Reissued with a new afterword Leonard Cohen is back! With a #1 bestselling poetry collection, The Book of Longing, flying off bookshelves; Lian Lunson’s acclaimed documentary, Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, in theatres this summer (the DVD will release this fall); and the superb soundtrack in music stores everywhere, Leonard Cohen proves he is Canada’s most enduring icon. Now, in the newly reissued Various Positions, Ira Nadel peels back the many layers to reveal the man and explain the fascinating relationship between Leonard Cohen’s life and his art. This book is a remarkable and rare look at Leonard Cohen, up close and personal. For nearly forty years, Leonard Cohen has endured the ups and downs of an international career that has alternately identified him as the "Prince of Bummers" and Canada's most respected poet and performer. Now, author Ira Nadel brings us closer to understanding these conflicting descriptions and allows us to enter Cohen's private world. He peels back the many layers to reveal the man and explain the fascinating relationship between Cohen's life and his art. This is a remarkable and rare look at Leonard Cohen, up close and personal.

The seventh volume in Knopf’s critically acclaimed Complete Lyrics series, published in Johnny Mercer’s centennial year, contains the texts to more than 1,200 of his lyrics, several hundred of them published here for the first time. Johnny Mercer’s early songs became staples of the big band era and were regularly featured in the musicals of early Hollywood. With his collaborators, who included Richard A. Whiting, Harry Warren, Hoagy Carmichael, Jerome Kern, and Harold Arlen, he wrote the lyrics to some of the most famous standards, among them, “Too Marvelous for Words,” “Jeepers Creepers,” “Skylark,” “I’m Old-Fashioned,” and “That Old Black Magic.” During a career of more than four decades, Mercer was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song an astonishing eighteen times, and won four: for his lyrics to “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe” (music by Warren), “In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening” (music by Carmichael), and “Moon River” and “Days of Wine and Roses” (music for both by Henry Mancini). You’ve probably fallen in love with more than a few of Mercer’s songs–his words have never gone out of fashion–and with this superb collection, it’s easy to see that his lyrics elevated popular song into art.

Poets, teachers, and musicologists fusing studies of form, scansion, and musical creation to redefine the place of the American bard

All over the world secular rationalist governments and judicial authorities have been challenged by increasingly forceful claims made on behalf of divine law. For those who believe that reason—not faith—should be the basis of politics and the law, proponents of divine law raise theoretical and practical concerns that must be addressed seriously and respectfully. As Mark J. Lutz makes plain in this illuminating book, they have an important ally in Plato, whose long neglected Laws provides an eye-opening analysis of the relation between political philosophy and religion and a powerful defense of political rationalism. Plato mounts his case, Lutz reveals, through a productive dialogue between his Athenian Stranger and various devout citizens that begins by exploring the common ground between them, but ultimately establishes the authority of rational political philosophy to guide the law. The result will fascinate not only political theorists but also scholars at all levels with an interest in the intersection of religion and politics or in the questions that surround ethics and civic education.

A ragged man visits the houses of the nobility. He entered ODonnels house unknown and asked the musicians to play for him. Then he took the harp from them and played far superior music with the harp between his feet, and he played the music with his toes. He insulted ODonnell and was surrounded by armed men, but he made some of the armed men assume his features, and they were attacked and killed. He restored them to life by getting the doorkeeper to rub their upper palates with an herb. The beggar headed off to the earls house, went to bed, and began snoring heavily. When he met the household, he was given a book that was turned upside down and began reading it. He began playing chess with some of the best chess players in the area and beat them with only half of the pieces on the board. The juggler plays various tricks on the household. He then moves onto the lawn and opens his bag. He throws a rope into the sky. A cat and mouse appear from the bag and race up the rope. The mouse rides on the cats back while the cat tries to unseat it. A hound and hare are released and race up the rope with the hare on the hounds back. The hound fails to dislodge the hare. The boy then goes up the rope but fails to carry out the jugglers instructions. He is restored to life by the juggler who departs.

THE STORY: Mary Gray is the prettiest girl in Deer Lick, Missouri, and shy Hugh Gregory loves her as much as she loves him. Sally, Mary's mother, is happy for her daughter and convinces Mary's father, John, that Hugh is perfect for Mary. Unfortunat