One of the towering figures of world literature, Goethe hasnever held quite as prominent a place in the English-speaking worldas he deserves. This collection of his four major works, togetherwith a selection of his finest letters and poems, shows that he isnot only one of the very greatest European writers: he is alsoaccessible, entertaining, and contemporary. The Sorrows of Young Wertheris a story of self-destructive love that made its author acelebrity overnight at the age of twenty-five. Its exploration ofthe conflicts between ideas and feelings, between circumstance anddesire, continues in his controversial novel probing theinstitution of marriage, Elective Affinities. The cosmic drama ofFaust goes far beyond the realism of the novels in a poeticexploration of good and evil, while Italian Journey, written in theauthor’s old age, recalls his youth in Italy and the impact ofMediterranean culture on a young northerner.

A brilliant new translation of the work that Herman Hessecalled "the first great masterpiece of European storytelling." Inthe summer of 1348, with the plague ravaging Florence, ten youngmen and women take refuge in the countryside, where they entertainthemselves with tales of love, death, and corruption, featuring ahost of characters, from lascivious clergymen and mad kings todevious lovers and false miracle-makers. Named after the Greek for"ten days," Boccaccio's book of stories draws on ancient mythology,contemporary history, and everyday life, and has influenced thework of myriad writers who came after him. J. G. Nichols's newtranslation, faithful to the original but rendered in eminentlyreadable modern English, captures the timeless humor of one of thegreat classics of European literature.

"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760), also known as "The Dreamof the Red Chamber", is one of the greatest novels of Chineseliterature. The fifth part of Cao Xueqin's magnificent saga, "TheDreamer Awakes", was carefully edited and completed by Gao E somedecades later. It continues the story of the changing fortunes ofthe Jia dynasty, focussing on Bao-yu, now married to Bao-chai,after the tragic death of his beloved Dai-yu. Against such worldlyelements as death, financial ruin, marriage, decadence andcorruption, his karmic journey unfolds. Like a sleepwalker throughlife, Bao-yu is finally awakened by a vision, which reveals to himthat life itself is merely a dream, 'as moonlight mirrored in thewater'.

'In a Free State was conceived in 1969 as a sequence aboutdisplacement. There was to be a central novel, set in Africa, withshorter surrounding matter from other places. The shorter piecesfrom these varied places were intended to throw a universal lighton the African material. But then, as the years passed and theworld changed, and I felt myself less of an oddity as a writer, Igrew to feel that the central novel was muffled and diminished bythe surrounding material and I began to think that the novel shouldbe published on its own. This is what, thirty-seven years after itsfirst publication, my publisher is doing in this edition.' V.S.Naipaul In a Free State is set in Africa, in a place like Uganda orRwanda, and its two main characters are English. They had oncefound liberation in Africa. But now Africa is going sour on them.The land is no longer safe, and at a time of tribal conflict theyhave to make a long drive to the safety of their compound. At theend of this drive the narrative tight, wonderfully constr

The Gift is the last of the novels Nabokov wrote in his nativeRussian and the crowning achievement of that period in his literarycareer. It is also his ode to Russian literature, evoking the worksof Pushkin, Gogol, and others in the course of its narrative: thestory of Fyodor Godunov-Cherdyntsev, an impoverished e migre poetliving in Berlin, who dreams of the book he will someday write--abook very much like The Gift itself.

The thirty-four stories in this volume span Chekhov’s creative career. They present a wide spectrum of comic and serious themes and a variety of techniques. (His short novels, available in another Norton volume, Seven Short Novels by Chekhov, have been omitted.) Two of the stories have been translated for this edition by Professor Matlaw; the other translations, by Constance Garnett, Ivy Litvinov, and Marian Fell, have been revised in accordance with contemporary usage. Footnotes have been supplied wherever necessary to explain peculiarities of Russian life and the historical era in which Chekhov lived and wrote. Backgrounds includes a rich selection of Chekhov’s letters, in new translations by Professor Matlaw, and Gorky’s celebrated essay on Chekhov, translated by Ivy Litvinov. The critical essays offer general views of Chekhov’s art and achievement and detailed analyses of particular stories. The critics are D. S. Mirsky, A. B. Derman (whose essay has been translated from the Russian especially

