From Homer and Shakespeare to Toni Morrison and Jonathan Safran Foer, major works of literature have a great deal to teach us about two of life’s most significant stages—growing up and growing old. Distinguised scholar Arnold Weinstein’s provocative and engaging new book, Morning, Noon, and Night, explores classic writing’s insights into coming-of-age and surrendering to time, and considers the impact of these revelations upon our lives. With wisdom, humor, and moving personal observations, Weinstein leads us to look deep inside ourselves and these great books, to see how we can use art as both mirror and guide. He offers incisive readings of seminal novels about childhood—Huck Finn’s empathy for the runaway slave Jim illuminates a child’s moral education; Catherine and Heathcliff’s struggle with obsessive passion in Wuthering Heights is hauntingly familiar to many young lovers; Dickens’s Pip, in Great Expectations, must grapple with a world that wishes him harm; and in Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical Persepolis, little Marjane faces a different kind of struggle—growing into adolescence as her country moves through the pain of the Iranian Revolution. In turn, great writers also ponder the lessons learned in life’s twilight years: both King Lear and Willy Loman suffer as their patriarchal authority collapses and death creeps up; Brecht’s Mother Courage displays the inspiring indomitability of an aging woman who has “borne every possible blow. . . but is still standing, still moving.” And older love can sometimes be funny (Rip Van Winkle conveniently sleeps right through his marriage) and sometimes tragic (as J. M. Coetzee’s David Lurie learns the hard way, in Disgrace). Tapping into the hearts and minds of memorable characters, from Sophocles’ Oedipus to Artie in Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Morning, Noon, and Night makes an eloquent and powerful case for the role of great literature as a knowing window into our lives and times. Its intelligence, passion, and genuine appreciation for the written word remind us just how crucial books are to the business of being human.

Subtle and haunting, Noon is the story of Rehan Tabassum, a young man who has seen a childhood of uncertainty, and whose vulnerability has rendered him a gaze so keen that it divines easily the shifts around him: his mother and her new husband, the emergence of a dazzling new India, the retreat of the old, muted order of dust and shortages, and the swell of a suppressed people. In this uncompromising yet unexpectedly tender third book, Aatish Taseer maps a difficult period in India and Pakistan, a period of deep upheavals, whose true direction is elusive. By presenting Rehan's journey through lands of sudden wealth and hidden violence, in an atmosphere of political quicksand and moral danger, Taseer brings us into closer contact with a world experiencing convulsive change. Stark, brave, and absolutely compelling, Noon confirms Aatish Taseer as a writer of emotional acuity and great intellectual gift.

"The role of energy in your life & how environmentalists control its use"

Long out of print, Shirley Hazzard's classic novel of love and memory A young Englishwoman working in Naples, Jenny comes to Italy fleeing a history that threatened to undo her. Alone in the fabulously ruined city, she idly follows up a letter of introduction from an acquaintance and thus changes her life forever. Through the letter, she meets Giocanda, a beautiful and gifted writer, and Gianni, a famous Roman film director and Giocanda's lover. At work she encounters Justin, a Scotsman whose inscrutability Jenny finds mysteriously attractive. As she becomes increasingly involved in the lives of these three, she discovers that the past--and the patterns of a lifetime--are not easily discarded.

Blackouts, rising gas prices, changes to the Clean Air Act, proposals to open wilderness and protected offshore areas to gas drilling, and increasing dependence on natural gas for electricity generation. What do all these developments have in common, and why should we care? In this timely expose, author Julian Darley takes a hard-hitting look at natural gas as an energy source that rapidly went from nuisance to crutch. Darley outlines the implications of our increased dependence on this energy source and why it has the potential to cause serious environmental, political, and economic consequences. In High Noon for Natural Gas readers can expect to find a critical analysis of government policy on energy, as well as a meticulously researched warning about our next potentially catastrophic energy crisis. Did you know that: Natural Gas (NG) is the second most important energy source after oil; In the U.S. alone, NG is used to supply 20% of all electricity and 60% of all home heating; NG is absolutely critical to the manufacture of agricultural fertilizers; In the U.S. the NG supply is at critically low levels, and early in 2003 we came within days of blackouts and heating shutdowns; Matt Simmons, the world's foremost private energy banker, is now warning that economic growth in the U.S. is under threat due to the looming NG crisis?