Ingo R. Stoehr Boeken

In 1949, taking a break from San Diego’s post–World War II bustle, the Knowles family went camping in Canada. Heading home through northwest Montana’s Yaak River country, they found a two-bedroom, story-and-half log cabin on a small lake.There was neither electricity nor plumbing. Access was via dirt road, slow at best and iffy during the long, hard winters. Darwin Knowles saw a peaceful life, and adventurous wife Marilyn agreed. Third-grader daughter, Dee (for Doris), could attend the one-room school, and three-year-old Bob (Barbara) have a safe place to play. Enthusiastic but ignorant of wilderness living, the family moved in that fall—working together to cook and heat with wood, hunt and fish for food, haul water, and wash clothes by hand.They stayed for six years, during which son Stevie was born. Dee’s reminiscence of her childhood in “the Yaak” presents quirky neighbors, growing girls’ adventures, wildlife huge and tiny, and especially one loving family. As she writes, “It was a cozy, scary, painful, hilarious, dangerous, interesting, and grand time, and the most fun I ever had.”

Locates in Aristophanes' comedies a complex comic disposition appropriate to the fundamental challenge of ordinary citizenship in a democracy.

In reassessing American literary realism, Faye Halpern seeks not only to understand why writers adopted sentimental techniques but to provide insight into contemporary arguments in literary studies about critical distance and sympathetic identification.

The Lord of the Rings meets Slaughterhouse-Five by way of World of Warcraft in this delirious mashup pitting the U. S. military against legendary monsters from fantasy novels and roleplaying games. From science fiction award-winner and an author, ex-Marine, and extreme amateur-landscaper, comes a riotous fantasy/military science fiction adventure that will delight fans of Terry Pratchett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and John Scalzi. Of course, no one was prepared for the day when orcs, trolls, and dragons fell from portals in the sky. But the world fought back against the invaders as best it could, with soldiers, tactical weapons, and even some rudimentary magic. Now a tough, but not-quite-prepared platoon of Marines is trapped on the wrong side of the portals. The enchanting landscape looks like Middle Earth, but--to the dismay of the nerdiest soldiers--is nothing like the Middle Earth they had loved. This so-called fantasy world has much to throw at the soldiers: legendary monsters, extremely rude trees, a mysterious orphan, treacherous mercenaries, and even a cranky, sort of helpful Ranger. As their supplies dwindle and the terrain becomes even more hostile, the squad must also escort a VIP (Very Important Princess). She could be the key to a strategic alliance between the worlds, but only if the Marines can just make it home.