The era of the Great Depression signaled the collapse of the modern industrial world. Sepia photographs of 1933 depicted American bread lines, soup kitchens, and dusty shantytowns. Headlines proclaimed President Roosevelt's New Deal, Hitler's rise to power, and Japan's annexation of Manchuria. Duke Ellington played to packed houses at the Cotton Club while Americans went hungry Secure in upper-class privilege, Charles Stone and his father, Ruben, had little concern for the sociopolitical reforms sweeping the world. In need of a reliable supply of silk material for their family's New York textile business, they established an Asian trading company in China at the outset of World War II. Trapped in Shanghai with cunning European robber barons, marauding Japanese armies, and a bewitching Eurasian woman, they dodged both the murderous Japanese and vengeful Chinese Communists. Silk is a story of love, international business, and vengeance, throughout the bloodiest era in human history.
The first of three volumes presenting the writings of Willa Cather includes her early book of stories and first four novels. The troll garden: Cather's first short story collection, originally published in 1905, depicts characters who seek the realm of beauty and imagination, but are confronted by the vulgarity and brutality of American society. O pioneers!: In Nebraska at the end of the nineteenth century, Swedish immigrant Alexandra Bergson leads her family to success, but not without personal sacrifice. The song of the lark: Follows the life of Thea Kronberg from her childhood in 19th-century Colorado to her career as a renowned opera singer. My Antonia: The reminiscences of a New York lawyer, Jim Burden, about his boyhood in Nebraska, particularly a young Bohemian girl named Antonia Shimerda, are set against the backdrop of the American assimilation of the immigrant. One of ours: The son of a prosperous Nebraska farmer yearns to leave his prairie home.
A new collection by a much celebrated poet, former Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove. From the opening sequence, "Cameos," which probes the private griefs and dreams of a working-class family, to the emblematic grace of a living legend like Rosa Parks, who acquiesced to public life in order to "serve the public good," these poems explore the intersection of individual fates with the grand arc of history. If there are heroes, Dove maintains, they continually reinvent themselves, as each of us must do each morning.
Before Superheroes, there were Masks! The Shadow. The Green Hornet and Kato. The Spider. In 1938, these masked vigilantes operated outside the law, working independently to strike fear into the hearts of evildoers. But when the corrupt politicians of the Justice Party transform New York into a fascist state run by mobsters, when an oppressive regime grants jack-booted stormtroopers free rein to imprison, extort, and execute the innocent, when the law itself becomes unjust - justice must be served by outlaws! Outnumbered and outgunned, the legendary vigilantes emerge from the shadows to fight, joined by Zorro, the Green Lama, Miss Fury, Black Terror, and the Black Bat! Nine renowned pulp heroes, brought together for the first time in an epic conflict of Law vs. Justice!
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author of the essay collection Shiksa Goddess ("Utterly delicious"--Judith Thurman), a dazzling debut novel, a comedy about New York's urban gentry living in a post-9/11 world--the arbiters of fashion and the doyennes of charity balls; about the rich and the nouveau rich(er), the glamorous and the desperate to be.We meet Francesca Weissman, the Upper East Side pediatrician rated number one by Manhattan magazine, who takes us into the upper strata of privilege and aspiration (she's originally from Queens with a father in hosiery; life on the fringes of glittering New York is fine with her) . . . Samantha Acton, thoroughbred descendant of the Van Rensselaers and the Carnegies, who defines the social order in the great tradition of Mrs. Astor and Babe Paley . . . Judy Tremont from Modesto, California, daughter of a cop--her life's work, her obsession, is New York society and its richest families . . . Barry Santorini, Republican, moviemaker, winner of twelve Oscars, and his wife, the Italian supermarket heiress and former media rep for Giorgio Armani . . . and many more. As Elements of Style opens out, we see a madcap mosaic of the social lives and mores of twenty-first century Manhattan--of romance, work, family, and friendship. Satiric, fierce, touching--and deliciously Wasserstein."Pure Wendy! She effortlessly makes the leap from stage to page with a novel that is loving, compassionate, flat-out funny. Wendy loved the word 'scintillating,' which is the best way to describe her stunning Elements of Style."--John Guare"Wasserstein gets the trappings and tribulations (of friendship and of romance) right, making her depiction of the rich and fab trying to connect with one another witty and entertaining."--Publishers Weekly"Bold, nimble, and funny to its fingertips, Elements of Style is a delight, a triumph. A book that no self-respecting New Yorker should be without. Those cursed with the hell of multiple residences will self-evidently need several copies--and spares, for houseguests."--Flora FraserFrom the Hardcover edition.
