美国冷战时期最致命的战役之一,在被俘虏前,比尔·理查森上校领导了阿拉莫式的保卫战,保卫了少数幸存者。朝鲜人把他们带到了零度以下的天气,没有食物,没有住所,没有医疗照顾,被称为死亡谷。理查森忍受着旨在打破身心的折磨,仍然坚强到足以带领战俘们抵抗、破坏和新的越狱计划。 《死亡之谷》是一个关于生存和决心的激动人心的故事,用他们自己的一句朴实无华的话,亲密地审视了美国第一次冷战战役的士兵。

Much of A.M. Klein's finest prose is to be found in the mass of uncompleted work that he abandoned at the time of his breakdown, and that became accessible only when his papers were deposited in the National Archives. Notebooks offers a generous selection of this work, revealing previously unsuspected facets of Klein's character and artistry. The fiction, criticism, and memoirs collected here focus on Klein's exploration of the role of the artist. The works illuminate crucial periods of his career, especially the early 19403, when he was transforming himself into a modernist, and the early 19503, when he was struggling to overcome the misgivings about his art that were to lead to his final breakdown. The semi-autobiographical text which Klein referred to as 'Raw Material' and the unfinished novel of prison life entitled 'Stranger and Afraid' cast a new light on Klein's often frustrating relationship with the Montreal Jewish community. In 'Marginalia' he discusses poetic form and technique and makes observations on the nature of poetry, thereby providing insights into his own concerns as a writer. In The Golem,' a profoundly ambiguous treatment of the act of creation, a selfportrait emerges of a storyteller who has lost faith in the power and value of his story. The volume includes a critical introduction, which places the material in the context of Klein's other works, as well as textual and explanatory notes. 'RAW MATERIAL' AND 'STRANGER AND AFRAID' 'Raw Material' and 'Stranger and Afraid' represent Klein's most ambitious and most revealing work at a crucial period in his career, the period between The Hitleriad and 'Portrait of the Poet as Landscape/ By the end of 1942, Klein had grown increasingly frustrated with the direction his career was taking. In the late thirties, after a silence of several years, he had returned to poetry, beginning with a number of political satires of a vaguely leftist cast. Soon, however, he turned to what was to be his central theme over the next few years, the Nazi threat to humanity, in general, and to the Jewish people, in particular. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage/ 'In Re Solomon Warshawer/ the psalms and ballads, and, finally, The Hitleriad all reflect this new concern. After completing The Hitleriad, Klein clearly felt the need to reassess his sense of himself as a poet, and, specifically, his relationship with the Jewish community to which most of the work of the preceding few years had been addressed. This reassessment is the central concern of a group of prose texts which Klein gathered together in a file he labelled 'Raw Material/ 'Raw Material' presents, especially in its later sections, a portrait of a profoundly frustrated poet, named Kay, whose poetry is of no interest to his community, which values only his hack work as a speech-writer and lecturer. Klein's anger at his community for failing to appreciate the true value of his work is expressed in a number of sardonic portraits of his family, his associates, and the Montreal Jewish community as a whole, revealing a side of him which one would hardly suspect from his published writings. But as important as 'Raw Material' is for the insights it offers into Klein's troubled relationship with his community, it is more than just a collection of thinly disguised autobiographical documents. 'Raw Material' consists of a variety of texts, some of which are not at all 'raw,' but highly polished works of literature, foreshadowing 'Portrait of the Poet as Landscape' in their symbolic and allusive exploration of the role of the poet in the modern world, and foreshadowing, as well, The Second Scroll, in their testing of the boundaries separating diary, memoir, fable, fiction, poetry, and poetic prose. Sometime in 1945, Klein decided to approach the issues explored in 'Raw Material' from an entirely new perspective. The result was an attempt at a prison novel, 'Stranger and Afraid/ There is evidence that Klein was already beginning to consider such a novel while he was still at work on 'Raw Material/3 and the close connection between 'Raw Material' and 'Stranger and Afraid' is reflected in the similarity between their central characters, Kay in the former and Drizen in the latter. (Drizen was actually named Kay in an early version of 'Stranger and Afraid/) As a convict imprisoned for a mysterious, unnamed crime, Drizen shares Kay's sense of impotence and vulner-UNTITLED NOVEL Klein's struggle, throughout the forties, to find alternatives to his increasingly frustrating role as a Jewish poet achieved its greatest success in the Quebec poems of The Rocking Chair, published in 1948. But, as Klein explained in a letter which he drafted that year to the American poet Karl Shapiro, recent xv 'THE GOLEM' The final years of Klein's career, following the publication of The Second Scroll in 1951, were increasingly dark ones. All of the old frustrations concerning his relationship to his community resurface more powerfully than ever in the most important works of the period. These include the essays 'The Bible Manuscripts,' 'The Bible's Archetypical Poet,' and 'In Praise of the Diaspora'; the short story 'The Bells of Sobor Spasitula'; a series of bleakly powerful translations from the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik; and, most importantly, the novel on which Klein was probably working at the time of his breakdown, The Golem.' 'The Golem' is Klein's last and most ambitious treatment of a legend to which he had turned several times throughout his career. The legend of the golem, a man created by magical art, is an ancient and widespread one in Jewish folklore, dating back at least to the Talmudic era.7 However, the bestknown version, and the one which forms the basis of Klein's novel, as of all modern treatments of the legend, is associated with Rabbi Judah Low ben Bezalel (c. 1525Bezalel (c. -1609)), the chief rabbi of Prague. Rabbi Low was a much revered figure in his day, but it was not until long after his death that he became associated with the golem legend. In early versions of the legend, Rabbi Low created the golem merely to act as a servant, but in Yudel Rosenberg's Niflaot Maharal im ha-Golem (1909), the golem is created to defend the Jews against accusations of ritual murder. This is a motif which has no precedent in the original legends; its invention is Rosenberg's response to ritual murder trials in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Europe. Klein probably knew Rosenberg's book -Rosenberg emigrated to Canada, where he became a prominent Montreal rabbi 8 -but, in any case, Klein's treatment of the legend, like others in the twentieth century, adopts the ritual murder motif. Klein was familiar with at least three other modern versions of the golem legend: the novels The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (1915) and The Golem of Prague by Chaim Bloch (1925), and the poetic drama The Golem by H. Leivick (1921). Meyrink's novel is mentioned in a note in the 'Golem' material [MS 3278], and Bloch's was a source for Klein's sonnet sequence Talisman in Seven Shreds' (c. i928/i93i).9 But only Leivick's drama, which Klein refers to in an article 'Welcome to Leivick ' [Canadian Jewish Chronicle, 28 April 1939, p. 4] and in notes for a lecture which he gave on Leivick on This passage is reminiscent of The Golem' in its use of the golem legend as a cautionary 'parable' about humanity's pride in its creative powers. In The Golem' Klein focuses on 'the creative act ' [MS 3573] in the artistic and, especially, the literary sense. He assigns a central role, without precedent in other treatments of the legend, to the self-consciously literary narrator, the

