Justin Kaplan – författare

The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author “gives us flesh and blood Whitman in this fine and sensitive biography” (The Boston Globe).A moving, penetrating, sharply focused portrait of America’s greatest poet—his genius, his passions, his androgynous sensibility—an exuberant life entwined with the turbulent history of mid-nineteenth century America. In vivid detail, Justin Kaplan, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, examines the mysterious selves of this enigmatic man whose bold voice of joy and sexual liberation embraced a growing nation . . . and exposes the quintessential Whitman, that perfect poet whose astonishing verse made “words sing, dance, kiss, copulate” for an entire world to hear.“Whitman emerges from this biography alive and kicking—hugely human, enormously attractive.” —Newsweek“Not only readable, but dramatic.” —The New York Times Book Review“A buoyant, energizing book.” —The Nation“Brilliant.” —Publishers Weekly

When Connecticut mechanic and foreman Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious, he wakes not to the familiar scenes of nineteenth-century America but to the bewildering sights and sounds of sixth-century Camelot. Although confused at first and quickly imprisoned, he soon realises that his knowledge of the future can transform his fate. Correctly predicting a solar eclipse from inside his prison cell, Morgan terrifies the people of England into releasing him and swiftly establishes himself as the most powerful magician in the land, stronger than Merlin and greatly admired by Arthur himself. But the Connecticut Yankee wishes for more than simply a place at the Round Table. Soon, he begins a far greater struggle: to bring American democratic ideals to Old England. Complex and fascinating, A Connecticut Yankee is a darkly comic consideration of the nature of human nature and society.

When Connecticut mechanic and foreman Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious, he wakes not to the familiar scenes of nineteenth-century America but to the bewildering sights and sounds of sixth-century Camelot. Although confused at first and quickly imprisoned, he soon realises that his knowledge of the future can transform his fate. Correctly predicting a solar eclipse from inside his prison cell, Morgan terrifies the people of England into releasing him and swiftly establishes himself as the most powerful magician in the land, stronger than Merlin and greatly admired by Arthur himself. But the Connecticut Yankee wishes for more than simply a place at the Round Table. Soon, he begins a far greater struggle: to bring American democratic ideals to Old England. Complex and fascinating, A Connecticut Yankee is a darkly comic consideration of the nature of human nature and society.

In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age.Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior.Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure

In this extraordinary volume of selections from Aristotle—culled from the monumental Oxford translation by authorities including W.D. Ross, Benjamin Jowett, and Ingram Bywater—editor Justin D. Kaplan has included the most widely read, studied, and quoted works of the great philosopher.Informative notes give the reader a convenient and concise review of each work, illuminating the main ideas. Thoughtfully assembled, The Pocket Aristotle is the essential guide to the man who has often been called the world’s most important thinker.

Mark Twain, the American comic genius who portrayed, named, and in part exemplified America’s “Gilded Age,” comes alive in Justin Kaplan’s extraordinary biography.With brilliant immediacy, Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brings to life a towering literary figure whose dual persona symbolized the emerging American conflict between down-to-earth morality and freewheeling ambition. As Mark Twain, he was the Mississippi riverboat pilot, the satirist with a fiery hatred of pretension, and the author of such classics as Tom Sawyer andHuckleberry Finn. As Mr. Clemens, he was the star who married an heiress, built a palatial estate, threw away fortunes on harebrained financial schemes, and lived the extravagant life that Mark Twain despised. Kaplan effectively portrays the triumphant-tragic man whose achievements and failures, laughter and anger, reflect a crucial generation in our past as well as his own dark, divided, and remarkably contemporary spirit. Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain brilliantly conveys this towering literary figure who was himself a symbol of the peculiarly American conflict between moral scrutiny and the drive to succeed. Mr. Clemens lived the Gilded Life that Mark Twain despised. The merging and fragmenting of these and other identities, as the biography unfolds, results in a magnificent projection of the whole man; the great comic spirit; and the exuberant, tragic human being, who, his friend William Dean Howells said, was “sole, incomparable, the Lincoln of our literature.”

In this extraordinary volume of selections from Aristotle—culled from the monumental Oxford translation by authorities including W.D. Ross, Benjamin Jowett, and Ingram Bywater—editor Justin D. Kaplan has included the most widely read, studied, and quoted works of the great philosopher.Informative notes give the reader a convenient and concise review of each work, illuminating the main ideas. Thoughtfully assembled, The Pocket Aristotle is the essential guide to the man who has often been called the world’s most important thinker.