WINNER of the 2008 NOBEL PRIZE in LITERATURE

The Prospector is the crowning achievement from one of France's preeminent contemporary novelists and a work rich with sensuality and haunting resonance. It is the turn of the century on the island of Mauritius, and young Alexis L'Etang enjoys an idyllic existence with his parents and beloved sister: sampling the pleasures of privilege, exploring the constellations and tropical flora, and dreaming of treasure buried long ago by the legendary Unknown Corsair. But with his father's death, Alexis must leave his childhood paradise and enter the harsh world of privation and shame. Years later, Alexis has become obsessed with the idea of finding the Corsair's treasure and, through it, the lost magic and opulence of his youth. He abandons job and family, setting off on a quest that will take him from remote tropical islands to the hell of World War I, and from a love affair with the elusive Ouma to a momentous confrontation with the search that has consumed his life. By turns harsh and lyrical, pointed and nostalgic, The Prospector is "a parable of the human condition" (Le Mond) by one of the most significant literary figures in Europe today.


"Le Clézio's prose is so sensual and rhythmic it's hypnotic."  — Boston Phoenix

"A novel of intense beauty."  — Review of Contemporary Fiction

"A remarkable work."  — Booklist, starred review


BOOK GROUP RESOURCES

• Listen to NPR book critic Christopher Merill discuss The Prospector at "The World."

• Visit the Nobel Prize J.M.G. Le Clézio page for a short biography and his Nobel acceptance speech, and find more information on the author at Wikipedia.

• Sarah Lyall at The New York Times describes Le Clézio as an author "whose work reflects a seemingly insatiable restlessness and sense of wonder about other places and other cultures."

• Read the 1985 review of The Prospector in The London Times.

• Paramanund Soobarah at the Mauritius Times celebrates the awarding of the Nobel Prize to a native son — learn more about Le Clézio's home nation of Mauritius from the CIA Fact Book and Wikipedia.

• Read the Time Magazine feature on J.M.G. Le Clézio by Lev Grossman.

• Listen to London Times editor Claire Armistead discuss Le Clézio and the Nobel Prize and read their write-up of his award.

Yousuf Karsh's life-long ambition was to search for a form within a face, one that could become a symbol for a life that was purposeful, meaningful, and generally virtuous. "I speak with some experience when I say that I have rarely left the company of accomplished men and women without feeling that they had in them real sincerity, integrity – yes, and sometimes vanity of course – and always a sense of high purpose." In his sixty-year career, he seldom wavered from this goal, even when fame and fortune came his way. Neither did he discard his trademark variations in lighting style that he perfected in the late 1940s while other fashions came and went. Unchanging, too, was his genius at capturing the revealing and ephemeral psychological expressions, those fleeting disclosures of character and purpose for which his famous sitters trusted him.

He was the preferred photographer of kings, queens, princes, presidents, prime ministers, generals, and other political figures because he rendered them with an unbiased and unfailing regard for their dignity. With musicians, artists, writers, scientists, actors, and other creative intellectuals, he shared a parallel ambition: to create works of art of lasting value. In making what now seem singular, monumental statements honoring those he considered his contemporary heroes, he stood alone in his field, so much so that it could be argued he was the last of his kind.

Karsh Arrived in Canada as a teenage refugee, escaping the genocide in Turkish Armenia, and was trained by his uncle, and later by John Garo in Boston, as a professional portrait photographer. At first this meant pleasing his sitters, rather than the editors and publishers who, with their staff photographers, kept an eye on fashion and celebrity. In 1941, after nine years as a struggling young photographer in Ottawa, fortune and personal connections justified his dedication. He shot the unforgetable image of Winston Churchill that became known as "the roaring lion." His name and his career were made almost instantly. But despite his personal success, this was still a period of anxious uncertainty, especially concerning the fate of European democracies and indeed the future of Western civilization. It was in that period that Karsh captured, like no other photographer, the faces of the people who defined and directed the age. It is this notion of heroism and its stylistic rendition that this book examines and illuminates.

Catie Copley is a black Labrador retriever who lives an unusual life as Canine Ambassador at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. Her job includes welcoming guests, taking them for walks, and helping Jim at his job as the hotel's Chief Concierge. Santol, who trained as a guide dog, just like Catie, is her canine counterpart at the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac in Quebec City, Canada.

Catie, a very lady-like dog, is surprised when, one day, a large, furry, black-and-white intruder snatches her toy lobster and runs away with it. She is taken aback, but once she gets to know the rambunctious Santol they become firm friends. When Jim drives Santol back to Canada, Catie is very excited to go too.

