The bolter

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Willis Barnstone

Focusing on the five years Willis Barnstone spent following his graduation from Bowdoin College, the years of living, thinking, and beginning to write in France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and England from 1948 to 1953, this fascinating and moving memoir nonetheless expands beyond those years. On one side of that period are the poet and translator's grandparents' immigration to the United States, his parents' stormy relationship and his father's eventual suicide, his childhood growing up in the building where Babe Ruth lived, his first gestures toward a life of poetry in Hawthorne's room at Bowdoin, and his first acquaintance with cultures other than his own while digging privies in remote Indian villages in Mexico during a year off from college. On the other side of that period are Barnstone's continuing life as the gypsy scholar in China, Tibet, Turkey, and Argentina and his continuing friendship with his children and former wife and the finest writers and artists the world over.

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Roy Jenkins

"In this evocation of twelve world cities which have either been intertwined with his life, or have otherwise aroused his particular interest, Roy Jenkins follows up Churchill with a book of a very different shape; short and semi-autobiographical, but also full of the wit, erudition and carefully chosen illustrations which made Churchill such a success. The cities are each described with a mixture of architectural interest, topographical insight and personal anecdote." "Jenkins has three British cities: Cardiff, which was the metropolis of his Monmouthshire childhood; Birmingham, which he represented in Parliament for twenty-seven years; and Glasgow, which he did not know well until he won a famous bye-election there in 1982, but which then aroused in him an enthusiasm far transcending politics." "There are four North European cities: Paris, of which his memories go back to 1931; Brussels, where he lived for four years as President of the European Commission; Bonn, not exactly a metropolis but the modest capital of the very successful West German polity for forty years; and Berlin, surveyed from its Wilhelmine splendour, through its 1945 degradation to its reunification and architectural resurgence in the 1990s. Then there are two essays on South European cities which both have a special and strong flavour - Naples and Barcelona." "From over a hundred visits to North America there emerge highly personal recollections of New York and a more objective view of the architectural sparkle of Chicago. Dublin, so near to home and yet so distant, concludes this delightful collection."--BOOK JACKET.

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Richard F. Welch

"This is the first full-length account of one of the most aggressive, dynamic, and successful combat leaders produced by either side in the Civil War. Based heavily on primary source material, the work chronicles the transformation of the self-assured son of a broken Bosten Brahmin family from a young, militarily inexperienced lawyer into a formidable warrior.". "Born into the Unitarian-Transcendentalist circle, which dominated New England intellectual and cultural life before the Civil War, Barlow attended the school run by the famous Brook Farm commune. From an early age he was noted for fearlessness in both speech and action - two characteristics that marked his conduct and affected his later careers. Barlow's unquestioning sense of his own intellectual and moral superiority was the source of his success as a combat officer during the war. He trained and drove his men hard, and they became one of the army's elite units in the process. Barlow's steadfast belief in himself led him to command from the front, winning respect of his troops, recognition from his superiors, public acclaim, and, often, success for his cause. Possessing innate self-confidence and almost heedless bravery in equal measure, Barlow rose from private to major general. He was heavily engaged in almost all the major battles of the Army of the Potomac beginning as a regimental colonel on the Peninsula in 1862 and finishing his career as commander of the first division in the vaunted II Corps during Grant's campaigns against Richmond in 1864. Throughout his military career, Barlow carved out a record as a fighting man that few could match and none could excel.". "Twice wounded, first at Antietam and then Gettysburg, Barlow consistently took his men into the hottest spots in most pivotal actions during Grant's bloody campaign against Lee.". "After the war, Barlow alternated a legal career with service in New York State government. As New York's attorney general he initiated suits against the Tweed Ring and other corrupt malefactors. Barlow's unfiltered forthrightness and unyielding ethics placed him at a disadvantage in the rough-and-tumble democratic politics of the late nineteenth century. His candid report exposing corruption involved in the successful Republican campaign to win the White House for Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 cost him whatever hopes he had for a further political career. Barlow returned to private life, pursued a successful legal career, and died relatively unknown in 1896."--BOOK JACKET.

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Hannah Rothschild

A biography of the author's great-aunt, jazz patroness Nica de Koenigswarter, drawing on family records to examine the traditions that shaped her youth, her marriage to Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, and her role in supporting the New York jazz world.