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Reprint, Summer 1992


ISSUE:  Summer 1992

Vintage Books recently added to its Library of America series Lincoln: Selected Speeches and Writings, with an introduction by Gore Vidal and containing such great public utterances as the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address [$11.50 paper]. Other recent Vintage publications include Verlyn Klinkenborg’s The Last Fine Time, a profile of a street and cafe in Buffalo, New York [$10.00], Mike Davis’s City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles [$14.00], and James Oakes’ Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South [$12.00]. Washington has issued a revised edition of Montana: A History of Two Centuries by Michael P. Malone, Richard B. Roeder, and William L. Lang, a work which first appeared in 1976 and one that has since stood as the standard work in its field. In the revision, the narrative is carried forward to the 1990’s and fully 25 percent of the text is new or revised [$40.00 cloth; $19.95 paper]. Yale has a new edition of David F. Labaree’s The Making of an American High School: The Credentials Market & the Central High School of Philadelphia, 1838—1939, winner of the 1989 History of Education Society’s Outstanding Book Award [$32.50 cloth; $15.00 paper]. Yale also has a reprint of Jean Fagan Yellin’s Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture [$27.50 cloth; $13.00 paper]. A recent Princeton reprint is Howard P. Chudacoffs How Old Are You? Age Consciousness in American Culture [$24.95 cloth; $12.95 paper]. Houghton Mifflin has reprinted Mark Gerzon’s A Choice of Heroes: The Changing Faces of American Manhood with a new afterward by the author [$10.95]. Beacon Press has republished Arna Bontemps’ Black Thunder: Gabriel’s Revolt: Virginia, 1800 [$12.00]. Nebraska’s Bison Books has brought out a 50th anniversary edition of Mari Sandoz’s Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas with an introduction by Stephen B. Gates [$11. 95]. Bison has also reprinted Mari Sandoz’s Cheyenne Autumn [$25.00 cloth; $9.95 paper]. A third Bison reprint is Fighting Liberal: The Autobiography of George W. Norris with a foreword by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. [$14.95 paper]. Elephant Paperback series of Ivan R. Dee has reprinted Andrew Bergman’s We’re in the Money: Depression America and Its Films [$9.95], and Kenneth T. Jackson’s The Ku Klux Klan in the city, 1915—1930 [$13.95]. California has issued a paper edition of Donald A. Grinde, Jr. and Bruce E. Johansen’s Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy, a study of the role of American Indians in the dramas that gave birth to democracy in America [$15.00 paper]. Louisiana has republished James R. McGovern’s Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal, a black man who was lynched by a Florida mob in October 1934 [$9.95 paper].

LIVES AND LETTERS

When Columbia originally published Russell Fraser’s Young Shakespeare in 1988, it was greeted with critical acclaim. The New York Review of Books deemed Young Shakespeare “a biography unlike any other, deliberately breaking away from some of the thinking as well as from the presentation of its predecessors.” “Mr. Fraser makes good his promise to bring the life and the art together,” said The New York Times. Columbia recently published a paper edition of Fraser’s study of the young Bard [$13.95], In late 1956 and early 1957, Forrest C. Pogue, then the newly appointed official biographer of General George C. Marshall, compiled a collection of tapes and interviews with the great American military leader covering his life from his earliest days as a young officer to the chief of staff under FDR in World War II. These interviews have now been assembled by the Marshall Foundation and are being distributed by Johns Hopkins under the title George C. Marshall: Interviews and Reminiscences for Forrest C. Pogue [$24.95 paper]. Norton has republished Robert C. Tucker’s highly acclaimed study, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928—1941 [$15.95 paper]. Jeremy Wilson’s unabridged Lawrence of Arabia was selected as one of the New York Times editors’ choice for best books of 1990, and Collier Books has now published an edition abridged by the author [$17.50]. Pittsburgh has come out with a new edition of Gentleman’s Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, 1744, an account of a young Scottish physician’s travels from Maryland to Maine in the pre-revolutionary period edited by Carl Bridenbaugh [$29.95 cloth]. South Carolina has published a paper edition of Elizabeth Allston Pringle’s A Woman Rice Planter, an account of a woman’s struggles for survival and dignity in the male-dominated society of the post-Civil War South, with a new introduction by Charles Joyner, an authority on Southern history [$15.95]. Another Southern woman writing in the post-bellum period was Katharine Du Ere Lumpkin, who wrote The Making of a Southerner recounting her journey from being a daughter of the Lost Cause to becoming a Southern Liberal. Georgia has brought out a paper edition of The Making of a Southerner [$14.95]. A recent addition to the Harper Perennial series is Sylvia Plath’s Letters Home: Correspondence 1950—1963 selected and edited with commentary by Aurelia Schober Plath [$15.00]. Louisiana has republished a revised edition of The Baby Dodds Story: As Told to Larry Gara, Baby Dodds being one of the great drummers from New Orleans whose memoirs first appeared more than 30 years ago shortly before Baby’s death in 1959 [$9.95 paper]. A Vintage Book is William Styron’s Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness [$8.00]. Published in 1981 and winner of Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship award that year, Patricia Hampl’s A Romantic Education is a memoir of an American Midwesterner searching for her family’s roots in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In 1991, Patricia Hampl returned to Prague—12 years after her last visit—and a new afterward in the republished edition of her earlier work describes how the city has changed since the collapse of communism [$12.95 paper].

