A gorilla shrewdly sells back a missing key chain to the highest bidder. An orangutan picks a lock to let himself out of his zoo enclosure and two elephants adopt a tag-team strategy to keep their handlers from putting them back into theirs. In The Parrot's Lament, noted environmentalist Eugene Linden offers more than one hundred true anecdotes about animal acts of cooperation, heroism, escape—even tales of deception or manipulation of human beings. Drawing on the first-person experiences of veterinarians, field biologists, researchers, and trainers, Linden has compiled a warmly entertaining and powerfully persuasive argument for animal consciousness that, while not human, far exceeds what humans usually grant animals. Scientifically sound and emotionally compelling, The Parrot's Lament contains remarkable stories that are sure to resonate with animal lovers, turning skeptics everywhere into believers.

The ancient novel, previously relegated to the margins of literary study, has recently taken its place at centre stage. Petronius' Satyricon, the oldest surviving work of prose fiction, is in many respects an arrestingly modern ancient novel but the inclusion within it of thirty short poems and two long ones introduces an alien feature in need of investigation. In this study, Catherine Connors draws on developments in Latin literary criticism to take a comprehensive approach to the Satyricon's poems, reminiscences of poetic texts, and the figure of the poet, assessing the ways in which they fragment and refashion established literary forms into a new amalgam of prose fiction. This book will be of interest to students of Latin literature, Neronian culture, and the early history of the novel. All Latin and Greek is translated.

The Bible has inflamed the hearts of poets and martyrs, spawned revolutions and reformations, and influenced cultures and personal lives in sometimes small, sometimes dramatic ways. With a teacher's wit and knowledge, bestsellling author J. Stephen Lang again turns to the Bible and navigates more of its immense treasures in his easily accessible and informative style in 1,001 More Things You Always Wanted to Know About the Bible. You will discover answers to the questions and curiosities you have always harbored about the Bible and its influence but perhaps felt you should already know. A joy to browse and reference, this fascinating book is sure to satisfy an inquirer's mind and spark further study of the Bible. Test your knowledge of Bible trivia: In a famous folk legend, who found the "true cross" of Christ on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem? In 1952, what new Bible translation caused heated opposition? Who established Sunday as "The Lord's Day"? Who wore girdles in Bible times? What favorite children's song did Anna Bartlett Warner write? What is the "mercy seat"?

The love songs of Occitan troubadours inspired a rich body of courtly lyric by poets working in neighboring languages. For Sarah Kay, these poets were nightingales, composing verse that is recognizable yet original. But troubadour poetry also circulated across Europe in a form that is less well known but was more transformative. Writers outside Occitania quoted troubadour songs word for word in their original language, then commented upon these excerpts as linguistic or poetic examples, as guides to conduct, and even as sources of theological insight. If troubadours and their poetic imitators were nightingales, these quotation artists were parrots, and their practices of excerption and repetition brought about changes in poetic subjectivity that would deeply affect the European canon. The first sustained study of the medieval tradition of troubadour quotation, Parrots and Nightingales examines texts produced along the arc of the northern Mediterranean—from Catalonia through southern France to northern Italy—through the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth. Featuring extensive appendices of over a thousand troubadour passages that have been quoted or anthologized, Parrots and Nightingales traces how quotations influenced the works of grammarians, short story writers, biographers, encyclopedists, and not least, other poets including Dante and Petrarch. Kay explores the instability and fluidity of medieval textuality, revealing how the art of quotation affected the transmission of knowledge and transformed perceptions of desire from the "courtly love" of the Middle Ages to the more learned formulations that emerged in the Renaissance. Parrots and Nightingales deftly restores the medieval tradition of lyric quotation to visibility, persuasively arguing for its originality and influence as a literary strategy.

Weep Not O Widow is a journal of fifty poems written from the heart and soul during that tough first year. Because the poems show the process Jean went through, this book will especially help the recently widowed. The poems contain beautiful imagery of weeping, memories of their shared life, and crying out to God. There are continuous references to natures beauty and the wildlife of Gods magnificent creation. With support and comfort, Jean hopes to help the grieving widow find her way to God and His will, and to the joy of living.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Fanny P. Seaverns, editor, 1867-68.