My Favourite Reference/Non-Fiction/Anthology Books and DVDs
Explore my top picks for favorite reference, non-fiction, and anthology books and DVDs. Discover must-read fiction, essential reference guides, and curated anthologies for every enthusiast.
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Complete Works of William Shakespeare
by William Shakespeare
Includes the complete text of Shakespeare's plays, poems, and sonnets
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Europe
by Norman Davies
Here is a masterpiece of historical narrative that stretches from the Ice Age to the Atomic Age, as it tells the story of Europe, East and West. Norman Davies captures it all-the rise and fall of Rome, the sweeping invasions of Alaric and Atilla, the Norman Conquests, the Papal struggles for power, the Renaissance and the Reformation, the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe's rise to become the powerhouse of the world, and its eclipse in our own century, following two devastating World Wars. This is the first major history of Europe to give equal weight to both East and West, and it shines light on fascinating minority communities, from heretics and lepers to Gypsies, Jews, and Muslims. It also takes an innovative approach, combining traditional narrative with unique features that help bring history alive: 299 time capsules scattered through the narrative capture telling aspects of an era. 12 -snapshots offer a panoramic look at all of Europe at a particular moment in history. Full coverage of Eastern Europe—100 maps and diagrams, 72 black-and-white plates.All told, Davies’'s Europe represents one of the most important and illuminating histories to be published in recent years.
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Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
by John Bartlett
First published in 1855, BARTLETT'S FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS has been completely updated and revised for the seventeenth edition by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Justin Kaplan. This 17th edition, under Kaplan's splendid direction, contains over 20,000 quotations, representing 2,500 authors, 90 of whom are new to BARTLETT'S. New comers include Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Tony Kushner, Tammy Wynette, Margaret Atwood, Mary Oliver, Maya Angelou, Frank O'Hara, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Mother Teresa, Jacques Cousteau, Rudolph Giuliani, Alfred Hitchcock, L. M. Montgomery, Eric Ambler, Jerry Seinfeld, J.K. Rowling, Katharine Graham, and Emma Goldman. With quotations presented in chronological order, in the famous BARTLETT'S tradition, BARTLETT'S gives the reader a vast panorama of the world, from the ancient Egyptians to the latest movie, from the inspirational and the beautiful to the sardonic and the downright funny.
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The Rise of the West
by William H. McNeill
The Rise of the West, winner of the National Book Award for history in 1964, is famous for its ambitious scope and intellectual rigor. In it, McNeill challenges the Spengler-Toynbee view that a number of separate civilizations pursued essentially independent careers, and argues instead that human cultures interacted at every stage of their history. The author suggests that from the Neolithic beginnings of grain agriculture to the present major social changes in all parts of the world were triggered by new or newly important foreign stimuli, and he presents a persuasive narrative of world history to support this claim. In a retrospective essay titled "The Rise of the West after Twenty-five Years," McNeill shows how his book was shaped by the time and place in which it was written (1954-63). He discusses how historiography subsequently developed and suggests how his portrait of the world's past in The Rise of the West should be revised to reflect these changes. "This is not only the most learned and the most intelligent, it is also the most stimulating and fascinating book that has ever set out to recount and explain the whole history of mankind. . . . To read it is a great experience. It leaves echoes to reverberate, and seeds to germinate in the mind."—H. R. Trevor-Roper, New York Times Book Review
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The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Bront‘
by Emily Brontë
The renowned Hatfield edition of Bronte's poetry is a body of work that continues to resonate today. It includes Emily's verse from Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, as well as 200 works collected from various manuscript sources after her death in 1848.
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Wheelock's Latin, 6e
by Frederic M. Wheelock
LaFleur offers a revised and newly illustrated edition of the classic introductory Latin course that, since its debut half a century ago, has proven the most popular and most esteemed in its field. Photos & maps.
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Caesar: Politician and Statesman
by Matthias Gelzer
The political career of one of the great statesmen of Antiquity--indeed of all times--is here captured in a full, authoritative, and lively biography that has long been a classic.
