Ivan R. Dee – serie

Fourteen writings by historians that show how, even though the New Deal's initiatives did not always work, FDR's program was a psychological and political success because it restored hope to a nation battered by the Great Depression. Mr. Sternsher's focus is not on Washington, D.C., but on what was happening at the local level across a vast and diverse nation.

It is no longer news that the history of the European past and its role in shaping American cultural life is under severe attack. In virtually every university that offers a liberal arts curriculum, in every arts institution that deals with European classics, in the offices of every publication that engages in intellectual pursuits, the discussion of the past has become the principal battleground for mapping out the future of our culture. In this provocative and insightful collection of essays first published in The New Criterion, ten distinguished critics reflect on the fate of Europe’s cultural and political legacy as we approach the turn of the century. On subjects ranging from the collapse of communism and its implications for European society, to the study of the classics, to the prospects for serious music and art, these essays offer analyses marked by wit, independence, and commanding intelligence. The contributors include David Pryce-Jones, Anne Applebaum, Roger Scruton, John Gross, Ferdinand Mount, John Herington, Keith Windschuttle, Mark Steyn, Hilton Kramer, and Roger Kimball. The Future of the European Past is a major contribution to the debate over some of the most pressing cultural issues of our time.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in history and a landmark in the study of constitutional origins, Leonard Levy’s now-classic study appears for the first time in paperback. Origins probes the intentions of the framers of the Fifth Amendment and emphasizes their belief that in a society based upon respect for the individual, it is more important that the accused not unwillingly contribute to his conviction than that the guilty be punished. "A work of monumental scholarship—broad in scope, thorough, carefully annotated, accurate, and imaginative."—Political Science Quarterly. "Vastly learned...everywhere critical and reflective...written in a style at once lucid and vigorous. All in all, it is quite clearly one of the important contributions to historical literature."—Henry Steele Commager. "A matchless contribution to our understanding of the historical background underlying the adoption of a major provision of the Bill of Rights."—American Political Science Review. "A masterful job."—Oscar Handlin.

In an age when the American public relies more on television for its news than any other medium, Edward Jay Epstein's detailed, probing analysis of the decision-making process in network news organizations has achieved the status of a classic. Mr. Epstein shows how internal corporate policy and budget requirements shape the direction of television news coverage. What we see on the network evening news, he demonstrates, does not mirror reality because TV's essential aim is not to inform but to excite viewers enough to induce them to "stay tuned." "The best book ever written about any aspect of television."—Richard Schickel. "The book is burnished with insights on virtually every page. Epstein's analysis seems to me incontestable, and is offered with great cogency, elegance, and sophistication."—Stephen J. Whitfield, Brandeis University. "A complex, fascinating book....Mr. Epstein shows that no educated citizen should rely exclusively or principally on TV news, but also that none should fail to watch it."—Wall Street Journal.

One of the best of our urban journalists considers the upside-down world of public policy and the entrenchment of foolish ideas in closely reported stories from the streets of New York to the seats of intellectual power. Insightful and articulate...entertaining and provocative. —Richard Lamm, Wall Street Journal. Spirited, stimulating, eloquent essays...vivid and devastating....The Burden of Bad Ideas is social, cultural, and political criticism of the first order. —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

Each year thousands of people come to the United States seeking protection—more than 62,000 applied for asylum in 1998 alone. America is a country of immigrants with a proud tradition of welcoming refugees from persecution. Yet most Americans object to high levels of illegal immigration, and many feel that poor immigrants are a burden to the society. These conflicting views are played out in a complex system of asylum adjudication that has developed over the last twenty years. The Mercy Factory is the first book to examine that system. It does so by telling the stories of five refugees, following them from their experience of persecution in their home countries to their arrival in the United States and their progress through the barriers of the American immigration legal system. The stories are both tragic and inspiring, but they also illuminate the workings of the asylum system and the dilemmas often faced by immigration officials and judges who must make life or death decisions in limited time, with limited information at hand. Throughout his absorbing narrative, Mr. Einolf explains the basic law of asylum in layman's terms, examines the history of the asylum adjudication system, and suggests proposals for reform.

