Daniel Defoe

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Miriam Gross

Photographs and selected essays provide a record of the English author's life and career and reveal the major phases of his intellectual development.

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David Hannay

Biography of the author of some of the first novels written about the sea war against Napoleon, and some of the few written by a man actually present.

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Ronald R. Kline

When he died suddenly at the height of his fame in 1923, his face was as familiar to Americans as that of Babe Ruth, Henry Ford, Jack Dempsey, or Warren G. Harding. Newspapers quoted his views on religion, politics (he was a Socialist), science, and future technological wonders. All were intrigued by the Horatio Alger tale of the penniless, hunchbacked German immigrant who rose to fame as the Wizard of Science, chief engineer at General Electric, and symbol of the new breed of scientists who daily surpassed the feats of Thomas A. Edison. In Steinmetz: Engineer and Socialist Ronald R. Kline presents the intellectual biography of Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865-1923). Educated in Germany, Steinmetz came to America in 1889 and soon found work with a Yonkers electrical firm. After General Electric purchased the company in 1893, Steinmetz rose to the position of chief consulting engineer.^ Obtaining nearly two hundred patents, he made his most important contributions in electrical energy loss (or hysteresis), the understanding and wider use of alternating current, and high-voltage power transmission. The General Electric corporation, Kline explains, became Steinmetz's home, his identity, and a platform from which he stepped onto the wider stage of world affairs. As leader of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Socialist councilman in Schenectady, and part-time professor of political economy at Union College, Steinmetz attempted to "engineer" society in the direction of a technocratic utopia by promoting welfare capitalism, Lenin's electrification of the Soviet Union, and other schemes--all with limited success. According to Kline, the legend of Steinmetz illustrates a shift in hero worship from inventors to scientists after World War I.^ It also encouraged the powerful (and paradoxical) American myth that a rugged individualist could make his mark in a bureaucracy. In a life filled with contrasts--here was a prominent Socialist serving as chief engineer of a major corporation--possibly even Steinmetz, Kline argues, was not always able to separate the myth from the man.

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Lidia Yuknavitch

This is not your mother's memoir. In The Chronology of Water, Lidia Yuknavitch expertly moves the reader through issues of gender, sexuality, violence, and the family from the point of view of a lifelong swimmer turned artist. In writing that explores the nature of memoir itself, her story traces the effect of extreme grief on a young woman's developing sexuality that some define as untraditional because of her attraction to both men and women. Her emergence as a writer evolves at the same time and takes the narrator on a journey of addiction, self-destruction, and ultimately survival that finally comes in the shape of love and motherhood.