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The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary
Par Sarah Ogilvie. 2023
The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A history and celebration of the many far-flung volunteers who helped define…
the English language, word by word.&“Enthralling and exuberant, Sarah Ogilvie tells the surprising story of the making of the OED. Philologists, fantasists, crackpots, criminals, career spinsters, suffragists, and Australians: here is a wonder book for word lovers.&” —Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only FruitThe Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind&’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others. Of deep transgenerational and broad appeal, a thrilling literary detective story that, for the first time, unravels the mystery of the endlessly fascinating contributors the world over who, for over seventy years, helped to codify the way we read and write and speak. It was the greatest crowdsourcing endeavor in human history, the Wikipedia of its time. The Dictionary People is a celebration of words, language, and people, whose eccentricities and obsessions, triumphs, and failures enriched the English language.Brief Lives: Charlotte Brontë (Brief Lives)
Par Jessica Cox. 2011
Charlotte Brontë is one of the world's best-loved writers. Her extraordinary literary talent manifested itself at an early age when…
she penned a series of imaginative and entertaining tales. Before her untimely death at the age of 38 she produced the masterpieces Jane Eyre, Shirley, and Vilette. Superb and meticulously researched, Jessica Cox's biography provides a beautifully drawn portrait of the creator of some of the world's most remarkable novels.Brief Lives: Marquis De Sade (Brief Lives)
Par David Carter. 2011
As explicit in his prose as he was in his private life, the Marquis de Sade remains one of the…
most controversial writers of all time. This new biography, by the acclaimed translator and author David Carter, promises to shock as much as it informs. Arrested many times for sexual misdemeanors, the Marquis de Sade was imprisoned in the Bastille, where he was writing 120 Days of Sodom and The Misfortunes of Virtue at the time that it was stormed in 1789. After the French Revolution he was again imprisoned and sent to an asylum, where he wrote diaries and plays. This concise biography offers a fresh look at a relentlessly compelling figure with a fascinating life of scandal and imprisonment.Brief Lives: Wilkie Collins (Brief Lives)
Par Melisa Klimaszewski. 2009
Author of the first detective novel in English, Wilkie Collins was one of the most popular authors in Victorian England.…
In this illuminating biography, Melisa Klimaszewski situates the writer within his own milieu and demonstrates how his work sparks new understandings of Victorian life and letters. A close friend and collaborator of Charles Dickens, Collins secured his own fame with sensational novels that feature intricate legal plots, mistaken identities, and complex crimes. Boldly challenging the mores of Victorian society by maintaining two families and shunning the institution of marriage, Collins was also one of the most unconventional public figures of his day. His life story, succinctly told in this elegant biography, promises to instruct and to entertain.Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life
Par Brigitta Olubas. 2007
The first biography of Shirley Hazzard, the author of The Transit of Venus and a writer of “shocking wisdom” and…
“intellectual thrill” (The New Yorker).Shirley Hazzard: A Writing Life tells the extraordinary story of a great modern novelist. Brigitta Olubas, Hazzard’s authorized biographer, has drawn, with great subtlety and understanding, on her fiction; on an extensive archive of letters, diaries, and notebooks; and on the memories of surviving friends and colleagues to create this resonant portrait of an exceptional woman. This biography explores the distinctive times of Hazzard’s life, from her youth and middle age to her widowhood and years of decline, and traces the complex and intricate processes of self-fashioning that lay beneath Hazzard’s formidable, beguiling presence. Olubas shows us the places of Hazzard’s life, of which she wrote with characteristic lyricism, accompanied by rare photographs from Hazzard’s collection and elsewhere.Hazzard was the last of a generation of self-taught writers, devotees of a great literary tradition, and her depth of perception and expressive gifts have earned her iconic status. Olubas has brought her brilliantly alive, enhancing and deepening our understanding of the singular woman who created some of the most enduring fiction of the past sixty years. As Dwight Garner wrote in The New York Times, “Hazzard’s stories feel timeless because she understands, as she writes in one of them: ‘We are human beings, not rational ones.’” Here, in Shirley Hazzard, is the story of a remarkable human being.The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin
Par Sian Lye. 2020
&“If you are looking to understand a bit more about the circumstances that inspired The Adventures of Tintin—this book will provide…
a good snapshot.&” —The BookBuff Review Hergé created only twenty-four Tintin books which have been translated into more than seventy languages and sold 230 million copies worldwide.The Real Hergé: The Inspiration Behind Tintin takes an in-depth look at the man behind the cultural phenomenon and the history that helped shape these books. As well as focusing on the controversies that engulfed Hergé, this biography will also look at his personal life, as well as the relationships and experiences that influenced him.&“Tintin is more famous now than when Hergé was actually writing and illustrating his adventures. Sian Mye&’s book is another in the excellent series about the real lives of our most famous authors, and is well worth a look. Brilliant!&” —Books Monthly&“It is certainly possible to enjoy the Tintin books without knowing Hergé. But they are more interesting after learning about this complex, sometimes frustrating, man. We can learn from him, even if we learn from his mistakes.&” —Rose City ReaderThe Explorers Club: A Visual Journey Through the Past, Present, and Future of Exploration
