For Yale University Press, which celebrates its hundredth birthday in 2008, the century has been an eventful one, punctuated with no few surprises. The Press has published more than 8,000 volumes through the years, scores of bestsellers and award-winners among them, and these books have come to fruition through the efforts of a host of colorful authors, editors, directors, board members, and others of intellectual and literary renown. With an ear always cocked for an interesting tale, one of today's best storytellers presents an anecdote-rich chronicle of the Press's first 100 years. Nicholas Basbanes, whom David McCullough has called the leading authority of books about books, quickly convinces us that the Press's history, while bookish, is also lively and fascinating. Basbanes explores the saga behind the acquisition of Eugene O'Neill's blockbuster play, the all-time Yale bestseller Long Day's Journey into Night; the controversy sparked in 1965 by publication of The Vinland Map; the origins of the groundbreaking Annals of Communism series, initiated in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise; and many more highlights from Press annals. Basbanes looks at the reasons behind the publisher's remarkable financial success, and he completes A World of Letters with a glimpse at the new initiatives that will propel the Press into a second exciting century.
Praise for Sun Yung Shin: Finalist for the Believer Poetry Award "[her] work reads like redactions, offering fragments to be explored, investigated and interrogated, making her reader equal partner in the creation of meaning."—Star Tribune Sun Yung Shin moves ideas—of identity (Korean, American, adoptee, mother, Catholic, Buddhist) and interest (mythology, science fiction, Sophocles)— around like building blocks, forming and reforming new constructions of what it means to be at home. What is a cyborg but a hybrid creature of excess? A thing that exceeds the sum of its parts. A thing that has extended its powers, enhanced, even superpowered.
A historical novel about the most unlikely of lovers, interwoven with the mysticism of the Jewish occult. Frances Sherwood brings to life the experience of the Jewish community during a period of oppression and rebirth. Set in seventeenth-century Prague, The Book of Splendor is an adventure-filled romance stocked with court intrigue and political tension, including the machinations of the rival Ottoman Empire, the religious controversies of Protestantism, and the constant threat of violence to the Jewish community. At the heart of the novel is Rochel, a bastard seamstress who escapes poverty through an arranged marriage to the tailor Zev, but falls in love with Yossel, the Golem created by Rabbi Loew to protect the Jewish community. Meanwhile, Emperor Rudolph II puts the safety of all Prague at risk in his mad bid for an elixir of immortality. The Book of Splendor is an epic tale reminiscent of Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, and a love story as unlikely as Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring. Reading group guide included.
Lately, I have been re-acquainting myself with the writings of Rich Alapack through his latest books -- Loves Pivotal Relationships, Sorrows Profiles, and White Hot True Blue. These reminded me of the lucid beauty of Alapacks writing style and of the deep and penetrating insights that he shares with his reader. I recognize myself and others in the vignettes these books provide, and have been incorporating his texts into my recent graduate classes. Alapacks writings mark a return to the original form in which phenomenologists used to communicate with their readers: via straightforward reflection; drawing upon a lifetime of experience; speaking in simple, descriptive language; and capturing the essence of human experience by mastering the art of speaking truthfully and authentically. It takes a certain kind of free-courageousness to engage in such writing today, in an intellectual climate where demands for methodological rigor (in the form of operationalism run amok) have compromised manuscripts submitted for review, in favor of half-hearted statements of methodological orthodoxy followed by statements of findings that amount to little more than summaries of raw data. What Alapack has achieved in his recent writings, and especially in his latest venture, The Splendor of Seeing and the Magic of Touch, is a truth-speaking both from the authors heart and from his lifetime of authentic dialogue with the interlocutors he has found along his own lifes journey. The gift that he gives to his reader is the gift of inviting us to join him on his own path to enlightenment. Scott D Churchill, PhD Professor and Graduate Program Director University of Dallas Editor-in-Chief, The Humanistic Psychologist This book is heart-warming, joyful, and insightfully brilliant. This authors newest publication, once again, represents a heart-felt and dedicated effort to researching human phenomena from the laboratory of day-today life. In this lifelong work, the author shares many of his personal experiences, experiences of others, then invites us to share a developmental journey through monumental experiences in our childhood, adolescence and young adulthood. He delves into important developmental topics that are rarely, if ever, discussed in mainstream psychological writing. Dr. Alapack offers reflected insight into these experiences, in a playful yet profound manner, allowing us to gain a deeper understanding of who we are, as perfectly imperfect people. Exploring the dynamics of peekaboo with a young-one, playing tag as a juvenile, sharing the exhilarating and/or bitter-sweet memories of the first kiss, barely coping with or perhaps flaunting a teenage hickey, will have you smiling with fondness, as you are reminded of your own experiences. These personal stories and parables are timeless and ageless. This text should be mandatory reading for both students and researchers in developmental psychology. Parents and Educators will find this book personally enriching, and will ultimately benefit from a more in- depth understanding of themselves and their children. I have seen Dr. Alapacks work grow and expand over the years, and this book is a shining example of an existential phenomenologist par excellence. His dedicated work has had a major and significant impact on my personal and professional life. Paul Watters, B.A., B.Ed., M.Ed. M.Ed., Lambton Kent District School Board, Sarnia, Ontario, Canada
