Author: Silvina López Medin
Publisher: Essay Press
ISBN: 9781734498448
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85
Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Sparked by the only two letters--out of over a hundred-that López Medin's mother saved from her own mother in Paraguay, THE POEM THAT NEVER ENDS weaves together poems and family photos to explore the fragmentation of time, memory, and mother-child relationships. Fragments, family hearing impairments, ripped-up letters, and living and writing between languages point to the inescapable holes in language, troubling the notion of a finite utterance. Layering elements of painting, cinema, and the elusive three dimensions of theater into the weave, THE POEM THAT NEVER ENDS traces a sequence of mothers-López Medin's mother, her mother's mother, herself as a mother-in a porous, restless gesture toward what's never fully grasped.
The Poem That Never Ends
Author: Silvina López Medin
Publisher: Essay Press
ISBN: 9781734498448
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85
Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Sparked by the only two letters--out of over a hundred-that López Medin's mother saved from her own mother in Paraguay, THE POEM THAT NEVER ENDS weaves together poems and family photos to explore the fragmentation of time, memory, and mother-child relationships. Fragments, family hearing impairments, ripped-up letters, and living and writing between languages point to the inescapable holes in language, troubling the notion of a finite utterance. Layering elements of painting, cinema, and the elusive three dimensions of theater into the weave, THE POEM THAT NEVER ENDS traces a sequence of mothers-López Medin's mother, her mother's mother, herself as a mother-in a porous, restless gesture toward what's never fully grasped.
Publisher: Essay Press
ISBN: 9781734498448
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85
Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Sparked by the only two letters--out of over a hundred-that López Medin's mother saved from her own mother in Paraguay, THE POEM THAT NEVER ENDS weaves together poems and family photos to explore the fragmentation of time, memory, and mother-child relationships. Fragments, family hearing impairments, ripped-up letters, and living and writing between languages point to the inescapable holes in language, troubling the notion of a finite utterance. Layering elements of painting, cinema, and the elusive three dimensions of theater into the weave, THE POEM THAT NEVER ENDS traces a sequence of mothers-López Medin's mother, her mother's mother, herself as a mother-in a porous, restless gesture toward what's never fully grasped.
In Praise of the Unfinished
Author: Julia Hartwig
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307496104
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
Hailed by Czeslaw Milosz as “the grande dame of Polish poetry” and named “one of the foremost Polish poets of the twentieth century” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Julia Hartwig has long been considered the gold standard of poetry in her native Poland. With this career-spanning collection, we finally have a book of her work in English. The tragic story of the last century flows naturally through Hartwig’s poems. She evokes the husbands who returned silent from battle (“What woman was told about the hell at Monte Cassino?”) and asks, “Why didn’t I dance on the Champs-Élysées / when the crowd cheered the end of the war? . . . Why was I fated to be on the main street of Lublin / watching regiments with red stars enter the city.” But there is also a welcoming of new experience in her verse, a sense that life, finally, is too beautiful to condemn. She seeks a higher peace, urging us to hear other voices: “an ermine’s cry, moan of a dove, / complaint of an owl—that remind us / the hardship of solitude is measured out equally.” Hartwig’s compassionate spirit in the face of destruction and suffering, her apparent need to live in the moment, make her poems monumental and deeply touching and the introduction of her work here long overdue. Return to My Childhood Home Amid a dark silence of pines—the shouts of young birches calling each other. Everything is as it was. Nothing is as it was. Speak to me, Lord of the child. Speak, innocent terror! To understand nothing. Each time in a different way, from the first cry to the last breath. Yet happy moments come to me from the past, like bridesmaids carrying oil lamps.
