The renowned Rilke scholar brings the poet's work to life for modern readers through 26 essays, each devoted to a single word found in his writings.Ulrich Baer's The Rilke Alphabet explores the enduring power of one of the world's greatest poets, a visionary who saw that even the smallest overlooked word could unlock life's mysteries. With deep insight and love for Rilke's language, Baer examines twenty-six words that are not merely unexpected in his work,...

Delving deep into China's great transformation, this moving collection of stories probes the hearts of everyday individuals caught up in the country's rapid economic development. Told with tenderness and emotional acuity, these stories introduce us to a heartbroken taxi driver, a love-struck middle-aged mother, a courageous cutting-edge designer, a drifting waiter, a Tai Chi instructor down on her luck, and a young American in search of himself. They are all denizens of China's most vibran...

Angry debates about polarizing speakers have roiled college campuses. Conservatives accuse universities of muzzling unpopular opinions, betraying their values of open inquiry; students sympathetic to the left openly advocate against completely unregulated speech, asking for "safe spaces" and protection against visiting speakers and even curricula they feel disrespects them. Some even call these students "snowflakes"-too fragile to be exposed to opinions and ideas that challenge their world...

We Are But a Moment takes the reader on a brisk tour of the globe that vividly imagines the inescapable crisis of the near future posed by overpopulation, diminishing natural resources, climate change, species extinction, and economic tumult.It is 2025, and a young White House aide, Aleks, finds himself locked up in quarantine when he tested positive after a routine briefing from a hotspot. Aleks recounts how our much-admired female president became a globally revered lead...

Mrs. Dalloway takes place over the course of a single day in a woman's life in 1920's London. There are flowers to buy, outfits to choose, but also a visit from a past lover, and the tragic fate of a young war veteran who cannot adjust to life in post-war London. Virginia Woolf's supple and mesmerizing account of an ordinary day draws the reader into the minds, perceptions, and emotions of an astonishingly varied and vivid cast of characters. Woolf reminds us that each day, hour, ...

An immediate bestseller when it was first published in 1921 by the famous author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden and The Enchanted April, this brilliant dissection of a marriage gone terribly wrong is also a cautionary tale for anyone tempted to abandon their principles in the name of loyalty and love. Based on von Arnim's disastrous marriage to the 2nd Earl Russell, the brother of philosopher Bertrand Russell, this haunting tale of a woman gaslit by her despotic husba...

Ralph Waldo Emerson transformed America by writing in an utterly unique, personal, and insistently optimistic voice about matters that concern us to this day: our lives alone and with others, the true sources of identity, and the specifically American promise of freedom and equality for all. A principal voice of the transcendentalist movement, Emerson embodies an independent American intellectual tradition rooted in deep moral convictions and the pragmatic ability to adapt to changing circ...

Elizabeth von Arnim's vivid, humorous, and subtly subversive Elizabeth and her German Garden is one of the great garden memoirs of all time. As the wife of a stern German aristocrat and mother of young children, the irreverent narrator of this engrossing memoir escapes the societal norms and constrictions of late nineteenth-century patriarchy by becoming an enthusiastic amateur gardener. As she grapples with the expectations placed on her as a woman, wife, and mother, Elizabeth's ...

Beguiling, witty, and gently comedic, The Enchanted April tells the tale of four very different women who escape dreary London for an Italian castle in Portofino, shortly after World War I. Elizabeth von Arnim's ageless novel compellingly responds to the eternal question of how to achieve happiness in life. An immediate best seller upon its first publication, the story of unlikely female friendship, newfound empowerment, rekindled love, and unexpected romance has been adapted for ...

The essays in Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity in Higher Education reflect diverse perspectives on one of the most pressing issues in higher education--the controversies over freedom of speech and its relation to intellectual diversity. Does the First Amendment apply on campuses and do its principles clarify or obscure the issues surrounding campus speech? What, after all, is the basis for those principles, and how do they relate to the purposes of the university? Is free speech trul...

One of the great literary love stories of all time, Jane Eyre is also the story of a woman who speaks her truth even when this means risking everything. The orphan Jane endures a cruel aunt, harsh schooling, and the severe limitations placed on her gender to eventually find herself in love with her employer, the dashing and mysterious Mr. Rochester. A secret in his past forces Jane to choose between compromising her integrity or giving up on him, until her courageous choices and g...

The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson's short novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) is a classic of Victorian gothic fiction. The story of an upstanding, educated gentleman who seeks to access his own dark sides and gets caught in a maelstrom of evil captivated late nineteenth-century London readers and then the world. Today Jekyll and Hyde has become the universal reference for "man's double being," but the story's revelatory ending shows that Stevenson d...