Synopses & Reviews
Poetry doesnt matter to most people, observes Jay Parini at the opening of this book. But, undeterred, he commences a deeply felt meditation on poetry, its language and meaning, and its power to open minds and transform lives. By the end of the book, Parini has recovered a truth often obscured by our clamorous culture: without poetry, we live only partially, not fully conscious of the possibilities that life affords. Poetry indeed matters.
A gifted poet and acclaimed teacher, Parini begins by looking at defenses of poetry written over the centuries. He ponders Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus, and moves on through Sidney, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Eliot, Frost, Stevens, and others. Parini examines the importance of poetic voice and the mysteries of metaphor. He argues that a poets originality depends on a deep understanding of the traditions of political poetry, nature poetry, and religious poetry.
Writing with a casual grace, Parini avoids jargon and makes his case in concise, direct terms: the mind of the poet supplies a light to the minds of others, kindling their imaginations, helping them to live their lives. The authors love of poetry suffuses this insightful booka volume for all readers interested in a fresh introduction to the art that lies at the center of Western civilization.
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'\"This splendid volume has very great potential as ecumenically significant, useful to Catholics and Protestants alike.\"
Choice -- Neville Maxwell - World Affairs'
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"The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr is a treasure of little-known essays and sermons framed by a brilliant introduction. It reminds us, once again, how eloquently Niebuhr speaks to the problems of our age."Peter Beinart, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations (on the new edition) -- Choice
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"To return to these penetrating reflections is to be reminded yet again of the intellectual voidstill today unfilledleft by Reinhold Niebuhrs passing.”Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston University (on the new edition)
-- Peter Beinart
Review
"What would she be thinking, what would she be saying, right now, about all this? Thus do many of us, long bereft, find ourselves repeatedly pondering regarding the late, incomparably lucid and passionate Hannah Arendt. How unexpectedly lucky for us therefore becomes this book, this gift from Ms. Arendts passionately lucid biographer: a text, both clear and urgent, that comes astonishingly close to providing an answer. Grounding her analysis in a vividly concise summation of the entire arc of her subjects life-thought, its almost as if Young-Bruehl were channeling Arendt, right now, today, when we really need her."Lawrence Weschler, Director of the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU and author of Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences -- Paula Kane
Review
"With gentle insistence, Parinis book makes the case that poetry is worth readingindeed, that it must be readespecially in a dark time like our own."Christopher Benfey, author of
Degas in New Orleans and
The Great Wave -- Colin Thubron - New York Review of Books
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'\"Here is a book that will delight students and teachers, indeed the whole commonwealth of good readers, schooled and unschooled. Parini quotes so well and so aptly that the dank mystifications that have made some readers forsake poetry all vanish.\"Samuel Pickering, author of
Autumn Spring and
Letters to a Teacher -- Christopher Benfey'
Review
'\"Jay Parini celebrates not simply poetry but glorious life itself. He shows that poetry can quicken the mind, purge damp melancholy from the cold heart, and spread goldenrod across fallen days.\"Samuel Pickering, author of
Autumn Spring and
Letters to a Teacher -- Samuel Pickering'
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'\"With the light touch and intelligent eye of a great teacher, Jay Parini makes this concise little book a marvel, plumbing the depths of the reasons for poetry and the underpinnings of the art from metaphor to vision, from nature to politics . Beginning with that notorious anti-poet Plato and stopping off for brief conversations with Shelley, Wordsworth, Stevens, Eliot and even Louise Glück, Parini gives us a generous, knowledgeable tour of why poetry matters to us now. Parini is a scintillating guide to the unfathomable, and he will be welcomed both by poets and by anyone intriguedor baffledby poetry. This is the perfect hip-pocket compendium of signposts to Poetryland.\"Molly Peacock, poet and creative nonfiction writer, author of
Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. -- Samuel Pickering'
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'\"If you are going to tell Jay Parini that poetry doesnt matter, you should probably start working on your debate points nowhes got a lot more.\"Jessie Forand, Burlington Free Press -- Molly Peacock'
Review
“Paul Goldberger is Americas foremost interpreter of public architecture. . . "Tracy Kidder
-- Jon Lackman - Art History Newsletter