105 pages : 20 cm When Scooby-Doo and the gang arrive at Professor Dinkley's archaeological dig in Mexico, they find Velma's uncle missing, and the workers terrified of chupacabras and Aztec gods--and the reader must help them solve the mystery 007-012 GRL: R "Possible 13 endings." "Possible 13 endings." -When Scooby-Doo and the gang arrive at Professor Dinkley's archaeological dig in Mexico, they find Velma's uncle missing, and the workers terrified of chupacabras and Aztec gods -- and the reader must help them solve the mystery

The citizens of Henry Adams are starting to take betswill Lily Fontaine and Trent July finally tie the knot? All they want is a nice, simple wedding, but their well-meaning neighbors are turning the no-fuss affair into the event of the decade. Bernadine, the town's fairy godmother, wants Lily to have a storybook wedding fit for a princess, and Lily's nine-year-old foster son is campaigning to be town preacher so he can officiate at the ceremony. Trouble multiplies when Trent is called on to help a new family move to town, not to mention Lily and Trent's task of blending their families together. With the bustle of the tight-knit, and often tightly wound, friends and family pushing them to the breaking point, the couple begins to wish they'd eloped. But, as they'll soon be reminded, happiness in Henry Adams is meant to be shared. About the Author Beverly Jenkins has received numerous awards, including three Waldenbooks Best Sellers Awards, two Career Achievement Awards from Romantic Times magazine, and a Golden Pen Award from the Black Writer's Guild. Ms. Jenkins was voted one of the Top Fifty Favorite African-American writers of the twentieth century by AABLC, the nation's largest online African-American book club.

