A coming-of-age story by a master of storytelling on the need to love and cherish life and grab it by the drosky's reins. This is Kops at his most irrepressible and irreverent, vibrant and lyrical and connected - to the present and the past. Seventeen-year-old Sam Glass is depressed. Since his father died suddenly, he sees no point in life especially not among the cosy middle class environs where his love of quoting from classical literature falls on deaf ears. Then a strange figure appears who claims to be a rabbi from the Middle Ages, who takes Sam back in time to the Russia of 1881. He meets a panoply of characters including his own forebears and some familiar figures from Jewish history. Then he discovers the secret purpose for which he has been chosen -- to assassinate Tsar Alexander II ..

"The religious and ethical contribution of the Judaism to civilization has been rightly acknowledged. The seminal role the Jews have played in the technological evolution of civilization has been largely overlooked." "This remarkable book uses the history of glassmaking as a foil with which new light is shed on the hidden history of that phenomenally creative people. During his association with the glassmakers of Venice, the author uncovered an intriguing historical symbiosis between the Jews and the art of glassmaking. The revelation impelled him to launch an intensive, eight-year campaign of research which led him across three continents and through 4000 years of human history. He discovered that the vitric arts, conceived in Akkadia among the progenitors of the Jews, was subsequently borne by the Jews into the Diaspora, an enthralling historical odyssey which has never been told in its entirety." "Many myths are shattered in the course of following the adventurous path of the art from its Akkadian roots through Canaan, Egypt, Rome, Persia, China and the West. Drawing upon a wealth of archeological, Biblical, archival and historical material, an intense beam of light is cast into the darker recesses of history in which conquered peoples suffer the indignity of having the record of their accomplishments obliterated by their conquerors, a process the author terms "Institutionalized Obfuscation."" "The peculiar parallelism between the movement of the Jews and the vitric arts bears historical connotations which stretch far beyond glassmaking; the very foundation upon which classic versions of history is based is demolished by the revelations which erupt from the pages of the book."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This is the first book-length study of the work of contemporary writer Bernard Kops. Born on November 28, 1926 to Dutch-Jewish immigrants, Bernard Kops became famous after the production of his play The Hamlet of Stepney Green: A Sad Comedy with Some Songs in 1958. This play, like much of his work, focuses on the conflicts between young and old. Identified as an “angry young man,” Kops, like his contemporaries John Osborne, Shelagh Delaney, and Harold Pinter, belonged to the so-called new wave of British drama that emerged in the mid-1950s. Kops went on to create important documentaries about the Blitz and living in London during the early 1940s. He has written two autobiographies, over ten novels, many journalistic pieces, and more than forty plays for TV, stage, and radio. A prolific poet, Kops has authored a long pamphlet poem and eight poetry collections. Now in his mid-80s, the prolific and versatile Kops still produces, his creativity undimmed by age.

Why have contemporary playwrights been obsessed by Shakespeare’s plays to such an extent that most of the canon has been rewritten by one rising dramatist or another over the last half century? Among other key figures, Edward Bond, Heiner Müller, Carmelo Bene, Arnold Wesker, Tom Stoppard, Howard Barker, Botho Strauss, Tim Crouch, Bernard Marie Koltès, and Normand Chaurette have all put their radical originality into the service of adapting four-century-old classics. The resulting works provide food for thought on issues such as Shakespearean role-playing, narrative and structural re-shuffling. Across the world, new writers have questioned the political implications and cultural stakes of repeating Shakespeare with and without a difference, finding inspiration in their own national experiences and in the different ordeals they have undergone. How have our contemporaries carried out their rewritings, and with what aims? Can we still play Hamlet, for instance, as Dieter Lesage asks in his book bearing this title, or do we have to “kill Shakespeare” as Normand Chaurette implies in a work where his own creative process is detailed? What do these rewritings really share with their sources? Are they meaningful only because of Shakespeare’s shadow haunting them? Where do we draw the lines between “interpretation,” “adaptation” and “rewriting”? The contributors to this collection of essays examine modern rewritings of Shakespeare from both theoretical and pragmatic standpoints. Key questions include: can a rewriting be meaningful without the reader’s or spectator’s already knowing Shakespeare? Do modern rewritings supplant Shakespeare’s texts or curate them? Does the survival of Shakespeare in the theatrical repertory actually depend on the continued dramatization of our difficult encounters with these potentially obsolete scripts represented by rewriting?

