SPRING/SUMMER 2018 Smith Fagan Mitchell Chemerinsky/Gillman Devotion Fishing Beowulf Free Speech 978-0-300-21862-6 978-0-300-21534-2 978-0-300-22888-5 On Campus $18.00 $30.00 $26.00 978-0-300-22656-0 $26.00 Scott Bently Hart Ashton Wiman Against the Grain The New Testament One Hot Summer Joy 978-0-300-18291-0 978-0-300-18609-3 978-0-300-22726-0 978-0-300-22608-9 $26.00 $35.00 $30.00 $25.00 Olson Standing Thomson Shea Chicago Basic Income Warner Bros Language of Light Renaissance 978-0-300-23084-0 978-0-300-19760-0 978-0-300-21543-4 978-0-300-20368-4 $28.00 $25.00 $26.00 $35.00 RECENT GENERAL INTEREST HIGHLIGHTS 1 General Interest COVER: Chalk, 1984 © Pete Turner. General Interest 1 What was your motivation for writing this book? Sometime in 1931, Walter Benjamin wrote a short and now famous essay about a reader’s relationship to his books. He called it “Unpacking My Library: A Speech on Collecting” and used the occasion of Packing My Library pulling his almost two thousand books out of their An Elegy and Ten Digressions boxes to muse on the privileges and responsibilities of a reader. Packing and unpacking are two sides of the Alberto Manguel same gesture, but packing a library is an exercise in loss. There is an untold history of vanished books—through negligence, war, forgetfulness, exile, theft, natural A best-selling author and world-renowned Photo © Melik Külekci. catastrophes—that deserves to be chronicled, and bibliophile meditates on his vast personal perhaps the story of my own library can serve as a library and champions the vital role of A conversation starting place. all libraries with Alberto For reasons I don’t wish to recall, in the summer of Manguel 2015 I decided to leave France and the library I had built there. It was the absurd end of a happy fifteen- In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his year-long chapter, and the beginning of another that, I centuries-old village home in France’s Loire Valley hoped, would be equally happy and at least as long. As and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment my library was dismantled, I asked myself: Who was that on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Packing up his enor- reader whose remains I’m now storing away? If every mous 35,000-volume personal library, choosing which library is autobiographical, its packing-up is something books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself of an elegy. I accompany this elegy with ten digressions in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between on subjects as varied as dreams, revenge, loss, readers’ books and readers, books and collectors, order and disor- responsibilities and a certain notion of civic justice. der, memory and reading. In this poignant and personal reevaluation of his life as a reader, the author illumi- The dismantling of a library, however heartbreaking, nates the highly personal art of reading and affirms the and the packing of its books, however unjust, need vital role of public libraries. not be seen as a premature burial but as a promised future life. Which sections of my library will survive Manguel’s musings range widely, from delightful reflec- and which will be deemed obsolete? What unexpected tions on to the idiosyncrasies of book lovers to deeper alliances will be formed among the boxed travelling analyses of historic and catastrophic book events, Also by Alberto Manguel: including the burning of ancient Alexandria’s library The Library at Night companions? What new labels will emerge once Paper 978-0-300-15130-5 $18.00/£12.99 the old ones are discarded? “En ma fin gît mon and contemporary library lootings at the hands of ISIS. A Reader on Reading commencement,” “In my end is my beginning,” With insight and passion, the author underscores the Paper 978-0-300-17208-9 $20.00x/£12.99 universal centrality of books and their unique impor- Curiosity Mary Queen of Scots is said to have embroidered Paper 978-0-300-21980-7 $18.00/£12.99 on her cloth while in prison. This seems as good a tance to a democratic, civilized, and engaged society. motto as any for what I trust is the promise of my “A richly enjoyable book, absolutely enthralling for anyone who loves to read library’s resurrection. ALBERTO MANGUEL prefers to define himself as a reader and a and an inspiration for anybody who has lover of books, yet he is also a writer, translator, editor, and critic, as ever dreamed of building a library of his or well as the director of the National Library of Argentina. her own.