POETRY

In 1855 Walt Whitman published the first edition of Leaves of Grass consisting of 12 untitled poems and a preface outlining Whitman’s poetics. An initial commercial failure, this volume became the first stage of a lifelong enterprise. Six editions and some 37 years later, Leaves of Grass became one of the central works of American poetry. Vintage Books has now added Leaves of Grass to its Library of America series. This edition includes both the 1855 first edition in its exact original form and the final edition of 1891—92 [$12.50]. As part of its Penguin Classic series, Penguin Books is offering George Herbert’s The Complete English Poems edited with an introduction and notes by John Tobin [$11.95], Penguin has also published Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Selected Poems edited by Aidan Day [$9.95], and Francis Turner Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury of the Rest Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language originally published in 1861 and now edited by Christopher Ricks [$11.95]. Harper Perennial Books has come out with a new edition of Sylvia Plath’s The Collected Poems, edited, annotated, and with an introduction by the poet’s former husband and fellow poet, Ted Hughes [$15.00]. Harper Perennial has also reprinted a revised edition of Ernest Hemingway’s Complete Poems edited by Nicholas Gerogiannis [$9.95]. Nebraska has reprinted Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta edited by Richard W. Van Fossen [$7.95 paper]. BOA Editions Ltd. has published new translations of Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil & Paris Spleen and of Arthur Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell & Illuminations in companion bilingual volumes, the Baudelaire volume being $30.00 cloth; and $15.00 paper, and the Rimbaud volume $25.00 cloth; and $12.50 paper. Norton has a new edition of Alberto Rios’ Teodoro Luna’s Two Kisses [$9.95].

LITERATURE IN GENERAL

Oxford is offering a handsome new edition of Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose edited by Andrew Nicholson and collecting together for the first time all Byron’s various prose writings including his speeches in the House of Lords, short stories, reviews, critical articles, and much shorter pieces such as memoranda notes, reminiscences, and marginalia [$140.00 cloth]. As a part of its Clarendon Paperback series, Oxford has reprinted Barbara Everett’s Poets in Their Time: Essays on English Poetry from Donne to Larkin, Barbara Everett being an Oxford Don who is considered one of England’s most intelligent readers of poetry [$19.95]. Penn State had republished Henry James’ Italian Hours, a series of 22 essays written between 1872 and 1909 providing a journey through time as well as over terrain and revealing James’ sensitive reaction to rapid transformation in 19th century Europe [$29.95 cloth]. Yale has reprinted Alvin Kernan’s The Death of Literature in which the author relates this death to a variety of agents including television, computer technology, and legal issues of copyright and plagiarism [$25.00 cloth; $10.00 paper]. Other Yale reprints include Robert J. Stoller’s Observing the Erotic Imagination [$35.00 cloth; $12.00 paper], and Stoller’s Presentations of Gender [$35.00 cloth; $12.00 paper]. Nebraska has published a paper edition of T.S. Eliot’s To Criticize the Critic and Other Writings [$8.95]. A recent Cambridge reprint is Colin Falck’s Myth, Truth & Literature: towards a true post-modernism, a theoretical study which aims to prove the superfluousness of literary theory [$44.95 cloth; $15.95 paper].

HISTORY

The first edition of Hispanic scholar John A. Crow’s The Epic of Latin America appeared in 1946 and subsequent editions were published in 1971 and 1980. Now, California has published a fourth edition of Crow’s classic study, one that Hugh Gibson, former U.S. Ambassador to Brazil called, “the best book on Latin America that I have encountered during my 40 years experience [$55.00 cloth; $18.00 paper]. Vintage Books has a new edition of Richard Pipes’ The Russian Revolution which the Washington Post Book World described as “monumental in detail. . .a sweeping and often absorbing chronicle” [$18.00]. Vintage has also reprinted Kapuscinski’s Shah of Shahs, an account of the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran [$9.00], Louisiana has printed a paper edition of Eugene D. Genovese’s From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World [$9.95]. Yale is offering a paper edition of Leonard Thompson’s A History of South Africa, one that Archbishop Desmond Tutu praises as “both accurate and authentic, written in a delightful literary style.” [$15.00]. Ivan R. Dee has reprinted Mark Frankland’s The Patriots’ Revolution: How Eastern Europe Toppled Communism and Won Its Freedom, a study The Economist praised as “a finely written record . . .a pleasure to read” [$26.50 cloth].

FICTION

First published in 1951, Lie Down in Darkness is the novel that put William Styron in the Parthenon of American writers. This brooding, sometimes searing, portrait of a Southern family can now be viewed in a new Vintage Book [$12.00]. Vintage has also republished Styron’s Sophie’s Choice, the complex novel about the relations between a young Southerner and a beautiful Polish Jewish victim of the Holocaust [$13.00].

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