In Latin Alive, Joseph Solodow tells the story of how Latin developed into modern French, Spanish, and Italian, and deeply affected English as well. Offering a gripping narrative of language change, Solodow charts Latin's course from classical times to the modern era, with focus on the first millennium of the Common Era. Though the Romance languages evolved directly from Latin, Solodow shows how every important feature of Latin's evolution is also reflected in English. His story includes scores of intriguing etymologies, along with many concrete examples of texts, studies, scholars, anecdotes, and historical events; observations on language; and more. Written with crystalline clarity, this book tells the story of the Romance languages for the general reader and to illustrate so amply Latin's many-sided survival in English as well.

THE STORY: Jo is in a pickle: She has twenty-four hours to save Hiram Hall--her father's once-famous country-western saloon in Rexford, Kansas--from foreclosure. Although the place has seen better days, Jo is determined to keep it open. But what will pack i

An “insightful cultural history of the mythical, self-immolating bird” from Ancient Egypt to contemporary pop culture by the author of The Book of Gryphons (Library Journal). The phoenix, which rises again and again from its own ashes, has been a symbol of resilience and renewal for thousands of years. But how did this mythical bird come to play a part in cultures around the world and throughout human history? Here, mythologist Joseph Nigg presents a comprehensive biography of this legendary creature. Beginning in ancient Egypt, Nigg’s sweeping narrative discusses the many myths and representations of the phoenix, including legends of the Chinese, where it was considered a sacred creature that presided over China’s destiny; classical Greece and Rome, where it appears in the writings of Herodotus and Ovid; medieval Christianity, in which it came to embody the resurrection; and in Europe during the Renaissance, when it was a popular emblem of royals. Nigg examines the various phoenix traditions, the beliefs and tales associated with them, their symbolic and metaphoric use, and their appearance in religion, bestiaries, and even contemporary popular culture, in which the ageless bird of renewal is employed as a mascot and logo. “An exceptional work of scholarship.”—Publishers Weekly

Automotive pioneer Charles Stewart Mott and his first wife, Ethel Culbert Harding Mott, purchased sixty-four acres at the edge of downtown Flint, Michigan, and laid the cornerstone in 1916 for the family home and gentleman's farm they called Applewood. This collection of stories of Applewood's first one hundred years reveals the private lives of a very public family, much told in their own words. The author weaves excerpts from decades of interviews, personal letters, and C. S. Mott's detailed diary, plus recollections from family, friends, and staff. More than 250 photos, both new and historical images from the Ruth Mott Foundation Archives, give an intimate look at an extraordinary family and the place they called home.

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914 delineates the roles women played in the flourishing music world of late-Victorian and early twentieth-century England, and shows how contemporary challenges to restrictive gender roles inspired women to move into new areas of musical expression, both in composition and performance. The most famous women musicians were the internationally renowned stars of opera; greatly admired despite their violations of the prescribed Victorian linkage of female music-making with domesticity, the divas were often compared to the sirens of antiquity, their irresistible voices a source of moral danger to their male admirers. Their ambiguous social reception notwithstanding, the extraordinary ability and striking self-confidence of these women - and of pioneering female soloists on the violin, long an instrument permitted only to men - inspired fiction writers to feature musician heroines and motivated unprecedented numbers of girls and women to pursue advanced musical study. Finding professional orchestras almost fully closed to them, many female graduates of English conservatories performed in small ensembles and in all-female and amateur orchestras, and sought to earn their living in the overcrowed world of music teaching.

A guide to eighteenth and nineteenth century performance practice on the horn.