Par The Explorers Club. 2023
Discover the extraordinary history and thrilling frontiers of exploration with this gorgeously illustrated guide from The Explorers Club, the esteemed…
home of the world's most prominent explorers.The discovery of the North and South Poles. The summiting of Everest. The moon landing. The (largely unknown) birth of climate change science. These are just some of the stories from The Explorers Club, the organization that, since its inception in 1904, has pushed the envelope of human curiosity.This guided tour of The Club&’s most riveting journeys includes hundreds of photos and fascinating anecdotes about The Club&’s distinguished members, including Teddy Roosevelt, Neil Armstrong, and Jane Goodall. From the darkest depths of the ocean to the highest points on Earth and to outer space and beyond, this book shares not just the inspirational history of modern exploration, but also reveals how it has evolved and continues to be relevant—even urgent—today.Good Times, Bad Times: The Explosive Inside Story of Rupert Murdoch
Par Harold Evans. 1983
A renowned journalist&’s &“vivid&” account of his battle with Murdoch after the global media baron bought the Times of London…
(Chicago Tribune). In 1981, Harold Evans was the editor of one of Britain&’s most prestigious publications, the Sunday Times, which had thrived under his watch. When Australian publishing baron Rupert Murdoch bought the daily Times of London, he persuaded Evans to become its editor with guarantees of editorial independence. But after a year of broken promises and conflict over the paper&’s direction, Evans departed amid an international media firestorm. Evans&’s story is a gripping, behind-the-scenes look at Murdoch&’s ascension to global media magnate. It is Murdoch laid bare, an intimate account of a man using the power of his media empire for his own ends. Riveting, provocative, and insightful, Good Times, Bad Times is as relevant today as when it was first written. With details on the scandalous deal between Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher, this updated ebook edition includes an extensive new preface by Evans, the New York Times–bestselling author of Do I Make Myself Clear?, discussing the Rupert Murdoch phone-hacking scandal.Fallen Angel: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe
Par Robert Morgan. 2023
Over 170 years after his death, Edgar Allan Poe remains a figure of enduring fascination and speculation for readers, scholars,…
and devotees of the weird and macabre. In Fallen Angel, acclaimed novelist and poet Robert Morgan offers a new biography of this gifted, complicated author.Focusing on Poe’s personal relationships, Morgan chronicles how several women influenced his life and art. Eliza Poe, his mother, died before he turned three, but she haunted him ever after. The loss of Elmira Royster Shelton, his first and last love, devastated him and inspired much of his poetry. Morgan shows that Poe, known for his gothic and supernatural writing, was also a poet of the natural world who helped invent the detective story, science fiction, analytical criticism, and symbolist aesthetics. Though he died at age forty, Poe left behind works of great originality and vision that Fallen Angel explores with depth and feeling.Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert
Par Brian Herbert. 2023
Everyone knows Frank Herbert's Dune. This science fiction epic combines politics human evolution and ecology and has captured the imagination…
of generations of readers. It is one of the most popular science fiction novels ever written, has won awards, sold millions of copies around the world and spawned multiple motion-picture adaptations. Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's eldest son, tells the provocative story of his father's extraordinary life in this honest and loving chronicle. He has also brought to light all the events in Herbert's life that would find their way into speculative fiction's greatest epic. From his early years in Tacoma, Washington, through his time at university and in the Navy, to the difficult years of poverty while struggling to become a published writer, Herbert worked long and hard before finding success after the publication of Dune in 1965. Brian Herbert writes about these years with a truthful intensity that brings every facet of his father's brilliant, and sometimes troubled, genius to full light. Insightful and provocative, this absorbing biography offers Brian Herbert's unique personal perspective on one of the most enigmatic and creative talents of our time.Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert
Par Brian Herbert. 2023
Everyone knows Frank Herbert's Dune. This science fiction epic combines politics human evolution and ecology and has captured the imagination…
of generations of readers. It is one of the most popular science fiction novels ever written, has won awards, sold millions of copies around the world and spawned multiple motion-picture adaptations. Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's eldest son, tells the provocative story of his father's extraordinary life in this honest and loving chronicle. He has also brought to light all the events in Herbert's life that would find their way into speculative fiction's greatest epic. From his early years in Tacoma, Washington, through his time at university and in the Navy, to the difficult years of poverty while struggling to become a published writer, Herbert worked long and hard before finding success after the publication of Dune in 1965. Brian Herbert writes about these years with a truthful intensity that brings every facet of his father's brilliant, and sometimes troubled, genius to full light. Insightful and provocative, this absorbing biography offers Brian Herbert's unique personal perspective on one of the most enigmatic and creative talents of our time.Dreamer of Dune: The Biography of Frank Herbert
