My Invented Life

Download My Invented Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Henry Holt and Company (BYR)
ISBN 13 : 1429960965
Total Pages : 241 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Invented Life by : Lauren Bjorkman

Download or read book My Invented Life written by Lauren Bjorkman and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2009-09-29 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Roz and Eva everything becomes a contest—who can snag the best role in the school play, have the cutest boyfriend, pull off the craziest prank. Still, they're as close as sisters can be. Until Eva deletes Roz from her life like so much junk e-mail for no reason that Roz understands. Now Eva hangs out with the annoyingly petite cheerleaders, and Roz fantasizes about slipping bovine growth hormone into their Gatorade. Roz has a suspicion about Eva. In turn, Eva taunts Roz with a dare, which leads to an act of total insanity. Drama geeks clamor for attention, Shakespearean insults fly, and Roz steals the show in Lauren Bjorkman's hilarious debut novel.

My Invented Country

Download My Invented Country PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063049686
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (63 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Invented Country by : Isabel Allende

Download or read book My Invented Country written by Isabel Allende and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly personal memoir of exile and homeland by bestselling author Isabel Allende In My Invented Country Isabel Allende evokes the magnificent landscapes of her country, a charming, idiosyncratic Chilean people with a violent history and indomitable spirit, and the politics, religion, myth and magic of her homeland that she carries with her even today. The book circles around two life-changing moments. The assassination of her uncle, Salvador Allende Gossens, on September 11, 1973, sent her into exile and transformed her into a literary writer. And the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on her adopted homeland, the United States, brought forth from Allende an overdue acknowledgment that she had indeed left home. My Invented Country, whose structure mimics the workings of memory itself, ranges back and forth across that distance accrued between the author’s past and present lives. It speaks compellingly to immigrants, and to all of us, who try to retain a coherent inner life in a world full of contradictions.

Mi Pais Inventado

Download Mi Pais Inventado PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781531182694
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (826 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mi Pais Inventado by :

Download or read book Mi Pais Inventado written by and published by . This book was released on with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Invented Lives

Download Invented Lives PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 618 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Invented Lives by : James R. Mellow

Download or read book Invented Lives written by James R. Mellow and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creates a portrait of one of America's legendary literary couples utilizing correspondence of many of their contemporaries.

John Aubrey, My Own Life

Download John Aubrey, My Own Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1681370425
Total Pages : 545 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (813 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis John Aubrey, My Own Life by : Ruth Scurr

Download or read book John Aubrey, My Own Life written by Ruth Scurr and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 545 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A game-changer in the world of biography.” —Mary Beard, The Guardian Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award Born on the brink of the modern world, John Aubrey was witness to the great intellectual and political upheavals of the seventeenth century. He knew everyone of note in England—writers, philosophers, mathematicians, doctors, astrologers, lawyers, statesmen—and wrote about them all, leaving behind a great gift to posterity: a compilation of biographical information titled Brief Lives, which in a strikingly modest and radical way invented the art of biography. Aubrey was born in Wiltshire, England, in 1626. The reign of Queen Elizabeth and, earlier, the dissolution of the monasteries were not too far distant in memory during his boyhood. He lived through England’s Civil War, the execution of Charles I, the brief rule of Oliver Cromwell and his son, and the restoration of Charles II. Experiencing these constitutional crises and regime changes, Aubrey was impassioned by the preservation of traces of Ancient Britain, of English monuments, manor houses, monasteries, abbeys, and churches. He was a natural philosopher, an antiquary, a book collector, and a chronicler of the world around him and of the lives of his friends, both men and women. His method of writing was characteristic of his manner: modest, self-deprecating, witty, and concerned above all with the collection of facts that would otherwise be lost to time. John Aubrey, My Own Life is an extraordinary book about the first modern biographer, which reimagines what biography can be. This intimate diary of Aubrey’s days is composed of his own words, collected, collated, and enlarged upon by Ruth Scurr in an act of meticulous scholarship and daring imagination. Scurr’s biography honors and echoes Aubrey’s own innovations in the art of biography. Rather than subject his life to a conventional narrative, Scurr has collected the evidence—the remnants of a life from manuscripts, letters, and books—and arranged it chronologically, modernizing words and spellings, and adding explanations when necessary, with sources provided in the extensive endnotes. Here are Aubrey’s intricate drawings of Stonehenge and the ancient Avebury stones; Aubrey on Charles I’s execution (“On this day, the King was executed. It was bitter cold, so he wore two heavy shirts, lest he should shiver and seem afraid”); and Aubrey on antiquity (“Matters of antiquity are like the light after sunset—clear at first—but by and by crepusculum—the twilight—comes—then total darkness”). From the darkness, Scurr has wrested a vibrant, intimate account of the life of an ingenious man.

