Starting with the Nebula-winning title story, this “outstanding” fantasy collection by the author of Ahab’s Return will have you “entranced and delighted” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Few writers can extract as much enchantment from the mundane as award-winning author Jeffrey Ford. His talent for storytelling is readily evident in The Empire of Ice Cream, his collection of ordinary and extraordinary juxtapositions. The bittersweet Nebula Award–winning title story introduces a composer with synesthesia who finds the sound—and woman—of his dreams through a cup of coffee. Then there are the fairies that inhabit sandcastles in the fleeting moments before the inevitable rise of the tide. Ford populates this charmed collection with stories taken from his own life as well, including “Botch Town,” which finds him as a schoolboy, and “The Trentino Kid,” which recalls his experience digging for clams.

The Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century contains over 400 entries that treat a broad range of individual poets and poems, along with many articles devoted to topics, schools, or periods of American verse in the century. Entries fall into three main categories: poet entries, which provide biographical and cultural contexts for the author's career; entries on individual works, which offer closer explication of the most resonant poems in the 20th-century canon; and topical entries, which offer analyses of a given period of literary production, school, thematically constructed category, or other verse tradition that historically has been in dialogue with the poetry of the United States.

This engaging and helpful book is both a thoughtful celebration of the learning process and a practical guide to becoming a better student. Written by the authors of the acclaimed Elements of Teaching, it is designed to help students of all ages—particularly high school and college students—attain their full potential for success in any area of study. James M. Banner, Jr., and Harold C. Cannon explore the qualities needed to get the most out of education: industry, enthusiasm, pleasure, curiosity, aspiration, imagination, self-discipline, civility, cooperation, honesty, and initiative. For each of these elements they offer general reflections, useful suggestions, and a description of a fictional student who either embodies or lacks these qualities. The second part of the book helps students understand the environment in which they learn, by focusing on such topics as teachers, the curriculum, ways of learning, and the transition from school to college. The core points of the text are reinforced by answers to questions that haunt students, as well as tips on what to do to become the best student possible. Throughout, the authors encourage students to consider learning as part of their lives and to be active participants in their own education.

A splendid collection of literary essays by "the greatest biographer of the century"--The Sunday Times, London. Ellmann's Oscar Wilde was a tremendous critical success, winning both the NBCC and the Pulitzer Prize last year.

Literary legend James A. Michener was “a Renaissance man, adventurous, inquisitive, unpretentious and unassuming, with an encyclopedic mind and a generous heart” (The New York Times Book Review). In this exceptional memoir, the man himself tells the story of his remarkable life and describes the people, events, and ideas that shaped it. Moving backward and forward across time, he writes about the many strands of his experience: his passion for travel; his lifelong infatuation with literature, music, and painting; his adventures in politics; and the hard work, headaches, and rewards of the writing life. Here at last is the real James Michener: plainspoken, wise, and enormously sympathetic, a man who could truly say, “The world is my home.” Praise for The World Is My Home “Michener’s own life makes one of his most engaging tales—a classic American success story.”—Entertainment Weekly “The Michener saga is as full of twists as any of his monumental works. . . . His output, his political interests, his patriotic service, his diligence, and the breadth of his readership are matched only by the great nineteenth-century writers whose works he devoured as he grew up—Dickens, Balzac, Mark Twain.”—Chicago Tribune “There are splendid yarns about [Michener’s] wartime doings in the South Pacific. There are hilarious cautionary tales about his service on government commissions. There are wonderful inside stories from the publishing business. And always there is Michener himself—analyzing his own character, assessing himself as a writer, chronicling his intellectual life, giving advice to young writers.”—The Plain Dealer “A sweepingly interesting life . . . Whether he’s having an epiphany over a campout in New Guinea with head-hunting cannibals or getting politically charged by the melodrama of great opera, James A. Michener’s world is a place and a time worth reading about.”—The Christian Science Monitor

Gus has been throwing the towel in out and about since 1978. Walks, runs, crawls, and creeps about. Reporting, observing, surmising, events, real & imagined, recording dreams, visions & hallucinations out of whack with every norm. Always been a bad bet to invite to a wine & cheese party. A stalwart enemy of convention, especially conventional poetry. This collection is Gus in the extreme.