Best Literary Movements & Periods

As an immigrant from Poland to England, and in travels from Malaya to Congo to the Caribbean, Conrad navigated an interconnected world, and captured it in a literary oeuvre of extraordinary depth. In a compelling blend of history, biography, and travelogue, Maya Jasanoff follows Conrad’s routes and the stories of his four greatest works— The Secret Agent , Lord Jim , Heart of Darkness , and Nostromo . “Brilliant…Jasanoff is an insightful and imaginative historian…The book comes in the form of a biography of Joseph Conrad, but in fact through Conrad she tells the story of a whole phase in world history…Boundless curiosity is also an attribute of Maya Jasanoff...[Her] travels have given her an empathy and an understanding for Conrad, and also for the victims of imperialism, that breathe on every page of this magnificent book…This is the best book on Conrad since [Ian] Watt’s. “Enlightening, compassionate, superb” —John Le Carré “With wit, nuance, and roving insight, Harvard historian Maya Jasanoff’s The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World maps the massively influential and controversial author’s life and work, finding that the themes of his time—dislocation and connection, immigration and xenophobia, power and powerlessness—uncannily mirror our own.” — Megan O’Grady, Vogue.com’s 10 Best Books of 2017 “[A] brilliant study . “[Jasanoff] Skillfully integrates details of Conrad’s life and accounts of his four greatest works, linking the challenges and forces that lie behind and within the novels to those of the 21st century…A powerful encouragement to read his books.” —. The Economist “This is an unobtrusively skillful, subtle, clear-eyed book, beautifully narrated…It is Jasanoff’s warmth towards her subject that comes through.” — Financial Times. “[Conrad’s] life story has been told many times, but Maya Jasanoff’s stands out for its vivid and imaginative writing…she provides rich background details on multiple topics…her attempts to reveal the hidden springs of Conrad’s fiction are often perceptive.” — Sunday Times (UK). “A great biography of Conrad for our times could never be just a biography of Conrad. To read it is to be a stowaway in the hull of a ship sailing from Conrad’s times to our own, as swift as the wind.” —Jill Lepore “In Dawn Watch , Maya Jasanoff has fashioned a singular craft for exploring the rapids and crosscurrents of a newly globalized era. The journey is intellectually exhilarating, and brings us to a richer understanding not only of Conrad’s world but our own.” —Kwame Anthony Appiah "Maya Jasanoff’s masterpiece....one of the most important books on colonialism to be written in our time, and by one of our most brilliant young historians." Maya Jasanoff is an eloquent historian and an erudite storyteller; she almost persuaded me to re-read Nostromo .” —Geoff Dyer “Jasanoff has done her research on sea and land as well as in the archives, and her book is often thrilling to read as it travels the world with Conrad. An admirable and profoundly meditated biography, worthy of its subject.” —Claire Tomalin “A guided tour of the underside of empire, led by the fiction of Joseph Conrad and the erudition of Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch is history, biography, and adventure story.

