In 1957--long before colleges awarded degrees in creative nonfiction and back when newspaper writing's reputation was tainted by the fish it wrapped--Princeton began honoring talented literary journalists. Since then, fifty-nine of the finest, most dedicated, and most decorated nonfiction writers have held the Ferris and McGraw professorships. This monumental volume harbors their favorite and often most influential works. Each contribution is rewarding reading, and collectively the selections validate journalism's ascent into the esteem of the academy and the reading public.

Necessarily eclectic and delightfully idiosyncratic, the fifty-nine pieces are long and short, political and personal, comic and deadly serious. Students will be provoked by William Greider's pointed critique of the democracy industry, eerily entertained by Leslie Cockburn's fraternization with the Cali cartel, inspired by David K. Shipler's thoughts on race, unsettled by Haynes Johnson's account of Bay of Pigs survivors, and moved by Lucinda Frank's essay on a mother fighting to save a child born with birth defects. Many of the essays are finely crafted portraits: Charlotte Grimes's biography of her grandmother, Blair Clark's obituary for Robert Lowell, and Jane Kramer's affecting story of a woman hero of the French Resistance.

Other contributions to savor include Harrison Salisbury on the siege of Leningrad, Landon Jones on the 1950s, Christopher Wren on Soviet mountaineering, James Gleick on technology, Gloria Emerson on Vietnam, Gina Kolata on Fermat's last theorem, and Roger Mudd on the media. Whether approached chronologically, thematically, randomly, or, as the editors order them, more intuitively, each suggests a perfect evening reading.

Designed for students as well as general readers, "The Princeton Anthology of Writing" splendidly attests to the elegance, eloquence, and endurance of fine nonfiction.

From a Swedish hotel made of ice to the enigma of UFOs, from a tragedy on Lake Minnetonka to the gold mine of cyberpornography, "The Princeton Reader" brings together more than 90 favorite essays by 75 distinguished writers. This collection of nonfiction pieces by journalists who have held the Ferris/McGraw/Robbins professorships at Princeton University offers a feast of ideas, emotions, and experiences--political and personal, light-hearted and comic, serious and controversial--for anyone to dip into, contemplate, and enjoy.

The volume includes a plethora of topics from the environment, terrorism, education, sports, politics, and music to profiles of memorable figures and riveting stories of survival. These important essays reflect the high-quality work found in today's major newspapers, magazines, broadcast media, and websites. The book's contributors include such outstanding writers as Ken Armstrong of the "Seattle Times"; Jill Abramson, Jim Dwyer, and Walt Bogdanich of the "New York Times"; Evan Thomas of "Newsweek"; Joel Achenbach and Marc Fisher of the "Washington Post"; Nancy Gibbs of "Time"; and Jane Mayer, John McPhee, John Seabrook, and Alex Ross of the "New Yorker."

The perfect collection for anyone who enjoys compelling narratives, "The Princeton Reader" contains a depth and breadth of nonfiction that will inspire, provoke, and endure.

According to Carol Rigolot, reading the work of Nobel Prize-winning poet Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) is not unlike eavesdropping on a telephone conversation in which only one side is audible. His poems are antiphonal, and even polyphonic, works where interlocutors are almost always reduced to anonymity. In this book, Rigolot analyzes the poet's multiple strategies of dialogue, capturing his conversations with a surprising range of people--from biblical figures and ancient Greek and Roman authors to artists as diverse as Dante and Shakespeare, Chateaubriand and Hugo, Audubon, Whitman, Poe, Baudelaire, Verne, Mallarm(c), Gaughin, Rimbaud, Loti, Claudel, Val(c)ry, Segalen, and Braque.