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World, on The Library at Night March Memoir/Literature/Books about Books Hardcover 978-0-300-21933-3 $23.00/£16.99 Also available as an eBook. 3 160 pp. 5 x 7 ⁄4 World 2 General Interest What was your motivation for writing this book? Sometime in 1931, Walter Benjamin wrote a short and now famous essay about a reader’s relationship to his books. He called it “Unpacking My Library: A Speech on Collecting” and used the occasion of Packing My Library pulling his almost two thousand books out of their An Elegy and Ten Digressions boxes to muse on the privileges and responsibilities of a reader. Packing and unpacking are two sides of the Alberto Manguel same gesture, but packing a library is an exercise in loss. There is an untold history of vanished books—through negligence, war, forgetfulness, exile, theft, natural A best-selling author and world-renowned Photo © Melik Külekci. catastrophes—that deserves to be chronicled, and bibliophile meditates on his vast personal perhaps the story of my own library can serve as a library and champions the vital role of A conversation starting place. all libraries with Alberto For reasons I don’t wish to recall, in the summer of Manguel 2015 I decided to leave France and the library I had built there. It was the absurd end of a happy fifteen- In June 2015 Alberto Manguel prepared to leave his year-long chapter, and the beginning of another that, I centuries-old village home in France’s Loire Valley hoped, would be equally happy and at least as long. As and reestablish himself in a one-bedroom apartment my library was dismantled, I asked myself: Who was that on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Packing up his enor- reader whose remains I’m now storing away? If every mous 35,000-volume personal library, choosing which library is autobiographical, its packing-up is something books to keep, store, or cast out, Manguel found himself of an elegy. I accompany this elegy with ten digressions in deep reverie on the nature of relationships between on subjects as varied as dreams, revenge, loss, readers’ books and readers, books and collectors, order and disor- responsibilities and a certain notion of civic justice. der, memory and reading. In this poignant and personal reevaluation of his life as a reader, the author illumi- The dismantling of a library, however heartbreaking, nates the highly personal art of reading and affirms the and the packing of its books, however unjust, need vital role of public libraries. not be seen as a premature burial but as a promised future life. Which sections of my library will survive Manguel’s musings range widely, from delightful reflec- and which will be deemed obsolete? What unexpected tions on to the idiosyncrasies of book lovers to deeper alliances will be formed among the boxed travelling analyses of historic and catastrophic book events, Also by Alberto Manguel: including the burning of ancient Alexandria’s library The Library at Night companions? What new labels will emerge once Paper 978-0-300-15130-5 $18.00/£12.99 the old ones are discarded? “En ma fin gît mon and contemporary library lootings at the hands of ISIS. A Reader on Reading commencement,” “In my end is my beginning,” With insight and passion, the author underscores the Paper 978-0-300-17208-9 $20.00x/£12.99 universal centrality of books and their unique impor- Curiosity Mary Queen of Scots is said to have embroidered Paper 978-0-300-21980-7 $18.00/£12.99 on her cloth while in prison. This seems as good a tance to a democratic, civilized, and engaged society. motto as any for what I trust is the promise of my “A richly enjoyable book, absolutely enthralling for anyone who loves to read library’s resurrection. ALBERTO MANGUEL prefers to define himself as a reader and a and an inspiration for anybody who has lover of books, yet he is also a writer, translator, editor, and critic, as ever dreamed of building a library of his or well as the director of the National Library of Argentina. her own.”—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World, on The Library at Night March Memoir/Literature/Books about Books Hardcover 978-0-300-21933-3 $23.00/£16.99 Also available as an eBook. 3 160 pp. 5 x 7 ⁄4 World General Interest 3 Why did you write a book about going on the road to interview people, not one that focused mainly on what science has revealed about the state of the environment? What’s more American than a road trip? On this road trip, readers begin to learn something about the truth Breakpoint of the future we face.