Kathleen Kuiper: 24 books

Verse and drama have provided outlets for emotive expression and the creative impulse for centuries. Poignant, inspiring, and thought-provoking, plays and poems spoken or written in any language help reinterpret reality and evoke some of humanity’s most profound truths. The terms culled in this...

Before Shakespeare, few dramatists had used historical figures as characters in a play, or actual historical events as elements of a plot. Likewise, the Bard was a pioneer of the sonnet, which he took to new heights. Both literary form, including his two historical tetralogies, and his narrative poems,...

Celebrated for numerous developments in the areas of law, writing, religion, and mathematics, Mesopotamia has been immortalized as the cradle of civilization. Its fabled cities, including Babylon and Nineveh, spawned new cultures, traditions, and innovations in art and architecture, some of which...

Echoes of ancient Roman concepts of governance, law, and society still ring throughout the world today. A stranger to neither war nor wealth, ancient Rome was shaped as much by strife as it was by prosperity. The expansion of the Roman Empire was buoyed by this culture’s tendency to embrace traditions...

As with many writers before and since, William Shakespeare was influenced by the events that took shape all around him. Sweeping changes to England’s politics, language, and culture that took place during his lifetime were the fertile ground from which the Bard drew inspiration. Shakespeare’s...

The use of horses has perhaps most dramatically shaped the way of life for Native American tribes in the Plateau and Plains regions of North America, but the practices and traditions of both culture areas date back to a time long before Europeans ever touched American shores, introducing their animals...

Even as contact with European cultures eroded indigenous lifestyles across North America, many Native American groups found ways to preserve the integrity of their communities through the arts, customs, languages, and religious traditions that animate Native American life. While their collective struggles...

Shakespeare’s gift for writing tragedies was powerful indeed. His ability to create epic tragic characters—think Hamlet, Lear, and the star-crossed Romeo and Juliet—and scenarios is virtually unrivalled. Readers examine the Bard’s major tragedies and their significance, and touch upon the state of theatre and dramatic performance in Shakespeare’s England for good measure.

In Shakespeare’s time, the term “comedy” did not necessarily denote something funny or amusing. Rather, through such plays such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice, the playwright examines other defining characteristics of comedic drama—the social interactions of common...

There was a time when people assumed that the world was flat. Once an alternate theory was proposed, however, that conceit was challenged and, eventually, disproved. In short, theories and ideas can be potent agents of change—none more so than those that are extensively detailed in this book.

The indigenous peoples of North America and Greenland have long inhabited and thrived in a variety of terrains and climates. The three different culture areas of the Arctic, American Subarctic, and American Northwest perhaps best exemplify this—from the sometimes stark environment of the tundra...

Home to some of the most remarkable feats of engineering as well as awe-inspiring natural vistas, ancient Egypt was a land of great promise fulfilled. Its pyramids, writing systems, and art all predate the Islamic conquest and are symbols of the civilization’s vitality. This volume invites readers...

Some of the world’s most celebrated works of art—the Mona Lisa and The Birth of Venus, to name just two—were produced during the period of cultural reawakening known as the Renaissance. Painters of the era incorporated new techniques and ideals while reflecting in their works the dramatic social,...

Starting at the dawn of the 20th century, writers began experimenting with literary styles as never before. As perhaps the most far-reaching movement, Modernism swept across both the United States and Europe and has been embodied in the works of such writers as Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, James...