ISSUE: Spring 1994
Random House has published an updated paper edition of Dino A. Brugioni’s Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, of which The New York Times said, “It places the reader at the center of the action, recreating and sustaining a degree of tension one would have thought impossible to capture” [$16.00]. Another recent Random House paper reprint is Greg Mitchell’s The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, a work that The Los Angeles Times described as “sizzling, “rambunctiously useful” [$14.00]. Times Books has republished a paper edition of Robert S.McElvaine’s The Great Depression: America, 1929—1941, a work which Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.deemed “fair-minded, incisive, thoroughly informed, and eminently readable” [$14.00]. Another recent Times paperback offering is Jeffrey H. Birnbaum’s The Lobbyists: How Influence Peddlers Work Their Way in Washington [$13.00]. Pittsburgh has a new edition of American Mosaic: The Immigrant Experience in the Words of Those Who Lived It edited by Joan Morrison and Charlotte Fox Zabusky, with a foreword by Oscar Handlin [$49.95 cloth, $10.95 paper]. Penn State has issued a second edition of Cynthia J. Arnson’s Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America, 1976—1993, a year-by-year account of the making of U.S. policy toward El Salvador and Nicaragua in the Reagan era [$55.00 cloth, $14.95 paper]. Now available in paper from Yale is Daniel Bluestone’s Constructing Chicago, a detailed reformulation of Chicago’s cultural and commercial past [$25.00, also available in cloth at $40.00], Collier Books has come out with a new edition of Michael Harrington’s now classic The Other America: Poverty in the United States, with a new introduction by Irving Howe. Since its publication in 1962, The Other America has sold more than one million copies [$9. 00]. Collier Books is also offering an all new third edition of Marilyn J.Appleberg’s I Love Los Angeles Guide, a complete guide book to the country’s second largest city [$11.00]. Vintage Books has republished Richard Bushman’s The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, an account for the quest for taste in manners in America [$18.00]. Two other recent Vintage Books are respectively Frances Fox Piven and Richard A.Cloward’s Regulating the Poor: the Functions of Public Welfare [$12.00] and Emily Benedek’s The Wind Won’t Know Me: A History of the Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute [$14.00]. Northeastern has a paper edition of Gary B. Nash’s Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681—1726 [$14.95]. A recent edition to the Vintage Civil War Library is Ernest B. Ferguson’s Chancellorsville 1863: The Souls of the Brave, a work which Civil War historian James M.McPherson said will “become the standard study” [$14.00].
When Steven Bach’s Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend was originally published in 1992, Kirkus Reviews said it “puts Dietrich before us as no book has ever done and whose writing sets a new standard for celebrity biographies.” A new paper edition of Marlene Dietrich is now available from Quill Books [$15.00]. Kenneth S.Davis’s FDR: The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882—1928 is the first volume of a landmark biography of FDR which won the Francis Parkman Prize. Random House recently published a paper editon of this prize-winning biography [$15.00]. Fordham has published a paper edition of James Thomas Flexner’s An American Saga: The Story of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner, an historical narrative grounded on documentary sources which ends with the marriage of Helen Thomas and Simon Flexner. The account deals equally with the lives and backgrounds of husband and wife, the author’s parents. Simon Flexner was eventually the acknowledged leader of American medical science and made the medical school at Johns Hopkins University world famous [$35.00 cloth, $20.00 paper]. For its Library of Southern Civilization series, Louisiana has republished Francis W. Dawson’s Reminiscences of Confederate Service, 1861—1865 edited by Bell I.Wiley [$11.95 paper]. Owl Paperbacks has reprinted John Mack Faragher’s Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer, winner of The Los Angeles Times Book Prize [$14.95], Times Books has issued a paper edition of Jimmy Carter’s Turning Point: A Candidate, a State, and a Nation Come of Age which The Washington Post called “a yarn of corruption, demagogy, and Southern charm worthy of Robert Penn Warren” [$12.00]. Vintage Books has a new edition of Alan Bullock’s monumental Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives which The Chicago Sun Times lauded as “A model of the art and craft of thinking and writing history, and a triumph of the skill and determination of one historian” [$20.00]. Other recent Vintage books include Charlayne Hunter-Gault’s In My Place [$11.00]; Michael Holroyd’s concluding biography of Bernard Shaw: The Lure of Fantasy, 1918—1950 and the Last Laugh, an Epilogue [$18.00]; Sterling Seagrave’s Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China [$16.00]; Nina Berberova’s The Italics Are Mine [$16.00]; and Antonio Fraser’s The Wives of Henry VIII [$14.00].
