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The famous aviator presents a personal account of his historic transatlantic solo flight in 1927

In this Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, John F. Kennedy tells the stories of eight U.S. senators who put principle above popularity. Kennedy singled out John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Edmund G. Ross, Robert A. Taft, and four other individuals who risked their political lives to embrace their most heartfelt beliefs.

A prize-winning biography of the Father of the Navy.

Charles Sumner (1811-1874), U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for two decades, was an ardent abolitionist; a founder of the Republican Party; chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from 1861 to 1871; chief of the Radical Republicans during the Civil War and Reconstruction; Lincoln's friend and, later, Grant's nemesis; as well as an advocate for universal equality, international peace, women's suffrage, and educational and prison reform. This edition combines for the first time Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War and Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man into one monumental biography that brings into brilliant focus the character and impact of one of the most controversial and enduring forces in American history.

A warmly sympathetic biography of Henry James--"the Master"--that emphasizes his devotion to his art, analyzes the pains of his childhood, and acknowledges his intense desire for privacy.

Ernest Samuels won a Pulitzer Prize for this single-volume abridgement of his three-volume life of Henry Adams. Samuels is a respected Adams scholar, known for editing his letters, and he places his subject in historical and literary context, while pointing out the discrepancies between Adams's life and its portrayal in his own THE EDUCATION OF HENRY ADAMS.

This prizewinning study of President Kennedy and and his administration was written by perhaps his closest aide and friend, and sets a high standard for insider accounts that aspire to the level of history.

A detailed biography of the red-neck politician who became a national demagogue in the twenties and thirties and almost reached the White House.

The trials and triumphs of Eleanor Roosevelt's life as wife and mother are carefully drawn in this sympathetic portrait.

Robert Caro's study reveals Robert Moses as a head of a state agency who seemed to wield more power than most elected officials, and who forever changed the public face of New York City. Moses is credited with building Lincoln Center, the United Nations, and Shea Stadium, among other projects. A fascinating study of personality, politics, and power--and the use of taxpayer money.

A biography of the American author known for her psychological examination of the moral and social values of middle-class and upper-class society.

This 1979 chronicle is seen by critics not only as the definitive life of Dr. Johnson, but as a model of well-researched, lucid, fair--but always affectionate--biography.

The first volume of Edmund Morris's biography of Theodore Roosevelt covers his life up to 1901, when he assumed the presidency following the assassination of President McKinley. Morris explores Roosevelt's origins and growth, and conveys the robust personality that charmed a nation.

This meticulous biography of the notorious Russian ruler examines his background and accomplishments, detailing the armed conflicts during his reign and scrutinizing his transformation of medieval Russia into modern Russia.

Traces the life of America's eighteenth president from his uneventful childhood, through his West Point education and extraordinary successes on the battlefield, to his failure in the world of politics.

A reissue of the original prize-winning memoir by journalist Russell Baker.

Presents a comprehensive look at the quintessential Puritan, from his private home life to his involvement in the Salem witch trials, and offers a realistic portrait of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Boston.

A biography of the famed Victorian poet, playwright, literary critic, and aesthete, whose career was destroyed by his conviction and imprisonment in 1895 on vice charges. Ellmann, a professor of English at Oxford University, spent more than a decade researching and writing this study, which remains the definitive account of Wilde's life to this day.

Offers a fresh look at the fifteenth century Florentine philosopher, recounts his life, and discusses his major work, "The Prince"

This is the second volume of David Levering Lewis's magisterial biography of Du Bois. It examines the second part of his long life, including his break with and later reconciliation with the NAACP, the development of his socialist views, his role in American political life, and his fluctuating reputation and influence. It covers the years of the Harlem Renaissance through the Cold War to his death in the '60s.

"Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject.... But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak". Thus did Harriet Beecher Stowe announce her decision to begin work on what would become one of the most influential novels ever written. The subject she had hesitated to "meddle with" was slavery, and the novel, of course, was Uncle Tom's Cabin. Still debated today for its portrayal of African Americans and its unresolved place in the literary canon, Stowe's best-known work was first published in weekly installments from June 5, 1851 to April 1, 1852. It caused such a stir in both the North and South, and even in Great Britain, that when Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862 he is said to have greeted her with the words, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that created this great war!" In this landmark book, the first full-scale biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe in over fifty years, Joan D. Hedrick tells the absorbing story of this gifted, complex, and contradictory woman. Hedrick takes readers into the multi-layered world of nineteenth-century morals and mores, exploring the influence of then-popular ideas of "true womanhood" on Stowe's upbringing as a member of the outspoken Beecher clan, and her eventful life as a writer and shaper of public opinion who was also a mother of seven. It offers a lively record of the flourishing parlor societies that launched and sustained Stowe throughout the 44 years of her career, and the harsh physical realities that governed so many women's lives. The epidemics, high infant mortality, and often disastrous medicalpractices of the day are portrayed in moving detail, against the backdrop of western expansion, the great social upheaval accompanying the abolitionist movement, and the entry of women into public life. Here are Stowe's public triumphs, both before and after the Civil War, and the private tragedies that included the death of her beloved eighteen month old son, the drowning of another son, and the alcohol and morphine addictions of two of her other children. The daughter, sister, and wife of prominent ministers; Stowe channeled her anguish and her ambition into a socially acceptable anger on behalf of others, transforming her private experience into powerful narratives that moved a nation. Magisterial in its breadth and rich in detail, this definitive portrait explores the full measure of Harriet Beecher Stowe's life and her contribution to American literature. Perceptive and engaging, it illuminates the career of a major writer during the transition of literature from an amateur pastime to a profession, and offers a fascinating look at the pains, pleasures, and accomplishments of women's lives in the last century.

WILLIAM COOPER'S TOWN is the story of a father and son who embodied many of the contradictions that divided the United States during the early years of the Republic. William Cooper founded Cooperstown, New York, and his son, James Fenimore Cooper, became a successful novelist. Their story shows how Americans resolved the clash between gentility and democracy through the creation of new social forms and new stories that evolved with the expansion of the frontier.