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"Why Architecture Matters reminds us that in a democratic capitalist society, the only sure guarantee that we will get good architecture is if we shake off our ignorance and start to take a personal interest in the design of our neighborhoods. Here is a succinct, lyrical and heartfelt book that celebrates the best works of architecture and points the way to being able to build more of it in the world today. There are so many guides to the world of art, so few to the world of architecture. This is among the very best."Alain de Botton, author of The Architecture of Happiness -- Tracy Kidder
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"A beautifully written and generous meditation on the art of building that every aspiring architect should read."--Witold Rybczynski, author of The Perfect House -- Alain de Botton
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“Placing on display the most public of all the arts can be astonishing. Paul Goldberger, collecting his thoughts on architecture over 40 years, does this. His book,
Why Architecture Matters, could be said to be a portable architectural museum that, by turns, astonishes, intrigues, explains and entrances.”--
Architecture Bulletin -- Witold Rybczynski
Review
“The strength of populist writing like Goldbergers is that it is accessible and engaging.”--Penny Lewis,
Blueprint Magazine -- Architecture Bulletin
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“Best of all, Goldberger combines forensic analysis of the architectural art with a sense of wonder.”--Jonathan Wright,
Scottish Sunday Herald -- Penny Lewis - Blueprint Magazine
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“Edith Grossman, the Glenn Gould of translators, has written a superb book on the art of the literary translation. Even Walter Benjamin is surpassed by her insights into her task, which she rightly sees as imaginatively independent. This should become a classic text.”Harold Bloom -- Choice
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“Grossman and others like her continue to offer us enlightenment. . . .[The subject] is passionately explored and patiently explained.”--Richard Howard,
New York Times Book Review
-- Harold Bloom
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“Required reading for publishers the world over. . . . It should also be given to all reviewers, agents, writers and readers. . . . In clean language that is a pleasure to read, Grossman argues why and how a good translation is just that."--Julie Rose,
The Australian
-- Richard Howard - New York Times Book Review
Review
"In this slim but powerful volume, Edith Grossman argues that translation performs a function that is too often ignored or misunderstood." Edward King,
Sunday Times
-- Julie Rose - The Australian
Review
"Mark Tushnet is the leading constitutional scholar of his generation. In this book, he addresses constitutional laws central questions: How and why does the Constitution matter? His answers – both persuasive and deeply disturbing – will surprise virtually all of his readers."Louis Michael Seidman, Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Constitutional Law, Georgetown University Law Center -- Andrea Wulf - New York Times Book Review
Review
“Mark Tushnet has squared the circle by writing a book that is both accessible and highly sophisticated. It offers an engaging précis of Tushnets own thought, and also of a large body of recent work at the intersection of legal theory and political science. Yet it refuses to oversimplify and itself makes fresh theoretical contributions. An admirable achievement that should improve public discourse about the role of the Constitution.”Adrian Vermeule, Harvard Law School -- Louis Michael Seidman
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“An outstanding introduction to the many ways that the Constitution shapes American politics, and politics shapes American constitutional law.”Jack M. Balkin, Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment, Yale Law School -- Adrian Vermeule
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“Mark Tushnet has issued another bold challenge to constitutional orthodoxy in the United States. His incisive examination of how the Constitution of the United States does more to structure politics than dictate specific outcomes will fascinate lawyers, political scientists and citizens.”Mark Grabar, Professor of Law and Government, University of Maryland -- Jack M. Balkin
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“Mark Tushnet has written a profoundly important and illuminating book in a wonderfully conversational style. Its emphasis on the importance of structures--and, especially, political partiesis an important corrective to the common reduction of the Constitution to a system of ‘fundamental rights. It deserves to be read by scholars, students, and citizens alike who wish to learn what difference it might truly make that we conduct our politics under the aegis of the Constitution.”Sanford Levinson, author of
Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (and How We the People Can Correct It) -- Mark Grabar
Review
"This is a valuable book and a valiant effort to explain the importance of translation."--Chad Post,
The Quarterly Conversation -- Edward King - Sunday Times