A close friend and younger contemporary of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound, Louis Zukofsky was born in New York City in 1904 and lived there nearly all his life. His most famous work is simply entitled A, a poem he began in 1928 when he was 24 years old and completed 46 years later in 1974.Of this long poem the critic Hugh Kenner has said: “The most hermetic poem in English, which they will still be elucidating in the 22nd century.” Johns Hopkins has published a new paper edition of A totaling more than 800 pages [$24.95]. Norton has a paperback edition of Adrienne Rich’s The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950—1984 [$10.95]. A recent HarperPerennial book is The Darkness is Deep: Selected Poems of William Stafford edited and with an introduction by Robert Bly [$12.00 paper]. As a part of the Viking Portable Library, Penguin Books has published The Portable Dante edited by Paolo Milano and including the complete Divine Comedy as well as short poems and selections from Dante’s letters [$12.50]. Xenos Books is offering a new edition of Alfredo de Palchi’s The Scorpion’s Dark Dance translated from the Italian by Sonia Raiziss [$19.95 cloth, $9.95 paper].
In 1842 near the Khyber Pass the British suffered a devastating defeat in which 16, 000 British soldiers, their families, and camp followers were massacred climaxing what became known as the First Afghan War. An account of that conflict is presented in John H.Waller’s Beyond the Khyber Pass: the Road to British Disaster in the First Afghan War, a new paper edition of which has been published by Texas [$17.95]. Yale is out with a paper edition of Irving Rouse’s The Tainos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus [$12.00, also available in cloth, $27.50]. Vintage Books has reprinted Howard M.Sachar’s A History of the Jews in America, a work lauded as “monumental” by The San Francisco Chronicle [$20.00].
Collier Books is out with a paper edition of Modern American Women Writers: Profiles of Their Lives and Works-From the 1870s to the Present edited by Elaine Showalter, Lea Baechler, and A.Walton Litz [$15.00]. Collier is also offering a paper edition of African American Writers: Profiles of Their Lives and Works-From the 1700s to the Present edited by Valeric Smith, Lea Baechler, and A.Walton Litz [also $15.00]. Penguin Books has a four-volume “The Penguin History of Literature” the respective volumes being The English Language edited by W.F.Bolton and David Crystal [$11.95]; The Victorians edited by Arthur Pollard [$13.00]; American Literature to 1900 edited by Marcus Cunlifiie [$12.00]; and American Literature Since 1900 also edited by Marcus Cunliffe [$12.00]. Yale has published a paper edition of Liam Hudson’s and Bernadine Jacot’s The Way Men Think: Intellect, Intimacy and the Erotic Imagination [$13.00; also available in cloth $27.50]. Irene Tayler’s Holy Ghost: The Male Muses of Emily & Charlotte Bronte is available as a Columbia paperback [$16.00], Johns Hopkins has republished Marc Shell’s The Economy of Literature, a study of the relationship between literature and matters economic from Ancient Greece to our own times [$14.95].Revising the Word and the World: Essays in Feminist Literary Criticism edited by V’eV’e A.Clark, Ruth-Ellen B.Joeres, & Madelon Sprengnether has been republished by Chicago [$14.95 paper, $35.00 cloth]. A recent Harvard paperback is Kendall L.Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational [$18.95].
Charles Dicken’s novel Great Expectations made its first appearance in volume form as a three-volume novel without illustrations in July 1861.The three-volume 1861 version is the basis for a new edition of this famous novel published by Oxford and edited by Margaret Cardwell [$90.00 cloth]. Nebraska’s Bison Book Series has added two novels by Gabrielle Roy, the novels being respectively The Road Past Altamont [$7.95] and Street of Riches [$8.95], both novels involving a young girl growing to womanhood on the Canadian prairie. Southern Methodist is out with a new edition of W.P.Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes to Iowa, a collection of stories [$19.95 cloth, $9.95 paper]. Harper-Perennial reprints include Fae Myenne Ng’s novel about San Francisco called Bone [$11.00]; Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine in a new and expanded edition [$12.00], and H.E.Bates’ The Darling Buds of May: The Pop Larkin Chronicles— Three Volumes in One [$11.00]. Two works by B.Traven are available in the Ivan R. Dee Elephant Paperback Series, the works being respectively The Night Visitor and Other Stories [$10.95] and the novel Government [also $10.95]. In the Vintage Crime series are three novels by Patricia Highsmith, the novels being Ripley’s Game, Ripley Under Water, and The Boy Who Followed Ripley [$10.00 each]. Vintage Books has new editions of two of Truman Capote’s more famous works, The Grass Harp: Including a Tree of Night and Other Stories [$10.00] and Breakfast at Tiffany’s [also $10.00]. Also available from Vintage Books are Michael Ondaarje’s The English Patient, winner of the Booker Prize [$11.00], and Running in the Family [$10.00]. Other reprints from Vintage are Julia Barnes’ The Porcupine [$9.00] and Staring at the Sun [$10.00]. Washington Square Press has a paper edition of Michael Malone’s Time’s Witness, a novel about a tangled murder in a prosperous North Carolina town [$10.00] as well as Catherine Pelletier’s The Weight of Winter about the Maine logging country [also $10.00]. Pantheon Books is offering a new edition of Roy Lewis’ The Evolution Man or How I Ate My Father, a book long out of print and now a number one bestseller in Europe about an upwardly mobile cave family [$18.00 cloth].
