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The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America
Leo Marx · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorThis is Not the End of the Book
Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carriere · 348 pages
This beautifully produced book, an object of desire in itself, is the transcription of a long conversation between the two men in which they discuss a vast range of subjects, from what can be defined as the first book, to the idea of the library, the burning of books both accidental and deliberate, and what will happen to knowledge and memory when infinite amounts of information are available at t
Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale
Marina Warner · 201 pages
Marina Warner has loved fairy tales over her long writing career, and she explores here a multitude of tales through the ages, their different manifestations on the page, the stage, and the screen. From the phenomenal rise of Victorian and Edwardian literature to contemporary children's stories, Warner unfolds a glittering array of examples, from classics such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and T
Eminent Outlaws: The Gay Writers Who Changed America
Christopher Bram · 372 pages
Describes how the trailblazing, post-war gay literary figures, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg, paved the way for newer generations, including Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, and Edward Albee.
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?
James Shapiro
For more than two hundred years after William Shakespeare's death, no one doubted that he had written his plays. Since then, however, dozens of candidates have been proposed for the authorship of what is generally agreed to be the finest body of work by a writer in the English language. In this remarkable book, Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to questio
The Elizabethan World Picture
Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard · 116 pages
This brief and illuminating account of the ideas of world order prevalent in the Elizabethan age and later is an indispensable companion for readers of the great writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists, Donne and Milton, among many others. The basic medieval idea of and ordered Chain of Being is studied by Professor Tillyard in the process of
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf · 129 pages
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m
Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World
Claire Harman · 341 pages
Part biography and part cultural history, this splendid book not only tells the captivating story of Jane Austen's life, but also her literary legacy. The slow growth of Austen's fame, the changing status of her work, and what it has stood for in English culture is a story of personal struggle and family dynamics as well as a history of critical practices and changing public tastes. Jane's Fame is
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination
Peter Ackroyd · 518 pages
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses
Kevin Birmingham · 424 pages
For more than a decade, the book that literary critics now consider the most important novel in the English language was illegal to own, sell, advertise or purchase in most of the English-speaking world. James Joyce's big blue book, "Ulysses, " ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of "Ulysses "was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. All of the
Proust's Overcoat: The True Story of One Man's Passion for All Things Proust
Lorenza Foschini · 128 pages
"Jacques GuErin was a prominent businessman at the head of his family's successful perfume company, but his real passion was for rare books and literary manuscripts. From the time he was a young man, he frequented the antiquarian bookshops of Paris in search of lost, forgotten treasures. The ultimate prize? Anything from the hands of Marcel Proust." "GuErin identified with Proust more deeply than
Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood
Ellen F. Brown, John Wiley Jr. · 379 pages
Documents the cultural importance of Margaret Mitchell's famous novel, discussing the writing process, reception by the publishing industry, numerous authorized and unauthorized translations, and the iconic film adaptation.
Careless People: Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of The Great Gatsby
Sarah Churchwell · 432 pages
" Tracing the genesis of a masterpiece, a Fitzgerald scholar follows the novelist as he begins work on The Great Gatsby. The autumn of 1922 found F. Scott Fitzgerald at the height of his fame, days from turning twenty-six years old, and returning to New York for the publication of his fourth book, Tales of the Jazz Age. A spokesman for America's carefree younger generation, Fitzgerald found a home
A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18
Joseph Loconte · 235 pages
"The untold story of how the First World War shaped the lives, faith, and writings of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"--Amazon.com.
Literary Rogues: A Scandalous History of Wayward Authors
Andrew Shaffer · 297 pages
Rock stars, rappers, and actors haven't always had a monopoly on misbehaving. There was a time when authors fought with both words and fists, a time when poets were the ones living fast and dying young. This witty, insightful and wildly entertaining narrative profiles the literary greats who wrote generation-defining classics such as The Great Gatsby and On the Road while living and loving like he
The Book of Legendary Lands
Umberto Eco · 478 pages
"A fascinating illustrated tour of the fabled places in literature and folklore that have awed, troubled, and eluded us through the ages"--Provided by publisher.
Russian Thinkers
Isaiah Berlin, Jason Ferrell · 312 pages
Few, if any, English-language critics have written as perceptively as Isaiah Berlin about Russian thought and culture. Russian Thinkers is his unique meditation on the impact that Russia's outstanding writers and philosophers had on its culture. In addition to Tolstoy's philosophy of history, which he addresses in his most famous essay, 'The Hedgehog and the Fox,' Berlin considers the social and p
The History of the Hobbit, Part One: Mr. Baggins
John D. Rateliff, J.R.R. Tolkien · 512 pages
The Lady and Her Monsters
Roseanne Montillo · 322 pages
"A ... blend of literary history, lore, and early scientific exploration that traces the origins of the greatest horror story of all time"--Dust jacket flap. Motillo brings to life the fascinating times, startling science, and real-life horrors behind Mary Shelley's gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein.
Paperbacks from Hell: A History of Horror Fiction from the '70s and '80s
Grady Hendrix · 254 pages
Written in dead letters... and covered in blood! Demonic possession! Haunted condominiums! Murderous babies! Man-eating moths! No plot was too ludicrous, no cover art too appalling, no evil too despicable for the *Paperbacks From Hell*. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Horror author Grady Hendrix risks his soul and sanity (not to mention yours) to relate the true, untold story of
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece The Sun Also Rises
Lesley M.M. Blume · 368 pages
"The making of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, the outsize personalities who inspired it, and the vast changes it wrought on the literary world. In the summer of 1925, Earnest Hemingway and a clique of raucous companions traveled to Pamplona, Spain, for the town's infamous running of the bulls. Then, over the next six weeks, he channeled that trip's maelstrom of drunken brawls, sexual rival