The middle years of the twentieth century were a time of profound and rapid change. The world had recently experienced the Great Depression and World War II. Nothing could be quite the same again-and, in fact, nothing was. In My Green Age, author Terrence Keough not only recounts his life as an ordinary person, but he also provides a perspective on the years between 1935 and 1963. A series of vignettes interspersed throughout the memoir add piquancy to the comments on the nature of the times. A summer memory: My birthday, June 14, 1940. I heard from my upstairs bedroom my mother talking to Mr. Olson on the doorstep below. "Paris has fallen to the Germans," he said. The Reverend R. MacDonald's Religion 5C class: "If you mow your lawn for up to a half hour on Sunday," he contended, "you have committed a venial sin. If you mow it for more than a half hour, that's a mortal sin." One evening, we took the tube to Knightsbridge to go to my favourite restaurant, Luba's Bistro, just down the street from Harrods and the Brompton Oratory, on Yeoman's Row.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is that rare combination, a writer equally admired as poet and critic. The variety of subjects in Green Age is characteristic of her writing: from the opening poem, "Fifty," funny, courageous, and defiant, to a set of birthday poems for a grown daughter; from emulations of the Persian mystic Rumi, to the provactive "Meditation in Seven Days," whose central assumption is that we may find in the Bible traces of a Canaanite goddess whose worship was forbidden with the advent of patriarchal monotheism. But if her subjects may seem formidable, her poems are not. Ostriker is accessible, witty, daring, and humane, and she has become one of the most praised poets of her generation.

Supplying a quarter of San Francisco’s coal, Nortonville of the 1860s-70s is a flourishing empire in small, seeming to promise unending prosperity and a better future. But beneath the vibrant work ethic of its Welch citizens lies an insidious network of superstitions. A missing boy first brings these dark undercurrents to light. Then young Asher Witherow falls under the spell of an unorthodox apprentice minister, stirring a whirlpool of suspicion and outrage. Soon Asher finds himself trapped in a nightmarish crucible, all the more excruciating because he himself could end it if he could only find the strength of will. This is a lesson the missing boy has taught him, and what he understands instinctively from the alluring Anna Flood, new to Nortonville, who with her raw sensuality and independence seems to offer some hope of redemption or even escape. In this powerful debut from a young writer of stunning talent, M. Allen Cunningham takes us into a time and place at once gritty and magical, when the future seems filled with promise but where the day’s labor is bone breaking, numbing and always dangerous. Gorgeously written, historically authentic, The Green Age of Asher Witherow is a novel of tested loyalties, of condemnation and redemption. The characters’ deep emotional lives are complex and vivid, fluctuating from the doomed to the transcendent. As he unpacks his heart, Asher comes to realize that all his early traumas have somehow bonded him to the land surrounding Mount Diablo and infused his life with an inward wealth—a treasure at which we can only wonder.

Alchemy is popularly viewed as a secret way of turning worthless base metal into gold, and then a precursor to modern chemistry. This is often taken as a metaphor for psychological development. This book describes an innovative "third way" for both the education and exercise of an alchemical imagination that embraces both material matters and psychological insight: alchemy as lyrical poetics, or the intensive production of embodied metaphor. Alchemy here is viewed as an immanent set of metaphor-driven "best practices" for indwelling complex and contradictory earthly matters in a sensual, artistic and humane manner. Or, again, it describes best psychotherapeutic practice. Alchemy is read not as a medium for "personal growth", but optimal co-existence with the natural world. It is an eco-logical rather than ego-logical project with deep aesthetic concerns (education of the senses in close noticing) and political intentions (a democracy of worldly things). The book echoes post-Freudian developments in psychoanalysis that avoid the mysticism of symbol systems to work rather with everyday signs and linguistic registers such as embodied metaphors, keeping the focus on known and sensed phenomena rather than abstractions.

A fully illustrated overview of the work of David Nash, a contemporary British sculptor famous for his work with natural materials.

Where did literary modernism happen? This book answers this question, re-evaluating the parameters of modernism in the light of recent developments in literary geography and literary history through an examination of novels, poetry, theatre, and "e;little magazines"e;. Essays identify and appraise the local attachments of modernist texts in particular geographical regions and question the idea of the "e;regional"e; in light of the alienating displacements of transnational modernity.

Introducing a new voice in vegetarian cooking. Packed with 1,000 recipes that are seductive, sexy, and utterly delicious, Passionate Vegetarian covers all the bases of meatless cooking, from east (Stir Fry of Asparagus with Black Bean-Ginger Sauce), west (Talk of the Town Barbecued Tofu), from the Mediterranean (Swiss Chard with Raisins, Onions & Olives) to the American South (Black-Eyed Pea Ragovt). You'll find lush lasagnas; plump pierogies; bountiful burgers, beans, and breads; pleasing pasta and pies. You'll spoon up soups and stews, and delight in desserts from simple to swoonworthy. Written by longtime vegetarian Crescent Dragonwagon, author of Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook, Passionate Vegetarian employs innovative methods (try "Ri-sort-ofs," in which risotto technique is used to create splendid, richly flavored grain dishes built around not just rice but also barley, buckwheat, spelt, and even toasted oats with an array of seasonings) and introduces lesser-known ingredients (get to know and love not just tofu and tempeh but a whole new generation of soyfoods, as well as "Quick Fixes" like instant bean flakes). Opinionated, passionate, and deeply personal, Ms. Dragonwagon's tantalizing headnotes will have readers rushing to the kitchen to start cooking. (Can her over-the-top Garlic Spaghetti really be that good? It is.) Whether you're a committed vegetarian, a dedicated vegan (most recipes offer low-fat and vegan options), or a food-loving omnivore in search of something new and wonderful, this is not just vegetarian cooking--but cooking, period--at its most creative, inspiring, and exuberant.