The citizens of Henry Adams are starting to take bets—will Lily Fontaine and Trent July finally tie the knot? All they want is a nice, simple wedding, but their well-meaning neighbors are turning the no-fuss affair into the event of the decade. Bernadine, the town's fairy godmother, wants Lily to have a storybook wedding fit for a princess, and Lily's nine-year-old foster son is campaigning to be town preacher so he can officiate at the ceremony. Trouble multiplies when Trent is called on to help a new family move to town, not to mention Lily and Trent's task of blending their families together. With the bustle of the tight-knit, and often tightly wound, friends and family pushing them to the breaking point, the couple begins to wish they'd eloped. But, as they'll soon be reminded, happiness in Henry Adams is meant to be shared. ϡ쯦랠

In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of forty-six years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath."My husband died, my life collapsed." On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced?totally unprepared?with the stunning reality of widowhood. A Widow's Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life without the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief?the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgment of the widow's desperation?only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now."Enlivened by the piercing vision, acute perception, and mordant humor that are the hallmarks of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, this moving tale of life and death, love and grief, offers a candid, never-before-glimpsed view of the acclaimed author and fiercely private woman

"Richardson never pulls his punches in these vivid descriptions." -- Publishers WeeklyCaught in the Chinese counterattack at Unsan-one of the deadliest American battles of the Cold War Era-Colonel Bill Richardson led an Alamo like defense of the few survivors before being taken prisoner. The North Koreans marched them through sub-zero weather without food, shelter, or medical attention to the area known as Death Valley. Enduring torture designed to break the mind and body, Richardson remained strong enough to lead his fellow prisoners in resistance, sabotage, and new plans for escape.Valleys of Death is a stirring story of survival and determination, an intimate look at the soldiers who fought America's first battle of the cold war in the unvarnished words of one of their own.From Publishers Weekly

__Alien Albion__challenges assumptions about the origins of English national identity and the importance of religious, class, and local identities in the early modern era.

Luminous and intensely personal, Art and Madness recounts the lost years of Anne Roiphe’s twenties, when the soon-to-be-critically-acclaimed author put her dreams of becoming a writer on hold to devote herself to the magnetic but coercive male artists of the period. Coming of age in the 1950s, Roiphe, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, grew up on Park Avenue and had an adolescence defined by privilege, petticoats, and social rules. At Smith College her classmates wore fraternity pins on their cashmere sweaters and knit argyle socks for their boyfriends during lectures. Young women were expected to give up personal freedom for devotion to home and children. Instead, Roiphe chose Beckett, Proust, Sartre, and Mann as her heroes and sought out the chaos of New York’s White Horse Tavern and West End Bar. She was unmoored and uncertain, “waiting for a wisp of truth, a feather’s brush of beauty, a moment of insight.” Salvation came in the form of a brilliant playwright whom she married and worked to support, even after he left her alone on their honeymoon and later pawned her family silver, china, and pearls. Her near-religious belief in the power of art induced her to overlook his infidelity and alcoholism, and to dutifully type his manuscripts in place of writing her own. During an era that idolized its male writers, she became, sometimes with her young child in tow, one of the girls draped across the sofa at parties with George Plimpton, Terry Southern, Doc Humes, Norman Mailer, Peter Matthiessen, and William Styron. In the Hamptons she socialized with Larry Rivers, Jack Gelber and other painters and sculptors. “Moderation for most of us is a most unnatural condition . . . . I preferred to burn out like a brilliant firecracker.” But while she was playing the muse reality beckoned, forcing her to confront the notion that any sacrifice was worth making for art. Art and Madness recounts the fascinating evolution of a time when art and alcohol and rebellion caused collateral damage and sometimes produced extraordinary work. In clear-sighted, perceptive, and unabashed prose, Roiphe shares with astonishing honesty the tumultuous adventure of self-discovery that finally led to her redemption.

