Francois Racine de Monville (1734-1797), a virtuoso musician, sportsman, architect and epicurean, was a quintessential representative of the French Enlightenment, a luminary among a constellation of luminaries. Unlike many of his contemporaries, however, Monsieur de Monville fell into oblivion.

The author has conducted extensive research to paint a portrait of Monville and place him in the context of the political, social and artistic movements at the end of the 18th century.

The pages of this book are populated with Monville's friends and acquaintances. The reader will discover princes and paupers, playwrights and prostitutes, philosophers and pirates, ambassadors and actresses, feminists and Freemasons. The author also focuses on the Americans living in Paris at the end of the 18th century-including four future presidents of the United States-who traveled in the circles Monville frequented.

Many celebrities were Monville's guests at his sumptuous Paris townhouse or at his country estate, the Desert de Retz, at Chambourcy, with its unique Column House, considered "the most interesting building of the eighteenth century."

The text is enhanced with three engravings of the Desert de Retz by Constant Bourgeois dating from 1808. A hitherto unpublished poem by Beaumarchais dedicated to Monville is included in an appendix.

This new edition incorporates additional anecdotes from the life of Monville, recounted by his contemporaries and unpublished for over a century. The index has been expanded to twelve pages and the bibliography now contains over three score references.

Praise for the first edition of "Monville: Forgotten Luminary of the French Enlightenment"

A reader in the United States: "The ironic last sentence was perfect. One thing for sure is that I'm even more determined to visit the Desert because of the book. What an incredibly interesting man and what a life."
Readers in France: "Je voulais vous dire toute mon admiration pour le travail fabuleux que vous avez effectue ainsi que pour la qualite de cette uvre que je parcours avec le plus grand interet."
"Votre livre est petri de tendresse pour la France."
A reader in the United Kingdom: "You are giving me lots of micro-biographies of people I'd never heard of and therefore ought not to be interested in; logically I should be bored stiff, but in fact not at all. Don't know how you do it but the damn thing is highly readable "
A reader in Mexico: "I finished your wonderful book yesterday and I am truly delighted. I really adored it It was like a trip in Time and Space. I could imagine myself in those places with the people you talk about."

The seventy-eight poems in this collection--from four lines to six pages in length--were composed over a period of almost forty years and can be considered episodes of a memoir, an autobiography in verse documenting the author's life, loves and travels.

The dictionary defines "divagation" as a wandering or a digression. Therefore many of the poems in this collection evoke the author's voyages that have taken him to forty-seven countries around the world.

"Divagations" is also a virtual handbook of poetic forms ranging from the elegance of the Spenserian Stanza to free verse. There are ballads and ballades, odes and ottava rima, rondels and rondeaux. Like many English-language poets, the author has a fondness for the sonnet; included is a sequence of twenty-four love sonnets. He has also included three sestinas, one in French. A long, narrative poem in blank verse recounts the adventures of one Poor Fisher, who travels to the Caribbean and attempts to establish a new religion with himself as its prophet.

Ronald W. Kenyon studied English literature at the University of Michigan and Stanford and became familiar with the entire history of English poetry, from Anglo-Saxon alliteration to the modernism of William Butler Yeats, Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound; this entire legacy has left its mark on his poetry. The reader will also find allusions to modern Spanish-language poets, notably Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Lorca.

Included in an appendix are extensive annotations by Catherine Jagor, a Paris-based poet who has known the author for over a quarter of a century and is intimately familiar with his work.

"After reading this collection, you will be changed, enriched and inspired." Jean-Pierre Collet, author of "Le Chant du Naif" and "Harmonies.""

A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas: Real Stories from Bahrain was written during and after the author's four-month stay in the Middle Eastern island kingdom of Bahrain. The second edition, now available, includes an index. With a photographer's eye, a journalist's nose for news and a poet's way with words, Ronald W. Kenyon recounts his observations and displays his insightful understanding of Arab and Islamic culture, customs and religion with particular emphasis on Bahrain. In a wide-ranging series of vignettes and anecdotes, the author takes the reader from the temples and towns of the 5,000-year old Dilmun civilization to the glitz of twenty-first century shopping malls. He offers vivid descriptions of sanguinary religious rites, the tribulations of haggling with a taxi driver whose fare has to be paid in three different currencies and his body clock's disorientation from dealing with three different weekends. While not a guidebook, A Winter in the Middle of Two Seas is a meticulously-researched primer for anyone visiting or working in Bahrain or the armchair traveler who wants to learn more about current events in the Middle East than what appears in the mainstream media. In the last chapter of the book, entitled "The Truth about Bahrain," the author strives for objectivity, attempting to set the record straight by placing the current events in Bahrain in their historical, geopolitical and religious context. The author is optimistic about the future of Bahrain and dedicates his book to the people of Bahrain "in the earnest hope that they may, with God's grace, achieve everlasting harmony."