But through the sometimes uncomfortable months that the two men explore Homer's great work together--first in the classroom, where Jay persistently challenges his son's interpretations, and then during a surprise-filled Mediterranean journey retracing Odysseus's famous voyages--it becomes clear that Daniel has much to learn, too: Jay's responses to both the text and the travels gradually uncover long-buried secrets that allow the son to understand his difficult father at last. Mendelsohn weaves his basket with many wands; the complexity seems natural, an account of the quality of life itself, a route to revelation. The book partakes of at least four genres: classroom drama; travel writing; biographical memoir; literary criticism. Mendelsohn makes Homer’s epic shine in your mind.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “My favorite classicist once again combines meticulous literary investigation with warm and wrenching human emotion—books like these are why I love reading.” —Lee Child “Poignant, tender, affecting. “When Daniel Mendelsohn’s mathematician father lands in his son’s Homer seminar at Bard, the older man sets in motion an odyssey both hilarious and heartfelt. Father and son start in the pages of an epic, board a ship to follow the hero’s path through the Mediterranean, and finally end where all our stories do. Dread of the alien thrums through [Homer’s] Odyssey ; for Mendelsohn, the ancient tale becomes an occasion not only to explore his relationship with his father, but to transform it. The recognition leaves Mendelsohn free to see through his father’s hardness—his ‘exacting standards for everything’—to the vulnerable fighter within: a scrappy, strategizing Odysseus from the Bronx. What solace or despair resides in the unexpected relevance of this ancient poem, its encounters with Otherness thrown into high relief by the xenophobia of our time? [But] it dives deeper, excavating a portrait of Mendelsohn’s special student, his father: his lonely childhood, his early brilliance, his forfeiture of Latin for a life of numbers. There is but one ending to the book; within a year, Jay would die, and so Mendelsohn’s journey—indeed like Homer’s—would be undertaken after the fact, when something remained to be learned. In An Odyssey, he reels us in with a storyteller’s strongest gifts: passion, clarity, and timing.” —Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal. Mendelsohn’s exploration is [both] a personal family memoir and a critical report on Homer’s epic, and the two facets illuminate each other. The Mediterranean cruise that father and son take pays off in surprising ways; we get a haunting glimpse of the fear that the end of your journey means finis , the hope residual in permanent postponement. This is an honest, and loving, account of the improbable odyssey that gave them this one last deeply satisfying adventure together.” —Peter Green, The New York Review of Books “Heartfelt, touching . The course, and the cruise retracing Odyssey’s voyage to Ithaca a few months later, set in motion an emotional journey neither man could have anticipated. Mendelsohn expertly examines the Odyssey with depth and classical acumen, extracting meaning from even its most subtle moments. He details his own relationship with the ancient poem, and he culls from the narrative many insights into his own familial bonds, specifically with his father. a surprising piece of art—a masterful memoir of reading, teaching and learning; a book as full of twists and turns as its subject, often beautiful too. This is a story of reconciling a scientist and an artist; Jay, the man of calculus, comes to influence both his son and his fellow pupils. As well as a contribution to the art of memoir, An Odyssey is a vivid defence of the close rereading of a classical text, the tiny questions from which bigger pictures become clear.” —Peter Stothard, The Financial Times ★ “Enlightening—engaging, gripping and deeply moving . Mendelsohn explores the enduring relevance of Homer’s Odyssey through a memoir tracing the complex relationship between father and son.” —Library Journal (starred review) “Beguiling. in this memoir, Mendelsohn recounts a freshman class on the Odyssey he taught at Bard College with his father, an 81-year-old computer scientist, sitting in. … Mendelsohn gradually unwraps layers of timeless meaning in the ancient Greek poem; Homeric heroes offer resonant psychological parallels to a modern family. His father, a retired mathematician, had been interested in the classics during his school days and decided to continue his education by studying with his son . The author uses a close reading of the epic to illuminate the mysteries of the human condition; he skillfully, subtly interweaves textual analysis [with] the lessons of life outside it . At the book’s center is [Mendelsohn’s father] Jay, whose presence in the classroom bewilders and charms the other students and his son . With this graceful and searching memoir, we all drink from the cup of knowledge proffered by one of our leading philosopher-writers.” —Hamilton Cain, Star Tribune. A meditation on filial love as candid, tender and in its own way ruthless as its counterparts in the Bible, Shakespeare and Homer . both dense and fleet, and wholly captivating.” —Tim Pfaff, The Bay Area Reporter “It’s hard to pierce a legend, even when it’s just generation-old family lore . As author-professor, Mendelsohn doesn’t lecture; his storytelling leaves room for other teachers — including his current students, his former professors and relatives who decode multi-layered family myths. Classroom discussions of Odysseus’ long, wandering journey home to Ithaca led father