"Scholars and laymen alike have long projected their fantasies onto the great expanse of the global North, whether it be as a frozen no-man's-land, an icy realm of marauding Vikings, or an unspoiled cradle of prehistoric human life. Bernd Brunner reconstructs the encounters of adventurers, colonists, and indigenous communities that led to the creation of a northern "cabinet of wonders" and imbued Scandinavia, Iceland, and the Arctic with a perennial...

"The first-ever full reckoning with Marvel Comics' interconnected, half-million-page story, a revelatory guide to the "epic of epics"--and to the past 60 years of American culture--from a beloved authority on the subject who read all 27,000+ Marvel superhero comics and lived to tell the tale. The superhero comic books that Marvel Comics has published since 1961 are, Douglas Wolk notes, the longest continuous, self-contained work of fiction ever created:...

"From leading Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro, a timely and insightful examination of what the world's greatest dramatist can teach us about life in an America riven by conflict. The United States has always been divided, but Americans from all walks oflife have also always shared a deep affinity for the plays William Shakespeare, even if their meaning has been fiercely contested. For well over two centuries now, Americans of all stripes--presidents...

"A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"--

"Preeminent Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro shows how the tumultuous events in England in 1606 affected Shakespeare and shaped the three great tragedies he wrote that year--King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. In the years leading up to 1606, since the death of Queen Elizabeth and the arrival in England of her successor, King James of Scotland, Shakespeare's great productivity had ebbed, and it may have seemed to some that his prolific...