In 1926 de Saint-Exupéry began flying for the pioneering airlineLatécoère - later known as Aéropostale - opening up the first mailroutes across the Sahara and the Andes. WIND, SAND AND STARS isdrawn from this experience. Interweaving encounters with nomadicArabs and other adventures into a richly textured autobiographicalnarrative which includes the extraordinary story of his crash inthe Libyan Desert in 1936, and his miraculous survival.'Self-discovery comes when a man measures himself against anobstacle,' writes Saint-Exupéry. This book he explores thetranscendent perceptions that arise when life is tested to itslimits. Both a gripping tale of adventure and a poeticmeditation.

'Cesar Montero was dreaming about elephants. He'd seen them atthe movies on Sunday...' Only moments later, Cesar is led away bypolice as they clear the crowds away from the man he has justkilled. But Cesar is not the only man to be riled by the rumoursbeing spread in his Colombian hometown - under the cover ofdarkness, someone creeps through the streets sticking maliciousposters to walls and doors. Each night the respectable townsfolkretire to their beds fearful that they will be the subject of thefollowing morning's lampoons. As paranoia seeps through the townand the delicate veil of tranquility begins to slip, can theperpetrator be uncovered before accusation and violence leave theinhabitants' sanity in tatters?

The text of this Norton Critical Edition is that of the first edition of the novel, published by D. Appleton & Company in 1895, conservatively emended. As in previous editions, Crane’s uncancelled but unpublished manu* pages, including his discarded Chapter XII, are presented in an appendix. To assist the reader, the editor has annotated obscure terms and allusions. "Backgrounds and Sources" contains biographical, historical, and contextual material on both The Red Badge of Courage and the war fiction genre. Frederick Crews, Donald Pizer, Harold R. Hungerford, Eric Solomon, and J. C. Levenson provide the framework for understanding the novel as both literature and history. A selection of Stephen Crane’s letters and an illustration from the battle of Chancellorsville, upon which the novel is based, are also included. "Criticism" is a collection of fourteen essays (six of them new to the Third Edition) representing the best of what has been written about The Red Badge of Courage, fr

John Kenneth Galbraith A brilliant achievement. The New York Times If ever a book answered a crying need, this one does. Here is all the economic lore most general readers conceivably could want to know, served up with a flourish by a man who writes with immense vigor and skill, who has a rare gift for simplifying complexities. Leonard Silk Robert Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers is a living classic, both because he makes us see that the ideas of the great economists remain fresh and important for our times and because his own brilliant writing forces us to reach out into the future. Lester Thurow The Worldly Philosophers, quite simply put, is a classic....None of us can know where we are coming from unless we know the sources of the great ideas that permeate our thinking. The Worldly Philosophers gives us a clear understanding of the economic ideas that influence us whether or not we have read the great economic thinkers. Paul Samuelson Sinclair Le

From the first tee to the nineteenth hole, here's a collection of above-par cartoons and comic strips featuring favorite cartoon characters on the links, in the rough, and out of luck when it comes to the game of golf!

"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760) is one of the greatestnovels of Chinese literature. The first part of the story, TheGolden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy whoprefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai,his parents' choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beautyDai-yu. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich,magical work sets worldly events - love affairs, sibling rivalries,political intrigues, even murder - within the context of theBuddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion andkarma determines the shape of our lives.

