Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born to a well-to-do family in Providence, Rhode Island. As a child, he revealed remarkable precocity in his early interests in literature and science. Ill-health dogged him in youth, rendering his school attendance sporadic; and in 1908 he experienced a nervous breakdown that rendered him a virtual recluse for several years. In 1914 he discovered the world of amateur journalism and began slowly emerging from his hermitry. He wrote tremendous amounts of essays, poetry, and other work; in 1917, under the encouragement from W. Paul Cook and others, he resumed the writing of horror fiction, and his career as a dream-weaver began anew. In 1921 Lovecraft met his future wife, Sonia H. Greene, at an amateur journalism convention. It was at this time that he began expanding his horizons, both geographical and intellectual: he traveled widely, from New England to New York to Cleveland; and he absorbed such literary and intellectual influences as Lord Dunsany, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Arthur Machen. In 1924 he and Sonia decided to marry, and Lovecraft moved to New York to pursue his literary fortune. But, as the first volume of this biography concludes, his metropolitan adventure would be bittersweet at best. S. T. Joshi's award-winning biography H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (1996) provided the most detailed portrait of the life, work, and thought of the dreamer from Providence ever published. But that edition was in fact abridged from Joshi's original manuscript, and this expanded and updated two-volume edition restores the 150,000 words that Joshi omitted and, in addition, updates the texts with new findings.

Issued to coincide with the Twyla Tharp-Mikhail Baryshnikov national tour, premier choreographer Twyla Tharp reveals her extraordinary odyssey that changed contemporary dance. She recounts her unique story, from her childhood to her training in classical ballet to her struggle to find her own vision. Photographs.

The American Dance Festival has been a magnet drawing together diverse artists, styles, theories, and dance training methods; from this creative mix the ADF has emerged as the sponsor of performances by some of the greatest choreographers and dance companies of our time. Jack Anderson traces the development of ADF from its beginnings in New England to its seasons at Duke University. He displays the ADF for the multidimensional creature it is—a center for performances, a school for the best young dancers in the country, and a provider of community and professional services.

"A Kind of Rapture" brings together a selection of photos from Bergman's two-year travels by car through the Rust Belt (Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Gary) and the East Coast, taking color pictures of everyday people who moved him profoundly. 51 color photos.