After years of teaching creative writing, Frank McCourt published his first book, thus obliging his many friends who had been urging him to write about his childhood--a subject they knew from the many uproarious and affecting stories he told about it. ANGELA'S ASHES traces the tortuous path of his life from his days in abysmal poverty in Limerick, Ireland, to his arrival in New York as a teenager, eager to start a new life.

The autobiography of the Washington socialite, power broker, and publisher of the Washington Post.

A biography of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, who on May 31, 1927, landed in Paris from New York after completing the first solo transatlantic flight. Upon returning to the U.S., Lindbergh became a national hero. The media's incessant pursuit of Lindbergh was something of a watershed episode in America's obsession with celebrity, an obsession which has permeated the culture throughout the 20th century. Anne Morrow Lindbergh provided Berg with access to both her and her husband's private papers. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

This story of the remarkably long and happy marriage of Vladimir and Véra Nabokov emphasizes Véra's extraordinary devotion, which manifested itself in ways that were pivotal to Nabokov's work as both a writer and a teacher. The book brings both Nabokovs to life, and provides fascinating revelations about Vladimir's adulteries, Véra's influence on LOLITA, and--most remarkably--her unwavering contentment with her role in his life as chauffeur, teaching assistant, secretary, muse, and steadfast defender.

This biography of the second President of the United States is by the esteemed historian whose biography TRUMAN won a Pulitzer Prize. McCullough tells of Adams's life as a farmer and lawyer, his relationship with his beloved Abigail, and the role he played in the turbulent events which led to the founding of a nation. He explores his relationships with the other Founding Fathers, especially the important differences with his rival, Thomas Jefferson. A New York Times Editors' Choice selection for 2001.

The third volume of Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson tells of his role as leader of the United Sates Senate. Caro explicates Johnson's deft use of power, which included cajoling, deal-making, and even intimidation. Johnson made history when he craftily built a coalition of Northern and Southern Democrats that successfully passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957--the first act of its kind since Reconstruction. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

This colorful and thorough biography of Henry Ward Beecher portrays him as the first celebrity preacher in his time, whose life unfortunately was ruined by a public scandal involving a married woman. Debby Applegate places the charismatic Beecher in the context of the 19th century's progressive movements, including abolition and women's suffrage, and credits him with spreading a Christianity that emphasized good will and optimism over sin. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2006.

A thought-provoking study of Andrew Jackson chronicles the life and career of a self-made man who went on to become a military hero and seventh president of the United States, critically analyzing Jackson's seminal role during a turbulent era in history, the political crises and personal upheaval that surrounded him, and his legacy for the modern presidency. Simultaneous.

Identity and family are explored when two brothers are predisposed to sibling rivalry after being christened "Lincoln" and "Booth."

The subject of angst due to family difficulties has been absolutely desiccated by countless writers over the years, which is what makes AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY such an astounding delight. The ground it covers is well-trodden, yet Tracy Letts's Pulitzer-Prize winning play manages to somehow hop, jump, and stomp across the terrain without ever touching a previous footprint. The problems of the Weston family are myriad, to say the least--booze, pills, pot, adultery, incest. They are a murder away from completing their commemorative set of deadly sins. At the play's outset, Beverly, the family patriarch, retreats mysteriously into the night, never to be heard from again, a surrender which makes perfect sense by the end of the play. His vanishing act forces the family daughters, Barbara, Ivy, and Karen, to return to their childhood home to comfort their mother, Violet, who rewards their devotion by launching into a vicious and relentless barrage of verbal and emotional abuse, from which none will be spared. Much hostility and hilarity ensues, as Violet conducts her symphony of dysfunction. This chillingly bitter old woman, who is addicted to pills and riddled with mouth cancer, is probably the meanest and most memorable character to stalk a Broadway stage in recent memory.

Jay Follet, the father of a family in Knoxville, goes to visit his ailing father, who has suffered a heart attack. On his return trip, he is killed in an auto accident. The remainder of the novel examines the reaction of his wife, his 4-year-old daughter, and especially his 6-year-old son as they prepare for a final farewell. This book was published posthumously in 1957, from Agee's unfinished manuscript.

THE TRAVELS OF JAIMIE MCPHEETERS is a work I rank right up there with Lonesome Dove. So did the Pulitzer juries, awarding the prize to each in its year of publication. With that bit of background, I have a simple charge for you: Prepare yourself for a wonderful reading experience. This is a novel that will entertain you royally. It will also--had I better whisper it?--teach you a lot about the mores, preoccupations, geography--and perils--of America at the time of the Gold Rush...But JAIMIE MCPHEETERS is, first and last, a bang-up story, stirring and funny by turns. It's presented as a personal memoir; the reflections of a mature man recalling the supreme adventure of his life....
Although based in part on the journal of a real gold-seeker, Taylor's novel reminds me in many ways of Dickens. The tale is along; packed with exciting incident; and built around a gallery of memorable characters, the most important being the wryly reflective Jaimie, and his father, Dr. Sardius McPheeters...[Sardius] is the quintessential American Argonaut, dreamily and desperately opting for a new start; the second chance....You'll long remember him, and his son, and others you'll meet on this journey from Louisville, Kentucky, "General Delivery, Upper California."

Faulkner's last novel, THE REIVERS, won the Pulitzer Prize. An essentially comic novel, it tells the story of 11-year-old Lucius "Loosh" Priest; Boon Hogganbeck, who works for Loosh's grandfather; and the black chauffeur, Ned McCaslin. The three embark on a picaresque adventure, stealing Loosh's grandfather's Winton Flyer automobile to go on a joyride to Memphis, where they become involved in a horse smuggling scheme, spend time in jail, and end up at Miss Reba's brothel.

The relationship of Will Howland and his Negro mistress is exposed when their granddaughter marries a segregationist with political ambitions.

The acclaimed stories from Texan, Katherine Anne Porter, many of which examine the intricacies of Southern life. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Malamud's novel is based on the case of a Jewish worker in Russia who is accused of murder, and his subsequent treatment at the hands of the law and the public.

Published during the political and racial turmoil of the 1960s, THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER is a fictionalized version of the written documents of a man who led a slave rebellion in Virginia in 1831. As Styron wrote at the time, "Had perfect accuracy been my aim I would have written a work of history rather than a novel." His controversial novel is the tragic story of the effects of oppression on a man's inherent goodness and decency.

