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Books > Language & Literature > Literature: texts > Essays, journals, letters & other prose works > General
Joan Didion’s savage masterpiece, which, since first publication in 1968, has been acknowledged as an unparalleled report on the state of America during the upheaval of the Sixties Revolution.
In her non-fiction work, Joan Didion not only describes the subject at hand – her younger self loving and leaving New York, the murderous housewife, the little girl trailing the rock group, the millionaire bunkered in his mansion – but also offers a broader vision of the world, one that is both terrifying and tender, ominous and uniquely her own.
For the first time, the speeches of His Royal Highness The Prince
of Wales are being made available in a two-volume set in a
collaborative effort by the University of Wales and the University
of Maryland. Professors Suheil Bushrui and David Cadman have
brought together a selection of speeches and articles by The Prince
of Wales covering a period of over forty years, gathered together
under headings that cover his principal interests and activities:
the natural environment, expressed both as farming, forestry and
fisheries, and then as climate change; architecture and the built
environment; integrated medicine and health; society, religion and
tradition; education, The Prince's Trust and Business in the
Community. These volumes, intended as a work of reference, show The
Prince of Wales as his ideas, knowledge and experience develop,
from his first speech at the age of twenty in 1968 to his more
recent speeches in 2012. What is most noteworthy, however, is that
though the style of the speeches and articles have changed over the
years, the overall message has remained consistent - not only in
terms of environmental degradation and climate change, but also in
matters relating to healthcare, urban form, organic farming and the
need for greater respect and understanding between religions - all
of which speaks volumes for The Prince's passion for and commitment
to what he believes, even in times when his ideas were
unconventional.
Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist's defining
work, The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told
through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural
habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television,
advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux invents a form that is
subjective and impersonal, private and communal, and a new genre -
the collective autobiography - in order to capture the passing of
time. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, The Years is
'a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and
consumerism' (New York Times), a monumental account of
twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of
one woman.
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