A classic of Modern Persian literature, Charand-o Parand (Stuff and Nonsense) is a work familiar to every literate Iranian. Originally a series of newspaper columns written by scholar and satirist Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda, the pieces poke fun at mullahs, t...

Well before publishing the "Lives of the Poets", Samuel Johnson was an accomplished biographer, having written the lives of numerous scholars, scientists, philosophers, critics, and theologians (including Peter Burnham, Sir Thomas Browne, and Confuci...

William Shakespeare is inextricably linked with the law. Legal documents make up most of the records we have of his life, and trials, lawsuits, and legal terms permeate his plays. Gathering an extraordinary team of literary and legal scholars, philos...

The "Kamasutra" is best known in the West for its scandalous celebration of unbridled sensuality. Yet, there is much, much more to it; embedded in the text is a vision of the city founded on art and aesthetic pleasure. In "Foucault and the Kamasutra"...

Rarely does a European or American child grow up without an introduction to Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling", "The Princess and the Pea", or "Thumbelina". Andersen began publishing his fairy tales in 1835, and they brought him almost imm...

Pyramus: "Now die, die, die, die, die". [Dies] "A Midsummer Night's Dream" "Shakespeare's Dead" reveals the unique ways in which Shakespeare brings dying, death, and the dead to life. It establishes the cultural, religious and social contexts for th...

Thames aficionado Robert Gibbings once wrote that "the quiet of an age-old river is like the slow turning of the pages of a well-loved book". "Writing the Thames" tells a much-loved river's story through the remarkable prose, poetry and illustration...

People have long imagined themselves as rooted creatures, bound to the earth – and nations – from which they came. In "Rootedness", Christy Wampole looks toward philosophy, ecology, literature, history, and politics to demonstrate how the metaphor of...

For decades, Roger Grenier has been charming readers with compact, erudite books that draw elegant connections between our lives and our love of the arts. Whether he's turning to literature and philosophy to help us see our canine companions anew in...

The Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427-386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundbreaking book, situated within the affective turn i...