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In A Splendor of Letters, Nicholas A. Basbanes continues the lively, richly anecdotal exploration of book people, places, and culture he began in 1995 with A Gentle Madness (a finalist that year for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and expanded in 2001 with Patience & Fortitude, a companion work that prompted the two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and biographer David McCullough to proclaim him "the leading authority of books about books." Basbanes now offers a consideration of the many pressing issues that surround the role of books in contemporary society, such as the willful destruction of books and libraries in Sarajevo, Tibet, and Cambodia, and the spirited efforts to restore them. The matter of "discards" at various libraries takes on an entirely new dimension as well, with fully researched stories about the kind of attitudes that may lead to the loss of “last copies” of important works. In vivid detail, Basbanes examines the many materials that have been used over the centuries to record information -- among them clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, slabs of stone, palm leaves, animal skins, and hammered sheets of gold and copper. Also discussed are the various debates that continue to rage about preservation, which may mean saving and storing books on paper indefinitely, or as electronic data, which are by nature ephemeral. In this beautifully packaged edition, Nicholas Basbanes brings to a close his wonderful trilogy on the remarkable world of books and bibliophiles.
For Yale University Press, which celebrates its hundredth birthday in 2008, the century has been an eventful one, punctuated with no few surprises. The Press has published more than 8,000 volumes through the years, scores of bestsellers and award-winners among them, and these books have come to fruition through the efforts of a host of colorful authors, editors, directors, board members, and others of intellectual and literary renown. With an ear always cocked for an interesting tale, one of today's best storytellers presents an anecdote-rich chronicle of the Press's first 100 years. Nicholas Basbanes, whom David McCullough has called the leading authority of books about books, quickly convinces us that the Press's history, while bookish, is also lively and fascinating. Basbanes explores the saga behind the acquisition of Eugene O'Neill's blockbuster play, the all-time Yale bestseller Long Day's Journey into Night; the controversy sparked in 1965 by publication of The Vinland Map; the origins of the groundbreaking Annals of Communism series, initiated in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise; and many more highlights from Press annals. Basbanes looks at the reasons behind the publisher's remarkable financial success, and he completes A World of Letters with a glimpse at the new initiatives that will propel the Press into a second exciting century.
A Gentle Madness continues to astound and delight readers about the passion and expense a collector is willing to make in pursuit of the book. The book captures that last moment in time when collectors pursued their passions in dusty bookshops and street stalls, high stakes auctions, and the subterfuge worthy of a true bibliomaniac. An adventure among the afflicted, A Gentle Madness is vividly anecdotal and thoroughly researched. Nicholas Basbanes brings an investigative reporter's heart to illuminate collectors past and present in their pursuit of bibliomania. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Since the rise of modern biblical scholarship there has not been unanimity as to how to characterize Paul. He has been praised for having delivered Christianity from Judaism. Lately it has been argued that he remained so thoroughly a Jew that he was not a Christian at all. Others think he became a Christian because he had become a totally frustrated Pharisee by his failure to observe the law of Moses. Some consider him to have been a male chauvinist with few redeeming qualities. Others see in him a messianist with masochistic tendencies. Some think he was a conceited authoritarian who had no patience with the views of others. For a time it was popular to see him as a mystic who wished to lose himself by being in Christ. It has been said that, as one concerned with the life of the Spirit, he saw reason as the enemy of faith and required his converts to sacrifice the intellect on the altar of submission to authority. All these are, at least in part, reactions against the prevailing picture of him as the one who laid the foundation for the doctrines of righteousness by faith and the God of grace on which the Protestant Reformation was built. – Dr. Herold Weiss, Introduction to Meditations on the Letters of Paul With this beginning, the reader is invited into a Bible study with Dr. Weiss that will not be just an exegetical exercise but will, more importantly, be a personal journey into the Messiah's gospel that Paul so fervently shared throughout the known world of his time and continues to share in our day. Be forewarned that you may find yourself spending more time than you counted on as you truly meditate on the words and the spirit of Paul's letters.