Much of A.M. Klein's finest prose is to be found in the mass of uncompleted work that he abandoned at the time of his breakdown, and that became accessible only when his papers were deposited in the National Archives. Notebooks offers a generous selection of this work, revealing previously unsuspected facets of Klein's character and artistry. The fiction, criticism, and memoirs collected here focus on Klein's exploration of the role of the artist. The works illuminate crucial periods of his career, especially the early 19403, when he was transforming himself into a modernist, and the early 19503, when he was struggling to overcome the misgivings about his art that were to lead to his final breakdown. The semi-autobiographical text which Klein referred to as 'Raw Material' and the unfinished novel of prison life entitled 'Stranger and Afraid' cast a new light on Klein's often frustrating relationship with the Montreal Jewish community. In 'Marginalia' he discusses poetic form and technique and makes observations on the nature of poetry, thereby providing insights into his own concerns as a writer. In The Golem,' a profoundly ambiguous treatment of the act of creation, a selfportrait emerges of a storyteller who has lost faith in the power and value of his story. The volume includes a critical introduction, which places the material in the context of Klein's other works, as well as textual and explanatory notes. 'RAW MATERIAL' AND 'STRANGER AND AFRAID' 'Raw Material' and 'Stranger and Afraid' represent Klein's most ambitious and most revealing work at a crucial period in his career, the period between The Hitleriad and 'Portrait of the Poet as Landscape/ By the end of 1942, Klein had grown increasingly frustrated with the direction his career was taking. In the late thirties, after a silence of several years, he had returned to poetry, beginning with a number of political satires of a vaguely leftist cast. Soon, however, he turned to what was to be his central theme over the next few years, the Nazi threat to humanity, in general, and to the Jewish people, in particular. 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage/ 'In Re Solomon Warshawer/ the psalms and ballads, and, finally, The Hitleriad all reflect this new concern. After completing The Hitleriad, Klein clearly felt the need to reassess his sense of himself as a poet, and, specifically, his relationship with the Jewish community to which most of the work of the preceding few years had been addressed. This reassessment is the central concern of a group of prose texts which Klein gathered together in a file he labelled 'Raw Material/ 'Raw Material' presents, especially in its later sections, a portrait of a profoundly frustrated poet, named Kay, whose poetry is of no interest to his community, which values only his hack work as a speech-writer and lecturer. Klein's anger at his community for failing to appreciate the true value of his work is expressed in a number of sardonic portraits of his family, his associates, and the Montreal Jewish community as a whole, revealing a side of him which one would hardly suspect from his published writings. But as important as 'Raw Material' is for the insights it offers into Klein's troubled relationship with his community, it is more than just a collection of thinly disguised autobiographical documents. 'Raw Material' consists of a variety of texts, some of which are not at all 'raw,' but highly polished works of literature, foreshadowing 'Portrait of the Poet as Landscape' in their symbolic and allusive exploration of the role of the poet in the modern world, and foreshadowing, as well, The Second Scroll, in their testing of the boundaries separating diary, memoir, fable, fiction, poetry, and poetic prose. Sometime in 1945, Klein decided to approach the issues explored in 'Raw Material' from an entirely new perspective. The result was an attempt at a prison novel, 'Stranger and Afraid/ There is evidence that Klein was already beginning to consider such a novel while he was still at work on 'Raw Material/3 and the close connection between 'Raw Material' and 'Stranger and Afraid' is reflected in the similarity between their central characters, Kay in the former and Drizen in the latter. (Drizen was actually named Kay in an early version of 'Stranger and Afraid/) As a convict imprisoned for a mysterious, unnamed crime, Drizen shares Kay's sense of impotence and vulner-UNTITLED NOVEL Klein's struggle, throughout the forties, to find alternatives to his increasingly frustrating role as a Jewish poet achieved its greatest success in the Quebec poems of The Rocking Chair, published in 1948. But, as Klein explained in a letter which he drafted that year to the American poet Karl Shapiro, recent xv 'THE GOLEM' The final years of Klein's career, following the publication of The Second Scroll in 1951, were increasingly dark ones. All of the old frustrations concerning his relationship to his community resurface more powerfully than ever in the most important works of the period. These include the essays 'The Bible Manuscripts,' 'The Bible's Archetypical Poet,' and 'In Praise of the Diaspora'; the short story 'The Bells of Sobor Spasitula'; a series of bleakly powerful translations from the Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik; and, most importantly, the novel on which Klein was probably working at the time of his breakdown, The Golem.' 'The Golem' is Klein's last and most ambitious treatment of a legend to which he had turned several times throughout his career. The legend of the golem, a man created by magical art, is an ancient and widespread one in Jewish folklore, dating back at least to the Talmudic era.7 However, the bestknown version, and the one which forms the basis of Klein's novel, as of all modern treatments of the legend, is associated with Rabbi Judah Low ben Bezalel (c. 1525Bezalel (c. -1609)), the chief rabbi of Prague. Rabbi Low was a much revered figure in his day, but it was not until long after his death that he became associated with the golem legend. In early versions of the legend, Rabbi Low created the golem merely to act as a servant, but in Yudel Rosenberg's Niflaot Maharal im ha-Golem (1909), the golem is created to defend the Jews against accusations of ritual murder. This is a motif which has no precedent in the original legends; its invention is Rosenberg's response to ritual murder trials in late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century Europe. Klein probably knew Rosenberg's book -Rosenberg emigrated to Canada, where he became a prominent Montreal rabbi 8 -but, in any case, Klein's treatment of the legend, like others in the twentieth century, adopts the ritual murder motif. Klein was familiar with at least three other modern versions of the golem legend: the novels The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (1915) and The Golem of Prague by Chaim Bloch (1925), and the poetic drama The Golem by H. Leivick (1921). Meyrink's novel is mentioned in a note in the 'Golem' material [MS 3278], and Bloch's was a source for Klein's sonnet sequence Talisman in Seven Shreds' (c. i928/i93i).9 But only Leivick's drama, which Klein refers to in an article 'Welcome to Leivick ' [Canadian Jewish Chronicle, 28 April 1939, p. 4] and in notes for a lecture which he gave on Leivick on This passage is reminiscent of The Golem' in its use of the golem legend as a cautionary 'parable' about humanity's pride in its creative powers. In The Golem' Klein focuses on 'the creative act ' [MS 3573] in the artistic and, especially, the literary sense. He assigns a central role, without precedent in other treatments of the legend, to the self-consciously literary narrator, the

