Since the founding of the United States, culinary texts and practices have played a crucial role in the making of cultural identities and social hierarchies. A Taste of Power examines culina...

Religion has always played a special role in the life of the United States. This has been true at Puritan times and it is still true today. Apocalypse Soon? charts the sometimes open, sometimes hid...

These have been called the most famous and beloved letters of the past century. Rainer Maria Rilke himself said that much of his creative expression went into his correspondence, and here he touche...

An illuminating history of North America's eleven rival cultural regions that explodes the red state-blue state myth.

North America was settled by people with distinct religious, politica...

This upbeat nitty-gritty memoir, based on the author's 2001 trail journal, chronicles one man's hike the whole length of the Appalachian Trail, beginning just north of Atlanta and finishing six mon...

Ovid's Metamorphoses gains its ideal twenty-first-century herald in Stanley Lombardo's bracing translation of a wellspring of Western art and literature that is too often treated, even by po...

'The finest translation in and for our time' (Kevin Crossley-Holland) Sir Gawain and The Green Knight, with its intricate plot of enchantment and betrayal is probably the most skilfully told story ...

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, this is a brilliant writer’s account of a long, painful, ecstatic—and unreciprocated—affair with a country that has long fascinat...

From 1897 to 1917 the red-light district of Storyville commercialized and even thrived on New Orleans's longstanding reputation for sin and sexual excess. This notorious neighborhood, located just ...

Nearly 100,000 U.S. soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan at the height of the campaign, fighting the longest war in the nation's history. But what do Americans know about the land where this confl...

Billy Cannon’s name, his image, and his remarkable athletic career serve as emblems for Louisiana State University, the Southeastern Conference, and college football. LSU’s only Heisman Trophy winn...

Get on Stage and Perfect Your Performance

Have you ever enjoyed a slam or two and thought, "I could do this," but felt apprehensive staring at that empty mic—or worse, you climbed up on stag...

The writings of Greek philosopher ARISTOTLE (384BC 322BC) student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great are among the most influential on Western thought, and indeed upon Western civilization it...

This unique book, now fully updated, provides a comprehensive overview of all aspects of life in North Korea today. Drawing on decades of experience, noted experts Ralph Hassig and Kongdan Oh explo...

Suggests ways for Detroit to become a smaller but better city in the twenty first century and proposes productive uses for the city’s vacant spaces.

As the world's most dynamic region, Asia embodies explosive economic growth, diverse political systems, vibrant societies, modernizing militaries, cutting-edge technologies, rich cultural tradition...

As well as being a remarkable statesman and one of the world's longest-detained political prisoners, Nelson Mandela has become an exemplary figure of non-racialism and democracy, a moral giant. Onc...

In the early 1970s, two idealistic young people -- Gwen Carpenter Roland and Calvin Voisin -- decided to leave civilization and re-create the vanished simple life of their great-grandparents in the...

This carefully crafted ebook: “The Complete Poetry of Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass (1855 & 1892) + Old Age Echoes + Uncollected and Rejected Poems” is formatted for your eReader with a functio...

An MIT "hack" is an ingenious, benign, and anonymous prank or practical joke, often requiring engineering or scientific expertise and often pulled off under cover of darkness -- instances of campus...

The greatest sonnets ever written, by the greatest poet and playwright in the English language--now in a handsome edition featuring exquisite color illustrations.

Discover Dante's original Inferno in this modern and acclaimed Penguin translation.

Describing Dante's descent into Hell with Virgil as a guide, Inferno depicts a cruel underwo...

The so-called ‘’shorter’’ Amitabha Sutra has been and is a foundation of spirituality for millions of Buddhist believers throughout the ages. The Sutra describes the magnificent Buddhist “heaven,” ...

The most comprehensive English-language collection of work ever by "the greatest poet of the twentieth century--in any language" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
"In his work a continent awakens to con...

With over 1000 entries and 400 illustrations, this volume is the most fact-packed history of the west ever assembled. Bestselling crime historian Jay Robert Nash has left no stone unturned in his s...

They emerged from the mines, shook off the coal dust, and stepped onto the diamond. From the early 1900s to the 1950s, baseball games between mine workers were a small-town phenomenon, each team at...

Ha'ina 'ia mai ana ka puana. This familiar refrain, sometimes translated "Let the echo of our song be heard," appears among the closing lines in many nineteenth-century chants and poems. From earli...

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this book is now available.

This compelling book provides a vivid firsthand account of the student demonstrations and massacre in Tiananmen Square in...

Unmistakably original, utterly heartfelt, stranger than fiction, hotter than any off-the-rack gay fantasy!

Building on the success of his extraordinary debut—the critically acclaimed, #1 “...

I write about anything that touches the essence of my existence. What I witness, what I feel, what I think, what I fear, what I treasure. I write about life, which is our greatest gift." --Mattie S...

