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F–W 2011 · Books that matter for people who care DAVID R.GODINE · PUBLISHER

Fall 2011 Catalog

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The Fall 2011 trade catalog for David R. Godine, Publisher and Black Sparrow Books features a new title from Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, the twentieth anniversary edition of Animal Fables from Aesop, translated works from Stig Dagerman and Zhang Xianliang, and much more.

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Page 1: Fall 2011 Catalog

Order InformationRetail Trade Discounts

• Single-title order – % (+ . shipping, pre-

paid only)

• - items – % (+ . shipping, pre-paid only)

• - items – %

• items and up – %

• Non-returnable – % ( items or more)

Wholesale terms

• %; minimum five books

Libraries and Universities

• Libraries – %

• Course Adoption – %

• Desk copies – free with confirmation of order

All Black Sparrow Books combine

with Godine titles for discounts.

All invoices are net days.

All terms are subject to change.

Current Returns Policy

• Permission and label required: call, fax, or write to

our New Hampshire address. No returns accepted

at our Boston address.

• Returns will be accepted if there are past due

invoices on your account.

• We will only accept for credit books purchased

within the past years: returns not accompanied

by invoice information will be credited at %.

• Returned books must be in print and in

condition: books are ineligible for credit.

• No cash refunds (merchandise credit only).

• Credits are valid for two years from date of issue,

and are applied automatically to open balances on

monthly statements.

• Any account whose annual returns exceed % will

automatically convert to % non-returnable status.

Please address all orders and

return requests to:

David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

Post Office Box

Jaffrey, New Hampshire

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in New Hampshire:

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[email protected] www.godine.com

�Editorial Offices:

David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc.

Court Square, Suite

Boston, Massachusetts

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[email protected]

�Cover illustration by Joe McKendry

from One Times Square (see p. )

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Fall–Winter 2011 · Books that matter for people who care

D A V I D R . G O D I N E · P U B L I S H E R

Page 2: Fall 2011 Catalog

Publisher’s Note

O , I have become accustomed to being greeted with thesalutation: “Oh, so you’re the one who publishes all those beautiful books!”I take it, of course, as a compliment and am gratified that anyone evenknows, or appreciates, the difference between a mass market paperback andone produced to our standards. But as a student of the subject, I am all tookeenly aware that publishing history is littered with beautiful books thatfailed. Aldus Manutius’s first and only crack at an illustrated book, theHyp-nerotomachia Poliphili of , sold so poorly that Aldus was compelled tobeseech the Doge of Venice for a tax break twelve years after the fact. Thegreat English publisher William Pickering issued Oliver Byrne’s Elements ofEuclid in , a striking book that failed entirely, remaindered less than adecade later. And the first, and probably the greatest, of the modern livresdes peintres, Parallèlement, illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, was a total bust forthe young and visionary publisher Ambroise Vollard. Today all three volumesare of course recognized as landmarks and cost as much as a small house.

For a publisher, unlike an author, it is probably not such a good idea tobe too much ahead of your time, and it is certainly safer to be interestingthan to be beautiful. This catalogue is full of genuinely interesting titles, titlesthat present and expand upon a topic to the point where the reader not onlyunderstands the subject thoroughly, but will, in time, consider the bookindispensable. In Writing the Garden, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers’s considera-tion of garden writing leaves no writer of any merit unexamined; SuzanneGreenberg and Barbara Norfleet, two old pros, take on the subject of wel-fare, how it was recorded and analyzed, and demonstrate how the founda-tions of social security, universal health care, and criminal justice were laidin this country. Joe McKendry, in a brilliant follow-up to Beneath the Streetsof Boston, his award-winning exposé of Boston’s subway system, describesand depicts the history of Times Square in One Times Square, and DouglasAdkins turns a searchlight on one of the greatest ocean racing yachts inAmerican history, tracing a trajectory of fame and obscurity, surprisingwins and heartbreaking losses that began ninety years ago. And not to beoutdone by the illustrated books, our literary titles on this list include newliterature in translation from the Swedish and Chinese, and a Black Sparrowtitle by Don Share, poet and senior editor of Poetry.