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307496104
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
Hailed by Czeslaw Milosz as “the grande dame of Polish poetry” and named “one of the foremost Polish poets of the twentieth century” by Ryszard Kapuscinski, Julia Hartwig has long been considered the gold standard of poetry in her native Poland. With this career-spanning collection, we finally have a book of her work in English. The tragic story of the last century flows naturally through Hartwig’s poems. She evokes the husbands who returned silent from battle (“What woman was told about the hell at Monte Cassino?”) and asks, “Why didn’t I dance on the Champs-Élysées / when the crowd cheered the end of the war? . . . Why was I fated to be on the main street of Lublin / watching regiments with red stars enter the city.” But there is also a welcoming of new experience in her verse, a sense that life, finally, is too beautiful to condemn. She seeks a higher peace, urging us to hear other voices: “an ermine’s cry, moan of a dove, / complaint of an owl—that remind us / the hardship of solitude is measured out equally.” Hartwig’s compassionate spirit in the face of destruction and suffering, her apparent need to live in the moment, make her poems monumental and deeply touching and the introduction of her work here long overdue. Return to My Childhood Home Amid a dark silence of pines—the shouts of young birches calling each other. Everything is as it was. Nothing is as it was. Speak to me, Lord of the child. Speak, innocent terror! To understand nothing. Each time in a different way, from the first cry to the last breath. Yet happy moments come to me from the past, like bridesmaids carrying oil lamps.
On the Brink of Everything
Author: Parker J. Palmer
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1523095458
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
“This impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns.” —Publishers Weekly 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying Category From bestselling author Parker J. Palmer comes a brave and beautiful book for all who want to age reflectively, seeking new insights and life-giving ways to engage in the world. “Age itself,” he says, “is no excuse to wade in the shallows. It’s a reason to dive deep and take creative risks.” Looking back on eight decades of life—and on his work as a writer, teacher, and activist—Palmer explores what he’s learning about self and world, inviting readers to explore their own experience. In prose and poetry—and three downloadable songs written for the book by the gifted Carrie Newcomer—he meditates on the meanings of life, past, present, and future. With compassion and chutzpah, gravitas and levity, Palmer writes about cultivating a vital inner and outer life, finding meaning in suffering and joy, and forming friendships across the generations that bring new life to young and old alike. “This book is a companion for not merely surviving a fractured world, but embodying—like Parker—the fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that is ours to claim at every stage of life.” —Krista Tippett, New York Times-bestselling author of Becoming Wise “A wondrously rich mix of reality and possibility, comfort and story, helpful counsel and poetry, in the voice of a friend . . . This is a book of immense gratitude, consolation, and praise.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, National Book Award finalist
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1523095458
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
“This impassioned book invites readers to the deep end of life where authentic soul work and human transformation become pressing concerns.” —Publishers Weekly 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medalist in the Aging/Death & Dying Category From bestselling author Parker J. Palmer comes a brave and beautiful book for all who want to age reflectively, seeking new insights and life-giving ways to engage in the world. “Age itself,” he says, “is no excuse to wade in the shallows. It’s a reason to dive deep and take creative risks.” Looking back on eight decades of life—and on his work as a writer, teacher, and activist—Palmer explores what he’s learning about self and world, inviting readers to explore their own experience. In prose and poetry—and three downloadable songs written for the book by the gifted Carrie Newcomer—he meditates on the meanings of life, past, present, and future. With compassion and chutzpah, gravitas and levity, Palmer writes about cultivating a vital inner and outer life, finding meaning in suffering and joy, and forming friendships across the generations that bring new life to young and old alike. “This book is a companion for not merely surviving a fractured world, but embodying—like Parker—the fiercely honest and gracious wholeness that is ours to claim at every stage of life.” —Krista Tippett, New York Times-bestselling author of Becoming Wise “A wondrously rich mix of reality and possibility, comfort and story, helpful counsel and poetry, in the voice of a friend . . . This is a book of immense gratitude, consolation, and praise.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, National Book Award finalist
C. P. Cavafy: The Unfinished Poems
Author: C.P. Cavafy
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307265463
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