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Caesar
by Christian Meier
As politician and diplomat, writer and lover, but above all as a military genius, Julius Caesar is one of the perennially fascinating figures in history—Boswell called him ”the greatest man of any age.” Christian Meier's authoritative and accessible biography is the definitive modern account of Caesar's life and career, setting Caesar's life story against the rich political and social background of the Late Roman Republic.
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The Quest For Arthur's Britain
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The legend of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table dominates the mythology of Britain, but could this story prove more fact than fiction? Recent archaeological findings have lead Geoffrey Ashe to believe there is more truth to Arthurian legend than previously accepted. The Quest for Arthur's Britain examines the historical foundation of the Arthurian tradition, and presents the remarkable results of excavations to date at Cadbury (reputed site of Camelot), Tintagel, Glastonbury and many places known almost exclusively to Arthurian scholars.
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Bulfinch's Mythology
by Thomas Bulfinch
For almost a century and a half, Bulfinch's Mythology has been the text by which the great tales of the gods and goddesses, Greek and Roman antiquity; Scandinavian, Celtic, and Oriental fables and myths; and the age of chivalry have been known. The stories are divided into three sections: The Age of Fable or Stories of Gods and Heroes (first published in 1855); The Age of Chivalry (1858), which contains King Arthur and His Knights, The Mabinogeon, and The Knights of English History; and Legends of Charlemagne or Romance of the Middle Ages (1863). For the Greek myths, Bulfinch drew on Ovid and Virgil, and for the sagas of the north, from Mallet's Northern Antiquities. He provides lively versions of the myths of Zeus and Hera, Venus and Adonis, Daphne and Apollo, and their cohorts on Mount Olympus; the love story of Pygmalion and Galatea; the legends of the Trojan War and the epic wanderings of Ulysses and Aeneas; the joys of Valhalla and the furies of Thor; and the tales of Beowulf and Robin Hood. The tales are eminently readable. As Bulfinch wrote, "Without a knowledge of mythology much of the elegant literature of our own language cannot be understood and appreciated. . . . Our book is an attempt to solve this problem, by telling the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement."
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The Language Instinct
by Steven Pinker
In this classic study, the world's leading expert on language and the mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about languages: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it envolved. With wit, erudition, and deft use it everyday examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution like web spinning in spiders or sonar bats. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America.
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The Major Works
by William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth, the Major Works presents a selection of Wordsworth's essays and a collection of his major poems. The study includes recommended additional reading and notes to give the essence of his work and thinking processes.
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The Savage Wars of Peace
by Max Boot
An account of the undeclared wars in American history, including those fought in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, argues their role in American international affairs and profiles such figures as Stephen Decatur and Army Lieutenant George S. Patton. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.
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Gods, Graves and Scholars
by C.W. Ceram
C.W. Ceram visualized archeology as a wonderful combination of high adventure, romance, history and scholarship, and this book, a chronicle of man's search for his past, reads like a dramatic narrative. We travel with Heinrich Schliemann as, defying the ridicule of the learned world, he actually unearths the remains of the ancient city of Troy. We share the excitement of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter as they first glimpse the riches of Tutankhamen's tomb, of George Smith when he found the ancient clay tablets that contained the records of the Biblical Flood. We rediscover the ruined splendors of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the wonders of the ancient wold; of Chichen Itza, the abandoned pyramids of the Maya: and the legendary Labyrinth of tile Minotaur in Crete. Here is much of the history of civilization and the stories of the men who rediscovered it. Illustrated with drawings, maps, and photographs
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Will in the World
by Stephen Greenblatt
A portrait of Elizabethan England and how it contributed to the making of William Shakespeare discusses how he moved to London lacking money, connections, and a formal education and rose to became his age's foremost playwright.
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The Face of the Tiger
by Mark Steyn
The world since September 11th - War and peace; quagmires and root causes; Afghanistan and Iraq; Europe and America, new realities and indestructible myths.
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Sex, Art, and American Culture
by Camille Paglia
A collection of twenty of Paglia's out-spoken essays on contemporary issues in America's ongoing cultural debate such as Anita Hill, Robert Mapplethorpe, the beauty myth, and the decline of education in America.