Interesting, no? And so, if I had my choice I would rather be greeted by,“So you’re the one who publishes all those interesting books!” than by asalute to beauty, which, after all, doth fade. � D ·R ·G

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Page 3: Fall 2011 Catalog

Writing the Garden

by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers

G , more than most outdoor activities, has

always attracted a cult of devotedly literate practition-

ers; people who like to dig, it would appear, also like to write.

And many of them write exceedingly well. In this thoughtful,

personal, and embracing consideration of garden writing,

garden historian Elizabeth Barlow Rogers selects and discusses

the best of these writers. Shemakes her case by picking delight-

ful examples that span two centuries, arranging the writers by

what they did and how they saw themselves: nurserymen, for-

agers, conversationalists, philosophers, humorists, etc.Her dis-

cussions and appreciations of these diverse personalities are

enhanced and supported by informed appraisals of their tal-

ents, obsessions, and idiosyncrasies, and by extensive extracts

from their writings. Rogers provides historical background,

anecdotal material, and insight into how these garden writers

worked. And wherever appropriate, she illustrates her story

with images from their books, so you can not only read what

they wrote but also see what they were describing. Since gar-

dens are by their very nature ephemeral, these visual clues

from the pages of their books, many reproduced in color, are

as close as we will come to the originals.

What makesWriting the Garden such a joy to read is that it

is not simply a collection of extracts, but real discussions and

examinations of the personalities who made their mark on

how we design, how we plant, and how we think about what is

for many one of life’s lasting pleasures. Starting with “Women

in the Garden” (Jane Loudon, Frances Garnet Wolseley, and

Gertrude Jekyll) and concluding with “Philosophers in the

Garden” (Henry David Thoreau, Michael Pollan, and Allen

Lacy), this is a book that encompasses the full sweep of the

best garden writing in the English language.

Writing the Garden is co-published by the New York Society

Library and the Foundation for Landscape Studies in asso-

ciation with David R. Godine, Publisher.

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E B R is

the president of the Foundation for

Landscape Studies. A resident of New

York City since , Rogers was the

first person to hold the title of Cen-

tral Park Administrator, and she was

the founding president of the Central

Park Conservancy. The co-author of

Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and

Landscape Design (Godine, ),

Rogers has won numerous awards for

her work as a writer and landscape

preservationist.

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Writing the Gardena literary conversationacross two centuriesby Elizabeth BarlowRogers

preface byMark Bartlett

Page 4: Fall 2011 Catalog

Faith, Hope & Charity ,

by Suzanne Greenberg & Barbara Norfleet

D last decades of the nineteenth century, our

country’s expanding wealth and influence moved pro-

gressive thinkers to evaluate the role of public institutions in

providing for the welfare of a growing population.A burgeon-

ing interest in issues as diverse as criminality among the poor,

the health of immigrants, overcrowding in slums, and the

education of the disabled spurred the development of new

means to investigate, document, and analyze their living con-

ditions with an eye toward improving their lives.

Among the figures who became preoccupied with issues of

social welfare was Francis GreenwoodPeabody, aHarvard edu-

cator who brought the reform agenda to students via the col-

lege’s Department of Social Ethics. A chief tool in Peabody’s

didactic arsenal was the Social Ethics Collection, a wide-rang-

ing assemblage of photographs, maps, and charts that docu-

mented living conditions, educational institutions, charitable

organizations, and hospitals across the US and Europe.

Capitalizing on rapid improvements in cameras and film,

photographers (many of them all but forgotten) provided

Peabody with his materials, taking what we would now call a

documentary approach.While less overtly ideological than the

work of journalists like Jacob Riis, the , images that

Peabody amassed recorded not only slums, sickness, and

sweatshops, but also the factories of forward-thinking compa-

nies like NCR and Heinz and the progressive educational

institutions like the Tuskegee and Hampton institutes.

