A moving poetic memoir about a family on the fringes of religion and society, this unforgettable story about a mother's destructive involvement with Christian fundamentalism pulls the curtain back on the darker side of American religious experience.Keith Waldrop's account of his mid-twentieth-century Midwestern upbringing opens a window on a uniquely American landscape of desolation and desire. Waldrop's mother, central to the book, was a devout Christian, consumed...

Between 1855 and his death in 1867, Charles Baudelaire inaugurated a new—and in his own words "dangerous"—hybrid form in a series of prose poems known as Paris Spleen. Important and provocative, these fifty poems take the reader on a tour of 1850s Paris, through gleaming cafes and filthy side streets, revealing a metropolis on the eve of great change. In its deliberate fragmentation and merging of the lyrical with the sardonic, Le Spleen de Paris may be regarded as one of the earliest and ...

One of the founding texts of literary modernism.Set in a modern, urban Paris, the prose pieces in this volume constitute a further exploration of the terrain Baudelaire had covered in his verse masterpiece, The Flowers of Evil: the city and its squalor and inequalities, the pressures of time and mortality, and the liberation provided by the sensual delights of intoxication, art, and women. Published posthumously in 1869, Paris Spleen was a landmark publication in ...

From the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning poet and critic: "A lovely book, full of joy and wisdom." — The Baltimore SunHow to Read a Poem is an unprecedented exploration of poetry, feeling, and human nature. In language at once acute and emotional, Edward Hirsch describes why poetry matters and how we can open up our imaginations so that its message can make a difference. In a marvelous reading of verse from around the world, including wo...

This National Book Award finalist is a revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann.In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.Sorting through boxes of family papers and ...

"I would like to write a beautiful prayer," writes the young Flannery O'Connor in this deeply spiritual journal, recently discovered among her papers in Georgia. "There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise." Written between 1946 and 1947 while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map O'Connor's singular relationship w...

When pain is real, why is God silent?Frederick Buechner has grappled with the nature of pain, grief, and grace ever since his father committed suicide when Buechner was a young boy. He continued that search as a father when his daughter struggled with anorexia. In this essential collection of essays, including one never before published, Frederick Buechner finds that the God who might seem so silent is ever near. He writes about what it means to be a steward of our pain, and about ...

The classic American coming of age novel of a precocious young man and the lessons learned from his tutor by "a masterly entertainer and social satirist" ( The New York Times).It is 1963 in an unnamed town in North Dakota, and Anthony Thrasher is languishing for a second year in eighth grade. Prematurely sophisticated, young Anthony spends too much time reading Joyce, Eliot, and Dylan Thomas but not enough time studying the War of 1812 or obtuse triangles....

A New York Times Notable Book: To truly understand herself, Doris Grumbach embraces solitudeWith a busy career as a novelist, essayist, reviewer, and bookstore owner, Doris Grumbach has little opportunity to be alone. However, after seventy-five years on the planet, she finally has her chance: Her partner has departed for an extended book-buying trip, and Grumbach has been given fifty days to relax, think, and write about her experience.In this graceful memo...

A New York Times Notable Book: One woman's search for the value of a long lifeWith the advent of her seventieth birthday, many changes have beset Doris Grumbach: the rapidly accelerating speed of the world around her, the premature deaths of her younger friends, her own increasing infirmities, and her move from cosmopolitan Washington, DC, to the calm of the Maine coast. Coming into the End Zone is an account of everything Grumbach observes over the course ...

We are not taught how to grieve, and yet grief comes to every one of us at some time. Bestselling author Lauraine Snelling discovered this truth when she began her own journey with grief in 1985, the year her twenty-year-old daughter, Marie, lost her battle with cancer. In this nonfiction book, A Hand to Hold, Lauraine helps us release the fears that make us uncomfortable around those who grieve. She urges us to offer those who grieve the gifts of touch, tears, talk, and time. Lauraine also i...

Everyone knows tis the season to be jolly; when you can roast chestnuts on an open fire, treetops glisten and sleigh bells ring alongside the sound of small childrens laughter. However, if you dont think Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year then reach for Keep Calm at Christmas and let its soothing advice reassure you that Christmas comes but once a year.Keep Calm at Christmas follows Keep Calm for Ladies and Keep Calm for Chaps an...