I Am Radar

Download I Am Radar PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0698168844
Total Pages : 699 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (981 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis I Am Radar by : Reif Larsen

Download or read book I Am Radar written by Reif Larsen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 699 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Washington Post "[G]randly ambitious... another masterpiece... this genre includes some of the greatest novels of our time, from Pynchon’s V. to David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. That’s the troupe Larsen has decided to join, and I Am Radar is a dazzling performance." The moment just before Radar Radmanovic is born, all of the hospital’s electricity mysteriously fails. The delivery takes place in total darkness. Lights back on, the staff sees a healthy baby boy—with pitch-black skin—born to the stunned white parents. No one understands the uncanny electrical event or the unexpected skin color. “A childbirth is an explosion,” the ancient physician says by way of explanation. “Some shrapnel is inevitable, isn’t it?” A kaleidoscopic novel both heartbreaking and dazzling, Reif Larsen’s I Am Radar begins with Radar’s perplexing birth but rapidly explodes outward, carrying readers across the globe and throughout history, as well as to unknown regions where radio waves and subatomic particles dance to their own design. Spanning this extraordinary range with grace and empathy, humor and courage, I Am Radar is the vessel where a century of conflict and art unite in a mesmerizing narrative whole. Deep in arctic Norway, a cadre of Norwegian schoolteachers is imprisoned during the Second World War. Founding a radical secret society that will hover on the margins of recorded history for decades to come, these schoolteachers steal radioactive material from a hidden Nazi nuclear reactor and use it to stage a surreal art performance on a frozen coastline. This strange society appears again in the aftermath of Cambodia’s murderous Khmer Rouge regime, when another secret performance takes place but goes horrifically wrong. Echoes of this disaster can be heard during the Yugoslavian wars, when an avant-garde puppeteer finds himself trapped inside Belgrade while his brother serves in the genocidal militia that attacks Srebrenica. Decades later, in the war-torn Congo, a disfigured literature professor assembles the largest library in the world even as the country around him collapses. All of these stories are linked by Radar—now a gifted radio operator living in the New Jersey Meadowlands—who struggles with love, a set of hapless parents,and a terrible medical affliction that he has only just begun to comprehend. As I Am Radar accelerates toward its unforgettable conclusion, these divergent strands slowly begin to converge, revealing that beneath our apparent differences, unseen harmonies secretly unite our lives. Drawing on the furthest reaches of quantum physics, forgotten history, and mind-bending art, Larsen’s I Am Radar is a triumph of storytelling at its most primal, elegant, and epic: a breathtaking journey through humanity’s darkest hours only to arrive at a place of shocking wonder and redemption. Cleveland Plain-Dealer "Larsen’s is an extraordinarily lush and verdant imagination, blooming wildly on the borders of the absurd and the riotous, the surreal and the ordinary…Quite unlike any [novel] I’ve read in a long time. One doesn’t consume it; one enters it, as part of a literary enactment… Brilliant…The effort is well-rewarded: It is both maddening and marvelous…I can’t wait to see what he pulls off next."

An Invented Life

Download An Invented Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 9780201632125
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (321 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis An Invented Life by : Warren G. Bennis

Download or read book An Invented Life written by Warren G. Bennis and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 1993-04-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays over a lifetime of experience from one of America's most respected authorities on business leadership. This collection spans three decades--covering such revolutions as the information explosion, Watergate, the emergence of Japan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union--and it shows how the ability to adapt, live with ambiguity, and to see new problems creatively is the essence of leadership.