A remarkable discovery, an extraordinary literary event: the never-before translated Unfinished Poems of the great Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, published for the first time in English alongside a revelatory new rendering of the Collected Poems—translated and annotated by the renowned critic, classicist, and award-winning author of The Lost. When he died in 1933 at the age of seventy, C. P. Cavafy left the drafts of thirty poems among his papers—some of them masterly, nearly completed verses, others less finished texts, all accompanied by notes and variants that offer tantalizing glimpses of the poet’s sometimes years-long method of rewriting and revision. These remarkable poems, each meticulously filed in its own dossier by the poet, remained in the Cavafy Archive in Athens for decades before being published in a definitive scholarly edition in Greek in 1994. Now, with the cooperation and support of the Archive, Daniel Mendelsohn brings this hitherto unknown creative outpouring to English readers for the first time. Beautiful works in their own right—from a six-line verse on the “birth of a poem” to a longer work that brilliantly paints the autumn of Byzantium in unexpectedly erotic colors—these unfinished poems provide a thrilling window into Cavafy’s writing process during the last decade of his life, the years of his greatest production. They brilliantly explore, often in new ways, the poet’s well-established themes: identity and time, the agonies of desire and the ironies of history, cultural decline and reappropriation of the past. And, like the Collected Poems, the Unfinished Poems offers a substantial introduction and notes that provide helpful historical, textual, and literary background for each poem. This splendid translation, together with the Collected Poems, is a cause for celebration—the definitive presentation of Cavafy in English.
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307265463
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 145
Book Description
A remarkable discovery, an extraordinary literary event: the never-before translated Unfinished Poems of the great Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, published for the first time in English alongside a revelatory new rendering of the Collected Poems—translated and annotated by the renowned critic, classicist, and award-winning author of The Lost. When he died in 1933 at the age of seventy, C. P. Cavafy left the drafts of thirty poems among his papers—some of them masterly, nearly completed verses, others less finished texts, all accompanied by notes and variants that offer tantalizing glimpses of the poet’s sometimes years-long method of rewriting and revision. These remarkable poems, each meticulously filed in its own dossier by the poet, remained in the Cavafy Archive in Athens for decades before being published in a definitive scholarly edition in Greek in 1994. Now, with the cooperation and support of the Archive, Daniel Mendelsohn brings this hitherto unknown creative outpouring to English readers for the first time. Beautiful works in their own right—from a six-line verse on the “birth of a poem” to a longer work that brilliantly paints the autumn of Byzantium in unexpectedly erotic colors—these unfinished poems provide a thrilling window into Cavafy’s writing process during the last decade of his life, the years of his greatest production. They brilliantly explore, often in new ways, the poet’s well-established themes: identity and time, the agonies of desire and the ironies of history, cultural decline and reappropriation of the past. And, like the Collected Poems, the Unfinished Poems offers a substantial introduction and notes that provide helpful historical, textual, and literary background for each poem. This splendid translation, together with the Collected Poems, is a cause for celebration—the definitive presentation of Cavafy in English.
Pale Colors in a Tall Field
Author: Carl Phillips
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721424
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 57
Book Description
A powerful, inventive collection from one of America’s most critically acclaimed poets. Carl Phillips’s new poetry collection, Pale Colors in a Tall Field, is a meditation on the intimacies of thought and body as forms of resistance. The poems are both timeless and timely, asking how we can ever truly know ourselves in the face of our own remembering and inevitable forgetting. Here, the poems metaphorically argue that memory is made up of various colors, with those most prominent moments in a life seeming more vivid, though the paler colors are never truly forgotten. The poems in Pale Colors in a Tall Field approach their points of view kaleidoscopically, enacting the self’s multiplicity and the difficult shifts required as our lives, in turn, shift. This is one of Phillips’s most tender, dynamic, and startling books yet.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374721424
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 57
Book Description
A powerful, inventive collection from one of America’s most critically acclaimed poets. Carl Phillips’s new poetry collection, Pale Colors in a Tall Field, is a meditation on the intimacies of thought and body as forms of resistance. The poems are both timeless and timely, asking how we can ever truly know ourselves in the face of our own remembering and inevitable forgetting. Here, the poems metaphorically argue that memory is made up of various colors, with those most prominent moments in a life seeming more vivid, though the paler colors are never truly forgotten. The poems in Pale Colors in a Tall Field approach their points of view kaleidoscopically, enacting the self’s multiplicity and the difficult shifts required as our lives, in turn, shift. This is one of Phillips’s most tender, dynamic, and startling books yet.
