"As a short-story writer, Rudyard Kipling is equaled only by Chekhov -- and this unusually generous selection, intended as a companion volume to T. S. Eliot's A Choice of Kipling's Verse, will undoubtedly confirm Kipling as a great master. Kipling has never wanted for advocates. The list includes George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges, Kingsley Amis and Angus Wilson, as well as Eliot. But Craig Raine, in his original and meticulous introduction, offers a fresh overview of the work, as well as detailed readings of particular stories." -- Back cover.

This pocket-sized selection of Rudyard Kipling's verse contains not only this classic, but many of his greatest poems, in testimony to a writer who possessed a precocious gift for rhyme and a brilliant ear for language.

Dan and Una perform their shortened version of A midsummer night's dream and accidentally conjure up Puck. For many afternoons Puck brings them the bold adventurers who made their fortunes and left their marks everywhere on the English countryside.

A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan, and Sigmund Freud with Gustav Mahler.