Here is an informative introduction to language: its origins in the past, its growth through history, and its present use for communication between peoples. It is at the same time a history of language, a guide to foreign tongues, and a method for learning them. It shows, through basic vocabularies, family resemblances of languages -- Teutonic, Romance, Greek -- helpful tricks of translation, key combinations of roots and phonetic patterns. It presents by common-sense methods the most helpful approach to the mastery of many languages; it condenses vocabulary to a minimum of essential words; it simplifies grammar in an entirely new way; and it teaches a language as it is actually used in everyday life.

Kalidasa is the major poet and dramatist of classical Sanskrit literature - a many-sided talent of extraordinary scope and exquisite language. His great poem, Meghadutam (The Cloud Messenger), tells of a divine being, punished for failing in his sacred duties with a years' separation from his beloved. A work of subtle emotional nuances, it is a haunting depiction of longing and separation. The play Sakuntala describes the troubled love between a Lady of Nature and King Duhsanta. This beautiful blend of romance and comedy, transports its audience into an enchanted world in which mortals mingle with gods. And Kalidasa's poem Rtusamharam (The Gathering of the Seasons) is an exuberant observation of the sheer variety of the natural world, as it teems with the energies of the great god Siva.

Door Alec Waugh op 17-jarige leeftijd geschreven kostschoolroman, waarin hij voorzichtig een fysieke zijde aan jongensvriendschappen suggereert.

Lydia, an old weaver slave, dreams of a better life, but she is torn when she has the opportunity to escape and pass as a white woman, but must leave the man she loves behind in the process.

Argentinian scholar and writer Enrique Anderson-Imbert is familiar to many North American students for his La Literatura de América Latina I and II, which are widely used in college Spanish courses. But Anderson-Imbert is also a noted creative writer, whose use of "magical realism" helped pave the way for such writers as Borges, Cortázar, Sábato, and Ocampo. In this anthology, Carleton Vail and Pamela Edwards-Mondragón have chosen stories from the period 1965 to 1985 to introduce English-speaking readers to the creative work of Enrique Anderson-Imbert. Representative stories from the collections The Cheshire Cat, The Swindler Retires, Madness Plays at Chess, Klein's Bottle, Two Women and One Julián, and The Size of the Witches illustrate Anderson-Imbert's unique style and world view. Many are "short short" stories, which Anderson-Imbert calls casos (instances). The range of subjects and points of view varies widely, challenging such "realities" as time and space, right and wrong, science and religion. In a prologue, Anderson-Imbert tells an imaginary reader, "Each one of my stories is a closed entity, brief because it has caught a single spasm of life in a single leap of fantasy. Only a reading of all my stories will reveal my world-view." The reader asks, "And are you sure that it is worth the trouble?" Anderson-Imbert replies, "No." The unexpected, ironic ending is one of the great pleasures of reading Enrique Anderson-Imbert.

Benny Lewis, who speaks over ten languages—all self-taught—runs the largest language-learning blog in the world, Fluent In 3 Months. Lewis is a full-time "language hacker," someone who devotes all of his time to finding better, faster, and more efficient ways to learn languages. Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World is a new blueprint for fast language learning. Lewis argues that you don't need a great memory or "the language gene" to learn a language quickly, and debunks a number of long-held beliefs, such as adults not being as good of language learners as children.