Poetry Will Save Your Life
Author: Jill Bialosky
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451693214
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
From a critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author and poet comes “a delightfully hybrid book: part anthology, part critical study, part autobiography” (Chicago Tribune) that is organized around fifty-one remarkable poems by poets such as Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath. For Jill Bialosky, certain poems stand out like signposts at pivotal moments in a life: the death of a father, adolescence, first love, leaving home, the suicide of a sister, marriage, the birth of a child, the day in New York City the Twin Towers fell. As Bialosky narrates these moments, she illuminates the ways in which particular poems offered insight, compassion, and connection, and shows how poetry can be a blueprint for living. In Poetry Will Save Your Life, Bialosky recalls when she encountered each formative poem, and how its importance and meaning evolved over time, allowing new insights and perceptions to emerge. While Bialosky’s personal stories animate each poem, they touch on many universal experiences, from the awkwardness of girlhood, to crises of faith and identity, from braving a new life in a foreign city to enduring the loss of a loved one, from becoming a parent to growing creatively as a poet and artist. Each moment and poem illustrate “not only how to read poetry, but also how to love poetry” (Christian Science Monitor). “An emotional, sometimes-wrenching account of how lines of poetry can be lifelines” (Kirkus Reviews), Poetry Will Save Your Life is an engaging and entirely original examination of a life while celebrating the enduring value of poetry, not as a purely cerebral activity, but as a means of conveying personal experience and as a source of comfort and intimacy. In doing so the book brilliantly illustrates the ways in which poetry can be an integral part of life itself and can, in fact, save your life.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451693214
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
From a critically acclaimed New York Times bestselling author and poet comes “a delightfully hybrid book: part anthology, part critical study, part autobiography” (Chicago Tribune) that is organized around fifty-one remarkable poems by poets such as Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath. For Jill Bialosky, certain poems stand out like signposts at pivotal moments in a life: the death of a father, adolescence, first love, leaving home, the suicide of a sister, marriage, the birth of a child, the day in New York City the Twin Towers fell. As Bialosky narrates these moments, she illuminates the ways in which particular poems offered insight, compassion, and connection, and shows how poetry can be a blueprint for living. In Poetry Will Save Your Life, Bialosky recalls when she encountered each formative poem, and how its importance and meaning evolved over time, allowing new insights and perceptions to emerge. While Bialosky’s personal stories animate each poem, they touch on many universal experiences, from the awkwardness of girlhood, to crises of faith and identity, from braving a new life in a foreign city to enduring the loss of a loved one, from becoming a parent to growing creatively as a poet and artist. Each moment and poem illustrate “not only how to read poetry, but also how to love poetry” (Christian Science Monitor). “An emotional, sometimes-wrenching account of how lines of poetry can be lifelines” (Kirkus Reviews), Poetry Will Save Your Life is an engaging and entirely original examination of a life while celebrating the enduring value of poetry, not as a purely cerebral activity, but as a means of conveying personal experience and as a source of comfort and intimacy. In doing so the book brilliantly illustrates the ways in which poetry can be an integral part of life itself and can, in fact, save your life.
