Rebecca West

"The publication of Rebecca West's Survivors in Mexico marks an important literary event: the rescue from oblivion of a daring and important work by an major twentieth-century writer. This book is West's exploration of Mexican history, religion, and culture - a work the author clearly conceived as a companion and sequel to her masterpiece about the Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941). Although West never brought Survivors to completion, she left behind a series of extensive drafts and revisions that Bernard Schweizer has meticulously assembled and edited. The result is a welcome addition to the Rebecca West canon - a compelling travel memoir/history comparable to her best work, and one certain to gain readers and critical acclaim." "West's narrative takes on Mexican history - the conquest by Spain, the Mexican Revolution, and the muralist movement - and explores the inner lives of such figures as Cortes, Montezuma, the Reclus brothers, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Dr. Atl, and Leon Trotsky. The author's concern is to distill meaning from the complex and often incoherent mass of data that characterizes the process of history. She draws fascinating connections between consciousness and material life, between subjective desire and social agency, and between art and politics. She sheds light on the revolutionary impulse and outlines a philosophy of history that acknowledges darkness yet documents the triumph of the human spirit over adversity."--Jacket.

Henry James Jr. (1843-1916) came from a well-to-do family in New York City that associated with such intellectuals as Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau. After studying medicine at Harvard, James went on to write the groundbreaking Principles of Psychology, praised by the Society for Psychical Research. Although he wrote, “I don’t want everyone to like me,” in A Portrait of a Lady, it seemed that everyone did, and he found critical and commercial success with such brilliant works as Daisy Miller, The Bostonians, The Turn of the Screw, and Washington Square. Published in 1916, Henry James is a critical study.

Writing her first novel during World War I, West examines the relationship between three women and a soldier suffering from shell-shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth century.

"Italian writer and filmmaker Gianni Celati's 1989 philosophical travelogue Towards the River's Mouth explores perception, memory, place and space as it recounts a series of journeys across the Po River Valley in northern Italy. This edition, translated into English for the first time, features a selection of ten essays by various scholars"--

This story is told through the eyes of a young woman, Lara. It is the story of Count Nikolai Diakonov, a white Russian, passionately loyal to the Tsar. In 1900, the Count lives not in his beloved country, but as an exile in Paris. Tsar Nicholas has been convinced that the Count is not loyal, but a traitor. Angry and deeply miserable, Count Diakonov sets out on a railway journey to visit a relative in Northern France. On the way, he encounters the revolutionary son of an old friend. This man is seeking the Count because he, too, has been the victim of related Russian intrique. What follows solves the mystery of Diakonov's exile, and changes his attitude to Russia. Through the story, Rebecca West also tells the story of the passing of old Russia and the birth of the USSR.

The lives of the talented Aubrey children have long been clouded by their father's genius for instability, but his new job in the London suburbs promises, for a time at least, reprieve from scandal and the threat of ruin. Mrs. Aubrey, a former concert pianist, struggles to keep the family afloat, but then she is something of a high-strung eccentric herself, as is all too clear to her daughter Rose, through whose loving but sometimes cruel eyes events are seen. Still, living on the edge holds the promise of the unexpected, and the Aubreys, who encounter furious poltergeists, turn up hidden masterpieces, and come to the aid of a murderess, will find that they have adventure to spare.

In 1900, West examines the final year of Queen Victoria's reign, a period that simultaneously embodied the confidence of the 19th century and hinted at the uncertainties of the century to come. The book covers a wide range of social, political, and cultural events, presenting a detailed, sometimes acerbic, historical argument. The book's illustrations, many of them rare period photographs, depict both historical figures and scenes from daily life, including Queen Victoria and the construction of the New York subway. West's text features notes accompanying the pictures, along with a central, long essay that offers her insightful perspective.