Richard Luckett, librarian at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and an acknowledged authority on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, explores the background and composition of Messiah; the often st
This “exquisite, exuberant, X-rated” novel (Mirabella), set in feudal Japan, tells the story of a concubine who hires a stable boy to whisper erotic stories from behind a screen while she entertains h
Wallis draws on his experience in urban ghettos to show why traditional liberal and conservative options that emphasize either social justice or personal values fall short. He looks outside the tradit
A “lively...generously illustrated” (Washington Post Book World) survey of how, over the past four thousand years, religious leaders, artists, writers, and ordinary people in the West hav
In these “impishly witty and ingeniously irreverent” essays (Atlantic Monthly), “the Andy Rooney of academia” (Los Angeles Times) takes on computer jargon, librarians, bureaucrats, meals on airplanes,
