The Cantos have been called Ezra Pound's intellectual diary, composed over the course of sixty years. Long out of print as a separate volume--it was originally published in 1933--this epic of nine groupings of poems is now being issued as a New Directions Paperbook.

Writing from the Crimea where she nursed wounded soldiers, Florence Nightingale through her letters tirelessly pushed for reforms that would improve the welfare of the troops and recruited volunteer nurses. From her correspondence emerges an extraordinary self-portrait of a complex and contradictory personality, very different from the heroine of popular myth. Illustrations.