This Third Edition of Tess of the d'Urbert,illes intro-duces a new text--that of the Clarendon edition(1983), edited by Juliet Grindle and Simon Gatrell.The text is fully annotated and includes, for ease of refer- ence, a separate table of contents for the novel. Also new to the Third Edition are reproductions of Hardy's map of Wessex and the manu* title page for the First Edition. "Hardy and the Novel" includes seven poems by Hardy that provide greater insight into his ethos, passages from Michael Millgate's biogra-phy of Hardy that depict the relationship between parts of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and the author's own life, and excerpts from Grindle and Gatrelt's introduction to the 1983 edition that discuss Hardy's revision process in both manu*s and early printed editions of the novel. "Criticism" features three new contemporary reviews including the first feminist review of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Also new to the Third Edition is "A Chat with Mr. Hardy," a hitherto un-reprinted post-publicatio

The story of K., the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home, seems to depict, like a dream from the deepest recesses of consciousness, an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. In his introduction, Idris Parry shows that duality-to Kafka a perpetual human condition-lies at the heart of this essentially imaginative magnum opus: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration. Thus, The Castle is an unfinished novel that feels strangely complete, in which a labyrinthine world, described in simple language and absurd fantasy, reveals a profound truth. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

"The Story of the Stone" (c. 1760), also known by the title of"The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners inChinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "The Debtof Tears" is the fourth, it charts the glory and decline of theillustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with thefortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters,Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour,realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects theritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and abovethe novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another planeof existence a theme, which affirms the Buddhist belief in asupernatural scheme of things.

With his first groundbreaki'ng book, Soul Prints, Marc Gafni taught readers how to tread a lifelong path of meaning by realizing their true, unique selves. Now, in The Mystery of Love, the profound philosopher and beloved spiritual teacher invites readers to the next step on the journey, addressing with passion, wisdom, and genuine humility the all-important issues of love, creativity, and our erotic connection to the universe. In the tradition of M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and Gary Zukov's The Seat of the Soul, The Mystery of Love speaks pene-tratingly to the age-old desire to move beyond emptiness and alienation and touch the full eros of living. Gafni, with clarity, bril- liance, and great compassion, re-frames our understandings of the erotic and the sensual in a way that invites us to live with passion and love in all facets of our lives. While drawn from the ancient wisdom texts of the Kabbalist tradi-tion, The Mystery of Love speaks to all readers who seek a passionate, joyful, yet

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The most famous day inliterature is June 16, 1904, when a certain Mr. Leopold Bloom ofDublin eats a kidney for breakfast, attends a funeral, admires agirl on the beach, contemplates his wife's imminent adultery, and,late at night, befriends a drunken young poet in the city'sred-light district. An earthy story, a virtuoso technical display,and a literary revolution all rolled into one, James Joyce's"Ulysses" is a touchstone of our modernity and one of the toweringachievements of the human mind.

Every night for three years the vengeful King Shahriyar sleepswith a different virgin, executing her the next morning. To endthis brutal pattern and to save her own life, the vizier'sdaughter, Shahrazad, begins to tell the king stories of adventure,love, riches and wonder - tales of mystical lands peopled withprinces and hunchbacks, the Angel of Death and magical spirits,tales of the voyages of Sindbad, of Ali Baba outwitting a band offorty thieves and of jinnis trapped in rings and in lamps. Thesequence of stories will last 1,001 nights.

Extensively revised by Nabokov in 1965--thirty years after itsoriginal publication-- Despair is the wickedly inventive andrichly derisive story of Hermann, a man who undertakes the perfectcrime--his own murder.

Phaedra is consumed with passion for Hippolytus, her stepson.Believing her husband dead, she confesses her love to him and isrebuffed. When her husband returns alive, Phaedra convinces himthat it was Hippolytus who attempted to seduce her. In hisinterpretation, Racine replaced the stylized tragedy withhuman-scale characters and actions. Introduction by RichardWilbur.

"The Story of the Stone (c. 1760)", also known by the title of"The Dream of the Red Chamber", is the great novel of manners inChinese literature. Divided into five volumes, of which "TheWarning Voice" is the third, it charts the glory and decline of theillustrious Jia family (a story which closely accords with thefortunes of the author's own family). The two main characters,Bao-yu and Dai-yu, are set against a rich tapestry of humour,realistic detail and delicate poetry, which accurately reflects theritualized hurly-burly of Chinese family life. But over and abovethe novel hangs the constant reminder that there is another planeof existence - a theme which affirms the Buddhist belief in asupernatural scheme of things.