This is Catie's first vacation and her first time in a strange city where they speak a different language. Santol introduces her to a famous goat, a friendly horse, a clumsy juggler, and intriguing new foods and smells. Catie finds that there is a lot of opportunity for adventure... maybe a little too much adventure.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book in America will be donated to NEADS / Dogs for Deaf and Disabled Americans, based in Princeton, Massachusetts. Since 1976, NEADS has trained more than 1,000 service dogs to assist deaf or physically disabled individuals. For more information, please visit www.neads.org. A portion of the Canadian proceeds will be donated to mira, based near Montreal, Canada. The mira Foundation trains more than 150 guide dogs each year to help people with visual, auditory, and physical disabilites. To learn more, visit www.mira.ca.

Catie and Santol explore Boston and Quebec from a dog's-eye view, which, come to think of it, approximates a child's-eye view. This is a small travel guide and an invitation. What fun to introduce a child to either of these historic cities. But that's not all. In this story, Catie gets into a little trouble – even good dogs do — so there's just enough suspense to keep young readers turning the pages to find out what happened next.
— Rebecca Rule, Nashua Telegraph

Now a 10-Part Miniseries Airing on PBS!

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) wrote what may be the quintessential distillation of English country life at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1945, the three books Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943) were published together in one elegant volume, and this new omnibus Nonpareil edition, complete with charming wood engravings, should be a cause for real rejoicing.

In his introduction, H. J. Massingham observes that Thompson "possesses the attributes both of sympathetic presentation and literary power to such a degree of quality and beauty that her claims upon posterity can hardly be questioned." He calls the books themselves "a triune achievement: a triumph of evocation in the resurrecting of an age that, being transitional, was the most difficult to catch as it flew; another in diversity of rural portraiture engagingly blended with autobiography; and the last in the overtones and implications of a set of values which is the author's 'message'."

This is the story of three closely-related Oxfordshire communities – a hamlet, a village, and a town – and the memorable cast of characters who people them. Based on her own experiences as a child and young woman, it is keenly observed and beautifully narrated, quiet and evocative. The books have inspired two plays that ran in London, and a new ten-part BBC-TV drama series to be broadcast in the US in 2009.

Our literature has no finer remembrancer . . . no observer so genuinely endearing.
– John Fowles, New Statesman
Flora Thompson's great memoir of her Oxfordshire girlhood [is] a model of the form. The richness of the language, the lingering over detail and incident creates a haunting classic.– The New York Times

BOOK GROUP RESOURCES
Learn the basics by reading the Wikipedia article about the trilogy.Read about Flora Thompson or read some of her poetry.
Enjoy the resources on the BBC website about their television version.See if Lark Rise to Candleford is playing on PBS near you. Read a resident's tale of the villages portrayed in the trilogy.Explore the region, including Juniper Hill (Lark Rise), Buckingham (Candleford), and Fringford (Candleford Green).

Three books, all written by women in the early 1960s, changed the way we looked at the world and ourselves: Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, and Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. All three books created revolutions in their respective spheres of influence, and nothing affected city planning and architecture – or the way we think about how life is lived in densely packed urban centers – more than Jane Jacobs's far-sighted polemic. This was an era when the "urban renewal" movement was at its most aggressive, and Jacobs correctly perceived that the new structures that were being built to replace the aging housing of our older cities were often far worse, in both their impact on society and their architectural sterility, than what urban planners identified as "the problem." She was ridiculed and pilloried by the establishment, but her ideas quickly took hold, and no one ever looked at what made for livable and viable neighborhoods the same way again.

Here is the first book for young people about this heroine of common sense, a woman who never attended college but whose observations, determination, and independent spirit led her to far different conclusions than those of the academics who surrounded her. Illustrated with almost a hundred images, in­cluding a great number of photos never before published (with many by Robert Otter), this story of a remarkable woman will introduce her ideas and her life to young readers, many of whom have grown up in neighborhoods that were saved by her insights. It will in­spire young people – and readers of all ages – and demonstrate that we learn vital life lessons from observing and thinking, and not just accepting what passes as "conventional wisdom."No stodgy history texts, Claudette Colvin and Genius of Common Sense throb with their heroines' passionate struggles. They are handsome books, loaded with primary sources like photographs and contemporary news accounts that bring alive these stories for any teenager wondering how she can make a difference in the world. — Ruth Coniff, The New York Times, May 10, 2009



Barak Obama Comments on the Importance of Jane Jacobs & American Cities


The theories of Jane Jacobs ... should be in the curriculums of grades 7 and 8, her books should be must-reads in all high schools, and her ideas should be discussed in all colleges and universities. Genius of Common Sense is not only a refreshing concept but also a delightful read ... a little gem of a book....
— Bernard Poulin, Toronto Globe and Mail

"Genius of Common Sense is an inspiring look at one of the great heroines of New York."
— Robert Caro, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Power Broker