My Life on the Road

Download My Life on the Road PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0812988353
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Life on the Road by : Gloria Steinem

Download or read book My Life on the Road written by Gloria Steinem and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Gloria Steinem—writer, activist, organizer, and inspiring leader—tells a story she has never told before, a candid account of her life as a traveler, a listener, and a catalyst for change. ONE OF O: THE OPRAH MAGAZINE’S TEN FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR | NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Harper’s Bazaar • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • Publishers Weekly When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel. Taking to the road—by which I mean letting the road take you—changed who I thought I was. The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories—in short, out of our heads and into our hearts. Gloria Steinem had an itinerant childhood. When she was a young girl, her father would pack the family in the car every fall and drive across country searching for adventure and trying to make a living. The seeds were planted: Gloria realized that growing up didn’t have to mean settling down. And so began a lifetime of travel, of activism and leadership, of listening to people whose voices and ideas would inspire change and revolution. My Life on the Road is the moving, funny, and profound story of Gloria’s growth and also the growth of a revolutionary movement for equality—and the story of how surprising encounters on the road shaped both. From her first experience of social activism among women in India to her work as a journalist in the 1960s; from the whirlwind of political campaigns to the founding of Ms. magazine; from the historic 1977 National Women’s Conference to her travels through Indian Country—a lifetime spent on the road allowed Gloria to listen and connect deeply with people, to understand that context is everything, and to become part of a movement that would change the world. In prose that is revealing and rich, Gloria reminds us that living in an open, observant, and “on the road” state of mind can make a difference in how we learn, what we do, and how we understand each other. Praise for My Life on the Road “This legendary feminist makes a compelling case for traveling as listening: a way of letting strangers’ stories flow, as she puts it, ‘out of our heads and into our hearts.’”—People “Like Steinem herself, [My Life on the Road] is thoughtful and astonishingly humble. It is also filled with a sense of the momentous while offering deeply personal insights into what shaped her.”—O: The Oprah Magazine “A lyrical meditation on restlessness and the quest for equity . . . Part of the appeal of My Life is how Steinem, with evocative, melodic prose, conveys the air of discovery and wonder she felt during so many of her journeys. . . . The lessons imparted in Life on the Road offer more than a reminiscence. They are a beacon of hope for the future.”—USA Today “A warmly companionable look back at nearly five decades as itinerant feminist organizer and standard-bearer. If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to sit down with Ms. Steinem for a casual dinner, this disarmingly intimate book gives a pretty good idea, mixing hard-won pragmatic lessons with more inspirational insights.”—The New York Times “Steinem rocks. My Life on the Road abounds with fresh insights and is as populist as can be.”—The Boston Globe

13 Treasures

Download 13 Treasures PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Hachette+ORM
ISBN 13 : 0316088773
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (16 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis 13 Treasures by : Michelle Harrison

Download or read book 13 Treasures written by Michelle Harrison and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tanya is no ordinary girl. She can see fairies. But not the fairies we imagine. Evil fairies who cast spells on her, rousing her from her sleep and propelling her out of bed. At wit's end with her daughter's inexplicable behavior, Tanya's mother sends her away to live with her grandmother at Elvesden Manor, a secluded countryside mansion on the outskirts of a peculiar Essex town. There is plenty to explore, as long as Tanya stays away from Hangman's Wood- a vast stretch of forest, full of catacombs and notorious for people losing their lives. Fifty years ago a girl vanished in the woods, a girl Tanya's grandmother will not speak of. As Tanya learns more about this girl, she finds herself dangerously close to vanishing into the fairy realm forever. Debut author Michelle Harrison weaves an intricate mystery into a beautiful and haunting fantasy that captures a rich world of fairy lore where only the color red can offer protection.

