It is remarkable how persistent a -minor- writer may be. He may lack the large vision and universal message of the great writer, but instead possess a clear, true, intense view of particular places, peoples, and situations that renders his work unique and irreplacable. Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) is such a figure in American literature. Best known as a scholar of Japanese culture, Hearn was a remarkable journalist, translator, travel writer, and perhaps second only to Poe in the literature of the macabre and supernatural. Hearn's life, as strange and colorful as his work, is brilliantly...
It is remarkable how persistent a -minor- writer may be. He may lack the large vision and universal message of the great writer, but instead possess a...
On April 28, 1858, municipal officials announced the winner of the design contest for a great new park for the people of New York City--Plan no. 33, "Greensward" by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Though the appropriated ground for what was to become Central Park was nothing more than a barren expanse occupied by squatters, in a matter of a few years, Olmsted turned the wasteland into a landscape of coherence, elegance, and beauty. It not only surpassed the design ingenuity of its existing European counterparts but gained the designer national acclaim in a profession that still lacked...
On April 28, 1858, municipal officials announced the winner of the design contest for a great new park for the people of New York City--Plan no. 33, "...
-Figures in a Western Landscape is an absolutely stunning book. A biographer's take on the story of the American West, it posits that the turns of history are based on people-major 'figures' who shape their time and place. In her sequence of biographical essays, Elizabeth Stevenson tells the story of the northern Rockies and, in particular, Montana, a state of mind even more than it is a state of the Union. As her readers have come to expect, she offers more than a mere recounting of events. Stevenson captures the humanity of her subjects.- -Charles Little, author of Louis Bromfield at...
-Figures in a Western Landscape is an absolutely stunning book. A biographer's take on the story of the American West, it posits that the turns of...
Babbitts and Bohemians is a fresh and informed account of the 1920s, a decade that seems almost mythical to some. Elizabeth Stevenson finds that the true twenties was a society of contrast. On the one hand, it was an era of sameness and political conformity, but on the other hand, it was also a time of cultural revolt. In places labeled Main Street and Middletown the citizenry followed a conventional pattern. At the same time, while most of America enjoyed the good life of this period, bohemians in Greenwich Village and expatriates in Paris were fervently...
Babbitts and Bohemians is a fresh and informed account of the 1920s, a decade that seems almost mythical to some. Elizabeth Stevenson finds that th...
