|
|
|
Unpacking the Boxes: A Memoir of a Life in Poetry
Donald Hall's remarkable life in poetry — a career capped by his appointment as U.S. poet laureate in 2006 — comes alive in this richly detailed, self-revealing memoir. Hall's invaluable record of the making of a poet begins with his childhood in Depression-era suburban Connecticut, where he first realized poetry was "secret, dangerous, wicked, and delicious," and ends with what he calls "the planet of antiquity," a time of life dramatically punctuated by his appointment as poet laureate of the United States. Hall writes eloquently of the poetry and books that moved and formed him as a child and young man, and of adolescent efforts at poetry writing — an endeavor he wryly describes as more hormonal than artistic. His painful formative days at Exeter, where he was sent like a naive lamb to a high WASP academic slaughter, are followed by a poetic self-liberation of sorts at Harvard. Here he rubs elbows with Frank O'Hara, John Ashbery, and Edward Gorey, and begins lifelong friendships with Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, and George Plimpton. After Harvard, Hall is off to Oxford, where the high spirits and rampant poetry careerism of the postwar university scene are brilliantly captured. At eighty, Hall is as painstakingly honest about his failures and low points as a poet, writer, lover, and father as he is about his successes, making Unpacking the Boxes — his first book since being named poet laureate — both revelatory and tremendously poignant..
Price: $14.66
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Impossible Takes Longer: The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said by Nobel Prize Laureates
Witty, incisive observations on such universally meaningful topics as courage and compassion by many of the greatest minds of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Since 1901, the Nobel Prize has been the hallmark of genius, but Nobel laureates tend to be more than merely brilliant—their idealism, courage, and concern for humanity have also made them sources of inspiration and wisdom. Contrary to the notion that geniuses are absentminded eccentrics who lead solitary lives, many Nobel laureates have been social activists and political leaders, and some have been polymaths whose interests and talents were diverse, such as Philip Noel-Baker, winner of the 1959 Peace prize, who ran in three Olympic Games. The quotations—drawn from biographies, published articles, and speeches—are grouped by such themes as achievement, truth and falsehood, war and conflict, technology, and more. “The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer,” said Fritjof Nansen, who personally repatriated more than 400,000 prisoners of war after World War I, and helped save millions of Russians from starvation. Albert Einstein prudently advised, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts,” and Czeslaw Milosz warned, “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” Most of the quotations have never been anthologized previously. There is a section of short biographical sketches of each of the roughly 250 laureates quoted in the book, a brief history of the Nobel Prize, and a complete list of every Nobel laureate through 2006. The Impossible Takes Longer is a remarkable assemblage of insightful, thought-provoking, sometimes humorous statements by some of the world’s wisest men and women. .
Price: $10.59
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash
How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?" the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. "Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did," came the answer. "So I took them seriously." Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical genius who was a legend by age thirty when he slipped into madness, and who -- thanks to the selflessness of a beautiful woman and the loyalty of the mathematics community -- emerged after decades of ghostlike existence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim. The inspiration for a major motion picture, Sylvia Nasar's award-winning biography is a drama about the mystery of the human mind, triumph over incredible adversity, and the healing power of love..
Price: $0.77
[Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
The Rising and the Rain: Collected Poems (University of Alaska Press - Alaska Writer Laureate)
John Straley crafts here a collection of poems that pay homage to his home of the Pacific Northwest and southeastern Alaska. His narrative poetry is infused with sharp wit and delicate details, as he meditates on the natural world of the Pacific coastline and its rhythmic seasonal patterns, cycles of rain, and rich abundance of earth. Straley intertwines the personal and political to create elegies of refreshing honesty and universal scope, making The Rising and Rain a powerful work by one of the top emerging poets today. .
