Language and Litterature

“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you're dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790   Benjamin Franklin would seem to be the teller – and quite arguably the protagonist – of the Great American Success Story.

Jane Austen's novels are classics.  They have never been out of print, and have continuously been turned into countless movies and TV series, yet her works still remain largely misunderstood.  On their surface, Austen's novels all involve characters from provincial communities in rural England, far removed geographically and thematically from greater social movements, war, industry, colonization, ...

DANTE FOR BEGINNERS takes the reader on a trip starting in hell and ending in heaven. The reader gets a quick introduction to Dante and his times. Next, the reader meets a sweet lass named Beatrice and samples a bit of his other literary offerings, such as the great feast, the Convivio. But then it's on to the big one, the Commedia, and a canto by canto description of the entire work.

There is no greater symbol of the American presidency than Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln himself, his personality, the sources of his dedication and his idealism, remain very much a mystery. The sudden rise to world stature of a hard-travelling lawyer from the frontier, with no prominent family or social connections to back him, was a wonder of the age.

Popular Disinformation author, Russ Kick, is known for his quirky, ingenious and surprisingly useful collections. He's done it again. This is the most comprehensive, not to mention the first, anthology of death poetry ever published in the English language and is ultimately life affirming.

This book is a meditation on facing fear, heartbreak and mortality. It is the story of a man who in rapid succession has his wife die in his arms, loses his house and his job and is left to care for his 19-month old daughter. Oddly enough, the best tools for coping with all of this were those he learned in more than two decades of the martial arts practice.

Charles Bukowski, novelist, short-story writer, poet, journalist and cult figure of the dissident and rebellious, was born in Germany in 1920 and died in the USA in 1994. During his life he was hailed as "laureate of American lowlife" by Time Magazine and literary critic, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker, wrote: "the secret of Bukowski's appeal. . .

A concise, accessible introduction to the great linguist who shaped the study of language for the 20th century, SAUSSURE FOR BEGINNERS puts the challenging ideas of Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) into clear and illuminating terms, focusing on the unifying principles of his teachings and showing how his thoughts on linguistics migrated to anthropology.

One of the most influential physicists of our time, Stephen Hawking touched the lives of millions. Recalling his nearly two decades as Hawking’s collaborator and friends, Leonard Mlodinow brings this complex man into focus in a unique and deeply personal portrayal. We meet Hawking the genius, who pours his mind into uncovering the mysteries of the universe—ultimately formulating a p

Reflecting Ingrid Bergman's career and based on the family archive, this photo book features unpublished pictures that her father Justus took when she was a young and aspiring actress in Stockholm, film stills, and famous paparazzi shots.

"Angels In My Hair" is the autobiography of a modern day mystic, an Irish woman with powers of the saints of old. When she was a child, people thought Lorna was 'retarded' because she did not seem to be focusing on the world around her. Instead Lorna was seeing angels and spirits. As Lorna tells the story of her life, the reader meets, as she did, the creatures from the spirit worlds who also inha

Burdened by the woes of a workaday life, the end of any good news, and the loss of her formidable father, Signe Pike, a 20-something editor at Penguin in New York, found herself needing something - anything - to believe in again. Her disenchantment made her long for the magical stories of her youth - the faeries that had enchanted her as a child.

In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, the best-selling author of The Stranger in the Woods brings us into Breitwieser's strange world-unlike most thieves, he never stole for money, keeping all his treasures in a single room where he could admire them. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as