and son to undertake a real-life Mediterranean cruise retracing the Greek warrior’s travels. Mendelsohn begins to see his father in a new light even while the older man challenges the basic tenets of Homer’s epic. A noted memoirist and venerable contributor to a myriad of respected periodicals, Daniel Mendelsohn doesn’t hold back. An Odyssey carefully unpacks details from Homer’s epic poem, with the author taking the stance of a vigilant observer. Witnessing his father’s guileless rediscovery of the ancient text, Mendelsohn’s life’s work as a classicist is turned on its head. The revelations and thoughts of the central characters of Homer’s Odyssey serve as portals to deeper understanding of contemporary relationships. Studying (and essentially mirroring) Homer’s legendary work allowed both the Mendelsohn father and son to find new dimensions for their love of one another. While the events of An Odyssey conclude with Jay passing away, the vibrant stamp he left behind on his son is evidenced by the profundity of the memoir’s pages. It’s an epic reconciliation, albeit a quiet one, focused on all that he’d been given by his father, celebrating their mutual love and respect.” —Michael Raver, The Huffington Post “Family memoirs are often chronicles of estrangement and rapprochement, typically seeking to wring meaning from the haze of grief or regret. As the memoir unspools, Mendelsohn’s narrative grip tightens, and the son’s search for his father becomes poignant and powerful.” —Julia M. Klein, The Forward “Compelling . As I read Mendelsohn’s wonderfully precise textual analysis of Homer, I couldn’t help but think how similar his interpretative method is to the ways in which Biblical scholars parse the Torah for deeper understanding. Through Homer, Mendelsohn has created a memorial his father: an extraordinary act of ­filial love.” —Helen Morales, Times Literary Supplement (UK). In this insightful, tender book, Mendelsohn gracefully marries literary criticism and memoir to describe an intellectual and personal journey that becomes one of profound discovery for both [father and son]. Most impressive are his transitions from scholarly con­sideration of ‘The Odyssey’ to intimate stories of his family life, as when the class discussion flows effortlessly into a magical moment, witnessing [his father] Jay as he offers a heartbreakingly beautiful tribute to his wife… [There are] many wise lessons to be gleaned from this lovely book.” —Harvey Freedenberg, BookPage. Mendelsohn has achieved an enviable renown as essayist, literary critic and author of autobiographical explorations undergirded by insights from classic texts. It’s clear that Mendelsohn’s Socratic method of teaching (via dialogue rather than lecture) forces everyone, including himself, to see things with fresh eyes. Every step of the way, An Odyssey charts a remarkable journey made indelible by Mendelsohn’s elegant prose. Mendelsohn is perhaps the most accessible contemporary ambassador of the classics; An Odyssey makes his most convincing case to date for their vital necessity. Mendelsohn takes us through the Odyssey alongside his class, meanwhile drawing comparisons between his and his father’s journeys, and those of Odysseus and Telemachus. Mendelsohn has honed a method of mixing memoir and criticism to reflect on the problems of contemporary life through the lens of the Greek classics. An Odyssey is a stellar contribution to the genre of memoirs about reading—literary analysis and the personal stories are woven together in a way that feels both artful and natural. “A marvellously entertaining and wise chronicle of [Mendelsohn’s and his father’s] odyssey, first in the classroom and then on a tour of the seas around Greece. This is powerfully true of this moving new odyssey as well.” —Alberto Manguel, Literary Review (UK) “A gentle, at times almost nostalgic, work: Mendelsohn’s lithe prose flits seamlessly across intervals and registers, switching from erudite exposition one minute to emotion-filled reminiscence the next. An accomplished, brave book that testifies to what is perhaps the Odyssey ’s most abiding message: that intelligence has little value if it isn’t allied to love.” —William Skidelsky, The Observer (UK). Besides creating page-turning narrative tension, Mendelsohn’s father Jay’s skepticism raises a question: What good are classics to a modern life? .Mendelsohn is the closest thing American classicists have to a hometown celebrity; his nonpareil prose has been recognized in wide literary circles. Even as Mendelsohn lights up hidden meanings in the Odyssey and universal resonances for the reader, he is not only conveying his knowledge about the epic, but about the little things, too, those details that make a person who they are. The book thus enacts a truth that has long been central to Mendelsohn’s writing and teaching, which is that the great works of antiquity remain relevant today. This is a gentle, at times almost nostalgic, work; Mendelsohn’s lithe prose flits seamlessly across intervals and registers, switching from erudite exposition one minute to emotion-filled reminiscence the next. This accomplished book testifies to what is perhaps the Odyssey ’s most abiding message: that intelligence has little value if it isn’t allied to love.” —William Skidelsky, The Guardian (UK) “Brilliant . The ancient story’s leaving and coming back to shared memories is also a strength of a son’s tribute to his father. Reading The Odyssey , the great book, with your failing old man, and keeping each other company in the parallel epic known as life [is] a memory that will last longer than anything on your cellphone.” —Ian Brown, The Globe and Mail (Canada).

