Эдна О'Брайен0.0 Winner of the 1990 Los Angeles Times Book Review Prize for Fiction, Lantern Slides reveals the wit and passion of an author at the height of her powers. Rich and humorous, full of bitterness and despair, struggle and boldness, these twelve new stories resonate with O'Brien's artistry. "...Her stories are brilliantly realized, and often very funny".--Joyce Carol Oates. Advertising in New York and Los Angeles.
Ван Аньи0.0 One of China's most brilliant young writers opens up that world and shows us how it is strangely like our own, giving us the shocks of recognition that are the mark of a great art.
Элис Манро4.0 Вот уже тридцать лет Элис Манро называют лучшим в мире автором коротких рассказов, но к российскому читателю ее книги приходят только теперь, после того, как писательница получила Нобелевскую премию по литературе. Критика постоянно сравнивает Манро с Чеховым, и это сравнение не лишено оснований: подобно русскому писателю, она «скупыми, но чудодейственными штрихами намечает контуры судеб или сложные взаимоотношения… это детально прописанные портреты — с легкими тенями и глубокой перспективой…» (The Washington Post Book World).
«В „Друге моей юности“ Манро сполна проявляет этот редкий талант, — писала газета The New York Times Book Review. — Подобно Рэймонду Карверу, она выписывает своих героев так, что читатели, даже принадлежащие к совсем другой культуре, узнают в персонажах самих себя».
Jane Smiley0.0 "Smiley's stories lucidly explore the complexities of contemporary sexual and dometic life...the emotional and moral complexity that she uncovers in the characters of these resonant novellas confirms Jane Smiley's singular talent. ORDINARY LOVE AND GOOD WILL is an extraordinary achievement."
THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
ORDINARY LOVE
At a reunion with her grown children, a woman recalls the long-ago affair that ended her relationship with their father--and changed all their lives irrevoccably.
GOOD WILL
Despite the carefully self-sufficient life he has designed for his small family, a man discovers that even the right choices have unexpected consequences--sometimes heart-breaking ones.
Теа Эстли0.0 Belle's life is defined by three men: the American father - a musician - whom she never knew; Seb, her partner in a loveless marriage; and Gaden Lockyer, the subject of Belle's research, a pioneer Australian whose love for his country mirrors Belle's own. (Nancy Pearl)
Ричард Флетчер0.0 Rodrigo Diaz, the legendary warrior-knight of eleventh-century Castile known as El Cid, is remembered today as the Christian hero of the Spanish crusade who waged wars of re-conquest for the triumph of the Cross over the Crescent. He is still honored in Spain as a national hero for liberating the fatherland from the occupying Moors. Yet, as Richard Fletcher shows in this award-winning book, there are many contradictions between eleventh-century reality and the mythology that developed with the passing years.
By placing El Cid in a fresh, historical context, Fletcher shows us an adventurous soldier of fortune who was of a type, one of a number of "cids," or "bosses," who flourished in eleventh-century Spain. But the El Cid of legend--the national hero--was unique in stature even in his lifetime. Before his death El Cid was already celebrated in a poem written in tribute of the conquest of Almeria; posthumously he was immortalized in the great epic Poema de Mio Cid and became the centerpiece for countless other works of literature. When he died in Valencia in 1099, he was ruler of an independent principality he had carved for himself in Eastern Spain. Rather than the zealous Christian leader many believe him to have been, Rodrigo emerges in Fletcher's study as a mercenary equally at home in the feudal kingdoms of northern Spain and the exotic Moorish lands of the south, selling his martial skills to Christian and Muslim alike. Indeed, his very title derives from the Arabic word sayyid meaning "lord" or "master." And as there was little if any sense of Spanish nationhood in the eleventh century, he can hardly be credited for uniting a medieval Spanish nation.
In this ground-breaking inquiry into the life and times of El Cid, Fletcher disentangles fact from myth to create a striking portrait of an extraordinary man, clearly showing how and why legend transformed him into something he was not during his life. A fascinating journey through a turbulent epoch, The Quest for El Cid is filled with the excitement of discovery, and will delight readers interested not only in Spanish history and literature, but those who want to understand how myth can shape our perception of history.
Джеффри Уорд0.0 This notable biography concentrates on character and personality rather than politics or policymaking. Beginning in 1905, with Franklin and Eleanor's honeymoon, it covers FDR's years as New York state senator, assistant secretary of the Navy, his early struggle to overcome the ravages of polio and ends with his election as governor of New York in 1928. Ward not only traces the development of Roosevelt's "first-class temperament" but provides dimensional characterizations of friends, enemies and family members, gallantly defending FDR's often-maligned mother, Sara, and revealing the effect on the Roosevelt children of the tensions between Franklin and Eleanor. FDR's jaunty, fun-loving nature and his "breezy duplicity" are brought into focus in the early sections, but the tone deepens in the moving account of the future president's valiant but hopeless attempt to regain the use of his legs. Going against the accepted legend, Ward maintains that "the Roosevelt who could not walk was in most respects very like the one who could."
О. Б. Хардисон-мл.0.0 Every so often a writer finds a way of reinterpreting the cosmos, of guiding readers through new fields of knowledge to transcendent understanding. Hardison is just such a writer, and Disappearing Through the Skylight is just such a book--a provocative, groundbreaking work that changes the way we look at our world, our culture, and ourselves. 8 pages of full-color illustrations.
Джейн С. Смит0.0 For half a century the specter of polio stalked the nightmares of every parent. This richly detailed account of the development of a successful vaccine against polio describes how a small laboratory experiment became a national event of a size and complexity never seen before.
