POE: The First Detective: Three Stories by Edgar Allan Poe established a whole new genre: detective fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle credits Poe for creating the very formula that made his Sherlock Holmes stories such a success: the super-intelligent sleuth with a bumbling sidekick, who triumphs over the diligent but baffled police official. Order a copy of The First Detective. ISBN 978-0-942208-15-3. $12.95
Two-Hour Reads
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WRITING
- Don't Panic: Procrastinator's Guide to Writing an Effective Term Paper, Steven Posusta. 64pp.
- Hamlet, Prince of Denmark with glossary
Hamlet, Director's Playbook, William Shakespeare. 236pp. with summary, scenes, auditions, sketchpad, producer, stage manager, budget, promotion
Seven Plays of William Shakespeare with Transgender Characters with glossary. 323pp.
Twelfth Night with glossary, William Shakespeare
As You Like It with glossary, William Shakespeare
Cymbeline with glossary, William Shakespeare
Merry Wives of Windsor with glossary, William Shakespeare
Two Gentlemen of Verona with glossary, William Shakespeare
Taming of the Shrew with glossary, William Shakespeare
Merchant of Venice, 2000, William Shakespeare
Merchant of Venice, rev. 2011 with glossary, William Shakespeare
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James Madison et al., The Idea of a President (debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787)
John Milton, Areopagitica: Freedom of the Press, revised
(teachers) Supplement Edition: Areopagitica: Freedom of the Press, revised
Edgar Allan Poe, First Detective: 3 Stories
Plato, Apology of Socrates & The Crito
(teachers) Supplement Edition: Apology of Socrates & Crito
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Gandhi on the (Bhagavad) Gita
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Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
(teachers) Supplement Edition: Leaves of Grass (1855)
Edgar Allan Poe, First Detective: 3 Stories
The Beechers Through the 19th Century, Sasha Newborn, producer
(teachers) Supplement Edition: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe with notes
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein with notes
William Blake, The Everlasting Gospel and Other Poems
John Milton, Areopagitica: Freedom of the Press, revised
(teachers) Supplement Edition: Areopagitica Freedom of the Press
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh. What the Heart Knows
- Italian for Opera Lovers (dictionary)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Dante and His Circle with Giotto, Boccaccio, Guido Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, Cino da Pistoia
Dante Alighieri, Vita Nuova poem series on Beatrice, who died young
- Sappho, Sappho: The Poems
(teachers) (Supplement Edition) Sappho Poems
Ghalib, Ghazals of Ghalib poetry
Luis Leal, Myths & Legends of Mexico/Mitos y Leyendas de México bilingual, 20 stories, color illustrations
The pages that follow describe titles still in inventory as of April 2012.
SHAKESPEARE: The Merchant of Venice, modernized by Rachel Burke for ease of reading and/or acting. This text is illustrated in b/w sketches by Orson Welles when he was a student (some sketches portray specific actors, such as Edwin Forrest as Shylock). The case of Shylock, one of drama's most intriguing characters, highlights the moral dilemma of justice vs. mercy. Portia is one of Shakespeare's remarkable cross-dressed heroines. ISBN 978-0-942208-10-8. $11.95
PORTIA: The quality of mercy is unforced.
It drops as does the gentle rain from heaven
unto the place beneath. It is twice-blessed:
It blesses him that gives and him that takes…
PLATO: Read more about The Apology of Socrates & The Crito, Socrates at his most personal, in the most famous trial in history. Questions remain; did Socrates want to die to prove a point? Was the outcome in doubt? Did his pride overshadow his good sense? Were the accusers right? Was there a political motive behind the trial? If his life was spent as he described it, why do we remember Socrates today? And the ever popular: How much of this is Socrates speaking and how much is Plato expressing his own philosophy? ISBN 978-0-942208-05-4. $9.95.
