An Enlarged Heart, the exquisitely written prose debut from prize-winning poet Cynthia Zarin, is a poignantly understated exploration of the author’s experiences with love, work, and the surprise of time’s passage. In these intertwined episodes from her New York world and beyond, she charts the shifting and complicated parameters of contemporary life and family in writing that feels nearly fictional in its richness of scene, dialogue, and mood. The writer herself is the marvelously rueful character at the center of these tales, at first a bewildered young woman, navigating the terrain of new jobs and borrowed apartments and the rapidly fading New York of people like Mr. Ferri, the Upper East Side tailor (“a wren of a man with pins flashing in his teeth”). By the end, whether Zarin is writing about vanished restaurants, her decades-long love affair with her collection of coats, a newlywed journey to Italy, a child’s illness, Mary McCarthy’s file cabinet, or the inner life of the New Yorker staff she knew as a young woman, this history of the heart shows us how persistent the past is in returning to us with entirely new lessons, and that there are some truths not even a tailor can alter.

A major scholarly work, published in conjunction with the exhibition titled "Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei" (on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during 1996, and scheduled for several other American cities during 1996-1997). Written by scholars of both Chinese and Western cultural backgrounds and conceived as a cultural history, the book synthesizes scholarship of the past three decades to present the historical and cultural significance of individual works of art and analyses of their aesthetic content, as well as reevaluation of the cultural dynamics of Chinese history. Includes some 600 illustrations, 436 in color. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

History lies beneath our feet and in the landscapes around us. In contrast to the history that comes from studying texts, archaeology is the study of history through objects, monuments, and other traces of past lives: history that extends beyond the earliest writings into the deep past, revealing the varied pathways that led to the present, and the challenges – often similar to those we face today – that confronted our ancestors. Ann Stahl argues that archaeology is unique in its focus on the everyday lives of all peoples in all places and times. From ancient temples to humble homes, archaeologists piece together worlds that would otherwise be lost: knowledge that shows us how routine actions have shaped societies, how and why societies have changed in light of environment, politics, and culture – and perhaps what the future holds for our societies too. Using compelling examples from a storied international career, Stahl provides the perfect summary of why archaeology is both a vitally important and enjoyable subject to study.