An encyclopedia designed especially to meet the needs of elementary, junior high, and senior high school students.

A heartfelt story of a young girl seeking beauty and connection in a busy world.

A beguiling exploration of the joys of reading across boundaries, inspired by the author’s year-long journey through a book from every country. Ann Morgan writes in the opening of this delightful book, "I glanced up at my bookshelves, the proud record of more than twenty years of reading, and found a host of English and North American greats starting down at me…I had barely touched a work by a foreign language author in years…The awful truth dawned. I was a literary xenophobe." Prompted to read a book translated into English from each of the world's 195 UN-recognized countries (plus Taiwan and one extra), Ann sought out classics, folktales, current favorites and commercial triumphs, novels, short stories, memoirs, and countless mixtures of all these things. The world between two covers, the world to which Ann introduces us with affection and no small measure of wit, is a world rich in the kind of narratives that engage us passionately: we meet an irreverent junk food–obsessed heroine in Kuwait, an explorer from Togo who spent years among the Inuit in Greenland, and a former child circus performer of Roma background seeking sanctuary in Switzerland. Ann's quest explores issues that affect us all: personal, political, national, and global. What is cultural heritage? How do we define national identity? Is it possible to overcome censorship and propaganda? And, above all, why and how should we read from other cultures, languages, and traditions? Illuminating and inspiring, The World Between Two Covers welcomes us into the global community of stories.

'A brilliant, unlikely book' Spectator How can we celebrate, challenge and change our remarkable world? In 2012, the world arrived in London for the Olympics...and Ann Morgan went out to meet it. She read her way around all the globe's 196 independent countries (plus one extra), sampling one book from every nation. It wasn't easy. Many languages have next to nothing translated into English; there are tiny, tucked-away places where very little is written down; some governments don't like to let works of art escape their borders. Using Morgan's own quest as a starting point, Reading the World explores the vital questions of our time and how reading across borders might just help us answer them. 'Revelatory... While Morgan's research has a daunting range...there is a simple message- reading is a social activity, and we ought to share books across boundaries' Financial Times

You’ve heard of the "Great Books"? These are their evil opposites. From Machiavelli's The Prince to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto to Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, these "influential" books have led to war, genocide, totalitarian oppression, the breakdown of the family, and disastrous social experiments. And yet the toxic ideas peddled in these books are more popular and pervasive than ever. In fact, they might influence your own thinking without your realizing it. Fortunately, Professor Benjamin Wiker is ready with an antidote, exposing the beguiling errors in each of these evil books. Witty, learned, and provocative, 10 Books That Screwed Up the World provides a quick education in the worst ideas in human history and explains how we can avoid them in the future.

Leila Hadley, twenty-five years old, divorced, restless, bored with her succesful career, set off for the Far East with her six-year-old son for an adventure that would last a lifetime. Now available for the first time in many years, Give Me the World is the classic memoir of that trip--to Manilla and Hong Kong, Siam and Singapore, India and Damascus, and on around the world. Told with a remarkable sense of emotion and observation, it is an evocative record of what meets the eye and heart of the traveler. A timeless and moving personal story, Give Me the World is proof of the paradox that a 60-foot-long ship deck can enclose complete and boundless freedom.

Who will win the race to write the best book in the world, and to what unimaginable lengths will they go to get there first? A hilarious tale of authorly competition. Titus Jensen is middle-aged, has a fondness for alcohol, and makes ends meet by giving public readings from obscure books at festivals across Sweden. He can't help thinking there has to be more to life for an author of his quality. Eddie X is hip, a hit with the ladies, and loves being the center of attention. A radical poet and regular on the festival circuit, he can't help thinking there has to be more to life for a talented, good-looking man like himself. One night, after a successful event—Titus reads from The Diseases of Swedish Monarchs and Eddie X waxes lyrical to the thrashing tones of metal band The Tourettes—the unlikely pair get horribly drunk together and hatch a plan to achieve worldwide recognition. The answer is to write the best book in the world—a book so amazing that it will end up on all the bestseller lists in every category imaginable: thriller, self-help, cooking, business, dieting—a book that combines everything in one! But there can only be one such book, and as the alcohol-induced haze clears both men realize they are not willing to share the limelight. Hilariously quirky and witty, this novel will take readers on a meandering race to the finish line, throwing plenty of satirical punches along the way.