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"[Grossmans] investigation of the broad-reaching societal benefits of translated texts--which allow for exchange of ideas and insight--is captivating and refreshing."--
Choice -- Chad Post - The Quarterly Conversation
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"Grossman is one of the multilingual crowds best, and she explains exactly why this skill of decoding and reconstruction of an authors words, rhythm and intent is so important."--
San Francisco Chronicle -- Choice
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"A passionate defense of the translators art."--Peter Terzian,
The Boston Globe -- San Francisco Chronicle
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"A brief, forceful defense of [translation]."--Hillel Italie,
The Associated Press -- Peter Terzian - The Boston Globe
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'\'\\\"The book is an enjoyable read, written in con -- Sanford Levinson\''
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"From beginning to end this book is a wonderful read—brisk, intelligent, and relevant, filled with delicious asides, personal reflections, and unexpected turns."—Alan Wolfe, Boston College
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“Reinhold Niebuhr's account of moral engagement in the face of both impersonal social systems and more personal forms of evil does indeed matter today. So does his example. Charles Lemert tells Neibuhr's story with feeling and analyzes his writings with intelligence. I'm both moved and grateful.”—Craig Calhoun, President, Social Science Research Council
Review
"A lifetime of academic study and theological reflection has prepared Charles Lemert to write this lucid and moving interpretation of Reinhold Niebuhr. Lemert, one of America's most distinguished sociologists, can portray the influence of thinkers as diverse as Max Weber and St. Augustine on Niebuhr's work. Gifted with a crystal clear writing style, Lemert has produced that rarest of treasures: a serious scholarly work that wears its learning lightly and that is immediately accessible to the interested lay reader."—Walter Russell Mead, Editor-at-Large of The American Interest
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“Reinhold Niebuhr, as a theologian and political thinker, has never been more urgently relevant than he is today. Charles Lemert has eloquently located Niebuhr's work in its original setting while highlighting its critical importance to the international moral dilemmas we currently face. This well-crafted book is for anyone interested in the interaction of religion, politics and morality.”—Harvey Cox, Harvard University
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"A gifted and creative expositor, Lemert provides careful analyses of Niebuhr's most important works, the develoment of his thinking in response to his own life history and concurrent world events, and his study of thinkers like Augustine and Max Weber. . . . Scholars and laypersons alike will find this volume valuable. Highly recommended."—Choice
Synopsis
Upon publication of her field manual,”
The Origins of Totalitarianism,
in 1951, Hannah Arendt immediately gained recognition as a major political analyst. Over the next twenty-five years, she wrote ten more books and developed a set of ideas that profoundly influenced the way America and Europe addressed the central questions and dilemmas of World War II. In this concise book, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl introduces her mentors work to twenty-first-century readers. Arendts ideas, as much today as in her own lifetime, illuminate those issues that perplex us, such as totalitarianism, terrorism, globalization, war, and radical evil.”
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, who was Arendts doctoral student in the early 1970s and who wrote the definitive biography of her mentor in 1982, now revisits Arendts major works and seminal ideas. Young-Bruehl considers what Arendts analysis of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union can teach us about our own times, and how her revolutionary understanding of political action is connected to forgiveness and making promises for the future. The author also discusses The Life of the Mind, Arendts unfinished meditation on how to think about thinking. Placed in the context of todays political landscape, Arendts ideas take on a new immediacy and importance. They require our attention, Young-Bruehl shows, and continue to bring fresh truths to light.
Synopsis
Why Architecture Matters is not a work of architectural history or a guide to the styles or an architectural dictionary, though it contains elements of all three. The purpose of Why Architecture Matters is to come to grips with how things feel to us when we stand before them, with how architecture affects us emotionally as well as intellectually”with its impact on our lives. Architecture begins to matter,” writes Paul Goldberger, when it brings delight and sadness and perplexity and awe along with a roof over our heads.” He shows us how that works in examples ranging from a small Cape Cod cottage to the vast, flowing” Prairie houses of Frank Lloyd Wright, from the Lincoln Memorial to the highly sculptural Guggenheim Bilbao and the Church of SantIvo in Rome, where simple geometries . . . create a work of architecture that embraces the deepest complexities of human imagination.”
