Meta Verse is a collection of poems that encourages readers to reflect on their values as they relate to important challenges of our time. These include degradation of our natural environment, problems related to race and ethnicity, and complications that arise with aging. In the title, Meta implies a deep level of thinking, and Verse offers a rhythmic setting that encourages thoughts and emotions. The collection provides a rich tapestry of themes that stimulate ...

Mark Twain once claimed that he could read human character as well as he could read the Mississippi River, and he studied his fellow humans with the same devoted attention. In both his fiction and his nonfiction, he was disposed to dramatize how the human creature acts in a given environment—and to understand why.Now one of America’s preeminent Twain scholars takes a closer look at this icon’s abiding interest in his fellow creatures. In seeking to account for how Twain might have ...

Satirist, novelist, and keen observer of the American scene, Mark Twain remains one of the world's best-loved writers. This delightful collection of Twain's favorite and most memorable writings includes selected tales and sketches such as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, How I Edited an Agricultural Journal Once, Jim Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn, and A True Story. It also features excerpts from his novels and travel books (including Roughing It, The Innocents...

These short fiction and prose pieces display the variety of Twain's imaginative invention, his diverse talents, and his extraordinary emotional range. Twain was a master of virtually every prose genre; in fables and stories, speeches and essays, he skilfully adapted, extended or satirized literary conventions, guided only by his unruly imagination. From the comic wit that sparkles in maxims from 'Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar,' to the parodic perfection of 'An Awful - Terrible Medieval Roma...

For a modest man, Tim Davison has done quite well for himself in the sailing world. He has won National and European championships from the 1970s to 2020s, has skippered his yacht from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and has written over 20 books on sailing. Maintaining that sailing is too important to be taken seriously, he has used the bluffing skills described in this book to help propel his racing boats to the front of the fleet and his cruising boats to the warm waters of the Med – an...

Before Guglielmo Marconi came along, there was no practical way to transmit telegraphic messages without wires. But when he harnessed the power of radio waves to send signals over long distances, what had once seemed impossible became a world-changing reality.In this original L.A. Theatre Works commission, we’ll get a firsthand, intimate view of the precocious Italian inventor, and what he had to overcome in his quest to revolutionize the way we communicate.Can You Hear Me ...

An author’s talents may seem obvious and indisputable as they move words and ideas into gathered phrases and stories.But where do these ideas and stories come from? A lonely thought that suddenly gathers form? An inspiration from a Muse? A suggestion from an everyday event?Perhaps in the case of their darker, more malevolent stories, other forces are at work. They help to nourish single words into sentences and paragraphs that ease themselves from the shadows and are sudden...