Can love last beyond the grave? Sylvie Davis is a ballerina who can’t dance. A broken leg ended her career, but Sylvie’s pain runs deeper. What broke her heart was her father’s death, and what’s breaking her spirit is her mother’s remarriage—a union that’s only driven an even deeper wedge into their already tenuous relationship. Uprooting her from her Manhattan apartment and shipping her to Alabama is her mother’ s solution for Sylvie’s unhappiness. Her father’s cousin is restoring a family home in a town rich with her family’s history. And that’s where things start to get shady. As it turns out, her family has a lot more history than Sylvie ever knew. More unnerving, though, are the two guys that she can’t stop thinking about. Shawn Maddox, the resident golden boy, seems to be perfect in every way. But Rhys—a handsome, mysterious foreign guest of her cousin’s—has a hold on her that she doesn’t quite understand. Then she starts seeing things. Sylvie’s lost nearly everything—is she starting to lose her mind as well? "Lush with Southern atmosphere, The Splendor Falls expertly weaves together romance, tension, and mystery. Haunting and unforgettable!" --Carrie Ryan, bestselling author of The Forest of Hands and Teeth "Sylvie's voice is sharp and articulate, and Clement-Moore . . . anchors the story in actual locations and history. . . . Her ear for both adolescent bitchery and sweetness remains sure, and her ability to write realistic, edgy dialogue without relying on obscenity or stereotype is a pleasure."-Publishers Weekly "Long, satisfying and just chilling enough, this will please a wide audience and leave readers hoping for more."-Kirkus Reviews
An expansive collection of love letters to books, libraries, and reading, from a wonderfully eclectic array of thinkers and creators.
"Dave Hickey gets it exactly right in his preface to this collection of journalism, poetry, fiction and memoir: Lewis, who died in 1997, was indeed 'the most stone wonderful writer that nobody ever heard of.' Writing for Rolling Stone in the early '70s, he almost singlehandedly invented the movie set piece, and no one's ever improved on his flint-eyed profiles of Sam Peckinpah and the Allman Brothers. But the best piece here is his searing memoir of his white-trash Texas parents, who died in what was ruled a double suicide. Etched in acid and heart's blood, it is a terse masterpiece." —Malcolm Jones, Newsweek "The least known of the New Journalism's founding fathers, Grover Lewis has long been a legend among nonfiction writers, and this overdue collection shows us why. A beautiful stylist blessed with a blistering honesty, Grover saw it all and wrote it like nobody else could. Put Splendor in the Short Grass up on the shelf with the best of Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and Gay Talese. It belongs there." —Kenneth Turan, film critic for the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio's Morning Edition "Grover Lewis, the most literary of journalists, did things his way, simultaneously inventing a genre and setting the standard. These days ambitious feature writers, whether they know it or not, all strive to do it Grover's way. But, as this long overdue collection shows, not only did Grover do it first, he did it best." —Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard and Hold the Enlightenment "Grover Lewis was a gift to American letters. He had a hard eye, a sharp eye for hidden reality, and the unique ability to raise a popular journalism piece to the level of a universal truth. Plus he wrote like an angel. This collection, Splendor in the Short Grass, is not just a terrific read, it's an important work. I loved every page of it." —James Crumley, author of the hardboiled mysteries Dancing Bear, The Last Good Kiss, and The Final Country "Your gonzo journalism library isn't complete without him." —Ruminator "Grover was, after all, the most stone wonderful writer that nobody ever heard of....His job was to hammer the detritus of fugitive cultural encounters into elegant sentences, lapidary paragraphs, and knowable truth; and, in truth, the loveliness and lucidity of Grover's writing always rose to the triviality of the occasion." —Dave Hickey, from the foreword Grover Lewis was one of the defining voices of the New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s. His wry, acutely observed, fluently written essays for Rolling Stone and the Village Voice set a standard for other writers of the time, including Hunter S. Thompson, Joe Eszterhas, Timothy Ferris, Chet Flippo, and Tim Cahill, who said of Lewis, "He was the best of us." Pioneering the "on location" reportage that has become a fixture of features about moviemaking and live music, Lewis cut through the celebrity hype and captured the real spirit of the counterculture, including its artificiality and surprising banality. Even today, his articles on Woody Guthrie, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, directors Sam Peckinpah and John Huston, and the filming of The Last Picture Show and One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest remain some of the finest writing ever done on popular culture. To introduce Grover Lewis to a new generation of readers and collect his best work under one cover, this anthology contains articles he wrote for Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Playboy, Texas Monthly, and New West, as well as excerpts from his unfinished novel The Code of the West and his incomplete memoir Goodbye If You Call That Gone and poems from the volume I'll Be There in the Morning If I Live. Jan Reid and W. K. Stratton have selected and arranged the material around themes that preoccupied Lewis throughout his life—movies, music, and loss. The editors' biographical introduction, the foreword by Dave Hickey, and a remembrance by Robert Draper discuss how Lewis's early struggles to escape his working-class, anti-intellectual Texas roots for the world of ideas in books and movies made him a natural proponent of the counterculture that he chronicled so brilliantly. They also pay tribute to Lewis's groundbreaking talent as a stylist, whose unique voice deserves to be more widely known by today's readers.
At a time when definitions of Calvinism are hotly contested, this book provides a vision of the Reformed faith that is generous, winsome, and imaginative.