Yale University Press: 2009 books

Explore the evolution of astronomy from Dante to Einstein, as seen through the eyes of trailblazing Victorian astronomer Mary Acworth Evershed   In 1910, Mary Acworth Evershed (1867–1949) sat on a hill in southern India staring at the moon as she grappled with apparent mistakes in Dante’s Divine...

One of the twentieth century’s most important poets, W. H. Auden stands as an eloquent example of an individual within whom thought and faith not only coexist but indeed nourish each other. This book is the first to explore in detail how Auden’s religious faith helped him to come to terms with himself...

The Hudson River has always played a vital role in American culture. Flowing through a valley of sublime scenery, the great river uniquely connects America’s past with its present and future. This book traces the course of the river through four centuries, recounting the stories of explorers and traders,...

A best-selling author and world-renowned bibliophile meditates on his vast personal library and champions the vital role of all libraries In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his centuries-old village home in France’s Loire Valley and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment...

A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for this volume writings penned during trips and wanderings...

While Bloomsbury is now associated with Virginia Woolf and her early-twentieth-century circle of writers and artists, the neighborhood was originally the undisputed intellectual quarter of nineteenth-century London. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival resources, Rosemary Ashton brings to life the...

Charles Dickens was regarded as the great proponent of hearth and home in Victorian Britain, but in 1858 this image was nearly shattered. With the breakup of his marriage that year, rumors of a scandalous relationship he may have conducted with the young actress Ellen "Nelly" Ternan flourished. For the...

A deeply perceptive and beautifully written cultural history of shyness, from one of our most astute observers of the everyday Shyness is a pervasive human trait: even most extroverts know what it is like to stand tongue-tied at the fringe of an unfamiliar group or flush with embarrassment...

What is the relationship between poetry and fame?   What happens to a reader's experience when a poem invokes its author's popularity?  Is there a meaningful connection between poetry and advertising, between the rhetoric of lyric and the rhetoric of hype?  One of the first full-scale treatments...

How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a “classic”? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? In this provocative new book Denis Donoghue essays to answer these questions. He presents his own short list of “relative”...

An insider’s perspective on the life and influence of Israel’s first native-born prime minister, his bold peace initiatives, and his tragic assassination More than two decades have passed since prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination in 1995, yet he remains an unusually intriguing and admired...

Who are the Quakers, what do they believe, and what do they practice? The Religious Society of Friends—also known as Quakers-—believes that everyone can have a direct experience of God. Quakers express this in a unique form of worship that inspires them to work for change in themselves and in the...