In Momaday's first novel, Abel is a Jemez Indian returning to his tribe after World War II. An outsider among his own people because of his war experiences and because of the fact that he is the illegitimate offspring of a Navajo, Abel is humiliated at a ceremony, then he murders the man who offended him. After serving an eight-year sentence, Abel moves to Los Angeles, where he is confronted by the Reverend Tosamah, a Kiowa Indian based on a parodic view of Momaday himself. Tosamah proceeds to victimize Abel because he is a "longhair"--an unassimilated Indian. Abel is victimized in other ways in Los Angeles, and eventually returns to the Jemez reservation to bury his grandfather. Through the use of traditions from both Navajo and Jemez cultures, Abel is finally able to bring together the shards of his identity into a coherent whole.

A retired, ailing history professor, Lyman Ward, has been deserted by his wife. To distract himself from pain, both physical and emotional, he embarks on the project of editing the private papers of his grandmother, an artist and writer married to a geologist. Ward recounts the story of his grandparents' life juxtaposed with his own--specifically, the betrayals of his grandmother and his own wife. Stegner masterfully evokes the Western landscape as well as the complex tensions between art and life. Stegner's magisterial tale, an American classic, was voted the best Western novel of the 20th century in a poll taken by the San Francisco Chronicle.

When Laurel Hand, a Chicago widow, goes home to Mississippi to visit her sick father, she discovers that he is now married to Fay, a woman younger than herself. Quiet and demure Laurel and the very crass Fay unsurprisingly take an immediate dislike to each other, and their clashes are heightened by competition for the Judge's affections and estate. The contrasts between Laurel and Fay are about not only about personality but also class and background--and Eudora Welty explores the situation with her usual acumen and buoyant wit. THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER, a spin-off from one of her New Yorker stories, won a Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1972.

Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prizewinning 1974 novel describes the battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. The trilogy begun with THE KILLER ANGELS has been continued by Shaara's son Jeff with the novels GODS AND GENERALS and THE LAST FULL MEASURE.

In Saul Bellow's tragicomic HUMBOLDT'S GIFT (1975), the main character, Charlie Citrine, is a successful writer who is tortured by a feeling of emptiness and by his troubling memories. Through his friend (and sometime mentor), the poet Von Humboldt Fleischer, Citrine learns the importance of the spiritual; and, through the unlikely figure of a gangster named Cantabile, Charlie is reawakened to his responsibilities. The question he grapples with is "how to be a man" in the materialist and antihuman society in which he lives--and then how to find the courage to deal with the answer to that question. The character of Humboldt is heavily based on Delmore Schwartz, who was Bellow's friend. HUMBOLDT'S GIFT was one of Bellow's most successful books, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

To read all of these stories in three or four sittings is to enter a world of lush lawns and swimming pools, martinis and backyard barbecues, the alienation of living in a big city, the anxiety of being surrounded by those whom you hope you resemble. Here Cheever captures the essence of urbanity and suburbanness, the angst of the station wagon, the paradox of loneliness inherent in being surrounded by people. Also included in this collection are Cheever's stories of Italy.

Ignatius J. Reilly, a grossly overweight medieval scholar who lives with his mother, is forced to seek employment when she can no longer tolerate his laziness. His disdainful encounters with the modern culture of New Orleans, his habitual misunderstanding of its inhabitants (some of them no less eccentric than himself) and his often hypocritical efforts at scholarly success make him one of the most memorable comic characters of modern literature.

Updike's third novel (after RABBIT, RUN and RABBIT REDUX) about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom follows the Pennsylvania car salesman's passage into middle age in the turbulent 1970s. Rabbit has achieved success as a salesman at Springer Motors, but his life is not without problems, including the return of his recalcitrant son Nelson, the return of an old flame into his life, and the ever-volatile relationship with Janice, his wife. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1982.

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.

This is the third novel in Kennedy's Albany Trilogy. Set in the 1930s, it explores the world of vagabonds through Francis Phelan, former baseball player turned hobo. Although the trilogy has recurring characters, one need not have read the previous two novels--LEGS and BILLY PHELAN'S GREATEST GAME--to appreciate this beautiful story.

Lurie's novel is the story of two English professors from Corinth University who spend a semester in London. Vinnie Miner is 54 years old, shy, and a scholar of children's literature; Fred Turner is a young, untenured professor. Each of them gets involved in a complicated love affair, as a result of which their views on England, America, love, and sex are forever altered.

Two former Texas Rangers, Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae, drive cattle from Texas to Montana with a crew of oddballs, misfits, and true heroes. With its roots firmly sunk in classic trail-drive lore, this novel nevertheless transcends the Western genre. Commenting on the book's phenomenal success, McMurtry said, "LONESOME DOVE was a critical book. But that's not how it was perceived. The romance of the West is so powerful, you can't really swim against the current. Whatever truth about the West is printed, the legend is always more potent." In 1987 the novel was adapted as a successful TV miniseries.

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
"American readers demand novels, and now Peter Taylor has given them one; to say that it is every bit as good as the best of his short stories is the highest compliment it can be paid."
THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
When Phillip Carver receives, on a lonely Sunday evening, two successive telephone calls from his sisters, begging him to leave his home in Manhattan and return immediately to Memphis, he is slow to agree. His sisters, middle-aged and unmarried, want his help in averting the remarriage of their father, an elderly widower. And although Phillip wants no part in such manipulations, he finds himself unable to refuse to make the trip South...and into his own past.

In 2006 the New York Times chose Toni Morrison's fifth novel from 1987, BELOVED, as the Best Work of American Fiction of the Last 25 Years, beating Don DeLillo, Cormack McCarthy, John Updike, and many others. Set during Reconstruction, much of BELOVED is told through flashbacks to pre-emancipation days in Kentucky. At the center of this kaleidoscopic tale is Sethe, a woman with a heavy past, emotionally and physically marked by slavery, poverty, and sexual violence. Sethe lives in rural Ohio with her mother-in-law Baby Suggs and her daughter Denver. Their home, however, is haunted by Beloved, Sethe's child who was killed nearly 2 decades before the novel begins. Morrison renders these women's brutal and powerful story in stunning detail through lyrical prose and magical dialog.