"Jane Jacobs taught the world to see the true value of cities because she had the courage to trust her own experience and common sense. This is an inspiring story, deeply researched and beautifully told."
— Robert Fishman, Professor of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan

This book is the cat's pyjamas.  It's the clearest account anywhere of who Jane was, what she did for cities, and how she did it.
— Max Allen, Producer of CBC Radio's Ideas program and editor of Ideas That Matter: The Worlds of Jane Jacobs

"This well-paced, seamlessly co-authored narrative introduces young adult readers to a little known person of great importance, whose visionary ideas changed the way we look at neighborhoods and value city life. The writers' black and white illustrations combined with vintage photographs, maps, and memorabilia give a vivid account of Jane Jacobs that will encourage young people to make observations and think critically."
— Susan Goldman Rubin, Prize-winning author of more than thirty young-adult biographies

"An absorbing story of a woman of genius, leadership, courage and imagination who changed the thinking of the world. Though written for younger readers, older ones also will enjoy reading about this remarkable person whose intellect and battles made American cities more civilized and humane places to live. Her impact was enormous and endures."
— Nicholas von Hoffman, former columnist for the Washington Post and commentator for "60 Minutes"

It is spring 1939 in the age of anxiety. In months Europe will be Hitler's. And Badenheim, a resort town vaguely in the orbit of Vienna, is preparing for its summer season. The vacationers arrive as they always have, a sampling of Jewish middle-class life: the impresario Dr. Pappenheim, his musicians, and their conductor; the gay Frau Tsauberblit; the historian, Dr. Fussholdt, and his much younger wife; the "readers," twins whose passion for Rilke is featured on their program; a child prodigy; a commercial traveler; a rabbi. The list waxes as the summer wanes. To receive them in the town are the pharmacist and his worried wife, the hotelier and his large staff, the pastry shop owner and his irritable baker, Sally and Gertie (two quite respectable prostitutes), and, mysteriously, the bland inspectors from the "Sanitation Department."

The story unfolds as matter-of-factly as a Chekhov play. The characters on stage are so deeply held by their defensive daily trivia that they manage to misconstrue every signal of their fate. Finally, the vacationers, whose numbers have now increased

by the forced crowding-in of other Jews hardly on vacation, become de facto prisoners in their familiar resort; their "vacation" begins to take on the lineaments of undefined disaster. The text builds a sense of foreboding in which each human detail is so persuasive, so right in its fidelity to the terrible evasions of the time, that it leaves us transformed by what we and the author know must, and will, happen to Badenheim's visitors.

Badenheim 1939 owes everything to its author's astonishing capacity to recreate the energies and confusions of innocent and uncomprehending victims who, always loyal to civility and social graces, fail to even dimly see the cruel terms of their imminent fate.

The writing flows seamlessly ... a small masterpiece.— Irving Howe, New York Times Book Review

As real as Kafka's unnamed Prague ... imbued with a Watteau-like melancholy.
— Gabriel Annan, New York Review of Books

BOOK GROUP RESOURCESLearn about Aharon Appelfeld and get the basics on Badenheim 1939. Use these discussion questions to guide your reading. (At bottom of page.)Read an interview from 1982 with Ann Parson or from 1988 with Philip Roth. Learn about Badenheim, the location for the book. Check out other books translated by Dalya Bilu, including a Godine book featuring a novella by Aharon Appelfeld. 

The photography of Angus McBean encompasses more than three decades of the history of British theater. His work includes most of the memorable productions of the Old Vic Company and of what is now the Royal Shakespeare Company; opera productions at Glyndebourne and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; ballet and operetta at Sadler's Wells; and West End productions of plays and musicals both old and new – hundreds of productions in all. He was the favorite photographer of Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, and Edith Evans, and he photographed countless plays starring John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, and Alec Guinness, not to mention younger stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Richard Burton, and Elizabeth Taylor. In fact, McBean photographed virtually every great actor of his era, perhaps the most brilliant years in the annals of British theater.

His studio was active and eclectic; among his patrons were not only actors, singers, and dancers, but also playwrights, producers, composers, artists, and writers. In his early career, McBean had been a pioneer of surrealist photography, with a highly popular series of "surrealized" portraits that appeared in The Sketch, and, later, of montage and multiple-exposure photography in a long-running series for The Tatler.

In 1969, McBean approached Harvard University to initiate the sale of his collection, and in the following year his archive of glass plate negatives, index prints, and programs, together with the copyrights, became a part of the Harvard Theatre Collection, where it remains the most often-requested collection of visual material. The photographs in this book, selected and captioned by the archive's curator, Fredric Woodbridge Wilson, have been carefully reproduced from the original negatives.

