During the Civil War three intelligent, articulate young men served as Abraham Lincoln's secretaries. John Nicolay and John Hay lived in the White House across the hall from the president's office and, together with William Stoddard, spent more time with Lincoln than anyone else outside his immediate family. "Lincoln's Men" is a fascinating, intimate, and moving portrait of life in the Civil War White House and of the beleaguered president's extraordinary relationship with the indispensable trio he used as a sounding board--the best and the brightest of their day who had a place near the center of Washington's grandest galas and a front-row seat on the drama of war.

Through the lens of four seminal concerts, acclaimed poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein offers an intimate, vivid, and comprehensive portrait of Bob Dylan. Beginning in 1963, Epstein revisits Dylan's early struggles to find artistic direction; his transition from folk icon to rock star; and his secluded family life and divorce. A breathtaking account of Dylan's Never Ending Tour and his contemporary studio sessions brings us full circle, revealing how Dylan revived a flagging career and accepted his role as the eminence grise of rock and roll today.

Drawing on new interviews with those closest to Dylan--including Maria Muldaur, Nora Guthrie, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott--The Ballad of Bob Dylan is a singular take on an artist who has transformed generations and continues to inspire and surprise today.

The Penn Greek Drama Series presents original literary translations of the entire corpus of classical Greek drama: tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays. It is the only contemporary series of all the surviving work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.This volume includes translations by Eleanor Wilner with Ines Azar (Medea), Marilyn Nelson ("Hecuba"), Donald Junkins ("Andromache"), and Daniel Mark Epstein ("The Bacchae").

Drawing from a career of almost fifty years, Daniel Mark Epstein's collection of new and selected poems forms a lyrical autobiography of its author as a poet and a man. Dawn to Twilight examines universal themes such as love and aging, happiness and despair, each of which Epstein approaches differently throughout the decades of his writing career. These poems encapsulate the evolution of Epstein's work, with the passage of time itself forming a crucial theme as the author grows from student to lover to father. Epstein's poems evince his deep empathy for people from all walks of life: a knife salesman who harbors no illusions about the use to which his wares have been put; a teacher who watches his student struggle with a thorny philosophical question; a genie whose plans of revenge fade as he emerges from his lamp into the light. Dawn to Twilight celebrates the coming of joy and beauty, accepts their transience, and elegizes their passing.

"Rapturous . . . [Epstein] extols Millay, persuasively, as 'America's foremost love poet.' " -Merle Rubin, The Wall Street Journal

This is the story of a rare sort of American genius, who grew up in grinding poverty in Camden, Maine. Nothing could save the sensitive child but her talent for words, music, and drama, and an inexorable desire to be loved. When she was twenty, her poetry would make her famous; at thirty she would be loved by readers the world over.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was widely considered to be the most seductive woman of her age. Few men could resist her, and many women also fell under her spell. From the publication of her first poems until the scandal over Fatal Interview twenty years later, gossip about the poet's liberated lifestyle prompted speculation about who might be the real subject of her verses.

Using letters, diaries, and journals of the poet and her lovers that have only recently become available, Daniel Mark Epstein tells the astonishing story of the life, dedicated to art and love, that inspired the sublime lyrics of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Sister Aimee was a scamp in school, a young widow in China, and a neurotic housewife in Rhode Island, but when the Lord spoke to her, she accepted her ministry and began preaching. This book "fills a significant gap in the history of revivalism" (New York Times Book Review). Photographs.