A World Of Letters

Download or read book A World of Letters written by Nicholas A. Basbanes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The World Republic of Letters written by Pascale Casanova and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "world of letters" has always seemed a matter more of metaphor than of global reality. In this book, Pascale Casanova shows us the state of world literature behind the stylistic refinements--a world of letters relatively independent from economic and political realms, and in which language systems, aesthetic orders, and genres struggle for dominance. Rejecting facile talk of globalization, with its suggestion of a happy literary "melting pot," Casanova exposes an emerging regime of inequality in the world of letters, where minor languages and literatures are subject to the invisible but implacable violence of their dominant counterparts. Inspired by the writings of Fernand Braudel and Pierre Bourdieu, this ambitious book develops the first systematic model for understanding the production, circulation, and valuing of literature worldwide. Casanova proposes a baseline from which we might measure the newness and modernity of the world of letters--the literary equivalent of the meridian at Greenwich. She argues for the importance of literary capital and its role in giving value and legitimacy to nations in their incessant struggle for international power. Within her overarching theory, Casanova locates three main periods in the genesis of world literature--Latin, French, and German--and closely examines three towering figures in the world republic of letters--Kafka, Joyce, and Faulkner. Her work provides a rich and surprising view of the political struggles of our modern world--one framed by sites of publication, circulation, translation, and efforts at literary annexation.

Download or read book A Splendor of Letters written by Nicholas A. Basbanes and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 2004-11-02 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In A Splendor of Letters, Nicholas A. Basbanes continues the lively, richly anecdotal exploration of book people, places, and culture he began in 1995 with A Gentle Madness (a finalist that year for the National Book Critics Circle Award) and expanded in 2001 with Patience & Fortitude, a companion work that prompted the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer David McCullough to proclaim him "the leading authority of books about books." In this beautifully packaged edition, Basbanes brings to a close his wonderful trilogy on the remarkable world of books and bibliophiles.

Download or read book The Garden of Letters written by Alyson Richman and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Portofino, Italy, 1943. A young woman steps off a boat in a scenic coastal village. Although she knows how to disappear in a crowd, Elodie is too terrified to slip by the German officers while carrying her poorly forged identity papers. She is frozen until a man she's never met before claims to know her. In desperate need of shelter, Elodie follows him back to his home on the cliffs of Portofino. Only months before, Elodie Bertolotti was a cello prodigy in Verona, unconcerned with world events. But when Mussolini's Fascist regime strikes her family, Elodie is drawn into the burgeoning resistance movement by Luca, a young and impassioned bookseller. As the occupation looms, she discovers that her unique musical talents, and her courage, have the power to save lives. In Portofino, young doctor Angelo Rosselli gives the frightened and exhausted girl sanctuary. He is a man with painful secrets of his own, haunted by guilt and remorse. But Elodie's arrival has the power to awaken a sense of hope and joy that Angelo thought was lost to him forever. Written in dazzling prose and set against the rich backdrop of World War II Italy, Garden of Letters captures the hope, suspense, and romance of an uncertain era, in an epic intertwining story of first love, great tragedy, and spectacular bravery."--

Download or read book A Book of Letters written by Ken Wilson-Max and published by Cartwheel Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A circle of young friends pass on a chain of "letters" starting from A and going all the way to Z.

Download or read book Letters from the End of the World written by Toyofumi Ogura and published by Kodansha International. This book was released on 2001 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of letters that document the catastrophe visited uponne family during the destruction of Hiroshima. The author - a youngrofessor of history at Hiroshima University - spent several days after theropping of the atomic bomb searching for his wife and son. His joy on beinge-united with them was short-lived as radiation sickness took his wife tenays later. The author spent the following year writing a series of letterso his wife, outlining the things he saw and experienced over the two weeksefore the bombing and her death.;The book also contains family documents,etters from the children to their parents and a diary in which the eldestaughter described the events of the 18th-19th August 1945, when she returnedo Hiroshima on the final day of her mother's life.

Download or read book The Letters of the Republic written by Michael Warner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The subject of Michael Warner's book is the rise of a nation. America, he shows, became a nation by developing a new kind of reading public, where one becomes a citizen by taking one's place as writer or reader. At heart, the United States is a republic of letters, and its birth can be dated from changes in the culture of printing in the early eighteenth century. The new and widespread use of print media transformed the relations between people and power in a way that set in motion the republican structure of government we have inherited. Examining books, pamphlets, and circulars, he merges theory and concrete analysis to provide a multilayered view of American cultural development.