One of the twentieth century's great undisputed masterpieces, Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano includes an introduction by Michael Schmidt in Penguin Modern Classics.It is the fiesta 'Day of the Dead' in the small Mexican town of Quauhnahuac. In the shadow of the volcano, ragged children beg coins to buy skulls made of chocolate, ugly pariah dogs roam the streets and Geoffrey Firmin - ex-consul, ex-husband, an alcoholic and a ruined man - is living out the last day of his...

The Benedictine whisked a brush of multicoloured feathers over the top of the book, puffed out his plump cheeks like the god of winds in an old nautical map, blew black dust from the leather cover, and, with a shiver of what in the circumstances seemed delicate trepidation, laid the volume open on the table.Palermo, 1783: The barons pursue feuds and petty plotting. Their wives indulge in forbidden French novels. And the porcine abbot Vella, eager to curry favour with Naple...

Michael Schmidt’s anthology includes the work of more than a hundred poets from every part of the English-speaking world. What links their diverse voices is a common language: each poem, in its own way, adds to the resources of the medium and makes it new.The poems in this book are allowed to slip free of their moorings in the biography and history of the last century to create new spaces and times. They have been chosen because they are exceptional, profound and unique in what the...

Above the town, on the hill brow, the stone angel used to stand. I wonder if she stands there yet...Hagar Shipley – an irascible, independent nonagenarian – has lived a quiet life full of rage. As she approaches her death, she retreats from the squabbling of her son and his wife to reflect on her past – her ill-advised marriage, her two sons, the harshness of farm life on the prairie, her own failures and the betrayals and failures of others.

Reflections on a lost poem and its rediscovery by contemporary poetsGilgamesh is the most ancient long poem known to exist. It is also the newest classic in the canon of world literature. Lost for centuries to the sands of the Middle East but found again in the 1850s, it tells the story of a great king, his heroism, and his eventual defeat. It is a story of monsters, gods, and cataclysms, and of intimate friendship and love. Acclaimed literary historian Mi...

Now in November I can see our years as a whole. This autumn is like both an end and a beginning to our lives, and those days which seemed confused with the blur of all things too near and too familiar are clear and strange now.Forced out of the city by the Depression, Arnold Haldmarne moves his wife and three daughters to the country and tries to scratch a living from the land. After years of unrelenting hard work, the hiring of a young man from a neighbouring farm upsets ...

National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistIn this stunning volume of epic breadth, Michael Schmidt connects the lives and works of more than 300 poets over the last 700 years--spanning distant shores from Scotland to Australia to the Caribbean, all sharing the English language.Schmidt reveals how each poet has transformed "a common language of poetry" into the rustic rhythms and elegiac ballads, love sonnets, and experimental postmodern verse that make up our lyrical canon...

In the late 1970s, as the apartheid government fought a desperate and dirty battle to stay in power, its security forces devised a chilling new tactic. A shadowy, top-secret unit called Delta 40 was established, tasked with the murder of hundreds of ANC, PAC, and SWAPO members. Victims’ bodies were flung from aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean. Based on the detailed analysis of flight logs and numerous interviews, Death Flight sheds shocking new light on one of apartheid’s darkest chapters.

The 700-year history of the novel in English defies straightforward telling. Geographically and culturally boundless, with contributions from Great Britain, Ireland, America, Canada, Australia, India, the Caribbean, and Southern Africa; influenced by great novelists working in other languages; and encompassing a range of genres, the story of the novel in English unfolds like a richly varied landscape that invites exploration rather than a linear journey. In The Novel: A Biography,...

Building a Space-Faring Civilization: Advancing the Renaissance of Science, Medicine, and Human Performance in Civilian Spaceflight explores an expanding, unique new trajectory for humankind—the settlement of space by civilians. For the first time in history, average humans can contemplate journeys to Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars with the idea of space settlement as a plausible reality. As the numbers of spacefaring civilians grow, medical personnel will be asked to meet their complex n...

Forty-Eight Greatest Squirrel Memes: Book One is a collection of squirrels in various comedic depictions of fun and humor for the entire family. Humor and laughter are good for the human soul, and this collection contains wild squirrels from our backyard, plus other squirrels created by Mary L. Schmidt. Laughter is great for humans as we relieve stress that has built up within ourselves, we breathe in deeper, which gives us more oxygen rich air that helps our brains, organs, and entire bod...

Shadow is a children's picture story about the death/loss of a pet dog named Shadow, and how it affects both children and adults. Emphasis is how it affects a child or children as this is often the first time they learn about death, the death of a dear pet is palpable, and how to help a child or children cope. Grief is real and it is hard for children to cope as they have nothing in which to compare this new loss, thus the focus is on how it affects children and how to help them cope using...