This book describes an encounter of the author with the Goddess. The author also tells of some of the events that preceded and followed it. In particular, he tells of his changed perception of the world. He could see then, and sometimes can still see, the divinity of women. (They are divine because they are like the Goddess). He knows with a intuitive certainty that the Goddess is about to make her advent once again, and that when that happens, the establishment of a uviversal matriarchy will be the inevitable result. This book is about a goddess of sublime beauty and power, and not about the God of our fathers. It is about the Goddess the human race first knew, the Great Goddess who was worshipped so ardently and for so long by our forebears. Now at long last is returning to walk among her children again. The signs of her coming are manifold, clear as the sun to see for all whose eyes have been opened. Our ancestors knew Her intimately. She was loved and adored by countless millions of people: whole nations worshipped Her; vast empires trembled in fear and joy at the slightest manifestation of Her unspeakable potency and magnificence. Yet few in these darker ages know anything about Her. She is thought to have vanished forever, leaving nothing of Her former cult behind, save a few references scattered in ancient authors, a few statues hidden in museums--mere skeletal remains of her former living glory. Though what I have to report is immemorially ancient, it seems as new to me--as it will to many others in this age--as if it had been newly born. Old does not mean decrepit, and what is truly perennial or immortal cannot wither or fade with time. Ancient and eternal but forever young and fair, the Goddess lives and will never die. "In all, the book possesses great possibilities. It's unique, and possibly the first to recount a personal experience with the Goddess by a man, throughout an entire book. The Goddess experience has been alluded to previously by men but not in a whole book, and not with the slant provided by Alex MacLeod." Rita Robinson, Exploring Native American Wisdom (New Page Books)
“Joyce is a grand mistress at building tension to a crescendo . . . a vivid and more powerful romance with an undercurrent of sensuality.” —RT Book Reviews (Top Pick) She played a dangerous game. Carolyn Browne was a poor bookseller’s daughter and an enlightened thinker, delighting London with her scathingly witty columns, written under the name Charles Copperville. Penetrating the town’s gilded salons in male disguise, Carolyn soon throws her barbs at the wrong man—the enigmatic Russian prince, Nicholas Sverayov. He was a dangerous target. His notoriety, extravagances, and indulgent disregard for social convention fuel Carolyn’s outrage. Nicholas has moved through the balls and soirees of high society effortlessly, a natural target of gossip, envy, and desire. But Nicholas is furious to find himself lampooned by Copperville, and quickly discovers Carolyn’s dearly held secret. Now, as the two spar, a new game begins—a game of deception and pride, of longing and chance. And they played for the ultimate prize . . . As Nicholas sweeps Carolyn from the teeming streets and gala balls of Regency London to the splendor and majesty of St. Petersburg, against all odds the unlikely lovers embark upon a whirlwind of passion and peril until there is no turning back—for the stakes have changed, demanding no less of them than the unwavering courage to claim the love of a lifetime. “A complex narrative, lots of historical detail and a heroic era—the Napoleonic wars . . . a heroine readers will root for.” —Publishers Weekly
Considered by many the bright jewel among the many enriching books of Cardinal Henri de Lubac, this work is a hymn to the beauty of the Church, under some of whose leaders for a time he unjustly suffered. The Splendor of the Church is, in a sense, a personal testimony of the great theologian's humility and love of the Church of Christ. It is also a classic work in the theology of the Church. Indeed, de Lubac's profound insights significantly contributed to Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, especially in its treatment on the Church as mystery and as the Sacrament of Christ. Chapters: I. The Church as Mystery II. The Dimensions of the Mystery III. The Two Aspects of the Church IV. The Heart of the Church V. The Church in the World VI. The Sacrament of Christ VII. Ecclesia Mater VIII. Our Temptations concerning the Church IX. The Church and Our Lady
A captivating novel of rich spectacle and royal scandal, Days of Splendor, Days of Sorrow spans fifteen years in the fateful reign of Marie Antoinette, France’s most legendary and notorious queen. Paris, 1774. At the tender age of eighteen, Marie Antoinette ascends to the French throne alongside her husband, Louis XVI. But behind the extravagance of the young queen’s elaborate silk gowns and dizzyingly high coiffures, she harbors deeper fears for her future and that of the Bourbon dynasty. From the early growing pains of marriage to the joy of conceiving a child, from her passion for Swedish military attaché Axel von Fersen to the devastating Affair of the Diamond Necklace, Marie Antoinette tries to rise above the gossip and rivalries that encircle her. But as revolution blossoms in America, a much larger threat looms beyond the gilded gates of Versailles—one that could sweep away the French monarchy forever.