In the course of a day spent with her husband of 28 years, Maggie Moran reviews and reconsiders her married life. While the two of them drive 90 miles north of their home in Baltimore to attend the funeral of the husband of Maggie's best friend, Maggie wonders how her son Jesse's married life can be saved, and what is worth saving in her own marriage.

An aging Cuban-American musician living in a flop house in East Harlem in the early 1980s recalls his youthful success: in 1949, as he and his brother played the dance halls of New York, they became known as the Mambo Kings. Postwar New York was an exciting place for Cesar and Nestor Castillo, and the lush, sensuous music they played, and the many women they loved, are pleasant memories for the ailing Cesar.

Updike's fourth "Rabbit" novel presents the human condition as personified by Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. The fat, aging, ill Rabbit must also cope with his son's drug addiction, his wife's troubles, a former girlfriend who turns up suffering from lupus, and the world in general, with which Rabbit has always had a love-hate relationship. In this last work of his tetralogy, Updike dissects the horrors and failures of American society, while still managing to find hope, if not for Rabbit, then perhaps for the rest of us. RABBIT AT REST won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1991.

Robert Olen Butler served as a translator in Vietnam. In A GOOD SCENT FROM A STRANGE MOUNTAIN, he draws on his experience with that country to write about about postwar Vietnamese émigrés in New Orleans, and the Americans whose lives touch theirs. The collection won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

This novel chronicles the life of a Canadian woman, born in 1905 out of love and tragedy, and follows her life through marriage, motherhood and widowhood as she ages with the century.

INDEPENDENCE DAY is the sequel to Richard Ford's 1986 novel THE SPORTSWRITER. The story picks up six years later and finds the narrator, Frank Bascombe, still trying to make sense of life. Bascombe is no longer a sportswriter; he now sell real estate. Over the course of a Fourth of July weekend he takes a stab at settling some aspects of his life. He attempts to finally sell a house to a couple which has already turned down the first 46 houses he has shown them. He goes on a trip with his 15-year-old son to visit the basketball and baseball halls of fame, but the magic of Cooperstown eludes them. INDEPENDENCE DAY was the first ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Pen/Faulkner Award.

Martin Dressler works in his father's cigar store in 1890s Manhattan, where he learns the basics of business. He goes into hotel work--first as a bellhop, but eventually rising to own a hotel before he's 30. Alternating Martin's dreams with the day-to-day detail of his life, Millhauser evokes the business and personal world of turn-of-the-century America.

Nathan Zuckerman, now in his early 60s, agrees to write a tribute to the dead father of an old friend and, in researching the man's life, becomes intrigued with the mystery of why someone who seemed to have been blessed in every way--with a happy marriage, successful business, good health--turned into such an intensely bitter and unhappy man during the 1960s. The novel serves as Roth's assessment of the domestic casualties of the Vietnam War.

Michael Cunningham's critically acclaimed novel, which is inspired by Virginia Woolf's MRS. DALLOWAY, tells three simultaneous stories. One is about Virginia Woolf while she is writing the novel in the mid-1920s. In another, a woman reading MRS. DALLOWAY in 1949 fights off despair. In the third, a woman named Clarissa (whose nickname is "Mrs. Dalloway") prepares a party for a friend in the late 1990s. The main action of each part of the novel takes place over the course of one day--as MRS. DALLOWAY does. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

During the rise of Nazism, Joe Kavalier escapes from Prague and immigrates to America, where he hopes to make enough money to bring the rest of his family with him. He teams up with Sammy Clay, his Brooklyn cousin, to create comic book characters who act out the dreams of their creators--who, meanwhile, both become involved with the same woman, the devastating Rosa Saks. Chabon's critically acclaimed novel provides not only a window into the immigrant experience but also a hymn of praise to the golden age of the comics. THE AMAZING ADVENTURES was a New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

In Richard Russo's lengthy fifth novel--this one set in a small Maine town--the Empire Grill provides the focus for the town's inhabitants, who include Miles Roby, who manages the place; Francine Whiting, the wealthy woman who owns it; Jimmy the cop; and Miles's large, eccentric, and often comic extended family. Many plots intertwine as the townsfolk are revealed in all their odd vulnerability, and Miles surveys them all from behind the counter of the grill. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

"Cal" Stephanides recounts his rich family history, beginning with his grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty (secretly siblings), as they leave Greece in the 1920s and settle in Detroit. By the time Calliope is born in 1960, his parents are upper middle-class Greek Americans, but when he is 14 they discover that Calliope is actually a hermaphrodite. Taking the name "Cal," he runs away, finally finding a home in a San Francisco burlesque show. Jeffrey Eugenides's epic novel, like its main character, is a wonderful hybrid creature that perfectly captures three distinctly American stories: the immigrant tale, life in the 1960s suburban world, and finally the gender-bending and identity-altering situations that we associate with the beginning of the 21st century. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2003, MIDDLESEX became both a literary and a commercial success--a success further bolstered by its selection for the Oprah Book Club in 2007.

Geraldine Brooks takes a very minor character from Louisa May Alcott's LITTLE WOMEN--Mr. March, the girls' preacher father--and makes him the main character in this Civil War novel, winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Serving as a chaplain with the Union army, March becomes a teacher on a plantation, where he meets up with Grace, a woman slave he knew years ago. Tormented by the scenes of cruelty and suffering he witnesses--and the casual racism of nearly everyone he encounters--March struggles to keep his ideals intact. Brooks based her vibrant and well-researched portrait of March partly on Bronson Alcott, the New England transcendentalist and father of Louisa May.

Oscar Wao is an overweight Dungeons & Dragons-playing geek living in a Dominican-American ghetto whose dreams are cut short by the 500-year curse that has plagued his family and his people, "The Curse of the New World." In his first novel since his universally revered collection of short stories, DROWN, Junot Diaz continues to distill the essence of the fractured second-generation experience. The rich tapestry of language in the novel (slang, Spanish, and the poetry of Homer) speaks volumes about the complicated and violent paths by which we find our place in the world. THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2008.

