"Taking Mesopotamia" was originally inspired by Jenny Lewis's search for her lost father – the young South Wales Borderer who fought in the ill-fated Mesopotamian campaign of World War I. Through reconstructed diary extracts, witness statements, form...

Are we alone? If so, "Particle and Wave" insists that we need not be lonely. Here the periodic table of elements – a system familiar to many of us from high school chemistry – unfolds in a series of unexpected meanings with connotations public, perso...

"This book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciousnesses and almost two epochs". ‌ That's how Edmund Gosse opened "Father and Son", the classic 1907 book about his relationship with his father. Seth Lerer's "Prospero's Son...

In 1943, twenty-four-year-old Primo Levi had just begun a career in chemistry when, after joining a partisan group, he was captured by the Italian Fascist Militia and deported to Auschwitz. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his transport, he was one of only...

The poems in Owen Lowery's first collection speak in a range of voices, offer glimpses into many lives and many worlds. At the same time, we hear in all of them Lowery's own voice. Incorporating elements from English, Welsh, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese...

In "Air's Appearance", Jayne Elizabeth Lewis enlists her readers in pursuit of the elusive concept of atmosphere in literary works. She shows how diverse conceptions of air in the eighteenth century converged in British fiction, producing the modern...

An actor's deepest desire is to be understood. But when asked to pronounce such words as "chanson", "phantasime", or "quaestor", many otherwise unflappable actors can be rendered speechless. "The Eloquent Shakespeare" aims to untie those tongues a...

"Overwintering" is coming through, emerging into the light of a new season. Pippa Little's book explores what survives and grows from the dark energies of winter, night and loss, from the buried past and the imagination's depths. Landscapes speak of...

Hugh Lofting's beloved story of the doctor who can talk to animals has long enchanted children. Though his fondness for pets drives away all his human patients, as a veterinarian, Doctor Doolittle has the magic touch. Join him, Polynesia, Jip the dog...

"Bevel" is William Letford's first book, but his poems have already earned him a large following thanks to his brilliant performances and through Carcanet's "New Poetries V" anthology. Letford makes poems from the rhythms of speech and the stuff of d...