Demonstrating the timely relevance of Theodore Dreiser, Edith Wharton, Jack London and Henry Adams, this book shows how debates about evolution, identity, and a shifting world picture have uncanny parallels with the emerging global systems that shape our own lives. Tracing these systems' take-off point in the early twentieth century through the lens of popular science journalism, John Bruni makes a valuable contribution to the study of how biopolitical control over life created boundaries ...

Focusing on twenty-first century Western films, including all major releases since the turn of the century, the essays in this volume cover a broad range of aesthetic and thematic aspects explored in these films, including gender and race. As diverse contributors focus on the individual subgenres of the traditional Western (the gunfighter, the Cavalry vs. Native American conflict, the role of women in Westerns, etc.), they share an understanding of the twenty-first century Western may be u...

Full-cast dramatisations of John Fowles' three best-known novels, with star castsJohn Fowles won international acclaim for his innovative, allusive novels The Collector, The Magus and The French Lieutenant's Woman. All were critical and commercial successes, translated into several languages and adapted as feature films. This collection brings together the BBC Radio adaptations of these three modern classics, with stellar casts including J...

The Complete Wizard of Oz Series is a magical and timeless collection of beloved stories by L. Frank Baum, the creator of one of the most enchanting fantasy worlds in children’s literature. This illustrated edition brings together the classic adventures set in the Land of Oz, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Marvelous Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, The Road to Oz, and many other delightful tales. These stories follow the adventures of Dorothy and her unforgettable companions as they jour...

The classic work on the art of fiction by the "refreshingly unpredictable" novelist and literary critic ( Publishers Weekly)In this posthumously published collection of his essays and reviews, acclaimed novelist John Gardner discusses the craft of fiction writing, taking to task some of his best-known contemporaries in the process. Gardner criticizes some for writing disingenuous fiction, and commends others who produce literature that acts as a life-affir...

Three books in one volume: Advice and reflections on modern fiction from "one of the greatest creative writing teachers we've ever had" (Frederick Busch).In On Becoming a Novelist, John Gardner advises the aspiring fiction author on such topics as the value of creative writing workshops, the developmental stages of literary growth, and the inevitable experience of writer's block. Drawn from his two decades of experience in creative writing, Gardner balances...

A collection of original, stimulating interpretations of key texts by Cormac McCarthy, designed for students and edited and written by leading scholars in the field

William Shawn once called The Talk of the Town the soul of the magazine. The section began in the first issue, in 1925. But it wasn't until a couple of years later, when E. B. White and James Thurber arrived, that the Talk of the Town story became what it is today: a precise piece of journalism that always gets the story and has a little fun along the way.The Fun of It is the first anthology of Talk pieces that spans the magazine's life. ...

In a comparative and interdisciplinary analysis of modern and postmodern literature, film, art, and visual culture, Monika Kaup examines the twentieth century's recovery of the baroque within a hemispheric framework embracing North America, Latin America, and U.S. Latino/a culture. As "neobaroque" comes to the forefront of New World studies, attention to transcultural dynamics is overturning the traditional scholarship that confined the baroque to a specific period, class, and ideology in ...

Emory University professor Sally Wolff has carried on a fifty-year tradition of leading students on expeditions to "Faulkner country" in and around Oxford, Mississippi. Not long ago, she decided to invite alumni on one of these field trips. One response to the invitation surprised her: "I can't go on the trip. But I knew William Faulkner." They were the words of Dr. Edgar Wiggin Francisco III, and in talking with Wolff he revealed that as a child in the 1930s and 1940s he did indeed know F...

A truly significant discovery, Walt Whitman’s Manly Health and Training is an entertaining health manifesto that sheds new light on one of America’s major nineteenth-century authors.In the fall of 1858, a thirteen-part essay series appeared in the New York Atlas, under the title Manly Health and Training. This nearly 47,000-word journalistic effort, written by Walt Whitman under his pen name “Mose Velsor,” was lost for more than 150 years...

In 1977, twenty years after the publication of his landmark poem “Howl,” and Jack Kerouac’s seminal book On the Road, Allen Ginsberg decided it was time to teach a course on the literary history of the Beat Generation. Through the creation of this course, which he ended up teaching five times, first at the Naropa Institute and later at Brooklyn College, Ginsberg saw an opportunity to present the history of Beat Literature in his own inimitable way. Compiled and edited by renowned ...