Intended for general readers and for students and scholars of poetry, Poetry as Survival is a complex and lucid analysis of the powerful role poetry can play in confronting, surviving, and t...

Poet John Hollander surveys the schemes, patterns, and forms of English verse in this classic text, illustrating each variation with an original and witty self-descriptive example. In new essays fo...

Now in an updated edition, this pioneering and authoritative study considers the profound impact of the growing global water crunch on international peace and security as well as possible ways to m...

Tsong kha pa (14th-century) is arguably the most important and influential philosopher in Tibetan history. An Ocean of Reasoning is the most extensive and perhaps the deepest extant commentary on N...

In a town deep in the Florida Everglades, where high school football is the only escape, a haunted quarterback, a returning hero, and a scholar struggle against terrible odds.

The loa...

Part reportage, part travelogue, this is a fascinating introduction to contemporary Danish culture for anyone who wants to know more about the world’s happiest nation.

Denmark is the country...

Linda Gray SextonOCOs critically acclaimed memoir is an honest, unsparing account of the anguish and fierce love that bound a brilliant, difficult mother and the daughter she left behind. Linda Sex...

The Tyranny of Heaven argues for a new way of reading the figure of Milton's God, contending that Milton rejects kings on earth and in heaven. Though Milton portrays God as a king in Paradise Lost,...

A distinctive collection of more than 90 effective poetry-writing exercises combined with corresponding essays to inspire writers of all levels.

In the heart of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin, a letter sent from an isolated settlement, addressed to Hautes-Pyrénées, France, and marked undeliverable, shows up at the Bayou Chene post office. Th...

A riveting debut--a black Afghanistan veteran in search of his lost brother amid the chaos of Hurricane Katrina.

Sound—one of the central elements of poetry—finds itself all but ignored in the current discourse on lyric forms. The essays collected here by Marjorie Perloff and Craig Dworkinbreak that critical ...

This timely, pathbreaking study of North Korea’s political history and culture sheds invaluable light on the country’s unique leadership continuity and succession. Leading scholars Heonik Kwon and ...

This balanced history offers a concise, readable introduction to Nazi Germany. Combining compelling narrative storytelling with analysis, Joseph W. Bendersky offers an authoritative survey of the m...

Little Ethiopia of the Pacific Northwest tells the story of the Ethiopian community in Seattle. The community began with approximately two dozen college students who came to the city during the Eth...

This book provides an overview of the practice of Islamic finance and the historical roots that define its modes of operation. The focus of the book is analytical and forward-looking. It shows that...

H.R.P. Dickson had the good fortune to spend many years among the Badawin, living and travelling with them as one of them in their own tents. In this book, first published in 1949, the author uses ...

Does gentrification destroy diversity? Or does it thrive on it? Boston’s South End, a legendary working-class neighborhood with the largest Victorian brick row house district in the United States a...

Over ninety years since their absorption into the modern Iraqi state, the Kurdish people of Iraq still remain an apparent anomaly in the modern world - a nation without a state. In ‘The Kurds of Ir...

The moving memoir of one brave woman who, along with her daughters, has kept 90,000 of her fellow citizens safe, healthy, and educated for over 20 years in Somalia.

Dr. Hawa Abdi, "the Moth...

This book aims to interpret ‘Jewish Philosophy’ in terms of the Marrano phenomenon: as a conscious clinamen of philosophical forms used in order to convey a ‘secret message’ which cannot fin...

The Ugliness of Moses Mendelssohn examines the idea of ugliness through four angles: philosophical aesthetics, early anthropology, physiognomy and portraiture in the eighteenth-century.

Hig...

This book is the first full-length analysis of the theory and practice of Persian singing, demonstrating the centrality of Persian elements in the music of the Islamic Middle Ages, their relevance ...

No art has been denounced as often as poetry. It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree ...

A moving and pioneering celebration of the male bisexual self that addresses biphobia in our society

In today’s sexual world, both straight and gay and lesbian communities still often refuse...

“I had just witnessed women who shingled their own roofs, drove eighteen-wheeler trucks, and built their own houses—as well as kept them clean and cooked a damn good meal. On women’s land I a...

Edmund Spenser's innovative poetic works have a central place in the canon of English literature. Yet he is remembered as a morally flawed, self-interested sycophant; complicit in England's ruthles...

British Somaliland provides a history of the administration of the British Somaliland Protectorate from the time when Somaliland first became governable, following the defeat of Abdullah Hassan, to...

The global Muslim population includes a large number of lineal descendants and relatives of the Prophet Muhammad. These kinsfolk, most often known as "sayyid" or "sharif," form a distinct social ca...

This book discusses the idea that there is a specific Islamic form of entrepreneurship. Based on extensive original research amongst small and medium sized enterprises in Saudi Arabia, it shows how...