Long considered outdated, the Social Ethics Collection had

been consigned to cabinetswhenBarbaraNorfleet and Suzanne

Greenberg took a renewed interest in the images as part of our

larger historical record and as works of art. Faith, Hope &

Charity explores the role of Peabody’s collection in compelling

people of wealth and influence – in the church, in business, in

universities – to become interested and invested in the welfare

of the less fortunate, restoring to view an unknown but vivid

part of our ongoing national debate on issues of social welfare

and social justice.

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FA ITH, HOPE & CHAR ITYSocial Reform and Photography, 1885–1910

by Suzanne Greenberg and Barbara Norfleet

Page 5: Fall 2011 Catalog

Holdouts!

by Andrew Alpern & Seymour Durst

A inches wide and feet deep owned

by a taxi driver whose asking price killed a developer’s

plans for a huge apartment house.

An empty - by -foot site in the middle of a Wall Street

office building created by the site’s former use as an outhouse

at the end of the eighteenth century.

A two-story building surrounded by a tall apartment house

on Upper Broadway that owes its continued existence to the

timing of Prohibition.

These snapshots are of holdouts that got in the way. They

appear whenever urban densities make land valuable and

wherever a profitmotive exists to trigger change.Holdouts are

often thought of as David versus Goliath battles, but is David

the little homeowner who doesn’t want to abandon his hearth

to the big heartless developer? Or is David the harried builder

who has invested huge sums of money in buying up ninety

percent of the land needed for development – whose benefits

would be enjoyed by thousands of citizens – but whose plans

are thwarted by the one landowner who controls the critical

land parcel without which the project is doomed?

What motivates a holdout? What are the problems when a

holdout gets in the way? What impacts do holdouts have on

how new buildings are planned and designed? What happens

when a new structure has to be constructed next to, around, or

even above an existing one that can’t be removed? How have

holdouts been dealt with over the years?

Holdouts! depicts with vivid clarity the colorful personali-

ties and outrageous actions that emerge in these stark con-

frontations. It describes epic battles that have been fought to

erect buildings in New York. More than illustrations and

photographs show the holdouts before, during, and after the

construction they delayed. This unique pictorial history will

delight architecture buffs, New Yorkers, urban historians,

indeed anyone interested in the sometimes hectic, sometimes

pathetic, and sometimes hilarious struggles of individuals

against real estate developers whose projects are so essential to

the continuing economic viability of our large cities.

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Page 6: Fall 2011 Catalog

Animal Fables from Aesopadapted & illustratedby Barbara McClintock

C twentieth anniversary of this classic

depiction of Aesop on stage, here, in all their wisdom

and humor, are the best of these timeless fables, selected and

adapted by Barbara McClintock and illustrated in her inim-

itable nineteenth-century anthropomorphic style.

This collection contains the artist’s interpretations of nine

fables, including such familiar ones as “The Fox and the

Grapes,” and a fine selection of lesser-known examples, “The

Wolf and the Lamb” and “The Crow and the Peacocks.”All are

revitalized by McClintock’s uncanny ability to capture

humanity, with all its strengths and weaknesses, in the expres-

sions of her exquisitely drawn costumed creations. Filled with

the delicacy of line and color that has come to be her trade-

mark, these images are bound to please readers of all ages as

well as collectors of fables for another generation.

The graceful full-color illustrations are both delicate and

theatrical. . . . The whole feel of this book is in the tradition

of La Fontaine: gay, witty, full of charm and foible.

New York Times

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Page 7: Fall 2011 Catalog

One Times Square

written & illustrated by Joe McKendry

A of the non-stop bustle of modern Times

Square stands One Times Square, the former headquar-

ters of the New York Times and the skyscraper – now all but

invisible behind billboards – that gave the square its name in

. Around it, a once-humble district of carriage houses

and coal merchants at the intersection of Broadway and Sev-

enthAvenue evolved into“The Crossroads of theWorld.”Here

impresarios and real-estate moguls vied to outdo each other

as they built theaters and hotels, penny arcades and restau-

rants, dime museums and office towers in an unending cycle

of reinvention and reimagination.

