Essays by popular children's authors reveal the books that shaped their personal and literary lives, explaining how the stories they loved influenced them creatively, politically, and intellectually.

How did the Vietnam War change the way we think of ourselves as a people and a nation? Christian G. Appy examines the war's realities and myths and its lasting impact on our national self-perception. Drawing on a vast variety of sources that range from movies, songs, and novels to official documents, media coverage, and contemporary commentary, Appy offers an original interpretation of the war and its far-reaching consequences for both our popular...

"The oral history and exploration of the cultural impact of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the classic, ground-breaking television show still adored by fans old and new, from pop culture critic and nearly lifelong devotee of the show Evan Ross Katz, social media's foremost Sarah Michelle Gellar historian"--

Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich--and happily horrify readers everywhere. This book is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities--some famous, some unknown, some surprisingly middle-of-the-road. From Esther Martin, the owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to playwright Tennessee Williams; from atheist leader Madalyn...

Essays, poetry, and art included in this anthology celebrate the one-hundredth birthday of the late poet and cultural icon Gwendolyn Brooks.

"In 1965 Thomas Merton fulfilled a twenty-four-year-old dream and went to live as a hermit beyond the walls of his Trappist monastery. Seven months later, after a secret romance with a woman half his age, he was in danger of losing it all. Yet on the very day that his abbot uncovered the affair, Merton found solace in an unlikely place--the songs of Bob Dylan, who, as fate would have it, was experiencing his own personal and creative crises during...

Ackroyd takes readers from William of Orange's accession following the Glorious Revolution to the Regency, when the flamboyant Prince of Wales ruled in the stead of his mad father, George III. Late Stuart and Georgian England marked the creation of the great pillars of the English state, and was also a revolutionary era in English letters. It was also a time of extraordinary and unprecedented technological innovation, which saw England utterly and...

"The acclaimed author of Expect Great Things: The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau traverses on foot from Manhattan to the site of Thoreau's cabin at Walden Pond, often retracing steps walked by Thoreau himself, and unlocks the practical principles of the mystic's life in the woods. When Henry David Thoreau launched his experiment in living at Walden Pond, he began by walking beyond the narrow limits of his neighbors, simply by putting himself...

Presents a portrait of five extraordinary figures--Ernest Shackleton, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Rachel Carson--to illuminate how great leaders are made in times of adversity and the diverse skills they summon in order to prevail.

"Drawing on new research, including the diaries, memoirs, and personal letters of both Lenin and his friends, Victor Sebestyen's biography--the first in English in nearly two decades--is not only a political examination of one of the most important historical figures of the twentieth century, but a portrait of Lenin the man."-- "Victor Sebestyen's riveting biography of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin--the first major biography in English in nearly two decades--is...