Par Brian Herbert. 2023
Everyone knows Frank Herbert's Dune. This science fiction epic combines politics human evolution and ecology and has captured the imagination…
of generations of readers. It is one of the most popular science fiction novels ever written, has won awards, sold millions of copies around the world and spawned multiple motion-picture adaptations. Brian Herbert, Frank Herbert's eldest son, tells the provocative story of his father's extraordinary life in this honest and loving chronicle. He has also brought to light all the events in Herbert's life that would find their way into speculative fiction's greatest epic. From his early years in Tacoma, Washington, through his time at university and in the Navy, to the difficult years of poverty while struggling to become a published writer, Herbert worked long and hard before finding success after the publication of Dune in 1965. Brian Herbert writes about these years with a truthful intensity that brings every facet of his father's brilliant, and sometimes troubled, genius to full light. Insightful and provocative, this absorbing biography offers Brian Herbert's unique personal perspective on one of the most enigmatic and creative talents of our time.Country Editor's Boy: A Memoir
Par Hal Borland. 1970
A memoir of youthful years spent in Colorado as the American West was transformed, by the author of High, Wide,…
and Lonesome and The Dog Who Came to Stay. Country Editor&’s Boy picks up where Hal Borland&’s classic memoir High, Wide and Lonesome left off: with Borland, on the cusp of adulthood in the early twentieth century, making his way in an eastern Colorado town that still retained all the flavors of the Old West. Borland&’s father, the editor of a local weekly newspaper, was working to help his publication transition along with the town around him. At the same time, young Hal was experiencing dramatic social and economic change in his own way. In a matter of a decade, Borland&’s Colorado town shifted from a frontier outpost to part of a rapidly urbanizing new America. This memoir shows a boy entering adulthood as the world around him comes of age. Evocative and wholly engrossing, Country Editor&’s Boy is a vividly drawn portrait of western life, by one of the greatest naturalist writers of his age.Ordinary Light: A memoir
Par Tracy Smith. 2015
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • This dazzling memoir from the former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Life…
on Mars is the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America."Engrossing in its spare, simple understatement.... Evocative ... luminous." —The Washington PostIn Ordinary Light, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her remarkable story, giving us a quietly potent memoir that explores her coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter.The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland
Par Angela Youngman. 2021
A unique exploration of the character, the author, and the many transformations of Alice in modern culture—often in edgy and…
menacing ways. The Dark Side of Alice in Wonderland is the first investigation of the vast range of darker, more threatening aspects of this famous story, and the way Alice has been transformed over time. Although the children&’s story has been in print for over 150 years, the mysteries and rumors surrounding the story and its creator Lewis Carroll have continued to grow. Alice has been transformed—this is the Alice of horror films, Halloween, murder and mystery, spectral ghosts, political satire, mental illnesses, weird feasts, Lolita, Tarot, pornography, and steampunk. The Beatles based famous songs such as &“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds&” and &“I am the Walrus&” on Alice&’s Adventures in Wonderland, and she has even attracted the attention of world-famous artists including Salvador Dali. The Japanese version of Lolita is so different from that of novelist Vladimir Nabokov—yet both are based on Alice. This is Alice in Wonderland as you have never seen her before: a dark, sometimes menacing, and threatening character. Was Carroll all that he seemed? The stories of his child friends, nude photographs, and sketches affect the way modern audiences look at the writer. Was he just a lonely academic, a closet pedophile, a brilliant puzzle maker—or even Jack the Ripper? For a book that began life as a simple children&’s story, it has resulted in a vast array of dark concepts, ideas, and mysteries. With this book, you can step inside the world of Alice in Wonderland—and discover a dark side you never knew existed.The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst
Par David Nasaw. 2001
The definitive and &“utterly absorbing&” biography of America&’s first news media baron based on newly released private and business documents…