'Richardson never pulls his punches in these vivid descriptions.'--Publishers Weekly Caught in the Chinese counterattack at Unsan-one of the deadliest American battles of the Cold War Era-Colonel Bill Richardson led an Alamo like defense of the few survivors before being taken prisoner. The North Koreans marched them through sub-zero weather without food, shelter, or medical attention to the area known as Death Valley. Enduring torture designed to break the mind and body, Richardson remained strong enough to lead his fellow prisoners in resistance, sabotage, and new plans for escape.Valleys of Death is a stirring story of survival and determination, an intimate look at the soldiers who fought America's first battle of the cold war in the unvarnished words of one of their own.

<P>Many of the letters in this volume, which covers the period August 1530 to March 1531, reflect Erasmus' anxieties over events at the Diet of Augsburg (June-November 1530), at which the first of many attempts to achieve a negotiated settlement of the religious division in Germany came to a rancorous conclusion, thus fostering the fear that religious controversy would eventually lead to war. His other chief concerns were the continued attacks on him by Catholic critics who regarded him as a clandestine Lutheran, and the insistence of many evangelical reformers that he was their spiritual father. The literary output of the period covered includes major works aimed at members of both groups.</P> <P>Volume 17 of the <I>Collected Works of Erasmus</I> series.</P>

Holler Loudly has a voice as big as the southwestern sky, and everywhere he goes, people tell him to "Hush!" From math class to the movies and even the state fair, Holler's LOUD voice just keeps getting him into trouble. But when a huge tornado comes twisting into town, Holler (with that voice of his!) saves the day. Readers will cheer for this rollicking story about celebrating our unique gifts, and Barry Gott's bright, fun illustrations will have you hollering for more.

