Indian summer, the succession of warm, fair days gracing New England in autumn, is at once a flourishing period signaling the end of fall, a meteorological event, a vernacular cultural construction, and a literary metaphor. In this appealing and elegant book, Sweeting plumbs Indian summer's use in literature as a symbol of second chance, rebirth, or reprieve before the onset of a harsher season. Well researched and charmingly written, Beneath the Second Sun is the first book to systematically treat the history and uses of Indian summer imagery in American life. The author focuses on the ways in which New Englanders have embraced the season, and he places the celebration of the season's beauty and its melancholy qualities within the context of Anglo-Native American relations. Sweeting does not try to locate the original definition of Indian summer, rather he explores the far more interesting ways in which the season has been imagined and described in American culture. Popular authors including Philip Freneau, Susan Cooper, Lydia Sigourney, John Greenleaf Whittier, Francis Parkman Oliver, Wendell Holmes, and, especially, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and William Dean Howells freely employ Indian summer imagery in their works. In the context of modern American Studies, Sweeting's study is part of a "post-modern" scholarly discussion of how tangible realities such as climate are mediated, even forged, by social needs. Sweeting further investigates the imaginative, early-nineteenth-century "invention" of New England regional identity and integrates traditional American Studies literary and historical concerns with a contemporary interest in the environment and sense of place. Sweeting's graceful, lively, and accessible style beckons not only scholars of American literature and the nineteenth century but any traveler seeking the glories of autumn in New England.

Now in paperback: a #1 New York Times–bestselling author’s gripping chronicle of “two doctors . . . bringing light to those in darkness” (Time) Second Suns is the unforgettable true story of two very different doctors with a common mission: to rid the world of preventable blindness. Dr. Geoffrey Tabin was the high-achieving “bad boy” of his class at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sanduk Ruit grew up in a remote village in the Himalayas, where cataract blindness—easily curable in modern hospitals—amounts to an epidemic. Together, they pioneered a new surgical method, by which they have restored sight to over 100,000 people—all for about $20 per operation. Master storyteller David Oliver Relin brings the doctors’ work to vivid life through poignant portraits of their patients, from old men who can once again walk treacherous mountain trails, to children who can finally see their mothers’ faces. The Himalayan Cataract Project is changing the world—one pair of eyes at a time.

A Major work of twentieth-century American Literature.

A millennium into the future, two advancements have altered the course of human history: the colonization of the Galaxy and the creation of the positronic brain. On the beautiful Outer World planet of Solaria, a handful of human colonists lead a hermit-like existence, their every need attended to by their faithful robot servants. To this strange and provocative planet comes Detective Elijah Baley, sent from the streets of New York with his positronic partner, the robot R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve an incredible murder that has rocked Solaria to its foundations. The victim had been so reclusive that he appeared to his associates only through holographic projection. Yet someone had gotten close enough to bludgeon him to death while robots looked on. Now Baley and Olivaw are faced with two clear impossibilities: Either the Solarian was killed by one of his robots--unthinkable under the laws of Robotics--or he was killed by the woman who loved him so much that she never came into his presence!