More than any other public space in New York City, Times

Square is the place where Americans have gathered, in good

times and in bad, to catch up on the latest news, to mark his-

toric occasions, or just to meet a few friends. From the Stock

Market crash in – when the building’s iconic “Zipper”

provided up-to-the-minute information – to the celebrations

marking the end of the Second World War, to annual New

Year’s Eve festivities with the iconic descending lighted ball,

the square and its tower have been an integral part of our his-

tory.

One Times Square explores the story of this fascinating

intersection, starting when Broadway was a mere dirt path

known as Bloomingdale Road, through the district’s decades

of postwar decay, to its renewal as a glittering tourist-friendly

media mecca. McKendry’s meticulous, lush watercolors take

readers behind the famous Camel billboard to find out how it

blew smoke rings over the square for years, to the top of the

Times Tower to see how the New Year’s ball has made its

descent for over years, and onto construction sites as

buildings grow up around One Times Square to dwarf what

once ranked among the tallest buildings in the world.

Reminiscent of David Macaulay . . . but with a style and

sensibility all [his] own. Jennifer Schrader, Boston Globe

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Winner of the Massachusetts

Book Honor Award

ONE TIMES SQUAREONE TIMES SQUAREONE TIMES SQUAREA CENTURY

OF CHANGE AT TH

E CROSSROADS OF THE W

ORLD

Written &Illustrate

d by JOEMcKEND

RY

Page 8: Fall 2011 Catalog

To Kill a Child

by Stig Dagermantranslated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman

with a preface by Alice McDermott

S D (‒) is regarded as the most

talented young writer of the Swedish post-war generation.

By the s, his fiction, plays, and journalism had catapulted

him to the forefront of Swedish letters, with critics comparing

him toWilliam Faulkner, Franz Kafka, and Albert Camus. His

suicide at the age of thirty-one was a national tragedy. This

selection, containing a number of new translations of Dager-

man’s stories never before published in English, is unified by

the theme of the loss of innocence. Often narrated from a

child’s perspective, the stories give voice to childhood’s tender

state of receptiveness and joy tinged with longing and loneli-

ness. The title story, “Att döda ett barn” (“To Kill A Child”), is

the most famous of Dagerman’s short stories and among the

most anthologized and oft-read stories in Sweden.

Dagerman wrote with beautiful objectivity. Instead of emo-

tive phrases, he uses a choice of facts, like bricks, to construct

an emotion. Graham Greene

Grass Soupby Zhang Xianliang

translated from the Chinese by Martha Avery

Z X , one of China’s greatest living writ-

ers, spent twenty-two years in Chinese prisons and labor

camps until his “rehabilitation” in . Through most of

those years he kept a diary of his experiences. InGrass Soup he

explores the systematic degradation that his brief diary entries

both recorded and concealed. The world he shows us is one in

which an ill-considered poem title can mean the firing squad,

in which learning how to boil a toad or steal plant roots can

mean survival. Like Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan

Denisovich, this“extraordinary, terrifying”document describes

not only how far humanity can fall, but also how “the human

spirit can prevail, even in hell” (Ian Buruma,The Independent).

