William Logan has been a thorn in the side of American poetry for more than three decades. Though he has been called the "most hated man in American poetry," his witty and articulate reviews have reminded us how muscular good reviewing can be. These new essays and reviews take poetry at its word, often finding in its hardest cases the greatest reasons for hope. Logan begins with a devastating polemic against the wish to have critics announce their aesthetics every time they begin a review. "The Unbearable Rightness of Criticism" is a plea to read those critics who got it wrong when they reviewed Lyrical Ballads or Leaves of Grass or The Waste Land. Sometimes, he argues, such critics saw exactly what these books were—they saw the poems plain yet often did not see that they were poems. In such wrongheaded criticism, readers can recover the ground broken by such groundbreaking books. Logan looks again at the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Frank O'Hara, and Philip Larkin; at the letters of T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell; and at new books by Louise Glück and Seamus Heaney. Always eager to overturn settled judgments, Logan argues that World War II poets were in the end better than the much-lauded poets of World War I. He revisits the secretly revised edition of Robert Frost's notebooks, showing that the terrible errors ruining the first edition still exist. The most remarkable essay is "Elizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp," which prints for the first time her early adolescent verse along with the intimate letters written to the first girl she loved.

William Logan has been a thorn in the side of American poetry for more than three decades. Though he has been called the Òmost hated man in American poetry,Ó his witty and articulate reviews have reminded us how muscular good reviewing can be. These new essays and reviews take poetry at its word, often finding in its hardest cases the greatest reasons for hope. Logan begins with a witty polemic against the wish to have critics announce their aesthetics every time they begin a review. ÒThe Unbearable Rightness of CriticismÓ is a plea to read those critics who got it wrong when they reviewed Lyrical Ballads or Leaves of Grass or The Waste Land. Sometimes, he argues, such critics saw exactly what these books wereÑthey saw the poems plain, yet often did not see that they were poems. In such wrongheaded criticism, readers can recover the ground broken by such groundbreaking books. Logan looks again at the poetry of Wallace Stevens, Frank OÕHara, and Philip Larkin; at the letters of T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Lowell; and at new books by Louise GlŸck and Seamus Heaney. Always eager to overturn settled judgments, Logan argues that World War II poets were in the end better than the much-lauded poets of World War I. He revisits the secretly revised edition of Robert FrostÕs notebooks, showing that the terrible errors ruining the first edition still exist. The most remarkable essay is ÒElizabeth Bishop at Summer Camp,Ó which prints for the first time her early adolescent verse, along with the intimate letters written to the first girl she loved.

"Nicola faces her biggest challenge as a publicist when she is forced to represent her superstar ex-boyfriend, Seamus, when he returns from rehab. Her boss Gaynor is struggling to keep the PR agency afloat, and Seamus is one client who definitely won't leave as long as Nicola is around. He's willing to do anything to win her back--even start a fake relationship for some badly needed good publicity. Meanwhile, tabloid journalist Billy's integrity is tested when he's asked to print the inside scoop on a troubled star. And as for their bestie Kara? Miss Reality Show may have a sex tape on the market. With everyone's career and relationships in jeopardy, the three friends must trust each other again--before all their dirty secrets spill"--Amazon.com.

"I'd gladly sell my soul to Satan for a year of freedom," cries impetuous Rosamond Vivian to her callous grandfather. Then, one stormy night, a brooding stranger appears in her remote island home, ready to take Rosamond to her word. Spellbound by the mysterious Philip Tempest, Rosamond is seduced with promises of love and freedom, then spirited away on Tempest's sumptuous yacht. But she soon finds herself trapped in a web of intrigue, cruelty, and deceit. Desperate to escape, she flees to Italy, France, and Germany, from Parisian garret to mental asylum, from convent to chateau, as Tempest stalks every step of the fiery beauty who has become his obsession. A story of dark love and passionate obsession that was considered "too sensational" to be published in the authors lifetime, A Long Fatal Love Chase was written for magazine serialization in 1866, two years before the publication of Little Women. Buried among Louisa May Alcott's papers for more than a century, its publication is a literary landmark—a novel that is bold, timeless, and mesmerizing."

In Dickinson’s Nerves, Frost’s Woods, William Logan, the noted and often controversial critic of contemporary poetry, returns to some of the greatest poems in English literature. He reveals what we may not have seen before and what his critical eye can do with what he loves. In essays that pair different poems—“Ozymandias,” “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer,” “In a Station of the Metro,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” “After great pain, a formal feeling comes,” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” among others—Logan reconciles history and poetry to provide new ways of reading poets ranging from Shakespeare and Shelley to Lowell and Heaney. In these striking essays, Logan presents the poetry of the past through the lens of the past, attempting to bring poems back to the world in which they were made. Logan’s criticism is informed by the material culture of that world, whether postal deliveries in Regency London, the Métro lighting in 1911 Paris, or the wheelbarrows used in 1923. Deeper knowledge of the poet’s daily existence lets us read old poems afresh, providing a new way of understanding poems now encrusted with commentary. Logan shows that criticism cannot just root blindly among the words of the poem but must live partly in a lost world, in the shadow of the poet’s life and the shadow of the age.

Along with such familiar titles as The Devil Wears Prada and Remember the Titans, Stratton introduces readers to lesser-known gems like Diplomatic Courier, The Narrow Margin, Prime Cut and Under Fire. The selections represent every major genre of film: domestic drama, musical, film noir, Western, science fiction, comedy, biopic, war, espionage, sports, superhero and horror. Among the acting careers examined are those of Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Greer Garson, Burt Lancaster, Meryl Streep, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Denzel Washington, Daniel Craig and many others. Covering over ninety years of film history, this is a book for the casual fan as well as the seasoned student. Easy to read and to navigate, it is a must-have reference.