For anyone interested in the history of twentieth-century theater or the figures who made the British stage so fascinating, this is a book that rolls back the curtain to reveal a cast of stars.

Selected Images
       

[L–R: Angus McBean, "Christmas Card"; Orson Wells & Gudrun Ure, from Othello; Audrey Hepburn, "Composite Portrait"]

By the Waters of Manhattan was Charles Reznikoff's first novel, published in 1930 by Charles Boni in New York. Part family saga, part bildungsroman, and part unrequited love story, the novel follows the lives of a Jewish family at the turn of the century from Elizavetgrad, Russia to Brownsville, Brooklyn, birthplace of the novel's protagonist, Ezekiel, a young poet in search of ways to feed his stomach and his soul. Like Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Henry Roth, Reznikoff's subject is as much the great island of Manhattan, as it is its inhabitants.

I am thrilled with it. This book has so much in it that marks Reznikoff as a first-rate artist.
– William Carlos Williams
Mr. Reznikoff's work is remarkable and original in American literature. . . . He has written the first story of the Jewish immigrant that is not false.
– Lionel Trilling

BOOK GROUP RESOURCES
Read about Charles Reznikoff and take a look at his poems.
Visit Charles Reznikoff's unoffical website.
Listen to Charles Reznikoff read some of his poems.Read a blog post on the Jewish Book Council Blog. Look at another Godine book, Selected Letters of Charles Reznikoff, 1917-1976. 

Housed at the Library of Congress, the archives of the Farm Security Administration constitute an essential visual record of American life from the late 1920s through the onset of the Second World War. Guided by the adroit hands and watchful eyes of the master photo editor Roy Stryker, the FSA archive includes the work of dozens of photographers, from acknowledged giants like Walker Evans, Ben Shahn, and Dorothea Lange to Marion Post Wolcott and Russell Lee, whose names and work may be less familiar.

Stryker's approach to his photographers' assignments was a bracing mix of structure and improvisation. He sent his artists across the country to shoot for a few weeks, mostly in small towns and rural areas. They worked from what Stryker called shooting scripts – laundry lists of possible subjects and situations – but were always free to explore their own perspectives on a locale, its inhabitants, and their activities. When negatives and prints arrived, Stryker would guide his artists with suggestions, advice, and sharp-eyed criticism, all designed to elicit their best work. At this he was strikingly successful.

This book collects work from nine of these trips – Evans in Louisana and Alabama, Shahn in West Virginia, Lange in California, and others – uniting them with Stryker's shooting scripts, letters, and other relevant archival documents. What emerges, beyond the images themselves, is a complex and vital overview of the FSA at work, not just the work, but how the work evolved and matured under Stryker's guidance. Appropriately, the book concludes with photographs of New Orleans, the only city photographed in depth by the FSA artists.

Reproduced in duotone, the 175 photographs in The Likes of Us – all printed from the original negatives at the Library of Congress – offer a rare opportunity not only to see a choice selection of famous and little-known images but also to understand the working of one of the government's most original and creative pre-war initiatives.

Selected images from the book:
   


Read Ron Slate's review of The Likes of Us.

A Beautiful Garden, and a book that successfully conveys the process of how to create one, rely on a gardener's capacity to discover how things grow and a writer's ability to explain it. A love of plants, along with an understanding of their needs, peculiarities, and idiosyncrasies, provide the foundation on which all memorable gardens are built and upon which truly useful gardening books depend.

Kim Smith's passion is her garden, a small and densely-packed quarter acre beside her family's seaside home in Gloucester, brimming with every species imaginable and some (including apricots) a few might consider unimaginable.  Here she has created the framework, a living tapestry of fragrance, foliage, flower and fruit, that establishes the soul of her garden.  She is sensistive to the plant's forms, hues, and horticultural demands, and has, by design, established  a succession of blooms and a selection of plant materials that reduce the needs for pesticides and herbicides. Any gardener wrestling with the challenges of blight, bugs, poor soil, limited light, and the vagaries of weather will find in these pages both sound advice and practical solutions - in spades.

But this is, quite deliberately, intended as more than another (and predictable) how-to book. The author is especially and equally interested in the intangibles a garden provides: the moods and ambiance, the butterflies attracted, the harmonious patterns of color, light, and texture. This is as much about how to visualize a garden, as about particular trees, shrubs, vines, perennials, and annuals. Eclectic in its approach, citing poetry and quotations from Eastern and Western sources, it challenges us with an artist's eye while drawing from down-to-earth practical experience.

Illustrated in full color with the author's own exquisite drawings, containing twenty-two chapters that illuminate every aspect of garden planning and planting, this book recommends itself to gardeners seeking both sensible guidance and design inspiration.

Visit Kim Smith's website!