One of the most important and popular premodern Korean novels, The Story of Hong Gildong is a fast-paced adventure story about the illegitimate son of a nobleman who becomes the leader of a band of honest outlaws who take from the rich and punish the corrupt. Despite the importance of the work to Korean culture—it is often described as the story of the Korean Robin Hood—studies of the novel have been hindered by a number of myths, namely that it was authored in the early sixteenth century by statesman Heo Gyun, who wrote it not only in protest of Joseon-dynasty laws on the rights of illegitimate children, but also as a manifesto of his own radical political ideas. In Invincible and Righteous Outlaw, the first book-length study of the novel in English, Minsoo Kang reveals that The Story of Hong Gildong was most likely written by an anonymous mid-nineteenth-century writer whose primary concern was appealing to the increasing number of readers in the late Joseon looking to be entertained and that the myth of Heo’s authorship can be traced to the writing of literary scholar Kim Taejun in the 1930s. Following a detailed examination of the history and literary significance of the novel—including analysis based on Eric Hobsbawm’s work on the universal figure of the noble robber—Kang surveys the many afterlives of the hero Hong Gildong, who throughout the decades has appeared and reappeared in countless revisionist novels, films, television dramas, and comics, even inspiring the creation of a Hong Gildong theme park in South Korea. He shows how the story was altered, distorted, and reinvigorated during and after the Japanese colonial period in both the North and the South for political, social, and literary purposes. While demonstrating the continued relevance of the novel and its hero in Korean culture up to the present day, Kang makes it clear that such narratives have served mostly to distance readers from a better understanding of this classic work.

A beautiful lady who can only be seen from far away, a machine that generates an entire civilization, a king who loves the hidden life of an inanimate statue, a city that appears once a year across a great chasm, an ancient Korean king assassinated in the dark of the night, a ghost that haunts soldiers on the DMZ - these are just some of the marvels you will encounter in these stories from the transcultural and metafictional imagination of Minsoo Kang. In diverse narratives grouped under the titles of Tales from a Lost History, Fables of the Dream World, and Stories from an Imaginary Homeland, Kang explores the nature and possibilities of storytelling itself as he spins out variations on an episodic theme, reinterprets an old myth, and struggles with a past that seeks a voice in the present. The result is a marvelously surrealistic landscape where histories, ideas, and legends freely intermingle and dance to the music of wonder and longing.

Hong Gildong, a brilliant but illegitimate son of a noble government minister, cannot advance in society and embarks on a series of adventures, joining a band of outlaws, vanquishing assassins and monsters, and founding his own kingdom.

From the dawn of European civilization to the twentieth century, the automaton—better known today as the robot—has captured the Western imagination and provided a vital lens into the nature of humanity. Historian Minsoo Kang argues that to properly understand the human-as-machine and the human-as-fundamentally-different-from-machine, we must trace the origins of these ideas and examine how they were transformed by intellectual, cultural, and artistic appearances of the automaton throughout the history of the West. Kang tracks the first appearance of the automaton in ancient myths through the medieval and Renaissance periods, marks the proliferation of the automaton as a central intellectual concept in the Scientific Revolution and the subsequent backlash during the Enlightenment, and details appearances in Romantic literature and the introduction of the living machine in the Industrial Age. He concludes with a reflection on the destructive confrontation between humanity and machinery in the modern era and the reverberations of the humanity-machinery theme today. Sublime Dreams of Living Machines is an ambitious historical exploration and, at heart, an attempt to fully elucidate the rich and varied ways we have utilized our most uncanny creations to explore essential questions about ourselves.

Gonzo journalist and literary roustabout Hunter S. Thompson flies with the angels—Hell’s Angels, that is—in this short work of nonfiction. “California, Labor Day weekend . . . early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Frisco, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur. . . The Menace is loose again.” Thus begins Hunter S. Thompson’s vivid account of his experiences with California’s most notorious motorcycle gang, the Hell’s Angels. In the mid-1960s, Thompson spent almost two years living with the controversial Angels, cycling up and down the coast, reveling in the anarchic spirit of their clan, and, as befits their name, raising hell. His book successfully captures a singular moment in American history, when the biker lifestyle was first defined, and when such countercultural movements were electrifying and horrifying America. Thompson, the creator of Gonzo journalism, writes with his usual bravado, energy, and brutal honesty, and with a nuanced and incisive eye; as The New Yorker pointed out, “For all its uninhibited and sardonic humor, Thompson’s book is a thoughtful piece of work.” As illuminating now as when originally published in 1967, Hell’s Angels is a gripping portrait, and the best account we have of the truth behind an American legend.

E. H. Gombrich's Little History of the World, though written in 1935, has become one of the treasures of historical writing since its first publication in English in 2005. The Yale edition alone has now sold over half a million copies, and the book is available worldwide in almost thirty languages. Gombrich was of course the best-known art historian of his time, and his text suggests illustrations on every page. This illustrated edition of the Little History brings together the pellucid humanity of his narrative with the images that may well have been in his mind's eye as he wrote the book. The two hundred illustrations—most of them in full color—are not simple embellishments, though they are beautiful. They emerge from the text, enrich the author's intention, and deepen the pleasure of reading this remarkable work. For this edition the text is reset in a spacious format, flowing around illustrations that range from paintings to line drawings, emblems, motifs, and symbols. The book incorporates freshly drawn maps, a revised preface, and a new index. Blending high-grade design, fine paper, and classic binding, this is both a sumptuous gift book and an enhanced edition of a timeless account of human history.

This early work by Radclyffe Hall was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Well of Loneliness' is a novel that follows an upper-class Englishwoman who falls in love with another woman while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I. Marguerite Radclyffe Hall was born on 12th August 1880, in Bournemouth, England. Hall's first novel The Unlit Lamp (1924) was a lengthy and grim tale that proved hard to sell. It was only published following the success of the much lighter social comedy The Forge (1924), which made the best-seller list of John O'London's Weekly. Hall is a key figure in lesbian literature for her novel The Well of Loneliness (1928). This is her only work with overt lesbian themes and tells the story of the life of a masculine lesbian named Stephen Gordon.