Synopses & Reviews
In 1099, the city of Jerusalem, a possession of the Islamic Caliphate for over four-hundred years, fell to an army of European knights intent on restoring the Cross to the Holy Lands. From the ranks of these holy warriors emerged an order of monks trained in both scripture and the military arts, an order that would protect and administer Christendom's prized conquest for almost a century: the Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or the Templars.
In this articulate and engaging history, Piers Paul Read explores the rise, the catastrophic fall, and the far-reaching legacy of these knights who took, and briefly held, the most bitterly contested citadel in the monotheistic West. Drawing on the most recent scholarship, and writing with authority and candor, Read chronicles the history of the blood-splattered monks who still infiltrate modernity in literature, as the inspiration for secret societies, and in the backyard fantasies of any child with access to a stick and a garbage can lid.
More than armed holy men, the Templars also represented the first uniformed standing army in the Western world. Sustaining their military order required vast sums of money, and, to that end, a powerful multinational corporation formed. The prosperity that European financiers enjoyed, from the efficient management of Levantine possessions and from pioneering developments in the field of international banking, would help jump-start Europe's long-slumbering Dark Age economy.
In 1307, the French king, Philip IV, expropriated Templar lands, unleashing a wave of repression that would crest five years later. After Templar leaders broke down and confessed, under torture, to blasphemy, heresy, and sodomy, Pope Clement V suppressed the Order in 1312. Was it guilty as charged? And what relevance has the story to our own times? In this remarkable history, Piers Paul Read explores the Crusades and the individual biographies of the many colorful characters that fought them.
Review
"The careful build-up pays off by giving depth to a subject astonishing enough without fantasies." (The Sunday Telegraph)
Review
"Lucid and accessible." (Literary Review)
Review
"[Read] is judicious...and his book is a pleasure to read." (The Spectator)
END
Review
"Finally, an edition of Whitman that doesn't overwhelm with too much material or starve with too little. Perfect for the classroom...presenting the best poems in their original form, when they were still closest to Whitman's inspiration."--
Ed Folsom, Whitman scholar and editor of the
Walt Whitman Quarterly"It's as if the silk cloth has dropped from the monument-- here at last in all its rugged, gleaming grandeur. Gary Schmidgall's thrilling new edition of Whitman restores the poet's true voice-- at once radical and intimate, tender and triumphant. This book vividly reminds us that Whitman's poems are the soul's-cry and heart's-blood of the American imagination."-- J. D. McClatchy, critic and poet
"A valuable new collection...present[ing] all the poems in their first published form."-- The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A fully unexpurgated collection that restores the sexual vitality and subversive flair suppressed by Whitman himself in later editions of
Leaves of Grass.
A century after his death, Whitman is still celebrated as America's greatest poet. In this startling new edition of his work, Whitman biographer Gary Schmidgall presents over 200 poems in their original pristine form, in the chronological order in which they were written, with Whitman's original line breaks and punctuation. Included in this volume are facsimiles of Whitman's original manuscripts, contemporary - and generally blistering - reviews of Whitman's poetry (not surprisingly Henry James hated it), and early pre-Leaves of Grass poems that return us to the physical Whitman, rejoicing - sometimes graphically - in homoerotic love.
Unlike the many other available editions, all drawn from the final authorized or "deathbed" Leaves of Grass, this collection focuses on the exuberant poems Whitman wrote during the creative and sexual prime of his life, roughly between l853 and l860. These poems are faithfully presented as Whitman first gave them to the world - fearless, explicit and uncompromised - before he transformed himself into America's respectable, mainstream Good Gray Poet through 30 years of revision, self-censorship and suppression.
Whitman admitted that his later poetry lacked the "ecstasy of statement" of his early verse. Revealing that ecstasy for the first time, this edition makes possible a major reappraisal of our nation first great poet.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [517]-520) and index.
About the Author
Piers Paul Read studied history at Cambridge University and has authored twelve acclaimed novels and three works of non-fiction, including the international bestseller ALIVE. His novels have won the Hawthornden Prize and the Geoffrey Faber, Somerset Maugham, and James Tait Black Awards. He is married with four children and lives in London.
Table of Contents
Leaves of grass (1855) -- Leaves of grass (1856) -- Leaves of grass (1860) -- Drum-taps (1865) -- Sequel to Drum-taps (1865-66) -- Leaves of grass (1867) -- Leaves of grass (1871-72) -- As a strong bird on pinions free (1872) -- Two rivulets (1876, Companion to centennial edition) -- Leaves of grass (1881) -- November boughs (1888, Sands at seventy) -- Leaves of grass (1891-92, annex: Good-bye my fancy) -- Appendices. Poems published before Leaves or posthumously ; Significant passages from Whitman manuscripts ; Whitman's observations on Leaves of grass, 1888-92 ; Contemporary reviews of Leaves of grass -- A Whitman chronology.