An exploration of the ideas, groupings and the social tensions that shaped the transformation of life caused by the changes of modernity in art, science, politics and philosophy.

In this Norwegian saga of restlessness, Hamsun presents young Edevart, a headstrong boy ill at ease with books, but fiercely self-determined and eager to escape his poor village of Polden. He becomes a close friend of August, a man-orphan, rootless, who sings fantastic tales of a wondrous world. In their years of seafaring, peddling, and raucous-raising-sometimes together, sometimes separated-Edevart grows in understanding, becoming a cunning businessman, experiencing the exhilaration and devastation of love and learning to enjoy the freedom of his wandering lifestyle. Nobel prize winner...

A riveting account of a landmark expedition that left only one survivor, now back in print for the first time in decades.

Arabia Felix is the spellbinding true story of a scientific expedition gone disastrously awry. On a winter morning in 1761 six men leave Copenhagen by sea--a botanist, a philologist, an astronomer, a doctor, an artist, and their manservant--an ill-assorted band of men who dislike and distrust one another from the start. These are the members of the Danish expedition to Arabia Felix, as Yemen was then known, the first organized foray into a...