Revolving around junior high school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her neighbors living along the coast of Maine, these thirteen linked short stories feature wonderfully vivid characters dealing with the regrets and tragedies of everyday lives. OLIVE KITTERIDGE was one of the most critically acclaimed titles released in 2008, earning a National Book Award nomination and winning the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

This in-depth pre-history of the 9/11 bombings focuses on Osama bin Laden, his fellow leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the rise of al-Qaeda, including its sources in the writings of the philosopher Sayyid Qutb, who visited New York City in the 1940s and was repelled by what he saw as Western decadence. Lawrence Wright traces the attraction of al-Qaeda for its followers, and underscores the significance of Israel’s stunning defeat of the Arab armies in 1967, a defining moment for the region.

Saul Friedlander's compelling THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS 1939-1945 completes the masterwork of history that began with Friedlander's NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS: THE YEARS OF PERSECUTION 1933-1939. Friedlander provides an in-depth account of the decisions of Hitler and the Third Reich to eliminate Jews across Europe--all drawn from Friedlander's exhaustive research of official documents. He also traces, in precise everyday detail, the effects of these decisions on the Jewish people and their experiences as recorded in the many memoirs, diaries, and eyewitness accounts that survived their makers. These public and private accounts, through Friedlander's deft scholarship, provide new perspectives on the events of that time and answer a multiplicity of questions about history and the Holocaust.

Discusses the impact of the migration of diverse peoples to the United States, and describes the effect on family life and traditions as well as on political and social conditions in the country.

This is a prize-winning history of the years between the terms of Presidents Jefferson and Jackson.

When first published in 1953, Bruce Catton, our foremost Civil War historian was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for excellence in nonfiction. This final volume of The Army of the Potomac trilogy relates the final year of the Civil War.

This book is an epic history of four civilizations--Native American, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American--that peopled the Southwest through ten centuries.

The first volume of George F. Kennan's SOVIET-AMERICAN RELATIONS 1917-1920 won a Pulitzer Prize in history in 1957. RUSSIA LEAVES THE WAR is Kennan's study of the events from the 1917 November Revolution to Russia's decision, in March 1918, to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, withdrawing from World War I. Kennan provides a close reading of the events of these brief but formative months, telling of Russia's relations with the United States and showing how the groundwork was laid for their later, troubled history in the mid-20th century. (The second volume of Kennan's study is THE DECISION TO INTERVENE.)

A sequel to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War, this book by Bray Hammond focuses on how Washington struggled financially to settle the Civil War and how its measures spurred the growth of federal government.

The crucial split in the town of Sadbury illustrates the grave difficulties which the early leaders and inhabitants experienced in substituting a new social structure and a new spirit for the old 'hierarchy, hold days, etc.' which they undoubtedly hoped would be absent in the New England common-wealth. One might even see the story of early Sadbury as a type of local morality play, replete with Devil, Greed, and Ambition, opposed by both Faith and Prudence.

In Reinhold Niebuhr's words, "Perry Miller, like all great historians, was both scientist and artist." That combination is nowhere better seen than in this book, awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History.

A history of nineteenth-century Western exploration which reveals its cultural and intellectual effects on the nation as a whole.

In this book, Bailyn discusses the intense, nation-wide debate on the ratification of the Constitution, stressing the continuities between that struggle over the foundations of the national government and the original principles of the Revolution.

In these memoirs by the former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson sees himself as having been "present at the creation" of the American century. Acheson's policies were praised by many and damned by others, including Joseph McCarthy.

Comparative study of race relations in the U.S. and Brazil probes racial attitudes, the impact of slave rebellions, and the role of the church.

Focusing on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the author examines the factors and institutions that have shaped the American character and culture.

The role of large-scale business enterprise-big business and its managers-during the formative years of modern capitalism is delineated for the first time in this pathmarking book.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award
Based on hitherto unexamined sources: interviews with ex-slaves, diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this "rich and admirably written book" (Eugene Genovese, The New York Times Book Review) aims to show how, during the Civil War and after Emancipation, blacks and whites interacted in ways that dramatized not only their mutual dependency, but the ambiguities and tensions that had always been latent in "the peculiar institution."

Contents
1. "The Faithful Slave"
2. Black Liberators
3. Kingdom Comin'
4. Slaves No More
5. How Free is Free?
6. The Feel of Freedom: Moving About
7. Back to Work: The Old Compulsions
8. Back to Work: The New Dependency
9. The Gospel and the Primer
10. Becoming a People

Historian C. Vann Woodward edited this collection of diary extracts which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1982.

Profiles four key figures in the history of government regulation of business.

Chronicles the political history of the space race, from its nineteenth-century beginnings with the rocketry pioneers to the Cold War competition, in which space became another area embraced by the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

Analyzes the movement of English emigrants to North America between 1773 and 1776

Looks at the nineteenth century origins of American science, discusses the influence of the Civil War, and describes financial support, training, and institutions associated with science.

Filled with fresh interpretations and information, puncturing old myths and challenging new ones, Battle Cry of Freedom will unquestionably become the standard one-volume history of the Civil War. A fast-paced narrative integrates the political, social and military events from the outbreak in Mexico to the ending at Appomattox.

In a swiftly paced, brilliantly vivid narrative, Karnow focuses on the relationship that has existed between the two nations since the United States acquired the country from Spain in 1898, examing how we have sought to remake the Philippines 'in our image, ' an experiment marked from the outset by blundering, ignorance, and mutual misunderstanding.

This absorbing and illuminating chronicle of the life of a midwife in 18th-century Maine won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990.

Reassesses Lincoln's civil liberties record and examines his responses to particular wartime problems.

Examines colonial society and the transformations in colonial life that resulted from the republican tendencies brought to the surface by the Revolution.

Presents a social history of the United States in 1940, along with a moment-by-moment account of Roosevelt's leadership and the private lives of the president and first lady.

An examination of the political and historical factors that determined the shaping of the U.S. Constitution, and an evaluation of its effect upon the development of American politics.

This first volume of a projected two-part definitive history of America's first capital city, chronicles its growth from its Dutch origins as New Amsterdam to the union of five boroughs into Greater New York in 1898. This expansive book by two historians has been 20 years in the making. A New York Times Notable Book of 1999.