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Teachers can check on the table of contents of the Supplement Edition: The Apology of Socrates & The Crito ISBN 978-0-942208-39-9. $35.00. See SPECIAL OFFER for 2011. Or order it direct.
Someone may wonder why I go about in private, giving advice and busying myself with the concerns of others, but do not venture to come forward in public and advise the state. I will tell you the reason of this.…
SAPPHO: Sappho: The Poems includes recent discoveries in the 1950s of previously unknown Sappho poetry. Though history has not been kind to Sappho's legacy, her contribution at the very beginning of lyric poetry as we know it is immeasurable. Presumably the headmistress of a girls' school, Sappho created performances with music, dance, and poetry. The music and dance have long disappeared, but the nuanced lines of poetry burned themselves into history. Plato called her the Tenth Muse, but others were not as kind. All her known works were destroyed by those who considered personal feelings to be retrograde. Nevertheless, she was quoted widely enough for us to taste the honey that remains in her lines. Revised edition. ISBN 978-0-942208-11-5. $9.95
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[TO COME: View the table of contents of a critical supplement. ISBN 978-0-942208-40-5. $35.] See SPECIAL OFFER for 2011.
I called you all here
to give you fine candies, girls,
and gifts, and we'll have a love song on
the pure-toned tortoise lyre.
My own skin is wrinkled now,
my black hair has gone gray,
even my knees no longer hold me up,
though I once leaped like a fawn,
but what can I do?
I can't begin again,
any more than rosy-armed Dawn
to the last days of earth can hide
her mother's love for Tithon,
whom she doomed to wither but never die.
I love this girl caressing me. I love
everything graceful. Love has given me this,
and beauty and the sunlight.
DANTE ALIGHIERI: Dante and His Circle is a collection by Dante Gabriel Rossetti of the ambitious youthful Dante (including his Vita Nuova opus about Beatrice, elaborately annotated by Dante), set alongside comparable works by fourteen of his contemporaries (sometimes replying to each other); after the courtly poetry and songs of the troubadours of Southern France, the group around Dante created modern Italian, the first vulgar literary language of Europe. ISBN 978-0-942208-09-2. $12.95
DANTE ALIGHIERI
Sonnet to Guido Cavalcanti
He imagines a pleasant voyage for Guido, Lapo Gianni,
and himself, with their three ladies
Guido, I wish that Lapo, you, and I,
could be by spells conveyed, as it were now,
upon a bark, with all the winds that blow
across all seas as our good will to haste.
So no mischance nor temper of the sky
should mar our course with spite or cruel slip;
but we, observing old companionship,
to be companions still should long thereby.
And Lady Joan, and Lady Beatrice,
and her the thirtieth on my roll, with us
should our good wizard set, over seas to move
and not to talk of anything but love:
and they three ever to be well at ease,
as we should be, I think if this were thus.
GHALIB: The Ghazals of Ghalib presents multi-layered two-liners from the famous Urdu poet Ghalib, whose love relationship to God is personal … and bittersweet. Order a copy of Ghazals of Ghalib/ ISBN 978-0-942208-06-1. $9.95
GANDHI: This book, Gita: Gandhi on the Gita, is Mahatma Gandhi's most succinct statement of his own beliefs. In each chapter, he retells the Bhagavad Gita story (a basic text of Hinduism), and gives his analysis of its meaning. ISBN 978-0-942208-03-0. Order a copy of Gita: Gandhi on the Gita. $9.95
LEAL: Mitos y Leyendas de Mexico/Myths and Legends of Mexico is a beautiful cofeetable-sized bilingual compilation by Luis Leal of stories running the span and development of the Mexican mystique, from the gods to the early Twentieth Century. Illustrated with 20 original color plates by Alvaro Suman. Paper cover ISBN 978-0-942208-31-3. $39.50. Signed hardbound copies also available. To buy directly, you can find the paperbound edition. We have a few signed copies, both softbound and hardcover. Contact Bandanna Books if interested.
Copyright © 2012 Bandanna Books