(Vanity Fair).William Randolph Hearst, known to his staff as the Chief, was a brilliant business strategist and a man of prodigious appetites. By the 1930s, he controlled the largest publishing empire in the United States, including twenty-eight newspapers, the Cosmopolitan Picture Studio, radio stations, and thirteen magazines. He quickly learned how to use this media stronghold to achieve unprecedented political power.The son of a gold miner, Hearst underwent a public metamorphosis from Harvard dropout to political kingmaker; from outspoken populist to opponent of the New Deal; and from citizen to congressman. In The Chief, David Nasaw presents an intimate portrait of the man famously characterized in the classic film Citizen Kane.With unprecedented access to Hearst&’s personal and business papers, Nasaw details Heart&’s relationship with his wife Millicent and his romance with Marion Davies; his interactions with Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, and every American president from Grover Cleveland to Franklin Roosevelt; and his acquaintance with movie giants such as Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Irving Thalberg. An &“absorbing, sympathetic portrait of an American original,&” The Chief sheds light on the private life of a very public man (Chicago Tribune).Georg Lukacs: From Romanticism to Bolshevism
Par Michael Löwy. 2023
On the 100th anniversary of the publication of History and Class Consciousness, a new edition of this indispensable guide to…
Lukacs's thought and politicsThe philosophical and political development that converted Georg Lukács from a distinguished representative of Central European aesthetic vitalism into a major Marxist theorist and Communist militant has long remained an enigma.In this this now classic study, Michael Löwy for the first time traced and explained the extraordinary mutation that occurred in Lukács's thought between 1909 and 1929. Utilizing many as yet unpublished sources, Löwy meticulously reconstructed the complex itinerary of Lukács's thinking as he gradually moved towards his decisive encounter with Bolshevism.The religious convictions of the early Lukács, the peculiar spell exercised on him and on Max Weber by Dostoyevskyan images of pre-revolutionary Russia, the nature of his friendships with Ernst Bloch and Thomas Mann, were amongst the discoveries of the book.Then, in a fascinating case-study in the sociology of ideas, Löwy showed how the same philosophical problematic of Lebensphilosophie dominated the intelligentsias of both Germany and Hungary in the pre-war period, yet how the different configurations of social forces in each country bent its political destiny into opposite directions. The famous works produced by Lukács during and after the Hungarian Commune—Tactics and Ethics, History and Class Consciousness and Lenin—were analysed and assessed. A concluding chapter discussed Lukács's eventual ambiguous settlement with Stalinism in the thirties, and its coda of renewed radicalism in the final years of his life.In this new edition, Löwy has added a substantial new introduction which reassess the nature of Lukacs's thought in the light of newly published texts and debates.Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2022
Par Margaret Atwood. 2022
From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays--funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient--which seek answers to Burning…
Questions such as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? How can we live on our planet? Is it true? And is it fair? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump and a pandemic. From debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom; from when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to how to define granola, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life
Par Jonathan Bate. 2015
Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate, was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He was one of Britain’s most…
important poets.With an equal gift for poetry and prose, he was also a prolific children’s writer and has been hailed as the greatest English letterwriter since John Keats. His magnetic personality and insatiable appetite for friendship, love, and life also attracted more scandal than any poet since Lord Byron. His lifelong quest to come to terms with the suicide of his first wife, Sylvia Plath, is the saddest and most infamous moment in the public history of modern poetry.Hughes left behind a more complete archive of notes and journals than any other major poet, including thousands of pages of drafts, unpublished poems, and memorandum books that make up an almost complete record of Hughes’s inner life, which he preserved for posterity. Renowned scholar Jonathan Bate has spent five years in the Hughes archives, unearthing a wealth of new material. His book offers, for the first time, the full story of Hughes’s life as it was lived, remembered, and reshaped in his art.Avidly Reads Board Games
Par Eric Thurm. 2018
“How we should think about board games, and what do they do to us as we play them?”Writer and critic…
Eric Thurm digs deep into his own experience as a board game enthusiast to explore the emotional and social rules that games create and reveal, telling a series of stories about a pastime that is also about relationships. From the outdated gender roles in Life and Mystery Date to the cutthroat, capitalist priorities of Monopoly and its socialist counterpart, Class Struggle, Thurm thinks through his ongoing rivalries with his siblings and ponders the ways games both upset and enforce hierarchies and relationships—from the familial to the geopolitical. Like sitting down at the table for family game night, Board Games is an engaging book of twists and turns, trivia, and nostalgia.Avidly Reads is a series of short books about how culture makes us feel. Founded in 2012 by Sarah Blackwood and Sarah Mesle, Avidly—an online magazine supported by the Los Angeles Review of Books—specializes in short-form critical essays devoted to thinking and feeling. Avidly Reads is an exciting new series featuring books that are part memoir, part cultural criticism, each bringing to life the author’s emotional relationship to a cultural artifact or experience. Avidly Reads invites us to explore the surprising pleasures and obstacles of everyday life.