A witty and wide-ranging exploration of a book that has perplexed and delighted people for centuries: the Talmud. For numerous centuries, the Talmud--an extraordinary work of Jewish ethics, law, and tradition--has compelled readers to grapple with how to live a good life. Full of folk legends, bawdy tales, and rabbinical repartee, it is inspiring, demanding, confounding, and thousands of pages long. As Liel Leibovitz enthusiastically explores the...

This volume offers students and book club members a handy and insight-filled guide to Morrison's works and their relation to current events and popular culture.
One of the few authors to attain both commercial success and literary acclaim, Toni Morrison, a longstanding member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, is widely read by high school students and general readers. Her books have been adapted into highly extolled films...

"Chapters cover such topics as Russian existentialism and vampire slayage; moral choices; ethics; faith and bad faith; constructing reality through existential choice; some limitations of science and technology; love and self-sacrifice; love, witchcraft, and vengeance; soul mates and moral responsibility; love and moral choice; forms of freedom; and Whedon as moral philosopher"--Provided by publisher.

Volume 5 Contents: Philosophy of Furniture--A Tale of Jerusalem--The Sphinx--Hop-Frog--The Man of the Crowd--Never Bet the Devil Your Head--Thou Art the Man--Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling--Bon-Bon--Some Words with a Mummy--The Poetic Principle--Old English Poetry--[POEMS OF LATER LIFE]--The Raven--The Bells--Ulalume--To Helen--Annabel Lee--A Valentine--An Enigma--To my Mother--For Annie--To F--To Frances S. Osgood--Eldorado--Eulalie--A...

For François Truffaut, the lost secret of cinematic art is in the ability to generate emotion and reveal repressed fantasies through cinematic representation. Available in English for the first time, Anne Gillain's François Truffaut: The Lost Secret is considered by many to be the best book on the interpretation of Truffaut's films. Taking a psycho-biographical approach, Gillain shows how Truffaut's creative impulse was anchored in his personal...

In one of his letters Hart Crane wrote, "Appollinaire lived in Paris, I live in Cleveland, Ohio," comparing--misspelling and all--the great French poet's cosmopolitan roots to his own more modest ones in the midwestern United States. Rebelling against the notion that his work should relate to some European school of thought, Crane defiantly asserted his freedom to be himself, a true American writer. John T. Irwin, long a passionate and brilliant critic...

In this 1905 short work of criticism, one great satirical mind pays tribute to another. In addition to lively synopses and appreciations of Mrs. Warren's Profession, Arms and the Man, The Devil's Disciple, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, and others, Mencken offers an epilogue on Shaw and Shakespeare.

"The story of Roth's creative life, [which] is not a biography-- though it contains a wealth of previously undisclosed biographical details and unpublished material--but something ultimately more rewarding: the exploration of a great writer through his art"--Dust jacket flap. "Philip Roth is one of the most renowned writers of our time. From his debut,Goodbye, Columbus, which won the National Book Award in 1960, and the explosion of Portnoy's Complaint...

"Jack Kirby (1917-1994) is one of the most influential and popular artists in comics history. With Stan Lee, he created the Fantastic Four and defined the drawing and narrative style of Marvel Comics from the 1960s to the present day. Kirby is credited with creating or cocreating a number of Marvel's mainstay properties, among them the X-Men, the Hulk, Thor, and the Silver Surfer. His earlier work with Joe Simon led to the creation of Captain America,...

This title provides an incisive analysis of popular American filmmaker, Richard Linklater.