Luminous and intensely personal, Art and Madness recounts the lost years of Anne Roiphe's twenties, when the soon-to-be-critically-acclaimed author put her dreams of becoming a writer on hold to devote herself to the magnetic but coercive male artists of the period. Coming of age in the 1950s, Roiphe, the granddaughter of Jewish immigrants, grew up on Park Avenue and had an adolescence defined by privilege, petticoats, and social rules. At Smith College her classmates wore fraternity pins on their cashmere sweaters and knit argyle socks for their boyfriends during lectures. Young women were expected to give up personal freedom for devotion to home and children. Instead, Roiphe chose Beckett, Proust, Sartre, and Mann as her heroes and sought out the chaos of New York's White Horse Tavern and West End Bar. She was unmoored and uncertain, “waiting for a wisp of truth, a feather's brush of beauty, a moment of insight.” Salvation came in the form of a brilliant playwright whom she married and worked to support, even after he left her alone on their honeymoon and later pawned her family silver, china, and pearls. Her near-religious belief in the power of art induced her to overlook his infidelity and alcoholism, and to dutifully type his manuscripts in place of writing her own. During an era that idolized its male writers, she became, sometimes with her young child in tow, one of the girls draped across the sofa at parties with George Plimpton, Terry Southern, Doc Humes, Norman Mailer, Peter Matthiessen, and William Styron. In the Hamptons she socialized with Larry Rivers, Jack Gelber and other painters and sculptors. “Moderation for most of us is a most unnatural condition.... I preferred to burn out like a brilliant firecracker.” But while she was playing the muse reality beckoned, forcing her to confront the notion that any sacrifice was worth making for art. Art and Madness recounts the fascinating evolution of a time when art and alcohol and rebellion caused collateral damage and sometimes produced extraordinary work. In clear-sighted, perceptive, and unabashed prose, Roiphe shares with astonishing honesty the tumultuous adventure of self-discovery that finally led to her redemption.

__Italian Women Writers__ looks at the work of three of the most significant women in late nineteenth century Italywhose domestic fiction and journalism addressed a growing female readership.

__Italian Women Writers__ looks at the work of three of the most significant women in late nineteenth century Italywhose domestic fiction and journalism addressed a growing female readership.

__Reflections on Native-Newcomer Relations__ opens up for discussion a series of issues in Native-newcomer history. It addresses all the trends in the discipline of the past two decades and never shies from showing their contradictions, as well as those in the author's own thinking as he matured as a scholar.

From Publishers Weekly Early one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Starred Review Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates� powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a �secondary infection� while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific �siege� of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of �death-duties,� painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a �good widow� and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish �sympathy gifts� and the attendant trash with a �widow�s slapstick-comedy.� In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973�1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound �pilgrimage� from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion�s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widows Story is the universally acclaimed author's poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels ( Blonde , The Gravediggers Daughter , Little Bird of Heaven , etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, offers an achingly personal story of love and loss. A Widows Story is a literary memoir on a par with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Calvin Trillins About Alice .

From Publishers Weekly Early one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Starred Review Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman Death,Joyce Carol - Family,Husband and wife,Smith,Bereavement,Literary,Loss (Psychology),Widows - United States,Raymond - Death and burial,American - 20th century - Family relationships,Grief,Women Authors,Authors,Oates,Husband and wife - United States,United States,Family & Relationships,Personal Memoirs,20th century,American,General,Literary Criticism,Biography & Autobiography,Widows,Biography

Unlike anything Joyce Carol Oates has written before, A Widows Story is the universally acclaimed author's poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of Raymond Smith, her husband of forty-six years, and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. A recent recipient of National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, Oates, whose novels ( Blonde , The Gravediggers Daughter , Little Bird of Heaven , etc.) rank among the very finest in contemporary American fiction, offers an achingly personal story of love and loss. A Widows Story is a literary memoir on a par with The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and Calvin Trillins About Alice .

Velma's uncle, a famous archeologist, asks the gang to visit his dig site in Mexico. It seems something is scaring his workers, and he needs to get to the bottom of it. But when Scooby-Doo and the gang arrives, the dig is empty and Velma's uncle is missing! Where did he go and what's scaring everyone? To solve the mystery, readers choose which characters to follow, discovering what seems to be Aztec ghosts and monsters along the way.

From Publishers WeeklyEarly one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. FromStarred Review Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

From Publishers WeeklyEarly one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. FromStarred Review Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

From Publishers WeeklyEarly one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. FromStarred Review Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

From Publishers WeeklyEarly one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. FromStarred Review Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

<blockquote> <p>The citizens of Henry Adams are starting to take bets—will Lily Fontaine and Trent July finally tie the knot?</p> </blockquote> <p>All they want is a nice, simple wedding, but their well-meaning neighbors are turning the no-fuss affair into the event of the decade. Bernadine, the town's fairy godmother, wants Lily to have a storybook wedding fit for a princess, and Lily's nine-year-old foster son is campaigning to be town preacher so he can officiate at the ceremony. Trouble multiplies when Trent is called on to help a new family move to town, not to mention Lily and Trent's task of blending their families together.</p> <p>With the bustle of the tight-knit, and often tightly wound, friends and family pushing them to the breaking point, the couple begins to wish they'd eloped. But, as they'll soon be reminded, happiness in Henry Adams is meant to be shared.</p>