This group portrait of the Founding Fathers emphasizes the sometimes intense associations and rivalries among Jefferson, Hamilton, Burr, Adams, Franklin, Madison, and Washington.The author examines six defining moments when the personal and the political collided, and shows how their distinctive styles and visions forged a new nation. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

Louis Menand's intellectual history discusses the ideas that emerged from the meetings of The Metaphysical Club, an informal group out of late-nineteenth-century Massachusetts, whose members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce. The groups unrecorded discussions have indirectly changed the American way of thinking. A New York Times Editor's Choice for 2001.

Two journalists who covered the Civil Rights movement over two decades tell the stories behind the stories in this panoramic account of how reporters, photographers, editors, and others brought the events of that time to America's homes through its newspapers, magazines, and television. The media were essential to bringing change to America, as the unprecedented images and accounts stunned the nation, shaking it out of its 1950s complacency. Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff cover a wide swath as they tell how first the black press and then the establishment press discovered the big story and kept with it, despite the personal risks and actual violence the reporters encountered. All this and more is recounted through interviews, oral history, documents, and examples of reporting from the time. THE RACE BEAT was a winner of a 2007 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction.

In this magisterial history of an exciting era of territorial expansion and national growth, historian David Walker Howe describes how political and military events, new technologies, and the rise of religious and progressive movements (most notably, the one against slavery), contributed to a far larger and changed nation by the end of the War with Mexico in 1848. Howe explains how the railroads, the telegraph, political parties, and the rise of business and commerce helped bring about revolutionary changes, and he places these in context with ideas about government and the nation's purpose first set down by the founding fathers and later realized by people such as Andrew Jackson and others. The period covered in WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT, from 1815 through 1848, acquires, in Howe's telling, a greater-than-before significance, and makes American history dramatically fresh again. WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for History.

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed continues the meticulous and eye-opening investigation of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings she began in her previous book (THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS) by tracking the lives of the Hemings family in a variety of locations, both in the United States and Europe, and showing the fate of the Jefferson and Hemings children. In doing so, Gordon-Reed vividly demonstrates the incredibly complicated choices and diverse lives lived in the early days of the United States, and her careful explication of issues of race, sex, power, and family should be a revelation to most readers. THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO was one of the most critically acclaimed books released in 2008, winning both a National Book Award for nonfiction and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for history.

A book which throws light on many features of the American character. Its concern is not merely to portray the scorners of intellect in American life, but to say something about what the intellectual is, and can be, as a force in a democratic society.

The author describes his experiences traveling from San Diego Bay to northern Maine, and shares his observations on nature along the way.

Norman Mailer's THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, which chronicles the historic 1967 protest march on the Pentagon in Washington D.C., won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize and is considered one of the definitive anti-war documents of the Vietnam era. Its first section, "History as a Novel," is as colorful and immediate as a work of fiction, presenting Mailer as a character in the drama. In visceral prose, he filters the events through his point of view--events that include the arrests of thousands of demonstrators, among them Mailer himself. The second half, "The Novel as History," employs a more sober and objective historical perspective on the march, the events that prompted it, the increasing anti-war sentiment in the country, and the government's determination--ultimately a futile one--to stamp it out. Mailer's ego-driven, iconoclastic, and fascinating narrative provides a wide-open window into a period of American history that has been endlessly recorded--but perhaps never so well.

A Western psychoanalyst and historian presents a detailed examination of the philosophies accepted by Gandhi and his attempts to convert the British through nonviolence.

Fitzgerald's landmark history of the Vietnam War reveals the collison of cultures between the Americans and the Vietnamese.

Drawing from religion and the human sciences, particularly psychology after Freud, the author attempts to demonstrate that the fear of death is man's central concern.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning work by nature-writer Annie Dillard. Living alone on Tinker Creek in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, Dillard follows the progression of seasons and explores the cosmic significance of the beauty and violence coexisting in the natural world.

Examines the circumstances and experience of being old in the United States and contradictory popular attitudes and public policy, and offers reform programs directed toward an adequate and comprehensive national policy on aging.

John Barth, who hails from the Chesapeake Bay area, writes an introduction to this nonfiction book about the bay and its fishermen.

Dr. Carl Sagan takes us on a great reading adventure, offering his vivid and startling insight into the brain of man and beast, the origin of human intelligence, the function of our most haunting legends--and their amazing links to recent discoveries.
"A history of the human brain from the big bang, fifteen billion years ago, to the day before yesterday...It's a delight."
THE NEW YORK TIMES

Challenges perpetuated misconceptions about the nature-nurture controversy by examining hereditary biological controls on human behavior and the possibility of sociobiological limitations on human destiny.

First published in 1979, this is a genuine interdisciplinary work of nonfiction, with dozens of historical references and subtexts. Critics and reviewers have summed up its meaning in varying ways, yet consistently with praise. A mixture of art, philosophy, music, math, technology, and cognitive science, the book's title only reflects one aspect of its subject matter; namely, the connection between the work of mathematician Kurt Gödel, the artist M. C. Escher, and the composer J. S. Bach. In the preface to the 20th-anniversary edition, the author calls his book "a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter." A 1980 Pulitzer Prize winner.

Seven interlinked essays on Habsburg Vienna in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries focus on the intersection of politics and culture and the achievements of the city's political geniuses.

Kidder reminds managers that more inspiring than a big paycheck is meeting a big, meaningful, and clearly-defined challenge. THE SOUL OF A NEW MACHINE follows a team through the course of solving a critical issue, complementing the story with insights any manager interested in motivating the troops would do well to follow.

The unforgettable true story of 'Sylvia Frumkin' and her dramatic regress from highly intelligent grade-school student to schizophrenic who has spent much of the past 17 years in mental institutions.

The racial turmoil of late 1960s and early '70s Boston is expertly conjured in J. Anthony Lukas's COMMON GROUND, which explores the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis in 1968. The book chronicles the attempts to bring the black and white communities together, both through simple experiments in social engineering--like televising a James Brown concert to prevent further rioting--and the more problematic method of busing black students into white schools, a practice that caused even more strife. But COMMON GROUND also delves into the complex mechanics of trying to carve out a life in a modern city. Lukas focuses on the efforts of three families--the black Twymons, the working-class Irish McGoffs, and the white, patrician Divers--to enhance, improve, and preserve their way of life against a background of huge social upheaval. He shows how well-meaning political decisions can become embroiled in corruption, how middle-class ambitions can destroy the delicate balance of a neighborhood, and how defending a way of life can swiftly degenerate into violence and brutality. Along the way, Lukas also lays bare the intricate societal relationships that make up a community, sensitively presenting the motivations of a dizzying array of characters from every social level. In addition to being a valuable history lesson, COMMON GROUND is an essential aid to understanding the convoluted interaction of political forces at work in any modern movement for social change.

