New York Times Bestseller New York Times Notable Book of 2016 • NPR Great Read of 2016 • Named a Best Book of 2016 by The Economist, Smithsonian, NPR's Science Friday, MPR, Minnesota Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, Times (London) From Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Yong, a groundbreaking, wondrously informative, and vastly entertaining examination of the most significant revolution in biology since Darwin—a “microbe’s-eye view” of the world that reveals a marvelous, radically reconceived picture of life on earth. Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ed Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are. The microbes in our bodies are part of our immune systems and protect us from disease. In the deep oceans, mysterious creatures without mouths or guts depend on microbes for all their energy. Bacteria provide squid with invisibility cloaks, help beetles to bring down forests, and allow worms to cause diseases that afflict millions of people. Many people think of microbes as germs to be eradicated, but those that live with us—the microbiome—build our bodies, protect our health, shape our identities, and grant us incredible abilities. In this astonishing book, Ed Yong takes us on a grand tour through our microbial partners, and introduces us to the scientists on the front lines of discovery. It will change both our view of nature and our sense of where we belong in it.

Containing Multitudes: A Documentary Reader of US History provides nearly two hundred primary documents that narrate aspects of US history from the period before European contact through the twenty-first century. Presented in two volumes, this curated selection—including letters, literature, journalism, and visual art—provides access to historical voices from a wide range of subject positions and belief systems. Designed for US history survey courses, this reader provides both analysis and instructional support in the form of brief introductory essays and questions to promote student discussion and reflection. Containing Multitudes not only conveys a rich and complex portrait of the American past but also offers readers valuable insight into the many dimensions of the historian’s craft.

Walt Whitman burst onto the literary stage raring for a fight with his transatlantic forebears. With the unmetered and unrhymed long lines of Leaves of Grass, he blithely forsook "the old models" declaring that "poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away." In a self-authored but unsigned review of the inaugural 1855 edition, Whitman boasted that its influence-free author "makes no allusions to books or writers; their spirits do not seem to have touched him." There was more than a hint here of a party-crasher's bravado or a new-comer's anxiety about being perceived as derivative. But the giants of British literature were too well established in America to be toppled by Whitman's patronizing "that wonderful little island," he called England-or his frequent assertions that Old World literature was non grata on American soil. As Gary Schmidgall demonstrates, the American bard's manuscripts, letters, prose criticism, and private conversations all reveal that Whitman's negotiation with the literary "big fellows" across the Atlantic was much more nuanced and contradictory than might be supposed. His hostile posture also changed over the decades as the gymnastic rebel transformed into Good Gray Poet, though even late in life he could still crow that his masterwork Leaves of Grass "is an iconoclasm, it starts out to shatter the idols of porcelain." Containing Multitudes explores Whitman's often uneasy embrace of five members of the British literary pantheon: Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Blake, and Wordsworth (five others are treated more briefly: Scott, Carlyle, Tennyson, Wilde, and Swinburne). It also considers how the arcs of their creative careers are often similar to the arc of Whitman's own fifty years of poem-making. Finally, it seeks to illuminate the sometimes striking affinities between the views of these authors and Whitman on human nature and society. Though he was loath to admit it, these authors anticipated much that we now see as quintessentially Whitmanic.

Essays cover American poets in the second half of the twentieth century.

This study employs as its primary source a codex from Uppsala University Library, Codex Upsaliensis Graecus 8 . Its aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the Late Byzantine and post-Byzantine miscellaneous book. It is argued that multitext books reflect the time and society in which they were created. A thorough investigation of such books sheds light on the interests and concerns of the scribes, owners, and readers of the books. Containing some ninety texts of different character and from different genres, Codex Upsaliensis Graecus 8 is a complex creation, but still an example of a type of book that was common during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This study takes a comprehensive view of the book in its entirety, making sense of its different parts in relation to the whole with the help of codicology and textual analysis. With that approach the original idea of the book is brought to the fore, and the texts are studied in the same context that the main scribe Theodoros chose and the early owners and readers of the book encountered. Through a systematic codicological analysis, the overall structure of the codex is explored and suggestions are made concerning the provenance. The examination of the scribal work procedure becomes a means to profile this otherwise fairly unknown scribe. The texts are grouped and characterized typologically to illustrate connections throughout the whole book as well as in relation to the separate structural units. The role of micro-texts and secondary layers of inscription is also considered. From the perspective of usability the texts are divided into four categories: narrative texts, rhetorical texts, philosophical-theological texts, and practical texts. Three texts are studied in greater depth, as examples of the width of the scribe's interests and the variety of the book's contents.