Poetry

A classic work of American theatre, based on the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in defense of a schoolteacher accused of teaching the theory of evolution

The accused was a slight, frightened man who had deliberately broken the law. His trial was a Roman circus. The chief gladiators were two great legal giants of the century. Like two bull elephants locked in mortal combat, they bellowed and roared imprecations and abuse. The spectators sat uneasily in the sweltering heat with murder in their hearts, barely able to restrain themselves. At stake was the freedom of every American. One of the most moving and meaningful plays of our generation.

Praise for Inherit the Wind

A tidal wave of a drama.--New York World-Telegram And Sun

"Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee were classic Broadway scribes who knew how to crank out serious plays for thinking Americans. . . . Inherit the Wind is a perpetually prescient courtroom battle over the legality of teaching evolution. . . . We're still arguing this case-all the way to the White House."--Chicago Tribune

"Powerful . . . a crackling good courtroom play . . . [that] provides two of the juiciest roles in American theater."--Copley News Service

"[This] historical drama . . . deserves respect."--The Columbus Dispatch

Selections from the first three decades of the poetry of John Ashbery, author of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

The late John Ashbery was a poet whose "teasing, delicate, soulful lines made him one of the most influential figures of late-20th and early 21st century American literature." (The New York Times) This important volume gathers work from his first ten collections of poetry, from Some Trees, which was chosen by W.H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Series (1956), to A Wave (1984). The 138 poems in this volume include short lyrics, haikus, prose poems, and many of Ashbery's major long poems, including "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror," offering a beautiful distillation of the first thirty years of his remarkable, groundbreaking work.