"This volume in the Critical Insights series presents a variety of new essays on 19th century Russian writing, traditionally referred to as the Golden Age of Russian literature. For readers who are studying it for the first time, several essays survey the critical conversation regarding this period, explore its cultural and historical contexts and offer close analytical and comparative reading of key texts. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of...

"I was scared of a thing that might have happened. In daytime I m sure it / never did. At night, I don t trust daylit memories or instincts. In nightmares, like / filmstrips, the feared thing occurs." In her second poetry collection, monsters real and imagined chase Houston Poet Laureate Gwendolyn Zepeda through late nights when she can t sleep. Ghosts routinely visit in the early morning hours, but in spite of her fears, she dares to believe that...

"In How Would Buddha Act?, best-selling author Barbara Ann Kipfer offers a unique, modern take on the ancient teachings of Right Action--the Buddhist concept of acting in loving, compassionate ways and responding to others with the intention of doing no harm. In the book, you'll learn that every thought, word, and deed has a consequence, and that by trying to be a better person in day-to-day life, you will be taking meaningful steps toward true enlightenment....

"From her youth, Mary Shelley immersed herself in the social contract tradition, particularly the educational and political theories of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as the radical philosophies of her parents, the feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the anarchist William Godwin. Against this background, Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus, first published in 1818. In the two centuries since, her masterpiece has been...

Short stories and comics about infatuations with baristas and other coffee shop workers.

"Big government, big business, big everything: Kirkpatrick Sale took giantism to task in his 1980 classic, Human Scale, and today takes a new look at how the crises that imperil modern America are the inevitable result of bigness grown out of control -- and what can be done about it. The result is a keenly updated, carefully argued case for bringing human endeavors back to scales we can comprehend and manage -- whether in our built environments, our...

"More Human is a groundbreaking manifesto that ranges across many aspects of life--from food to government, the economy to health care--to argue that we need to redesign, reorganize, and reconsider our world in terms more suited to the way we truly, naturally, humanly are. It talks about how to make our institutions more human, our products and services more human, and even our buildings more human. Something's gone wrong with the way we're meant...

Deployed to Iraq in March 2004 after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, US Marine Michael Zacchea thought he had landed a plum assignment. His team's mission was to build, train, and lead in combat the first Iraqi Army battalion trained by the US military. Quickly, he realized he was faced with a nearly impossible task. With just two weeks' training based on outdated and irrelevant materials, no language instruction, and few cultural tips for interacting...