American Places

William Zinsser

Trade Paper, 193 pp., $14.95
Quantity in Basket: None

Join William Zinsser as he visits sixteen of our nation's most treasured historic sites — unlearning cliched assumptions and rediscovering fundamental truths about America. American Places — and the ideals that Zinsser discovers these places represent — will never go out of fashion.

"Speaking across the centuries with stone and symbol, narrative and myth . . . [read more]

Desert Islands

Walter de la Mare

Illustrated by Rex Whistler

Trade Paper, 305 pp., $14.95
Quantity in Basket: None

Desert Islands opens with a captivating essay on the romance of islands and castaways in literature and life. The essay leads on to over 200 pages of what De la Mare himself calls "a rambling commentary"—a commonplace book on every conceivable aspect of this teeming subject, culled from a lifetime's reading on wrecks, pirates, utopias, and (of course) Daniel Defoe.

The Envisioned Life

Edited by Peter Kalkavage and Eric Salem

Also available in hardcover

Trade Paper, 383 pp., $24.95
Quantity in Basket: None

To mark Eva Brann's fiftieth year on the faculty of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, twenty-three of her colleagues, friends, and former students have contributed essays, poems, and art to The Envisioned Life. They celebrate Eva’s "passion for learning and her deep love of books, her breadth of knowledge and interests, her boundless energy, her mastery of the spoken and . . . [read more]

Literary Genius

Selected and edited by Joseph Epstein
Wood engravings by Barry Moser
Also available in hardcover.

Paperback
59 wood engravings, 246 pp., $18.95
Quantity in Basket: None

Our finest essayists discuss six centuries of literary genius.

"Genius is one of those words upon which the world has agreed to form no clear consensus," Joseph Epstein tells us in his introduction. How then shall we define "literary genius"? In this collection, twenty-five contemporary authors endeavor to answer that question by considering twenty-five clas . . . [read more]

The Secret of Fame

Gabriel Zaid

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Hardcover, 182 pp., $14.95
Quantity in Basket: None

"Gabriel Zaid is a marvelously elegant and playful writer—a cosmopolitan critic with sound judgment and a light touch. He is a jewel of Latin American letters, which is no small thing to be. Read him—you’ll see." —Paul Berman

In So Many B . . . [read more]

So Many Books

Gabriel Zaid

Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Trade Paper, 144 pp., $12.00
Quantity in Basket: None

"Reading liberates the reader and transports him from his book to a reading of himself and all of life. It leads him to participate in conversations, and in some cases to arrange them . . . It could even be said that to publish a book is to insert it into the middle of a conversation." —from So Many Books

Join the conversation! In So Many Books, Gabriel . . . [read more]

The Telescope in the Parlor

James McConkey

Trade Paper, 196 pp., $10.00
Quantity in Basket: None

Retail: $14.95. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $10.00

In this collection of essays, James McConkey—novelist, professor, and memoirist—writes about the authors and experiences that have meant the most to him. In "Three Autobiographical Essays" and "A Story for a Child," McConkey poignantly recalls events of courting and family life that rema . . . [read more]