From Marilyn to Mussolini, people captivate people. A&E's Biography, best-selling autobiographies, and biographical novels testify to the popularity of the genre. But where does one begin? Collected here are descriptions and evaluations of over 10,000 biographical works, including books of fact and fiction, biographies for young readers, and documentaries and movies, all based on the lives of over 500 historical figures from scientists and writers, to political and military leaders, to artists and musicians. Each entry includes a brief profile, autobiographical and primary sources, and recommended works. Short reviews describe the pertinent biographical works and offer insight into the qualities and special features of each title, helping readers to find the best biographical material available on hundreds of fascinating individuals.

Praise for the earlier edition: "Students of modern American literature have for some years turned to Fifteen Modern American Authors (1969) as an indispensable guide to significant scholarship and criticism about twentieth-century American writers. In its new form--Sixteenth Modern American Authors--it will continue to be indispensable. If it is not a desk-book for all Americanists, it is a book to be kept in the forefront of the bibliographical compartment of their brains."--American Studies

A collection of essays in which the possibilities of a deeper dialogue, by means of the contemplative traditions of the Abrahamic Faiths is explored. The book expounds an ageless, profound means of overcoming religious hatred and violence and awakening the beauty of unity in diversity.

In the wake of the steady expansion and more recent explosion of Anglo-Indian and Indo-Anglian writing, and following the success of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the literature of the Indian diaspora has become the object of close attention. As a body of literature, it simultaneously represents an important multicultural perspective within individual ‘national' literatures (such as those of Canada or Australia) as well as a more global perspective taking in the phenomena of transculturalism and diaspora. However, while readers may share an interest in the writing of the Indian diaspora, they do not always interpret the notion of ‘Indian diaspora' in the same way. Indeed, there has been much debate in recent years about the appropriateness of terms such as diaspora and exile. Should these terms be reserved for the specifically historical nature of problems encountered in the process of acquiring new nationality and citizenship, or can they be extended to the writing of literature itself or used to describe ‘economic' migration arising out of privilege? As a response to these debates, Shifting Continents/Colliding Cultures explores the aftermath of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, including the resulting diaspora. The essays also examine zones of intersection between theories of postcolonial writing and models of diaspora and the nation. Particular lines of investigation include: how South-Asian identity is negotiated in Western spaces, and its reverse, how Western identity is negotiated in South-Asian space; reading identity by privileging history; the role of diasporic women in the (Western) nation; how diaspora affects the literary canon; and how diaspora is used in the production of alternative identities in films such as Gurinder Chadha's Bhaji on the Beach.

This book investigates the re-discovery of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement in Germany of the nineteenth and beginning twentieth Germany. Since this movement is inseparably connected with religious reforms that took place at about the same time, it shall be demonstrated how the Reform Movement in Judaism used the Guide for its own agenda of historizing, rationalizing and finally turning Judaism into a philosophical enterprise of ‘ethical monotheism’. The study follows the reception of Maimonidean thought, and the Guide specifically, through the nineteenth century, from the first beginnings of early reformers in 1810 and their reading of Maimonides to the development of a sophisticated reform-theology, based on Maimonides, in the writings of Hermann Cohen more then a hundred years later.

This book explores the aftermath of British colonialism on the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka, including the resulting Diaspora. The essays also examine zones of intersection between theories of postcolonial writing and models of Diaspora and the nation.