During his twenty-five year career with the Investigative Support Unit, Special Agent John Douglas became a legendary figure in law enforcement, pursuing some of the most notorious and sadistic serial killers of our time: the man who hunted prostitutes for sport in the woods of Alaska, the Atlanta child murderer, and Seattle's Green River killer, the case that nearly cost Douglas his life. Douglas, who developed criminal profiling techniques for the FBI, teams up with novelist Olshaker to tell of his 25-year career tracking down serial killers.

In celebration of of the 75th anniversary of this classic bestseller, this stunningly illustrated, beautifully packaged, larger-format hardcover edition will be beloved by fans of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology of all ages. She regarded as the high point of her life a 1957 ceremony in which King Paul of Greece named her an honorary citizen of Athens.

No other edition accurately represents the actual (and likely authorial) divisions of the text as attested to by its two surviving witnesses―Caxton’s 1485 print and, especially, the famous Winchester Manuscript. Stephen H. A. Shepherd is Associate Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University.

This version, capturing a moment in creative history, represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic. Pulsating with the rhythms of 1950s underground America, jazz, sex, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "beat" and has inspired generations of writers, musicians, artists, poets, and seekers who cite their discovery of the book as the event that "set them free." From the back cover of On the Road: The Original Scroll : Jack Kerouac displaying one of his later scroll manuscripts, most likely The Dharma Bums Kerouac's map of his first hitchhiking trip, July-October 1947 (click image to see the full map). Original New York Times review of On the Road (click image to see the full review). --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Though the gifts of wildish nature come to us at birth, society's attempt to 'civilize' us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. In her now-classic book that spent 144 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list, and is translated into 35 languages, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., shows how woman's vitality can be restored through what she calls "psychic archaeological digs" into the ruins of the female unconscious. Dr. Estés collects the bones of many stories, looking for the archetypal motifs that set a woman's inner life into motion. Her "La Loba" teaches about the transformative function of the psyche; in "Bluebeard," we learn what to do with wounds that will not heal; in her literary story "Skeleton Woman," we glimpse the mystical power of relationship and how dead feelings can be revived; "Vasalisa the Wise" brings our lost womanly instincts to the surface again; "The Handless Maiden" recovers the Wild Woman initiation rites; and "The Little Match Girl" warns against the insidious dangers of a life spent in fantasy. With them, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand her, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine. Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., is an internationally known poet, post-trauma recovery specialist, senior training psychoanalyst [Jungian], and cantadora [keeper of the old stories] in her mestizo Latina tradition. "Millennia of humans have gathered around fires to hear words that transferred hard-won wisdom and allowed dreams of unlimited possibilities. It is a road map of all the pitfalls, those familiar and those horrifically unexpected, that a woman encounters on the way back to her instinctual self. An African tale of twins who baffle a man represents the dual nature of woman; from the Middle East, a story about a threadbare but secretly magic carpet shows society's failure to look beyond appearances. At times, Estes's commentary--in which she urges readers to draw upon and enjoy their Wild Woman aspects--is hyperbolic, but overall her widely researched study offers usable advice for modern women. The precise nature of this wildness is difficult to fathom, but, at best, it seems to include a genuine capacity to access feelings and to accept one's contradictions, while, at worst, it appears to amount to the kind of self-indulgence that prevailed during the ``me'' generation.

The great epic of Western literature, translated by the acclaimed classicist Robert Fagles Robert Fagles, winner of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and a 1996 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, presents us with Homer's best-loved and most accessible poem in a stunning modern-verse translation. Odysseus' reliance on his wit and wiliness for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces during his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War is at once a timeless human story and an individual test of moral endurance. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope. His translations include Sophocles’s Three Theban Plays , Aeschylus’s Oresteia (nominated for a National Book Award), Homer’s Iliad (winner of the 1991 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award by The Academy of American Poets), Homer’s Odyssey , and Virgil's Aeneid . His works include The Heroic Temper: Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy, Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles’ Tragic Hero and His Time and Essays Ancient and Modern (awarded the 1989 PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award).

"On what slender threads do life and fortune hang" Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. Robin Buss (1939–2006) was a writer and translator who worked for the Independent on Sunday and as television critic for the Times Educational Supplement .