In this monumental work, David Shipler, award-winning correspondent for The New York Times, examines the forces that contribute to the mutual aversion and hatred in Israel.

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

Profiles sharecropper children.

This book talks about the ants and their habitats and where they came from and arrived.

Follows the historic role of oil from the first oil well in Pennsylvania to the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War and comments on how the natural resource shaped the entire world economy and international politics in the last century.

The Washington Post's Moscow correspondent chronicles the collapse of the Soviet empire, from the rise of glasnost, through the final lowering of the Soviet flag, to the start of the post-Communist age.

Inspired by Darwin's observations of the Galapagos finches, the author reveals how the incremental changes that occur between generations of finches demonstrate natural selection. Through the author's discussions with many prominent ornithologists, the reader learns the differences among these finches and the effects the environment and sexual pressures have had on these birds.

Rosenberg examines the complex aftermath of the breakup of Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989. She dissects the lives of the people from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia as they struggle with the psychological crises that accompanied this immense change. Among those she describes are dissidents accused of collaborating with the secret police, people aware that their loved ones have informed on them, and East German border guards on trial for following orders to shoot defectors.

No book before this one has rendered the story of cigarettes -- mankinds most common self-destructive instrument and its most profitable consumer product -- with such sweep and enlivening detail.Here for the first time, in a story full of the complexities and contradictions of human nature, all the strands of the historical process -- financial, social, psychological, medical, political, and legal -- are woven together in a riveting narrative. The key characters are the top corporate executives, public health investigators, and antismoking activists who have clashed ever more stridently as Americans debate whether smoking should be closely regulated as a major health menace.We see tobacco spread rapidly from its aboriginal sources in the New World 500 years ago, as it becomes increasingly viewed by some as sinful and some as alluring, and by government as a windfall source of tax revenue. With the arrival of the cigarette in the late-nineteenth century, smoking changes from a luxury and occasional pastime to an everyday -- to some, indispensable -- habit, aided markedly by the exuberance of the tobacco huskers.This free-enterprise success saga grows shadowed, from the middle of this century, as science begins to understand the cigarettes toxicity. Ironically the more detailed and persuasive the findings by medical investigators, the more cigarette makers prosper by seeming to modify their product with filters and reduced dosages of tar and nicotine.We see the tobacco manufacturers come under intensifying assault as a rogue industry for knowingly and callously plying their hazardous wares while insisting that the health charges against them (a) remain unproven, and (b) are universally understood, so smokers indulge at their own risk.Among the eye-opening disclosures here: outrageous pseudo-scientific claims made for cigarettes throughout the 30s and 40s, and the story of how the tobacco industry and the National Cancer Institute spent millions to develop a "safer" cigarette that was never brought to market.Dealing with an emotional subject that has generated more heat than light, this book is a dispassionate tour de force that examines the nature of the companies' culpability, the complicity of society as a whole, and the shaky moral ground claimed by smokers who are now demanding recompense

This history examines the influences of geography and environment on the development of civilization and seeks to find large patterns that might explain why, in the modern period, some groups seem to have significantly greater material wealth than others. The author is an evolutionary biologist, and his scientific approach to human history draws on examples from societies all over the world.

Grounding scientific explanation in accessible, often humorous prose, this multilayered travelogue explores the diversity of America's geology and culture. McPhee unravels the mysteries of the country's geological timeline and reveals the quirks and motivations of his fellow travelers--preeminent geologists investigating the earth's history through rock layers unceremoniously carved to make room for Interstate 80. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

This study of Japanese society shows how, after Japan's defeat in World War II, the Japanese reshaped their old traditions and incorporated new ideas from the West in a unique mix. They were thus well-positioned to participate in the emerging free-market opportunities.

This biography of the emperor of Japan examines his formative years and how they shaped his character, his deft grasp of both the imperial system and modernity, his wielding of power and influence within his country, and that country's conflicts with major powers such as China and the United States. Winner of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award for biography and a 2001 Pulitzer Prize.

This narrative history of the civil rights movement focuses on Birmingham, Alabama over two decades--and that city's historic confrontations of 1963. The author examines the background of Birmingham's elites and how they responded to the challenges posed by the movement. She explores personalities and power struggles on both sides, and reveals new facts about events that made news, such as the famous church bombing in which four children were killed. A New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

This study of genocide in the 20th century examines America's pattern of reluctance to intervene--including in the Holocaust, in Cambodia, and in Bosnia. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Douglas Blackmon reports in depth on a little-known but widespread practice in the American South that began after the Civil War: the leasing of convict labor to corporations, municipalities, and farms. This system of forced labor, which continued into World War II, fell almost exclusively on black males, many of whom had been arrested on minor infractions and trumped-up charges. Blackmon draws on oral histories of those who survived to describe the harsh conditions under which they lived. He provides ample historical context and perspective in what amounts to a chilling, and important, account of segregation and oppression--a chapter in American history. The book won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize Award in the category of general nonfiction.

Moore's poems are revered for her fresh and original language and what her friend Elizabeth Bishop called "her polysyllabic virtuosity." She was a ladylike poet who valued elegance and decorum, and the concreteness and concision of her verse reflect her Imagist beginnings. Moore dealt with large questions by examining the small and seemingly trivial; her unconventional subject matter included animals, baseball, flowers, Brooklyn, opera, the circus--all of which she adored. She also wrote about poetry itself, most famously in her poem simply entitled "Poetry," which contains the memorable definition of poetry as "imaginary gardens with read toads in them."

Twenty-nine previously uncollected poems, some of which had been published and some of which were discovered after MacLeish's death in 1982.

