"The poems in Produce Wagon explore the vast and varied circumstances of the human experience: the poet's love for his wife, his love of nature, his love for the family he grew up in, and his love of stories"--

The world that Alexander remade in his lifetime was transformed once more by his death in 323 BCE. His successors reorganized Persian lands to create a new empire stretching from the eastern Mediterranean as far as present-day Afghanistan, while in Greece and Macedonia a fragile balance of power repeatedly dissolved into war. Then, from the late third century BCE to the end of the first, Rome's military and diplomatic might successively dismantled...

After its heydey in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, naturalism--a genre that typically depicts human beings as the product of biological and environmental forces over which they have little control--was supplanted by modernism, a genre in which writers experimented with innovations in form and content. In the last decade, the movement is again attracting spirited scholarly debate. This book takes stock of the best new research in...

The Northwest Coast totem pole captivates the imagination. From the first descriptions of these tall carved monuments, totem poles have become central icons of the Northwest Coast region and symbols of its Native inhabitants. Although many of those who gaze at these carvings assume that they are ancient artifacts, the so-called totem pole is a relatively recent artistic development, one that has become immensely important to Northwest Coast people...

Vertigo: Scottie Ferguson, a San Francisco police detective, is forced to retire when a freak accident gives him a severe case of acrophobia. Ferguson is hired by a rich shipbuilder to follow his wife who is behaving suspiciously and might be planning suicide. He falls in love with her, she is later murdered, and Ferguson becomes demonic in his desire to re-create her in another woman. Rear window: A photographer with a broken leg takes up the fine...

A wide-ranging collection of essays by a contemporary critic and historian traces four decades of writing and considers such diverse topics as Beethoven, Kilimanjaro, and Britain's Imperial War Museum.

"Zepeda's introduction notes her hometown's unique features, including the absence of any zoning laws, making Houston 'culturally diverse, internally incongruous, and ever-changing'...Noir aficionados will be pleased." -- Publishers Weekly "There's precious little comfort to be found in any of these Houston neighborhoods, most of which are set light-years away from the city's notoriously cushy new-money culture...Houston comes across as a haven of...

Overview: In the last decade, the Supreme Court has handed down a remarkable series of decisions invalidating congressional legislation in the name of federalism or states' rights. Most of these were decided by a razor-thin majority of five justices. The cases fall into four categories. First, in two cases the Court reaffirmed and expanded the principle of state sovereign immunity. In a second pair of cases, the Court held that state governments (other...

"Reading Charles Dickens is, in writer and contributor Jane Smiley's words, an "addictive" experience. Fortunately, Dickens addicts have an endless supply of material to feed their habit. He was an immensely prolific writer - the author of twenty novels as well as short stories, plays, and countless pieces of journalism. Dickens was also an extraordinary public figure - the first true literary star, whose stories were devoured by ever-hungry fans...