An extraordinary memoir by Iris Origo, who chronicled political life in A Chill in the Air and War in Val d'Orcia, and now turns inward to describe her own family, the work of writing, and the transcience of memory. Images and Shadows, Iris Origo’s autobiographical account of her early life, is as perceptive and humane and beautifully written as her celebrated memoir War in Val d’Orcia. Origo’s father came from an old and moneyed American family, her mother was the daughter of an Irish peer, and Iris grew up in the most privileged of circumstances. Her father died of tuberculosis when he was only thirty, and her mother moved to Fiesole, Italy, where she and Iris developed a close friendship with the great connoisseur and art historian Bernard Berenson. Later, Origo and her Italian husband transformed a desolate and deforested Tuscan property into a flourishing estate, and it was there that she discovered her true calling as a writer. In Images and Shadows, Origo paints portraits of her shy, loving father and her headstrong mother, and describes beloved places, the books that formed her sensibility, and how she grew up and made her way in the world. She reflects on the pleasures and challenges of writing and evokes the persistence and fragility of memory. Images and Shadows is an autobiography that is as thoughtful as it is profoundly touching.

This is the story of a Protestant young woman and her journey to the Roman Catholic Church. The fascinating novel is set in nineteenth-century England-a time when Catholicism was regarded with suspicion and prejudice against Catholics was commonplace. Leaving her sheltered life in the countryside, young Clem becomes acquainted with the fascinating ideas and people of Oxford-including a brilliant young clergyman, John Henry Newman. But when her relationship to a Roman Catholic man with a colorful reputation leads to an Italian elopement that is more innocent than it appears, the scandal drives a wedge between Clem and the upright Anglican circle of friends and family she left behind. Woven into the story of Clem and Augustine, their courtship and marriage, and Clem's conversion, is the vital, influential, and holy Newman, as seen through the eyes of friends. Meriol Trevor's engaging plot charts the ongoing friendship between Newman and the couple as it spans many years during which pivotal historical influences, such as the Industrial Revolution and the Oxford Movement, are shaping Victorian England. Many important events, personages, and ideas in the life of Newman appear in the story-his reasons for becoming a Roman Catholic, his differences with Cardinal Manning, his work in the Birmingham Oratory, and his being made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. The author, a renowned biographer of Newman, used Newman's actual correspondence as the basis for his parts in the dialogue.

I See a Shadow is a charming picture book that delivers a bright new take on the concept of shadows and the delight of imagination, from debut author/illustrator Laura Breen. Shadows are fun. They can be funny, too. Mostly, shadows are all around us, and not always what they seem. Here is a delightful, graphic celebration of imagination.

1861-1865, vol. 3.

A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, The Mark Lynton History Prize, and the Sally Hacker Prize for the History of Technology “A panoramic vision of cultural change” —The New York Times Through the story of the pioneering photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the author of Orwell's Roses explores what it was about California in the late 19th-century that enabled it to become such a center of technological and cultural innovation The world as we know it today began in California in the late 1800s, and Eadweard Muybridge had a lot to do with it. This striking assertion is at the heart of Rebecca Solnit’s new book, which weaves together biography, history, and fascinating insights into art and technology to create a boldly original portrait of America on the threshold of modernity. The story of Muybridge—who in 1872 succeeded in capturing high-speed motion photographically—becomes a lens for a larger story about the acceleration and industrialization of everyday life. Solnit shows how the peculiar freedoms and opportunities of post–Civil War California led directly to the two industries—Hollywood and Silicon Valley—that have most powerfully defined contemporary society.