Invented Lives

Download Invented Lives PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Scribe Publications
ISBN 13 : 192569349X
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (256 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Invented Lives by : Andrea Goldsmith

Download or read book Invented Lives written by Andrea Goldsmith and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Knowing what you want is hard. Accepting what is possible is harder still … It is the mid-1980s. In Australia, stay-at-home wives jostle with want-it-all feminists, while AIDS threatens the sexual freedom of everyone. On the other side of the world, the Soviet bloc is in turmoil. Mikhail Gorbachev has been in power for a year when twenty-four-year-old book illustrator Galina Kogan leaves Leningrad — forbidden ever to return. As a Jew, she’s inherited several generations worth of Russia’s chronic anti-Semitism. As a Soviet citizen, she is unprepared for Australia and its easy-going ways. Once settled in Melbourne, Galina is befriended by Sylvie and Leonard Morrow, and their adult son, Andrew. The Morrow marriage of thirty years balances on secrets. Leonard is a man with conflicted desires and passions, while Sylvie chafes against the confines of domestic life. Their son, Andrew, a successful mosaicist, is a deeply shy man. He is content with his life and work — until he finds himself increasingly drawn to Galina. While Galina grapples with the tumultuous demands that come with being an immigrant in Australia, her presence disrupts the lives of each of the Morrows. No one is left unchanged. Invented Lives tells a story of exile: exile from country, exile at home, and exile from one’s true self. It is also a story about love.

This Book Will Save Your Life

Download This Book Will Save Your Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780143038740
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (387 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis This Book Will Save Your Life by : A.M. Homes

Download or read book This Book Will Save Your Life written by A.M. Homes and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-04-03 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since her debut in 1989, A. M. Homes, author of the forthcoming novel The Unfolding, has been among the boldest and most original voices of her generation, acclaimed for the psychological accuracy and unnerving emotional intensity of her storytelling. Her ability to explore how extraordinary the ordinary can be is at the heart of her touching and funny new novel, her first in six years. This Book Will Save Your Life is a vivid, uplifting, and revealing story about compassion, transformation, and what can happen if you are willing to lose yourself and open up to the world around you.

I Invented the Modern Age

Download I Invented the Modern Age PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1451645570
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (516 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis I Invented the Modern Age by : Richard Snow

Download or read book I Invented the Modern Age written by Richard Snow and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of Henry Ford and his invention of the Model-T, the machine that defined twentieth-century America.

Models of My Life

Download Models of My Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026269185X
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (626 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Models of My Life by : Herbert A. Simon

Download or read book Models of My Life written by Herbert A. Simon and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1996-10-08 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this candid and witty autobiography, Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon looks at his distinguished and varied career, continually asking himself whether (and how) what he learned as a scientist helps to explain other aspects of his life. A brilliant polymath in an age of increasing specialization, Simon is one of those rare scholars whose work defines fields of inquiry. Crossing disciplinary lines in half a dozen fields, Simon's story encompasses an explosion in the information sciences, the transformation of psychology by the information-processing paradigm, and the use of computer simulation for modeling the behavior of highly complex systems. Simon's theory of bounded rationality led to a Nobel Prize in economics, and his work on building machines that think—based on the notion that human intelligence is the rule-governed manipulation of symbols—laid conceptual foundations for the new cognitive science. Subsequently, contrasting metaphors of the maze (Simon's view) and of the mind (neural nets) have dominated the artificial intelligence debate. There is also a warm account of his successful marriage and of an unconsummated love affair, letters to his children, columns, a short story, and political and personal intrigue in academe.

Fewer, Better Things

Download Fewer, Better Things PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1632869667
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (328 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Fewer, Better Things by : Glenn Adamson

Download or read book Fewer, Better Things written by Glenn Adamson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-08-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former director of the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, a timely and passionate case for the role of the well-designed object in the digital age. Curator and scholar Glenn Adamson opens Fewer, Better Things by contrasting his beloved childhood teddy bear to the smartphones and digital tablets children have today. He laments that many children and adults are losing touch with the material objects that have nurtured human development for thousands of years. The objects are still here, but we seem to care less and know less about them. In his presentations to groups, he often asks an audience member what he or she knows about the chair the person is sitting in. Few people know much more than whether it's made of wood, plastic, or metal. If we know little about how things are made, it's hard to remain connected to the world around us. Fewer, Better Things explores the history of craft in its many forms, explaining how raw materials, tools, design, and technique come together to produce beauty and utility in handmade or manufactured items. Whether describing the implements used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, the use of woodworking tools, or the use of new fabrication technologies, Adamson writes expertly and lovingly about the aesthetics of objects, and the care and attention that goes into producing them. Reading this wise and elegant book is a truly transformative experience.

