The insights here are of such depth, and contain such beauty in them, that time and again the reader must pause for breath. At last Rilke has met a critic whose insight, courage, and humanity are worthy of his life and work." —Leslie Epstein Director, Graduate Creative Writing Program, Boston University "[A] well-reasoned, fairly fascinating, and illuminating study which soundly and convincingly applies Freudian and particularly post-Freudian insights into the self, to Rilke's life and work, in a way which enlightens us considerably as to the relationship between life and work in original ways. Kleinbard takes off where Hugo Simenauer's monumental psycho- biography of Rilke (1953) left off. . . . He succeeds in giving us a psychic portrait of the poet which is more illuminating and which . . . does greater justice to its subject than any of his predecessors.. . . . Any reader with strong interest in Rilke would certainly welcome the availability of this study." —Walter H. Sokel,Commonwealth Professor of German and English Literatures,University of Virginia. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are just able to bear, and we wonder at it so because it calmly disdainsto destroy us." —Rilke Beginning with Rilke's 1910 novel, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, The Beginning of Terror examines the ways in which the poet mastered the illness that is so frightening and crippling in Malte and made the illness a resource for his art. Kleinbard goes on to explore Rilke's poetry, letters, and non-fiction prose, his childhood and marriage, and the relationship between illness and genius in the poet and his work, a subject to which Rilke returned time and again. This psychoanalytic study also defines the complex connections between Malte's and Rilke's fantasies of mental and physical fragmentation, and the poet's response to Rodin's disintegrative and re-integrative sculpture during the writing of The Notebooks and New Poems. One point of departure is the poet's sense of the origins of his illness in his childhood and, particularly, in his mother's blind, narcissistic self- absorption and his father's emotional constriction and mental limitations. Kleinbard examines the poet's struggle to purge himself of his deeply felt identification with his mother, even as he fulfilled her hopes that he become a major poet. The book also contains chapters on Rilke's relationships with Lou Andreas Salom and Aguste Rodin, who served as parental surrogates for Rilke. A psychological portrait of the early twentieth-century German poet, The Beginning of Terror explores Rilke's poetry, letters, non-fiction prose, his childhood and marriage. David Kleinbard focuses on the relationship between illness and genius in the poet and his work, a subject to which Rilke returned time and again.

Perhaps no cycle of poems in any European language has made so profound and lasting an impact on an English-speaking readership as Rilke's Duino Elegies. These luminous new translations by Martyn Crucefix, facing the original German texts, make it marvellously clear how the poem is committed to the real world observed with acute and visionary intensity.

WINNER, 2022 John Hope Franklin Prize, given by the American Studies Association HONORABLE MENTION, 2022 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize, given by the National Women's Studies Association Reveals the troubling intimacy between Black women and the making of US global power The year 1968 marked both the height of the worldwide Black liberation struggle and a turning point for the global reach of American power, which was built on the counterinsurgency honed on Black and other oppressed populations at home. The next five decades saw the consolidation of the culture of the American empire through what Erica R. Edwards calls the “imperial grammars of blackness.” This is a story of state power at its most devious and most absurd, and, at the same time, a literary history of Black feminist radicalism at its most trenchant. Edwards reveals how the long war on terror, beginning with the late–Cold War campaign against organizations like the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the Black Liberation Army, has relied on the labor and the fantasies of Black women to justify the imperial spread of capitalism. Black feminist writers not only understood that this would demand a shift in racial gendered power, but crafted ways of surviving it. The Other Side of Terror offers an interdisciplinary Black feminist analysis of militarism, security, policing, diversity, representation, intersectionality, and resistance, while discussing a wide array of literary and cultural texts, from the unpublished work of Black radical feminist June Jordan to the memoirs of Condoleezza Rice to the television series Scandal. With clear, moving prose, Edwards chronicles Black feminist organizing and writing on “the other side of terror”, which tracked changes in racial power, transformed African American literature and Black studies, and predicted the crises of our current era with unsettling accuracy.

When Mary Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry VIII, succeeded to the throne of England in 1553 it was with wild rejoicing and a degree of popularity rarely seen on the accession of a British monarch. Yet at her death five years later she was almost universally reviled and hated by her people so much so that she was posthumously awarded the sobriquet Bloody Mary. Mary's revenge on the church and on a religion she hated was swift and total. Noblemen like the Duke of Northumberland, would-be queens like Lady Jane Grey, churchmen like Thomas Cranmer and bishops Latimer and Ridley, Mary's fires or the executioner's axe ended the lives of all of them. During her brief reign she restored the Catholic faith to England and had over 280 Protestant martyrs burned at the stake. For a reign that looked so promising Mary's brief period in power brought the greatest officially sanctioned religious bloodletting the country had ever seen. And at the end, the stench of the execution fires and the grey smoke that settled like a pall across the country seemed to epitomize the reactionary forces that had assumed control.