Based on decades of looking at buildings and thinking about how we experience them, the distinguished critic raises our awareness of fundamental things like proportion, scale, space, texture, materials, shapes, light, and memory. Upon completing this remarkable architectural journey, readers will enjoy a wonderfully rewarding new way of seeing and experiencing every aspect of the built world.
Synopsis
Why Translation Matters argues for the cultural importance of translation and for a more encompassing and nuanced appreciation of the translators role. As the acclaimed translator Edith Grossman writes in her introduction, My intention is to stimulate a new consideration of an area of literature that is too often ignored, misunderstood, or misrepresented.”
For Grossman, translation has a transcendent importance: Translation not only plays its important traditional role as the means that allows us access to literature originally written in one of the countless languages we cannot read, but it also represents a concrete literary presence with the crucial capacity to ease and make more meaningful our relationships to those with whom we may not have had a connection before. Translation always helps us to know, to see from a different angle, to attribute new value to what once may have been unfamiliar. As nations and as individuals, we have a critical need for that kind of understanding and insight. The alternative is unthinkable.”
Throughout the four chapters of this bracing volume, Grossmans belief in the crucial significance of the translators work, as well as her rare ability to explain the intellectual sphere that she inhabits as interpreter of the original text, inspires and provokes the reader to engage with translation in an entirely new way.
Synopsis
In this surprising and highly unconventional work, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet poses a seemingly simple question that yields a thoroughly unexpected answer. The Constitution matters, he argues, not because it structures our government but because it structures our politics. He maintains that politicians and political partiesnot Supreme Court decisionsare the true engines of constitutional change in our system. This message will empower all citizens who use direct political action to define and protect our rights and liberties as Americans.
Unlike legal scholars who consider the Constitution only as a blueprint for American democracy, Tushnet focuses on the ways it serves as a framework for political debate. Each branch of government draws substantive inspiration and procedural structure from the Constitution but can effect change only when there is the political will to carry it out. Tushnets political understanding of the Constitution therefore does not demand that citizens pore over the specifics of each Supreme Court decision in order to improve our nation. Instead, by providing key facts about Congress, the president, and the nature of the current constitutional regime, his book reveals not only why the Constitution matters to each of us but also, and perhaps more important, how it matters.
Synopsis
A leading social theorist analyzes how and why Niebuhr's revival has taken place, ultimately arguing for his political and moral relevance today
Synopsis
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) was a Protestant preacher, an influential religious thinker, and an important moral guide in mid-twentieth-century America. But what does he have to say to us now? In what way does he inform the thinking of political leaders and commentators from Barack Obama and Madeleine Albright to David Brooks and Walter Russell Mead, all of whom acknowledge his influence? In this lively overview of Niebuhr's career, Charles Lemert analyzes why interest in Niebuhr is rising and how Niebuhr provides the answers we ache for in the face of seismic shifts in the global order.
In the middle of the twentieth century, having outgrown a theological liberalism, Niebuhr challenged and rethought the nonsocialist Left in American politics. He developed a political realism that refused to sacrifice ideals to mere pragmatism, or politics to bitterness and greed. He examined the problem of morality in an immoral society and reimagined the balance between rights and freedom for the individual and social justice for the many. With brevity and deep insight, Lemert shows how Niebuhr's ideas illuminate our most difficult questions today.
Synopsis
Although Niebuhr died in 1971, political leaders including Barack Obama, Madeleine Albright, and John McCain acknowledge his influence on their thinking today. This concise book explains why Niebuhr remains important in our own uncertain times.
About the Author
Edith Grossman is the acclaimed translator of Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Mayra Montero, and many other distinguished Spanish-language writers. Her translation of Don Quixote is widely considered a masterpiece. The recipient of numerous prizes for her work, she was awarded the Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation by PEN in 2006, an award in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2009, and the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize in 2010. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She lives in New York.