From Publishers Weekly Early one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Booklist \*Starred Review\* Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

The citizens of Henry Adams are starting to take bets—will Lily Fontaine and Trent July finally tie the knot? All they want is a nice, simple wedding, but their well-meaning neighbors are turning the no-fuss affair into the event of the decade. Bernadine, the town's fairy godmother, wants Lily to have a storybook wedding fit for a princess, and Lily's nine-year-old foster son is campaigning to be town preacher so he can officiate at the ceremony. Trouble multiplies when Trent is called on to help a new family move to town, not to mention Lily and Trent's task of blending their families together. With the bustle of the tight-knit, and often tightly wound, friends and family pushing them to the breaking point, the couple begins to wish they'd eloped. But, as they'll soon be reminded, happiness in Henry Adams is meant to be shared. ϡ쯦랠

<blockquote> <p>The citizens of Henry Adams are starting to take bets—will Lily Fontaine and Trent July finally tie the knot?</p> </blockquote> <p>All they want is a nice, simple wedding, but their well-meaning neighbors are turning the no-fuss affair into the event of the decade. Bernadine, the town's fairy godmother, wants Lily to have a storybook wedding fit for a princess, and Lily's nine-year-old foster son is campaigning to be town preacher so he can officiate at the ceremony. Trouble multiplies when Trent is called on to help a new family move to town, not to mention Lily and Trent's task of blending their families together.</p> <p>With the bustle of the tight-knit, and often tightly wound, friends and family pushing them to the breaking point, the couple begins to wish they'd eloped. But, as they'll soon be reminded, happiness in Henry Adams is meant to be shared.</p>

Beloved bestselling author Beverly Jenkins introduced readers to the delightful town of Henry Adams and its unforgettable residents in Bring on the Blessings and returned for another visit in A Second Helping . Now she brings us back to the people we have grown to love in Something Old, Something New �this time for a long-awaited wedding that will live forever in our hearts!� Already one of the premier names in African-American historical romance fiction and thrilling contemporary romantic suspense, Jenkins is a wonderfully versatile storyteller who enchants with this poignant, heartwarming, and funny tale about the joys and trials of a uniquely endearing community that fans of Kimberla Lawson Roby and Angela Benson will especially appreciate. ** From the Back Cover

From Publishers Weekly Early one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Booklist \*Starred Review\* Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

<p>Paul Ricoeur is one of the most important modern literary theorists and a philosopher of world renown. This collection brings together his published articles, papers, reviews, and interviews that focus on literary theory and criticism.</p> <p>The first of four sections includes early pieces that explore the philosophical foundations for a post-structural hermeneutics. The second contains reviews and essays in which Ricoeur engages in debate over some of the central themes of literary theory, including figuration/configuration and narrativity. In the third section are later essays on post-structuralist hermeneutics, and in the fourth, interviews in which he discusses text, language, and myths. Mario Valdés provides an introduction to the literary theories of Paul Ricoeur and the works in this collection particularly. He also includes a complete bibliography of Ricoeur's works that have appeared in English.</p>

