A selection of short stories from a twentieth-century "American master" (Dan Cryer, Newsday).A contemporary of Ann Beattie and Tobias Wolff, Frederick Busch was a master craftsman of the form; his subjects were single-event moments in so-called ordinary life. The stories in this volume, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout, are tales of families trying to heal their wounds, save their marriages, and rescue their children. In "Ralph the Duck,"...

Frederick Busch has an enduring love affair with great books, and here he brilliantly communicates his passion to us all. Whether expounding on Melville or Dickens, or celebrating Hemingway or O'Hara, he explains what literature can ineffably reveal about our own lives. For Busch, there was no other recourse save the "dangerous profession;" it was to be his calling, and in these piercing essays, he demonstrates that we as a culture ignore the fundamental truths about fiction only at our ow...

"Voilà Jack, l’ancien flic qui dans Filles enquêtait sur la disparition d’une adolescente, de retour chez lui, dans le nord de l’État de New York. Désormais déchu au rang de vigile dans un complexe hôtelier de la côte de Caroline, il se voit proposer par une avocate qu’il sauve des griffes d’un gigolo un travail du genre de ceux qu’il a autrefois pratiqués : rechercher son jeune neveu parti se mettre au vert sans plus donner de nouvelles dans un coin perdu du nord de l’État. Ce travail pou...

A New York Times Notable BookIn the unrelenting cold and bitter winter of upstate New York, Jack and his wife, Fanny, are trying to cope with the desperate sorrow they feel over the death of their young daughter. The loss forms a chasm in their relationship as Jack, a sardonic Vietnam vet, looks for a way to heal them both.Then, in a nearby town, a fourteen-year-old girl disappears somewhere between her home and church. Though she is just one of the hundreds of chi...

Parce que sa vie lui échappe, parce que sa petite fille de quelques mois est morte et que son couple se désagrège, parce qu’il va mal, Jack, ancien flic devenu vigile à l’université, accepte d’enquêter sur la disparition d’une adolescente, Janice Tanner. Quelque temps plus tard, une autre fillette disparaît... Autour de Jack, s’étend l’interminable hiver nord-américain, la neige qui recouvre tout et étouffe tous les bruits, la terre si dure qu’on n’enterre pas les morts. 'Filles, roman d’a...

An immensely powerful story, The Night Inspector follows the extraordinary life of William Bartholomew, a maimed veteran of the Civil War, as he returns from the battlefields to New York City, bent on reversing his fortunes. It is there he meets Jessie, a Creole prostitute who engages him in a venture that has its origins in the complexities and despair of the conflict he has left behind. He also befriends a deputy inspector of customs named Herman Melville who, largely forgotten as a writ...

On the assumption that John Updike was correct when he asserted, in a 1978 letter to Joyce Carol Oates, that "Nobody can read like a writer," Why I Like This Story presents brief essays by forty-eight leading American writers on their favorite American short stories, explaining why they like them. The essays, which are personal, not scholarly, not only tell us much about the story selected, they also tell us a good deal about the author of the essay, about what elements of fiction...

The theory of recognition is now a well-established and mature research paradigm in philosophy, and it is both influential in and influenced by developments in other fields of the humanities and social sciences. From debates in moral philosophy about the fundamental roots of obligation, to debates in political philosophy about the character of multicultural societies, to debates in legal theory about the structure and justification of rights, to debates in social theory about the prospects...

On December 16, 2020, Major League Baseball announced that seven Negro Leagues, from various seasons spanning the years 1920 to 1948, were being recognized as major leagues and that all statistics from those leagues and seasons would henceforth be considered part of the major-league record books. The earliest league to be included is the first iteration of the Negro National League (NNL), founded by Rube Foster, which extended from 1920 through the end of 1931.The First Negro L...

America and the catastrophic world of twentieth-century war, mass murder, and horror are the backdrop of this story of Annie Gianfala, a young woman who finds herself cast adrift in Hollywood with World War II looming.Defending herself with despairing stubbornness against personal catastrophe, she is able to save her life and escape. "Enormously touching and wholly believable."— Washington Post Book World

The Newark Eagles won only one Negro National League pennant during the franchise's 15-year tenure in the Garden State, but the 1946 squad that ran away with the NNL and then triumphed over the Kansas City Monarchs in a seven-game World Series was a team for the ages. World War II had ended, and numerous players who had served in the military returned to resume their playing careers with the Eagles. The returning veterans composed a veritable "Who's Who in the Negro Leagues" and included L...

This book on the 1939 Negro National League II champion Baltimore Elite Giants is part of a series of SABR books about the great Negro League teams of the first half of the twentieth century.The Giants were first formed in Nashville in 1921, but moved around from location to location over the years - Columbus and Washington, DC, became way stations for team founder Tom Wilson as he moved the team in search of a sizable and stable fan base that Nashville's Black population did not o...