"The View from the Cheap Seats brings together... more than sixty pieces of his outstanding nonfiction. Analytical yet playful, erudite yet accessible, this cornucopia explores a broad range of interests and topics, including (but not limited to): authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts...

The first English translation and only edition in print of Bulgakov's diaries and lettersThe career of Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of Master and Margarita--now regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th-century literature--was characterized by a constant and largely unsuccessful struggle against state censorship. This suppression did not only apply to his art: in 1926 his personal diary was seized by the authorities. From then on he confined his...

"An anthology of literary garden writings of Liberty Hyde Bailey, considered the father of modern horticulture. Included are essays and poems from his literary and philosophical books, essays from periodicals, and an essay that he read over nationalized radio in 1930 that has never before appeared in print"--

A remarkable achievement notable for its sustained conversational brilliance of style, wealth of literary history, incisive snapshots and portraits of people and places, and for the window it opens onto the unfolding human and artistic drama of two great Canadian writers who have exchanged correspondences for decades. Joe Rosenblatt and Barry Callaghan have been combative, ecstatic compadres for over 40 years. Hoggwash, a convergence by epistle, is...

"A true story of the battered life of a foremast crewman, Two Years Before the Mast is Richard Henry Dana's classic travel narrative, which inspired canonical works such as Moby Dick and Sailing Alone Around the World. As Rod Scher follows Dana (the Harvard dropout-turned-sailor) on his voyages around North America, he annotates Dana's tale with critiques, compliments, tie-ins to today, and little-known facts about both the book and the milieu of...

Miroslawa was a citizen and student of Poland during the rule of a military dictatorship. 1984 was the year after my graduation from college at UNC-Chapel Hill. An avid shortwave radio listener, I wrote to a Bulgarian periodical that transmitted a message during Radio Sofia's English language broadcast. The Bulgarian state radio summoned listeners to mail their addresses so that penpals might be found for readers of Bulgaria Heute (Bulgaria Today)....

From R. Barri Flowers, the award-winning writer and bestselling author of the heartfelt novel, Forever Sweethearts, comes a powerful and poignant women's epistolary novel: Graduate Circles. It's 1980, and college roommates, Jessica, Tammy, Kelly, and Gabriella, fresh off of receiving their MBAs from Michigan State University, spread across the globe and embark on their new lives, loves, and careers while experiencing the ups and downs, hopes and dreams,...

Frank and Percy Talley, Troopers 2365 and 2366, of the 1st City of London Yeomanry (Rough Riders), were destined to leave England to take part in the last, and most costly, single-day battle of the Gallipoli Campaign, on August 21, 1915. In 200-plus never-before-published letters, the Talley brothers describe their training in England, their move to the East coast to man the trenches there during the invasion scare of 1914, and the zeppelin attack...

"Retracing for modern-day visitors the Paris of "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Moveable Feast," of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ezra Pound, thsi guidebook uncovers the cafes, hotels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, gardens, and other landmarks immortalized by Hemingway in his fiction and nonfiction."--

American essayist, lecturer, poet, and leader of the Transcendentalist movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a champion of individualism and major critic of the prevailing society of his time. Emerson forwarded his ideology by publishing dozens of essays and giving over 1500 lectures in the United States during his lifetime. Emerson's philosophy did not espouse any specific tenets but rather promoted generally the principles of individuality, freedom,...