"Anyone who wants to understand the world we live in now should read this book." —Lawrence Wright To eliminate the scourge of terrorism, we must first know who the enemy actually is, and what his motivations are. In Anatomy of Terror, former FBI special agent and New York Times best-selling author Ali Soufan dissects Osama bin Laden’s brand of jihadi terrorism and its major offshoots, revealing how these organizations were formed, how they operate, their strengths, and—crucially—their weaknesses. This riveting account examines the new Islamic radicalism through the stories of its flag-bearers, including a U.S. Air Force colonel who once served Saddam Hussein, a provincial bookworm who declared himself caliph of all Muslims, and bin Laden’s own beloved son Hamza, a prime candidate to lead the organization his late father founded. Anatomy of Terror lays bare the psychology and inner workings of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and their spawn, and shows how the spread of terror can be stopped. Winner of the Airey Neave Memorial Book Prize

The "masterfully chilling" novel that inspired the hit AMC series (Entertainment Weekly). The men on board the HMS Terror — part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage — are entering a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, they struggle to survive with poisonous rations, a dwindling coal supply, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is even more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror clawing to get in. “The best and most unusual historical novel I have read in years.” —Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe

A new account of the birth of the West through its birthplace--Renaissance Italy The period between 1492--resonant for a number of reasons--and 1571, when the Ottoman navy was defeated in the Battle of Lepanto, embraces what we know as the Renaissance, one of the most dynamic and creatively explosive epochs in world history. Here is the period that gave rise to so many great artists and figures, and which by its connection to its classical heritage enabled a redefinition, even reinvention, of human potential. It was a moment both of violent struggle and great achievement, of Michelangelo and da Vinci as well as the Borgias and Machiavelli. At the hub of this cultural and intellectual ferment was Italy. The Beauty and the Terror offers a vibrant history of Renaissance Italy and its crucial role in the emergence of the Western world. Drawing on a rich range of sources--letters, interrogation records, maps, artworks, and inventories--Catherine Fletcher explores both the explosion of artistic expression and years of bloody conflict between Spain and France, between Catholic and Protestant, between Christian and Muslim; in doing so, she presents a new way of witnessing the birth of the West.

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER​ Named one of the most anticipated novels of the season by People, Associated Press, Time, Los Angeles Times, Parade, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Guardian, Publishers Weekly, and more. From the #1 bestselling authors Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny comes a novel of unsurpassed thrills and incomparable insider expertise—State of Terror. After a tumultuous period in American politics, a new administration has just been sworn in, and to everyone’s surprise the president chooses a political enemy for the vital position of secretary of state. There is no love lost between the president of the United States and Ellen Adams, his new secretary of state. But it’s a canny move on the part of the president. With this appointment, he silences one of his harshest critics, since taking the job means Adams must step down as head of her multinational media conglomerate. As the new president addresses Congress for the first time, with Secretary Adams in attendance, Anahita Dahir, a young foreign service officer (FSO) on the Pakistan desk at the State Department, receives a baffling text from an anonymous source. Too late, she realizes the message was a hastily coded warning. What begins as a series of apparent terrorist attacks is revealed to be the beginning of an international chess game involving the volatile and Byzantine politics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran; the race to develop nuclear weapons in the region; the Russian mob; a burgeoning rogue terrorist organization; and an American government set back on its heels in the international arena. As the horrifying scale of the threat becomes clear, Secretary Adams and her team realize it has been carefully planned to take advantage of four years of an American government out of touch with international affairs, out of practice with diplomacy, and out of power in the places where it counts the most. To defeat such an intricate, carefully constructed conspiracy, it will take the skills of a unique team: a passionate young FSO; a dedicated journalist; and a smart, determined, but as yet untested new secretary of state. State of Terror is a unique and utterly compelling international thriller cowritten by Hillary Rodham Clinton, the 67th secretary of state, and Louise Penny, a multiple award-winning #1 New York Times bestselling novelist.

Essential reading for scholars, poetry lovers, and anyone with an interest in Rainer Maria Rilke, German poetry, or the creative impulse, these ten letters of correspondence between Rilke and a young aspiring poet reveal elements from the inner workings of his own poetic identity. The letters coincided with an important stage of his artistic development and readers can trace many of the themes that later emerge in his best works to these messages—Rilke himself stated these letters contained part of his creative genius.

"You have to take the children away."—Donald Trump Taking Children argues that for four hundred years the United States has taken children for political ends. Black children, Native children, Latinx children, and the children of the poor have all been seized from their kin and caregivers. As Laura Briggs's sweeping narrative shows, the practice played out on the auction block, in the boarding schools designed to pacify the Native American population, in the foster care system used to put down the Black freedom movement, in the US's anti-Communist coups in Central America, and in the moral panic about "crack babies." In chilling detail we see how Central Americans were made into a population that could be stripped of their children and how every US administration beginning with Reagan has put children of immigrants and refugees in detention camps. Yet these tactics of terror have encountered opposition from every generation, and Briggs challenges us to stand and resist in this powerful corrective to American history.