My Ex-Life

Download My Ex-Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Flatiron Books
ISBN 13 : 1250122422
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Ex-Life by : Stephen McCauley

Download or read book My Ex-Life written by Stephen McCauley and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Bestseller Best Book of the Year: NPR, Shelf Awareness “I didn't know how much I needed a laugh until I began reading Stephen McCauley's new novel, My Ex-Life. This is the kind of witty, sparkling, sharp novel for which the verb ‘chortle’ was invented.” —Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air “McCauley fits neatly alongside Tom Perrotta and Maria Semple in the category of ‘Novelists You’d Most Like to Drive Across the Country With.’” —The New York Times Book Review David Hedges’s life is coming apart at the seams. His job helping San Francisco rich kids get into the colleges of their (parents’) choice is exasperating; his younger boyfriend has left him; and the beloved carriage house he rents is being sold. His solace is a Thai takeout joint that delivers 24/7. The last person he expects to hear from is Julie Fiske. It’s been decades since they’ve spoken, and he’s relieved to hear she’s recovered from her brief, misguided first marriage. To him. Julie definitely doesn’t have a problem with marijuana (she’s given it up completely, so it doesn’t matter if she gets stoned almost daily) and the Airbnb she’s running out of her seaside house north of Boston is neither shabby nor illegal. And she has two whole months to come up with the money to buy said house from her second husband before their divorce is finalized. She’d just like David’s help organizing college plans for her seventeen-year-old daughter. That would be Mandy. To quote Barry Manilow, Oh Mandy. While she knows she’s smarter than most of the kids in her school, she can’t figure out why she’s making so many incredibly dumb and increasingly dangerous choices? When David flies east, they find themselves living under the same roof (one David needs to repair). David and Julie pick up exactly where they left off thirty years ago—they’re still best friends who can finish each other’s sentences. But there’s one broken bit between them that no amount of home renovations will fix. In prose filled with hilarious and heartbreakingly accurate one-liners, Stephen McCauley has written a novel that examines how we define home, family, and love. Be prepared to laugh, shed a few tears, and have thoughts of your own ex-life triggered. (Throw pillows optional.)

An Invented Life

Download An Invented Life PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 0595201040
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (952 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis An Invented Life by : Edith Exton

Download or read book An Invented Life written by Edith Exton and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2001-09-26 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Invented Life is a story of spiritual and factual exile. It is the story of the Chertok family's life after the Russian Revolution in Eastern Europe and England told through Nina in her coming of age years between the two World Wars. Eminently readable, the book evokes the rich flavor and wit of pre-war Eastern European life in colorful descriptions of place, atmosphere and character. It also brings the reader face to face with the loss and disappearance of that world.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia (LOA #281)

Download Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia (LOA #281) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Library of America
ISBN 13 : 1598534947
Total Pages : 682 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (985 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia (LOA #281) by : Ursula K. Le Guin

Download or read book Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia (LOA #281) written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by Library of America. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Library of America gathers for the first time the entire body of work set in the imaginary central European nation of Orsinia—the enchanting, richly imagined historical fiction series written by Hugo, Nebula, and National Book Award winner Ursula K. Le Guin. In a career spanning half a century, Ursula K. Le Guin has produced a body of work that testifies to her abiding faith in the power and art of words. She is perhaps best known for imagining future intergalactic worlds in brilliant books that challenge our ideas of what is natural and inevitable in human relations—and that celebrate courage, endurance, risk-taking, and above all, freedom in the face of the psychological and social forces that lead to authoritarianism and fanaticism. It is less well known that she first developed these themes in the richly imagined historical fiction collected in this volume, which inaugurates the Library of America edition of her works. Written before Ursula K. Le Guin turned to science fiction, the novel Malafrena is a tale of love and duty set in the central European country of Orsinia in the early nineteenth century, when it is ruled by the Austrian empire. The stories originally published in Orsinian Tales (1976) offer brilliantly rendered episodes of personal drama set against a history that spans Orsinia’s emergence as an independent kingdom in the twelfth century to its absorption by the eastern Bloc after World War II. The volume is rounded out by two additional stories that bring the history of Orsinia up to 1989, the poem “Folksong from the Montayna Province,” Le Guin’s first published work, and two never-before-published songs in the Orisinian language. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.