Coralie Bickford-Smith

Andrew Delbanco

Tom Quirk

Herman Melville

Part of Penguin's beautiful hardback Clothbound Classics series, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith, these delectable and collectible editions are bound in high-quality colourful, tactile cloth with foil stamped into the design.In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab is an eerily compelling madman who focuses his distilled hatred and suffering (and that of generations before him) into the pursuit of a creature as vast, dangerous and unknowable as the sea itself. More than just a novel of adventure, this is a haunting social commentary populated with some of the most enduring characters in literature. Written with wonderfully redemptive humour, Moby Dick is a profound and timeless inquiry into character, faith and the nature of perception.

Or, the Whale

Moby-Dick

A Meditation on Hope

The Real American Dream

what it was, is, and should be

College

As the commercialization of American higher education accelerates, more and more students are coming to college with the narrow aim of obtaining a preprofessional credential. The traditional four-year college experience—an exploratory time for students to discover their passions and test ideas and values with the help of teachers and peers—is in danger of becoming a thing of the past. In College, prominent cultural critic Andrew Delbanco offers a trenchant defense of such an education, and warns that it is becoming a privilege reserved for the relatively rich. In describing what a true college education should be, he demonstrates why making it available to as many young people as possible remains central to America's democratic promise. In a brisk and vivid historical narrative, Delbanco explains how the idea of college arose in the colonial period from the Puritan idea of the gathered church, how it struggled to survive in the nineteenth century in the shadow of the new research universities, and how, in the twentieth century, it slowly opened its doors to women, minorities, and students from low-income families. He describes the unique strengths of America’s colleges in our era of globalization and, while recognizing the growing centrality of science, technology, and vocational subjects in the curriculum, he mounts a vigorous defense of a broadly humanistic education for all. Acknowledging the serious financial, intellectual, and ethical challenges that all colleges face today, Delbanco considers what is at stake in the urgent effort to protect these venerable institutions for future generations. In a new afterword, Delbanco responds to recent developments—both ominous and promising—in the changing landscape of higher education.

What It Was, Is, and Should Be - Updated Edition

Marie-Christine de Navacelle

Joshua Siegel

In a career that spans more than four decades, FrederickWiseman has made thirty-eight films that together form a monumental chronicle of latetwentieth- century institutional and cultural life. The dilemmasWiseman poses in his films moral, philosophical, legal, medical, technological, political, religious and aesthetic are both urgent and vexing, from his controversial debut, Titicut Follies (1967), the only American film ever censored for reasons other than national security or obscenity, to his recent critical and commercial success La Danse The Paris Opera Ballet (2009) and forthcoming film Boxing Gym (2010). FrederickWiseman, the first publication in English to provide a comprehensive overview ofWisemans work to date (including projects for theatre and opera), features original essays by a variety of distinguished writers, critics, filmmakers and actors, and byWiseman himself. Richly illustrated with stills from his films, this volume is an incisive examination of one of cinemas most fearless and innovative filmmakers.

Frederick Wiseman

Andrew Delbanco

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