From Publishers Weekly Early one morning in February 2008, Oates drove her husband, Raymond Smith, to the Princeton Medical Center where he was admitted with pneumonia. There, he developed a virulent opportunistic infection and died just one week later. Suddenly and unexpectedly alone, Oates staggered through her days and nights trying desperately just to survive Smith's death and the terrifying loneliness that his death brought. In her typically probing fashion, Oates navigates her way through the choppy waters of widowhood, at first refusing to accept her new identity as a widow. She wonders if there is a perspective from which the widow's grief is sheer vanity, this pretense that one's loss is so very special that there has never been a loss quite like it. In the end, Oates finds meaning, much like many of Tolstoy's characters, in the small acts that make up and sustain ordinary life. When she finds an earring she thought she'd lost in a garbage can that raccoons have overturned, she reflects, "If I have lost the meaning of my life, and the love of my life, I might still find small treasured things amid the spilled and pilfered trash." At times overly self-conscious, Oates nevertheless shines a bright light in every corner in her soul-searing memoir of widowhood. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. From Booklist *Starred Review* Brutal violence and catastrophic loss are often the subjects of Oates’ powerful novels and stories. But as she reveals in this galvanizing memoir, her creative inferno was sequestered from her joyful life with her husband, Raymond Smith. A revered editor and publisher who did not read her fiction, Smith kept their household humming during their 48-year marriage. After his shocking death from a “secondary infection” while hospitalized with pneumonia, Oates found herself in the grip of a relentless waking nightmare. She recounts this horrific “siege” of grief with her signature perception, specificity, and intensity, from epic insomnia and terrifying hallucinations to the torment of “death-duties,” painful recognitions of confidences unshared and secrets harbored, and a chilling evaporation of meaning. But Oates also rallies to offer droll advice on how to be a “good widow” and describes her struggles with mountains of lavish “sympathy gifts” and the attendant trash with a “widow’s slapstick-comedy.” In a stunning extension of the compelling disclosures found in The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates, 1973–1982 (2007), protean and unflinching Oates has created an illuminating portrait of a marriage, a searing confrontation with death, an extraordinarily forthright chronicle of mourning, and a profound “pilgrimage” from chaos to coherence. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The incomparable, best-selling Oates fascinates readers, and her memoir of sudden widowhood will have an impact similar to Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking (2005). --Donna Seaman

The proceedings of the 1999 IEE International Fuzzy Systems Conference cover a wide range of aspects of control systems engineering.

The proceedings of the 1999 IEE International Fuzzy Systems Conference cover a wide range of aspects of control systems engineering.

The proceedings of the 1999 IEE International Fuzzy Systems Conference cover a wide range of aspects of control systems engineering.

In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of forty-six years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath. "My husband died, my life collapsed." On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced—totally unprepared—with the stunning reality of widowhood. A Widow's Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life without the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief—the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgment of the widow's desperation—only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now." Enlivened by the piercing vision, acute perception, and mordant humor that are the hallmarks of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, this moving tale of life and death, love and grief, offers a candid, never-before-glimpsed view of the acclaimed author and fiercely private woman. Biography & Autobiography,Personal Memoirs

In a work unlike anything she's written before, National Book Award winner Joyce Carol Oates unveils a poignant, intimate memoir about the unexpected death of her husband of forty-six years and its wrenching, surprising aftermath."My husband died, my life collapsed." On a February morning in 2008, Joyce Carol Oates drove her ailing husband, Raymond Smith, to the emergency room of the Princeton Medical Center where he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Both Joyce and Ray expected him to be released in a day or two. But in less than a week, even as Joyce was preparing for his discharge, Ray died from a virulent hospital-acquired infection, and Joyce was suddenly faced?totally unprepared?with the stunning reality of widowhood. A Widow's Story illuminates one woman's struggle to comprehend a life without the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. As never before, Joyce Carol Oates shares the derangement of denial, the anguish of loss, the disorientation of the survivor amid a nightmare of "death-duties," and the solace of friendship. She writes unflinchingly of the experience of grief?the almost unbearable suspense of the hospital vigil, the treacherous "pools" of memory that surround us, the vocabulary of illness, the absurdities of commercialized forms of mourning. Here is a frank acknowledgment of the widow's desperation?only gradually yielding to the recognition that "this is my life now."Enlivened by the piercing vision, acute perception, and mordant humor that are the hallmarks of the work of Joyce Carol Oates, this moving tale of life and death, love and grief, offers a candid, never-before-glimpsed view of the acclaimed author and fiercely private woman

xiv, 415 pages ; 24 cm Joyce Carol Oates shares her struggle to comprehend a life absent of the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century Originally published: New York : Ecco, 2011 The vigil -- Free fall -- The basilisk -- Purgatory, Hell -- "You looked so happy" -- Epilogue

<P>Many of the letters in this volume, which covers the period August 1530 to March 1531, reflect Erasmus' anxieties over events at the Diet of Augsburg (June-November 1530), at which the first of many attempts to achieve a negotiated settlement of the religious division in Germany came to a rancorous conclusion, thus fostering the fear that religious controversy would eventually lead to war. His other chief concerns were the continued attacks on him by Catholic critics who regarded him as a clandestine Lutheran, and the insistence of many evangelical reformers that he was their spiritual father. The literary output of the period covered includes major works aimed at members of both groups.</P> <P>Volume 17 of the <I>Collected Works of Erasmus</I> series.</P>