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verbamundiINTERNATIONAL LITERATURE SERIES

translated from the Swedish by Steven Hartman, preface by Alice McDermott

Stig DAGERMANTo Kill a Child

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Page 9: Fall 2011 Catalog

Wishboneby Don Share

W a reader first encounteringDon Share’s

work is the electric energy of his lines, their contempo-

rary music and movement. Reading Wishbone, Share’s third

book, is akin to picking up the one clear station still transmit-

ting, the frenetic static of the world replaced by a strong signal

broadcast. Share’s poems are contrapuntal ripostes to the

Babel of the present, a voice not above the noise, but speaking

from its midst in a self-possessed language that muscles a new

way into meaning. The poems take place in America’s back-

yards and byways, intensive care rooms and airports, haunted

by fathers and Fathers, informed by philosophy, the Judeo-

Christian tradition, and pop culture. One finds the poet there

too, less his portrait than a self-deprecating likeness in the

crowd (the Renaissance master in the corner of the canvas)

decrying and defending, his “umbrella out and Cubs cap on

. . . curiously Odyssean in the Loop,” and always at the ready.

Don Share’s work is compressed as a haiku, intent as a tanka,

witty as a sonnet, witless as a song, relentless as an exposé,

patter without pretension . . . his elegant poetry, exposed as

a haiku, expansive as a renga, boisterous as a bridge, happy

as Delmore Schwartz with Lou Reed and vice versa, vivacious

as the living day . . . built out of attention, music and sight.

David Shapiro

The poet’s awareness of how daily life refuses to cohere into

a consoling pattern is beautifully mirrored by his conviction

that language itself signals a fall from grace and unity and

emotional wholeness. Tom Sleigh

Share is one of the more gifted craftsmen we have writing in

America today. Erin Belieu, Boston Review

[Don Share] is sage and deeply hilarious. Ed Park

Few poets manage such dexterous and fresh music.

Alice Fulton

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Don Share is senior editor of Poetry

magazine in Chicago. His books in-

clude Squandermania (Salt Publish-

ing, ),Union (Zoo Press, ),

and Seneca in English (Penguin

Classics, ). His critical edition

of Basil Bunting’s poems is forth-

coming from Faber and Faber, as well

as Bunting’s Persia from Flood Edi-

tions. His translations of Miguel

Hernández, collected in I Have Lots

of Heart (Bloodaxe Books, ),

were awarded the Times Literary

Supplement Translation Prize, the

Premio Valle Inclán, and the P.E.N./

New England “Discovery” Award.

Page 10: Fall 2011 Catalog

Dorade

by Douglas Adkinsforeword by Llewellyn Howland III

T , quite simply, the definitive history of the boat gen-

erally considered the greatest ocean racing yacht of the

twentieth century. It begins with Roderick Stephens, Sr. whose

“deep and abiding faith in his sons’ talents, character and good

sense” led him to invest his reputation and fortune to help Olin

Stephens, then little more than a teenager, and Olin's brother

Rod, design and build an ocean racer to compete against the

finest offshore yachts of the day.

The result wasDorade, a -foot yawl launched in May

into the teeth of the Great Depression. Lightly built, with spar-

tan accommodations and berths like coffins, she performed

well in her shakedown summer. But it was the Transat-

lantic Race, which, under Olin’s command, she won in sixteen

days and an hour, beating the next (and much larger) boat by

two days, a winner on corrected time by over four days, that

set her name firmly in the annals of yachting history – and

changed forever the face of ocean racing yacht design.

In the eight decades since her launching she has been actively

raced and restored under the ownership of a host of colorful

and devoted characters on both coasts. A common sight off

San Francisco and Seattle, a frequent racer in the Solent and

Mediterranean, and now back east to race again off Newport,

she has outlived her modest and beloved designer andmost of

her owners. She has crossed the Atlantic to England and the

Pacific to Hawaii numerous times, suffered collisions, lapses

of good judgment, and misguided improvements. She has

endured repairs and restorations,witnessed love affairs, heart-

break, and even death. This is her story, from stem to stern,

nautical history at its best and related with affection, accuracy,

and eloquence by a sailor who has sutured together the many

strands, both verbal and visual, of a great yacht’s life. And

what a life it has been! As she ghosted past the Lizard that

morning of Tuesday, July , to shock the yachting world

with her Transatlantic win, Dorade was first to finish and has

remained first ever since.

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DoradeThe History of an Ocean Racing Yacht

BY DOUGLAS ADKINS