Stevens's perennial concern was the role of the artist in the society in which he lives: What is the connection between the imagination and the real world? His conclusion, that the creation of art and the appreciation of beauty provide the source of meaning and order, is also an answer to his other major preoccupation, which is the quest for meaning in a world without God. Stevens's work is private, cerebral, and full of fine discriminations of feeling; it is also characterized by the vast resources of his vocabulary. Many of his poems take the form of theme and variations--most notably his famous work, "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

This posthumous volume won Williams the Pulitzer Prize in 1963.

The DREAM SONGS--385 sonnetlike poems about his alter ego, a middle-aged man named Henry--established Berryman as a major voice in American poetry. This volume won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964.

In 1967, Sexton won the Pulitzer Prize for LIVE OR DIE, one of her most harrowing and personal volumes of poetry.

Winner of the 1969 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the Objectivist volume OF BEING NUMEROUS contains spare, haunting verse.

These Pulitzer Prize-winning poems and essays by the author of No Nature range from the lucid, lyrical, and mystical to the political. All, however, share a common vision: a rediscovery of North America and the ways by which we might become true natives of the land for the first time.

John Ashberry won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror'. Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been.

A capstone to Nemerov's career of nearly thirty years, showing the expansion and increasing richness of his voice and vision and the sharpening of his perception and craft.

Verses by the renowned American poet who has won the Pulitzer Prize for both poetry and fiction are arranged in reverse chronological order and reveal his continual development.

This volume, representing 30 years of Kinnell's poetry, won the Pulitzer Prize as well as the American Book Award in 1983. It includes representatives of the nature poetry he was writing in the 1960s, much of THE BOOK OF NIGHTMARES, and approximately half the poems in MORTAL ACTS, MORTAL WORDS.

Brief poems describe nature, mortality, a missing child, the lives of animals, and the beauty of the seasons.

The short sentences in these quirky prose poems build to describe the absurdisms of a world wracked by war and tragedy. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1990.

Presents a new collection of poetry by the National Book Award- and Bolligen Prize-winning poet-author of "Merciful Disguises"

The strange world of James Tate comes together with samplings from the poet's earlier award-winning work in this volume that garnered the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

This haunting collection takes place in a garden, in which the voices of the flowers, the gardener, and the gods of both speak to one another in the taut emotional tenor Gluck is famous for. Pained spiritual longing and a mythic quality heighten the conversation. Based on traditional prayer, many of the poems bear the titles "Matins" and "Vespers." Winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

A collection of poems from the author's earlier books combined with a dozen new poems interweave memory and history.

This is a collection of 33 poems that move between elegy and prayer among the tailings of memory in an honest search for truths so universal that they tend to escape us all.

For this major collection, spanning twenty years of writing, Jorie Graham has made a generous selection from her five previous volumes of poetry: Hybrids of Plants and of Ghosts, Erosion, The End of Beauty, Region of Unlikeness, and Materialism.

In a collection that represents over thirty-five years of her writing life, this distinguished poet explores a wide range of subjects, which include her cultural and family history and reflect her fascination with music and the discoveries offered by language. In fact, her book is a testament to the miraculous power of language to interpret and transform our world. It is a testament that invites readers to share her vision of experiences we all have in common: sorrow, tenderness, desire, the revelations of art, and mortality - "the hard, dry smack of death against the glass". To this community Mueller presents moments after moment where the personal and public realms intersect, where lives ranging from her own to those of Mary Shelley and Anton Webern illuminate the ways in which history shapes our lives. In "Brendel Playing Schubert", Mueller's breathtaking linguistic virtuosity reminds us how music can transport us out of ourselves and into "the nowhere where the enchanted live"; in "Midwinter Notes", the crepuscular world, stripped of its veil, shines forth as a signal from some realm where the sense of things may be revealed. In the title piece Mueller brings a sense of enduring and unclouded wonder to a recognition of all those whose lives might have been our own.

A new collection of poetry from the author of COUNTRY MUSIC and THE WORLD OF TEN THOUSAND THINGS.

A collection of works by the American poet laureate and MacArthur Fellow, this book includes Strand's eulogy for Joseph Brodsky, his "dog poems," and poems on works by de Chirico, among other subjects. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

In his eighth book of poems, Williams continues to develop the possibilities of the long line for which he is so well known, but he includes some short lines here as well, recalling the work of his early books. The poems here often investigate consciousness--both in the psychological sense of the word and in the sense that suggests awareness of what's around, an awareness for which Williams has received copious praise.

How is human nature driven to perpetuate itself through love and procreation while it is simultaneously attracted to the shadowy pull of self destruction? Stephen Dunn addresses this mystery throughout this collection in which he considers the individual in the context of broad philosophical and historical questions. This title won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

The metaphysical pondering of the poems in this eighth collection of Dennis's verse eventually finds its way into the material world, where, for instance, the poet contemplates varnishing his bookshelves.

Of these 45 poems, 11 are sonnets, and many of them take Irish history and the Irish immigration to America as their subject. Moy is the poet's birthplace in Northern Ireland.

The title of Robert Hass's Pulitzer-Prize winning collection evokes carpentry and craft, and his poetry leaves little doubt about his masterful skills as a handler and shaper of language. He has always excelled at making ideas tangible with words, though he has usually restricted his arena to the personal, extending his private perceptions into our realm of vision with his verse. With TIME AND MATERIALS, he moves into the universal, by addressing the atrocity of war, the hegemony of economics, and the ubiquitous, inexorable creep of cynicism that taints so much of modern culture. But Hass's lines and letters, chosen and assembled with such care and candor that they often appear spontaneous, demonstrate the possibility of defeating pessimism with exposure and bright-eyed examination. He both reveals and heals the wounds of the world with his words.

W.S. Merwin paints ordinary scenes and memories with various shades of light and dark, and thus allows us to appreciate angles and aspects that were previously hidden. Merwin's choice to hide himself, and his structure, in this collection is intriguing. In the first portion of the book, he simply allows his observations to emerge as words that resonate with alluring wisdom, yet feel separate, and even scattered. However, a theme surfaces as the verses accumulate, and insight dawns on us with the inexorable certainty of sunlight, until the final page leads us back to the title, and leaves us eager for another reading. THE SHADOW OF SIRIUS garnered the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Merwin's second time winning the award, after THE CARRIER OF LADDERS in1971.

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