In this dizzyingly rich novel of ideas, Mann uses a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps--a community devoted exclusively to sickness--as a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality. “[Woods’s translation] succeeds in capturing the beautiful cadence of [Mann’s] ironically elegant prose.” – Washington Post Book World.

Considered an essential text since its publication thirty-five years ago, this guide for students and practitioners of both theater and literature complements, rather than contradicts or repeats, traditional methods of literary analysis of scripts. “In fewer than one hundred pages, this marvelously instructive book shows how to unlock the secrets of plot, character, theme, exposition, imagery, motivation, conflict, theatricality and pacing. Our editor says he learned more about dramatic structure in the few hours he spent with this ninety-six-page book than he has in his twenty years of theater experience.”— Stage Directions. Accessible to those both new to and familiar with script analysis, Ball's text paves the way for rich discussion and meaning making in the classroom and on stage.”— Elizabeth Horn , assistant professor of theatre, University of Central Florida. “David Ball's brilliantly conceived and written book is a valuable asset in all of my scripting classes. One of the strengths of the book is its ability to get students from such diverse backgrounds and levels of experience to work together and get on the same page.”— Richie Call, Utah State University. “Indispensable in my directing classes, this slender little volume contains an elusive mix of uncommon clarity, bracing provocation, and immediate usefulness. Never one to linger on his own cleverness, Ball makes an immediate case for action and propulsion in both script analysis and theatrical production. “David Ball's little tome may have been written for directors of theater, but I find its practical and straightforward manner in explaining how to read a script essential for writers. And so do their teachers.”— David Feldshuh, Cornell University. “ Backwards and Forwards is a brilliant, unique, and influential book. I have used it for many years in my work as a professional actor and director, as well as in the classroom when teaching directing and play analysis.”— Harold Dixon, distinguished professor emeritus, School of Theatre Arts, University of Arizona. “It's extremely rare that you will read a book and it changes your perspective on not only what you do creatively but also how you do what you do. The book’s deceptively simple, straightforward approach to play analysis not only is timeless but also continues to provide me with fresh insights as both a scholar and a practitioner.”— Inga Meier, Stephen F. Austin University. “In less than one hundred pages Backwards and Forwards has taught me more about theatre than any other book. I have used it faithfully as the key reference text guiding student actors through in-depth analyses of the classics of world theatre.

In this classic guide to acquiring and maintaining political power, Machiavelli used a rational approach to advise prospective rulers, developing logical arguments and alternatives for a number of potential problems, among them governing hereditary monarchies, dealing with colonies and the treatment of conquered peoples. The person who held the aforementioned office with the tongue-twisting title was none other than Niccolò Machiavelli, who, suddenly finding himself out of a job after 14 years of patriotic service, followed the career trajectory of many modern politicians into punditry.

"— Publishers Weekly, starred review From Dada to the Automatists, and from Max Ernst to André Breton, Gérard Durozoi here provides the most comprehensive history of the Surrealist movement. Tracing the movement from its origins in the 1920s to its decline in the 1950s and 1960s, Durozoi tells the history of Surrealism through its activities, publications, and reviews, demonstrating its close ties to some of the most explosive political, as well as creative, debates of the twentieth century. With its unprecedented depth and range, this massive new history of Surrealism (including 232 color plates and 777 halftones) from veteran French philosopher and art critic Durozoi will be the one-volume standard for years to come. Divided chronologically into seven chapters, beginning with 1919-1924 and ending with 1959-1969, the book discusses expertly the main surrealist artists like Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Ren‚ Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, but also treats with considerable understanding the surrealist writing by Louis Aragon, Paul Eluard, Robert Desnos, Julien Gracq and, of course, the so-called "Pope of Surrealism," Andr‚ Breton.

"My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff.

The Brothers Karamasov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. It returns to us a work we thought we knew, subtly altered and so made new again.” ― Donald Fanger, Washington Post Book World. “It may well be that Dostoevsky's [world], with all its resourceful energies of life and language, is only now--and through the medium of this translation--beginning to come home to the English-speaking reader.” ― John Bayley, The New York Review of Books. “Heartily recommended to any reader who wishes to come as close to Dostoevsky's Russian as it is possible.” ― Joseph Frank, Princeton University.