Color illustrations accompany quotations from twenty-four Shakespearean dramas about twenty-seven flowers. Explains what each flower meant in Elizabethan times and Shakespeare's particular use of it in his plays.

"Hurtling between Weltschmerz and wit, drollness and diatribe, entropy and enchantment, it's the juxtaposition at the heart of Dubravka Ugresic's writings that saw Ruth Franklin dub her "the fantasy cultural studies professor you never had." In Europe in Sepia, Ugresic, ever the flâneur, wanders from the Midwest to Zuccotti Park, the Irish Aran Islands to Jerusalem's Mea Shearim, from the tristesse of Dutch housing estates to the riots of south London,...

A history of the sport Quidditch, answering such questions such as where the Golden Snitch came from, or why the Wigtown Wanterers have meat cleavers on their robes. Una historia de este deporte de Quidditch, respondiendo preguntas como donde la dorada Snitch vino de, o por que los Wigtown Wanterers tienen carnicero en sus tunicas.

William Shakespeare found dozens of different ways to kill off his characters, and audiences today still enjoy the same reactions - shock, sadness, fear - that they did more than 400 years ago when these plays were first performed. But how realistic are these deaths, and did Shakespeare have the knowledge to back them up? In the Bard's day death was a part of everyday life. Plague, pestilence and public executions were a common occurrence, and the...