Price: $12.56
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Lives of the Laureates, Fourth Edition: Eighteen Nobel Economists
Lives of the Laureates offers readers an informal history of modern economic thought as told through autobiographical essays by eighteen winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics The essays not only provide unique insights into major economic ideas of our time but also shed light on the processes of intellectual discovery and creativity. This fourth edition adds five new Nobel laureates to its list of contributors: Gary S. Becker, 1992 recipient; John C. Harsanyi, co-recipient in 1994; Robert E. Lucas, Jr., 1995 recipient; Myron S. Scholes, co-recipient in 1997; and James J. Heckman, co-recipient in 2000. This edition also includes a new afterword by the editors, "Lessons from the Laureates." Lives of the Laureates collects revised presentations from a continuing lecture series at Trinity University in San Antonio, for which Nobelists at American universities are invited to give an account of "My Evolution as an Economist." Some common motivating themes emerge: the importance of real world events and a desire for relevance—as seen in James Tobin's decision to enter economics in order to understand the ruin caused by the Great Depression and in Gary Becker's recourse to economics to help him understand inequality, race, and class; the influence of great teachers— several cite the charismatic Milton Friedman; the right conditions for creativity and intellectual discovery—as found at the University of Chicago starting in the late 1940s, and the Rand Corporation in the 1950s; and the role of chance in their careers—the "lucky accidents" that set them on one path rather than another. Together, these individual accounts give what the editors call a "comprehensive picture of the diverseness, richness, and profundity that is the hallmark of contemporary economic thought in America.".
Price: $6.87
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare
FRITZ HABER -- a Nobel laureate in chemistry, a friend of Albert Einstein, a German Jew and World War I hero -- may be the most important scientist you have never heard of. The Haber-Bosch process, which he invented at the turn of the twentieth century, revolutionized agriculture by converting nitrogen to fertilizer in quantities massive enough to feed the world. The invention has become an essential pillar for life on earth; some two billion people on our planet could not survive without it. Yet this same process supplied the German military with explosives during World War I, and Haber orchestrated Germany's use of an entirely new weapon -- poison gas. Eventually, Haber's efforts led to Zyklon B, the gas later used to kill millions -- including Haber's own relatives -- in Nazi concentration camps. Haber is the patron saint of guns and butter, a scientist whose discoveries transformed the way we produce food and fight wars. His legacy is filled with contradictions, as was his personality. For some, he was a benefactor of humanity and devoted friend. For others, he was a war criminal, possessed by raw ambition. An intellectual gunslinger, enamored of technical progress and driven by patriotic devotion to Germany, he was instrumental in the scientific work that inadvertently supported the Nazi cause; a Jew and a German patriot, he was at once an enabler of the Nazi regime and its victim. Master Mind is a thought-provoking biography of this controversial scientist, a modern Faust who personifies the paradox of science, its ability to create and to destroy. It offers a complete chronicle of his tumultuous and ultimately tragic life, from his childhood and rise to prominence in the heady days of the German Empire to his disgrace and exile at the hands of the Nazis; from early decades as the hero who eliminated the threat of starvation to his lingering legacy as a villain whose work led to the demise of millions. .
Price: $3.12
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
Nobel Lectures: From the Literature Laureates, 1986 to 2006
Twenty-one of the world's greatest writers contemplate art and politics in a collection of both lyrical beauty and ethical depth."A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity....You find no shelter, no protection—unless you lie—in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician."—Harold Pinter, from his Nobel lecture "Art, Truth And Politics" For over one hundred years writers from around the world have traveled to Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death, to be awarded the prize bearing his name. From the political to the aesthetic, Nobel Lectures collects the words of a quarter century of these literature laureates, representing the inspirations, motivations, and passionately held beliefs of some of the greatest minds in the world of literature. From Harold Pinter's passionate and timely lecture on the nature of truth in art and politics to J.M. Coetzee's allegorical journey through the mysteries of the creative process; from Toni Morrison's essay on the link between language and oppression to Nadine Gordimer's meditation on the ways in which literature can shape the worlds of individual and collective being, this is a volume in which meditations on imagination and the process of writing mingle with keen discussions of global affairs, cultural change, and the ongoing influence of the past. Whatever genre the laureates write in, be it poetry, drama, or prose, and whatever their cultural or social background, Nobel Lectures is a testament to the power of literature to shape the world..
Price: $14.00
[ Notify me when price goes down.]
|
|
|
|
|