Parallel Movement of the Hands
Author: John Ashbery
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062968874
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
A stunning collection of work from beloved poet John Ashbery, his first posthumous book Renowned for his inventive mind, ambitious play with language, and dexterity with a wide range of tones and styles, John Ashbery has been a major artistic figure in the cultural life of our time. Parallel Movement of the Hands gathers unpublished, book-length projects and long poems written between 1993 and 2007, along with one (as yet) undated work, to showcase Ashbery’s diverse and multifaceted artistic obsessions and sources, from children’s literature, cliffhanger cinema reels, silent films, and classical music variations by Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny to the history of early photography. Ashbery even provides a fresh and humorous take on a well-worn parable from the Gospel of Matthew. These works demonstrate that while producing and publishing the shorter, discrete poems often associated with his late career, Ashbery continued to practice the long-form, project-based writing that has long been an important element of his oeuvre. Edited and introduced by Ashbery’s former assistant poet Emily Skillings and including a preface by acclaimed poet and novelist Ben Lerner, this compelling and varied collection offers new insights into the process and creative interests of a poet whose work continues to influence generations of artists and poets with its signature intertextuality, openness, and simultaneity. A landmark publication of never-before-seen works, this book will enlighten scholars as well as new readers of one of America’s most prominent and celebrated poets.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062968874
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 462
Book Description
A stunning collection of work from beloved poet John Ashbery, his first posthumous book Renowned for his inventive mind, ambitious play with language, and dexterity with a wide range of tones and styles, John Ashbery has been a major artistic figure in the cultural life of our time. Parallel Movement of the Hands gathers unpublished, book-length projects and long poems written between 1993 and 2007, along with one (as yet) undated work, to showcase Ashbery’s diverse and multifaceted artistic obsessions and sources, from children’s literature, cliffhanger cinema reels, silent films, and classical music variations by Beethoven’s pupil Carl Czerny to the history of early photography. Ashbery even provides a fresh and humorous take on a well-worn parable from the Gospel of Matthew. These works demonstrate that while producing and publishing the shorter, discrete poems often associated with his late career, Ashbery continued to practice the long-form, project-based writing that has long been an important element of his oeuvre. Edited and introduced by Ashbery’s former assistant poet Emily Skillings and including a preface by acclaimed poet and novelist Ben Lerner, this compelling and varied collection offers new insights into the process and creative interests of a poet whose work continues to influence generations of artists and poets with its signature intertextuality, openness, and simultaneity. A landmark publication of never-before-seen works, this book will enlighten scholars as well as new readers of one of America’s most prominent and celebrated poets.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Author: Ocean Vuong
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525562044
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller • Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction • Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525562044
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
A New York Times bestseller • Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction • Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!
Broom Broom
Author: Brecken Hancock
Publisher: Coach House Books
ISBN: 1770563792
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 73
Book Description
Nothing slips by Brecken Hancock's deft ear as she seductively plumbs the depths of the evolution of bathing, doppelgangers, the Kraken, and the minutiae of family with all its tragic misgivings. The poems in Broom Broom pervert the rational, safe parts of the world to extoll and absorb the sweep of human history. What I mean to say is, the evidence is always there. From where we stand, we confuse lampposts for ghosts. Brecken Hancock's poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in several journals, including Event and Fiddlehead. She is reviews editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.
Publisher: Coach House Books
ISBN: 1770563792
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 73
Book Description
Nothing slips by Brecken Hancock's deft ear as she seductively plumbs the depths of the evolution of bathing, doppelgangers, the Kraken, and the minutiae of family with all its tragic misgivings. The poems in Broom Broom pervert the rational, safe parts of the world to extoll and absorb the sweep of human history. What I mean to say is, the evidence is always there. From where we stand, we confuse lampposts for ghosts. Brecken Hancock's poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in several journals, including Event and Fiddlehead. She is reviews editor for Arc Poetry Magazine.
The Works ...: The poems, with ... a life of the author; and an essay on his poetry
Author: Thomas Gray
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 466
Book Description