In this stimulating collection of new and previously published writings, the celebrated theatre and film critic returns to his first love, poetry. In his criticism over the years, Mr. Simon has consistently paid attention to the books of poets, and has in addition written occasional verse and translated foreign poetry. The poet James Dickey, in his book Sorties, recalls "a good afternoon of human time" he spent with Mr. Simon, talking about poets. "Do you know whom I really like," Mr. Simon asked. Dickey expected the name of a new French poet he hadn't heard of, but Mr. Simon pulled out The Collected Poems of Andrew Young, a rather mild English ecclesiastical poet. Dickey never forgot the avant-garde critic with the surprising taste in poetry. Dreamers of Dreams is less about mild poets, though, and more about great pathfinders and innovators: Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Rilke, Eliot, Anna Akhmatova, Paul Celan, and, yes, Oscar Wilde. But it is also about poets nearer to us: Robert Graves, Joseph Brodsky, John Ashbery, and Philip Larkin—not always in admiration. Dreamers of Dreams also includes essays on the best English poem about physical love, on translating poetry, and on some forgotten minor poets whose only sin was accessibility, and who cry out for rediscovery.

What would it be like to live with terrorism day in and day out? To bury loved ones week in and week out? What would it be like to be an ex-American, raising five children in Hebron, miles from the West Bank of Israel? Trying to keep herself sane in "a gyre of internal doubts and external turbulence," June Leavitt took to writing a diary, recording the appalling things that were happening around her. Storm of Terror begins with Rosh Hashanah in September 2000, the Jewish New Year, when Stage II of the Intifada broke out all over Israel. Ms. Leavitt writes firsthand of the tragic events of the ensuing eighteen months, when the Palestinians opened up the arsenals of weapons that had been given them as part of the American-sponsored peace process, and began to use them against Israelis. Hundreds of Israeli mothers, fathers, and children were gunned down on the roads of Israel. Israeli soldiers, waiting for rides, were blown up by suicide bombers; buses filled with civilians went up in rockets of fire, leaving chars and cinders of tragedy. Ms. Leavitt and her family knew many of the victims. Her daughter was drafted into the army as a combat soldier in Hebron just as the Arab uprising began. With a keen sense of the political blunders that, parading under the banner of "Peace Accords," caused the escalation of Arab terrorism and national trauma; with stirring references to biblical stories where the roots of the Arab-Israeli conflict may lie, Ms. Leavitt has written a poignant and powerful narrative.

“The history of poetry and of Poetry in America are almost interchangeable, certainly inseparable,” wrote A. R. Ammons. Founded by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry magazine established its reputation immediately by printing T. S. Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago Poems,” Wallace Stevens’s “Sunday Morning,” and the first important poems of Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, and many other then unknown, now classic authors. Publishing monthly without interruption, Poetry has become America’s most distinguished magazine of verse, presenting, often for the very first time, virtually every notable poet of the last nine decades—an unprecedented record. Decade by decade, this bountiful ninetieth-anniversary anthology from Poetry includes the poems of the major talents—along with several lesser known—in all their variety: William Butler Yeats, Edgar Lee Masters, Sara Teasdale, D. H. Lawrence, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Vachel Lindsay, Robert Graves, May Sarton, Langston Hughes, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Hart Crane, Robert Penn Warren, Dylan Thomas, e. e. cummings, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Merrill, John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, Randall Jarrell, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Robinson Jeffers, Theodore Roethke, Karl Shapiro, Anne Sexton, Thom Gunn, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Maxine Kumin, Ted Hughes, Adrienne Rich, and Galway Kinnell. In recent decades, Poetry has presented Seamus Heaney, Rita Dove, Billy Collins, Kay Ryan, Eavan Boland, Stephen Dunn, Mary Oliver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Jane Kenyon, James Tate, Sharon Olds, Louise Glück, Marilyn Hacker, and many, many others. T. S. Eliot called Poetry “an American institution.” The Poetry Anthology is sure to be an American keepsake.

The first book to survey the broad range of Ms. Sontag's work, including full discussions of her fiction. One can ask for no better guidebook. —M. Thomas Inge

In surveys of the plays that will help readers and viewers follow the action with ease and understanding, Robert Fallon opens a window to Shakespeare's time while illuminating the timelessness of his works. Mr. Fallon examines the most frequently staged plays scene by scene, and those less frequently performed act by act. He provides intelligent readers with incisive and engaging commentary on character, theme, setting, poetry, and stage history. Wonderfully reader-friendly. —William Kerrigan, University of Massachusetts at Amherst