The twist of a knife. The birth of a legend. Step into the world of the #1 bestselling Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas with this collection of prequel novellas. Celaena Sardothien is her kingdom's most feared assassin. Though she works for the powerful Assassin's Guild and its scheming master, Arobynn Hamel, she yields to no one and trusts only her fellow killer-for-hire, Sam. But when Arobynn dispatches her on missions that take her from remote islands to hostile deserts, Celaena finds herself acting independently of his wishes and questioning her own allegiance. If she hopes to escape Arobynn's clutches, Celaena will have to put her faith in her wits and her blade . . . knowing that if she fails, she'll lose not just a chance at freedom but her life. A prequel to the New York Times bestselling Throne of Glass, this collection of five novellas explores the history of this cunning assassin and her enthralling-and deadly-world. Included in this volume: The Assassin and the Pirate Lord The Assassin and the Healer The Assassin and the Desert The Assassin and the Underworld The Assassin and the Empire

An eye-opening adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, from concrete and steel to denim and chocolate, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science.

In this comprehensive history of Homer’s references to ships and seafaring, author Samuel Mark reveals patterns in the way that Greeks built ships and approached the sea between 850 and 750 b.c. To discuss and clarify the terms used by Homer, Mark draws on scholarly literature as well as examples from recent excavations of ancient shipwrecks. Mark begins by emphasizing the importance of the household during a period in which chiefs ruled and Greek nobles disdained merchants and considered seafaring a necessary but less than distinguished activity. His chapter on Odysseus’s construction of a ship includes discussions of the types of wood used. He concludes that most Greek ships were of laced, rather than pegged mortise-and-tenon construction. Mark goes on to discuss characteristics of Homeric ships and their stern ornaments, oars, quarter rudders, masts, mast-steps, keels, ropes, cables, and planks. Mark reaches several surprising conclusions: that in an agricultural society, seafaring was a common activity, even among the nobles; that hugging the coast could be more treacherous than sailing across open sea; that Homeric ships were built mainly to be sailed, instead of rowed; that sea battles were relatively common; that helmsmen were crucial to a safe voyage; and that harbors were little more than natural anchorages. Mark’s discussion of Homer’s geography covers theories that posit Odysseus sailing in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Seas and even on the Atlantic Ocean. As befits a study whose subjects are partly historical, partly archaeological, and partly myth and legend, Mark’s conclusions are tentative. Yet, this comprehensive and meticulous study of Homer’s references to ships and seafaring is sure to become a standard study on the subject.

Extraordinary photos that reveal the social, economic, and cultural realities of the Black South A True Likeness showcases the extraordinary photography of Richard Samuel Roberts (1880–1935), who operated a studio in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1920 to 1935. He was one of the few major African American commercial photographers working in the region during the first half of the twentieth century, and his images reveal the social, economic, and cultural realities of the black South and document the rise of a small but significant southern black middle class. The nearly two hundred photographs in A True Likeness were selected from three thousand glass plates that had been stored for decades in a crawl space under the Roberts home. The collection includes "true likenesses" of teachers, preachers, undertakers, carpenters, brick masons, dressmakers, chauffeurs, entertainers, and athletes, as well as the poor, with dignity and respect and an eye for character and beauty. Thomas L. Johnson and Phillip C. Dunn received a 1987 Lillian Smith Book Award for their work on this book. This new edition of A True Likeness features a new foreword by Elaine Nichols, the supervisory curator of culture at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. A new afterword is provided by Thomas L. Johnson.

Borrowing its title from Madeline Harrison Caviness's influential work on the modes of seeing articulated by the twelfth-century cleric Richard of Saint Victor, this interdisciplinary collection brings together the work of thirty scholars from England, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. Each author has contributed an original article that engages with ideas formulated in Caviness's wide-ranging scholarship. The historiographic introduction discusses themes in Caviness's publications and their importance for art historical and medieval studies today. The book's thematic matrix groups together essays concerned with: The Material Object, Documentary Reconstruction, Post-Disciplinary Approaches, Multiple Readings, Gender and Reception, Performativity, Text and Image, Collecting and Consumption, and Politics and Ideology. The contributors include curators, art historians, historians, and literary scholars. Their subjects range from medieval stained glass to the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival, the Sachsenspiegel, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Many foreground issues of gender, reception, and textuality, which have permeated Caviness's scholarship. Some also present approaches to sites that have been the subject of important studies by Caviness, including Canterbury, Chartres, Reims, Saint-Denis, Sens, and Troyes. The volume offers a broad range of methodological approaches to key topics in the study of medieval imagery and thus highlights the vitality of the field today.