After 40+ years of writing about Europe, Rick Steves has gathered 100 of his favorite memories together into one inspiring, award-winning collection: For the Love of Europe: My Favorite Places, People, and Stories. Join Rick as he's swept away by a fado singer in Lisbon, learns the dangers of falling in love with a gondolier in Venice, and savors a cheese course in the Loire Valley. Contemplate the mysteries of centuries-old stone circles in England, dangle from a cliff in the Swiss Alps, and hear a French farmer's defense of foie gras. With a brand-new, original introduction from Rick reflecting on his decades of travel, For the Love of Europe features 100 of the best stories published throughout his career. Covering his adventures through England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and more, these are stories only Rick Steves could tell. Wry, personal, and full of Rick's signature humor, For the Love of Europe is a fond and inspirational look at a lifetime of travel. Winner of the 2022 Society of American Travel Writers' Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award: Best Travel Book, Silver

A Nation Transformed is a major collection of essays by a mix of young and eminent scholars of early modern English history, literature, and political thought. The fruit of an intense interdisciplinary two-day conference held at the Huntington Library, California, it asks whether and in what ways the culture and politics of early modern England was transformed by the second half of the seventeenth century. In sharp contrast to those who have emphasised continuity and the persistence of the ancien régime, the contributors argue that England in 1700 was profoundly different from what it had been in 1640. Essays in the volume deal with changes in natural philosophy, literature, religion, politics, political thought, and political economy. The insights offered here, based on innovative research, will interest scholars and students of early modern history, Renaissance and Augustan literature, and historians of political thought.

Early American literature has traditionally been defined as writings in English by future residents of the land that became the United States. Thanks to this definition, it has only a modest reputation: "early" has come to mean "less"--less American and less literary than American literature proper. In this book, William C. Spengemann redefines early American literature, calling it writings in English that reflect or have been influenced by the discovery, exploration, and settlement of the New World. Spengemann argues that linguistic criteria should have precedence over national origin in determining the national literature to which a given work rightfully belongs, and from this perspective he examines a variety of works in new and provocative ways. He analyzes Milton's Paradise Lost as an American poem that reflects the impact of the discovery and settlement of America on seventeenth-century religious culture; traces the semantic development of the English word Columbus from its first written appearance in 1553 to its identification with the United States after 1780; and compares in detail Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, viewing them as comparable--and American--writings, all concerned with comprehending the displacement of the remembered Old World by an altogether new one.