The Rings of Saturn
The Rings of Saturn

Author: W. G. Sebald

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Published: 2016-11-08

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 081122130X

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"The book is like a dream you want to last forever" (Roberta Silman, The New York Times Book Review), now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund A masterwork of W. G. Sebald, now with a gorgeous new cover by the famed designer Peter Mendelsund The Rings of Saturn—with its curious archive of photographs—records a walking tour of the eastern coast of England. A few of the things which cross the path and mind of its narrator (who both is and is not Sebald) are lonely eccentrics, Sir Thomas Browne’s skull, a matchstick model of the Temple of Jerusalem, recession-hit seaside towns, wooded hills, Joseph Conrad, Rembrandt’s "Anatomy Lesson," the natural history of the herring, the massive bombings of WWII, the dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, and the silk industry in Norwich. W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants (New Directions, 1996) was hailed by Susan Sontag as an "astonishing masterpiece perfect while being unlike any book one has ever read." It was "one of the great books of the last few years," noted Michael Ondaatje, who now acclaims The Rings of Saturn "an even more inventive work than its predecessor, The Emigrants."

Dakota
Dakota

Author: Kathleen Norris

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2001-04-06

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 054752756X

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“A deeply spiritual, deeply moving book” about life on the Great Plains, by the New York Times–bestselling author of The Cloister Walk (The New York Times Book Review). “With humor and lyrical grace,” Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

Bread and Ale for the Brethren
Bread and Ale for the Brethren

Author: Philip Slavin

Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press

Published: 2012-04

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1907396721

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Despite increased commercialization and an efficient network of local markets in 1300s Europeas well as significant costs and risks associated with the production, transportation, and storage of foodsome landed lords, monasteries, and convents continued to rely on the produce of their own estates. This detailed study sets out to account for the puzzling situation, covering the period between 1260 and 1536, with an in-depth analysis of the changing patterns and fortunes of the provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory. As it examines the entire process of food delivery from field to table, the record explores the question of food security within the context of the various crises in the 14th century, and also illustrates the aftereffects of the Black Death. Although providing unparalleled insight into the Priory, the book also serves as an important resource on understanding the Late Middle Ages economy of England and society during a time of upheaval."

Plainsong
Plainsong

Author: Kent Haruf

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2001-04-03

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0375726934

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National Book Award Finalist A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver. In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go. And out in the country, two brothers, elderly bachelors, work the family homestead, the only world they've ever known. From these unsettled lives emerges a vision of life, and of the town and landscape that bind them together—their fates somehow overcoming the powerful circumstances of place and station, their confusion, curiosity, dignity and humor intact and resonant. As the milieu widens to embrace fully four generations, Kent Haruf displays an emotional and aesthetic authority to rival the past masters of a classic American tradition.

Nothing Like It In the World
Nothing Like It In the World

Author: Stephen E. Ambrose

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2001-11-06

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9780743203173

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The story of the men who build the transcontinental railroad in the 1860's.

Minot State University
Minot State University

Author: Mark Timbrook

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738560472

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In 1913, the State Normal School at Minot opened its temporary residence at the newly constructed Minot Armory with 11 faculty and 55 students. Site selection, reductions in funding, construction problems, litigation, and a tornado had delayed the opening of campus facilities. In 1914, the partially completed campus opened for classes. Hard economic times in the predominantly rural state delayed further construction until 1924, when the normal school received collegiate status and was renamed the State Teacher's College at Minot. Minot State University is located in the beautiful Mouse River valley on the drift prairie of North Dakota and has been inextricably linked to the landscape, community, and state of which it is a part. This volume commemorates its origin and dynamic evolution through World War II and serves as a centennial tribute to the faculty, staff, administration, and students that created this premier institution on the northern Great Plains.

Albion's Seed
Albion's Seed

Author: David Hackett Fischer

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1991-03-14

Total Pages: 981

ISBN-13: 019974369X

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This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.