George F. Will

In the early 1990s Windsor Castle was devastated by fire. In this book Nicolson charts the years since the fire through to the final rebuilding, including dealing with the fire, the finances of restoring the Castle and the decisions on whether simply to restore or make changes. Head Bookbinder Richard Day’s swan song to mark his retirement from the Royal Bindery. It displays both his skills as a bookbinder, and his membership of the Royal Household Fire Brigade, in which capacity he was one of the first firemen on the scene of the Windsor Castle fire in 1992. This aspect of his life is celebrated both on the outer boards and on the doublures.

"When Katie Roiphe arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1986, she found that the feminism she had been raised to believe in had been radically transformed. The women's movement, which had once signaled such strength and courage, now seemed lodged in a foundation of weakness and fear. At Harvard, and later as a graduate student at Princeton, Roiphe saw a thoroughly new phenomenon taking shape on campus: the emergence of a culture captivated by victimization, and of a new bedroom politics in the university, cloaked in outdated assumptions about the way men and women experience sex. Men were the silencers and women the silenced, and if anyone thought differently no one was saying so." "Twenty-four-year-old Katie Roiphe is the first of her generation to speak out publicly against the intolerant turn the women's movement has taken, and in The Morning After she casts a critical eye on what she calls the mating rituals of a rape-sensitive community. From Take Back the Night marches (which Roiphe terms "march as therapy" and "rhapsodies of self-affirmation") to rape-crisis feminists and the growing campus concern with sexual harassment, Roiphe shows us a generation of women whose values are strikingly similar to those their mothers and grandmothers fought so hard to escape from - a generation yearning for regulation, fearful of its sexuality, and animated by a nostalgia for days of greater social control." "At once a fierce. Excoriation of establishment feminism and a passionate call to our best instincts, The Morning After sounds a necessary alarm and entreats women of all ages to take stock of where they came from and where they want to go."--Jacket.

The fifth collection of George F. Will's essays in America's political tumults and cultural controversies of the past four years.

In his provocative and compelling new book, America's most widely read and most influential commentator casts his gimlet eye on our singular nation. Moving far beyond the strict confines of politics, George F. Will offers a fascinating look at the people, stories, and events--often unheralded--that make the American drama so endlessly entertaining and instructive. With Will's signature erudition and wry wit always on display, One Man's America chronicles a spectacular, eclectic procession of figures who have shaped our cultural landscape--from Playboy founder Hugh Hefner to National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., from Victorian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from cotton picker-- turned--country singer Buck Owens to actor-turned-president Ronald Reagan. Will crisscrosses the country to illuminate what it is that makes America distinctive. He visits the USS Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and ponders its enduring links to the present. He travels to Milwaukee to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of an iconic brand, Harley-Davidson. In Los Angeles he finds the inspiring future of education, while in New York he confronts the dispiriting didacticism of the avant-garde. He ventures to the Civil War battlefields of Virginia to explore what we risk when we efface our own history. And on the outskirts of Chicago he investigates one of the darkest chapters in American history, only to discover a shining example of resilience and grace--the best the country has to offer. Will's wide lens takes in much more as well--everything from the "most emblematic novel of the 1930s" (and no, it is not about the Joads) to the cult of ESPN to Brooks Brothers and Ben & Jerry's. And of course, One Man's America would not be complete without the author's insights on the national pastime, baseball--the icons and the cheats, the hapless and the greats. Finally, in a personal and reflective turn, Will writes movingly of his thirty-five-year-old son Jon, born with Down syndrome, and pays loving and poignant tribute to his mother, who died at the age of ninety-eight after a long struggle with dementia. The essays in One Man's America, even when critiquing American culture, reflect Will's deep affection and regard for our nation. After all, he notes, when America falls short, it does so only as compared to "the uniquely high standards it has set for itself." In the end, this brilliantly informative and entertaining book reminds us of the enduring value of "the simple virtues and decencies that can make communities flourish and that have made America great and exemplary."From the Hardcover edition.