The Tempest has long dazzled readers and audiences with its intricate blend of magic, music, humour, intrigue and tenderness, its vibrant but ambiguous central characters. As Virginia and Alden Vaughan show, in their wide-ranging new edition of this established favourite, such antithetical extremes exemplify the play’s endlessly arguable nature, its appeal to diverse eras and cultures.

With its cross-dressed heroine, gender games and explorations of sexual ambivalence, its Forest of Arden and melancholy Jacques, As You Like It speaks directly to the twenty-first century. Juliet Dusinberre demonstrates that Rosalind’s authority in the play grows from new ideas about women and reveals that Shakespeare’s heroine reinvents herself for every age.

With Spin to Knit, you'll learn all the details about fibers, tools, and materials for spinning, and find a substantial selection of simple patterns to knit with that fabulous yarn you've created all on your own. Don't want to spin a lot of yarn? No problem, you'll find lots of ideas for combining your precious handspun with commercial, mill-spun yarns or for accenting sweaters you already own. Discover why "lumpy bumpy" yarn is your friend; ways to unlump your yarn; how to control singles, twist, and ply; and ways to incorporate color, beads, and novelties in your spinning.

Bringing together cutting edge neuroscience, experimental data, and fascinating anecdotes, Robert Burton explores the inconsistent and sometimes paradoxical relationship between our thoughts and what we actually know. Provocative and groundbreaking, On Being Certain, will challenge what you know (or think you know) about the mind, knowledge, and reason.

In The Key, Frey takes his no-nonsense, "Damn Good" approach and applies it to Joseph Campbell's insights into the universal structure of myths. Myths, says Frey, are the basis of all storytelling, and their structures and motifs are just as powerful for contemporary writers as they were for Homer. The Key is designed as a practical step-by-step guide for fiction writers and screen writers who want to shape their own ideas into a mythic story.

In the 1970s and 80s, Northrop Frye and Jay Macpherson co-taught a very influential course at the University of Toronto's Victoria College on the history of Western mythology—Frye focusing on the biblical myths; Macpherson on the classical. Biblical and Classical Myths recreates the thought behind that course, with Frye's lectures—unpublished until very recently—supplemented by Macpherson's popular 1962 textbook on classical mythology, Four Ages: The Classical Myths. By complementing the biblical tradition with the classical, this volume imparts a comprehensive understanding of western mythology.

Joseph Campbell's classic cross-cultural study of the hero's journey has inspired millions and opened up new areas of research and exploration. Originally published in 1949, the book hit the New York Times best-seller list in 1988 when it became the subject of The Power of Myth, a PBS television special. Now, this legendary volume, re-released in honor of the 100th anniversary of the author's birth, promises to capture the imagination of a new generation of readers.

It’s a giant gap in our history. The Great Inflation, argues award-winning columnist Robert J. Samuelson in this provocative book, was the worst domestic policy blunder of the postwar era and played a crucial role in transforming American politics, economy, and everyday life—and yet its story is hardly remembered or appreciated. In these uncertain economic times, it is more imperative than ever that we understand what happened in the 1960s and 1970s, lest we be doomed to repeat our mistakes.

From one of America's most distinguished economists, a short, brilliant and revelatory book: the fundamental ideas people most commonly get wrong about economics, and how to think about the subject better. These fallacies include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries.

Since its first publication in 1994, this guide has been an essential tool for journalists, researchers, lawyers, professors, librarians, business executives, and students. The new edition has been updated by award-winning journalist Schlein to include tips and search strategies from 20 information industry experts. This is more than an annotated list of thousands of web sites—it is a coaching tool that shows readers how to do comprehensive and reliable research in hundreds of disciplines, regardless of information container.

Writers give as much thought and consideration to naming characters as they would to naming a newborn child. This trusted writing resource takes the uncertainty out of the process with a brand new edition. Contains: more than 25,000 first and last names organized by meaning and ethnic origin; invaluable instruction on naming strategies and creating original names; and a look at how best-selling novelists, like Elizabeth George, Marian Keyes and more, name their characters. Now all types of fiction writers can add more nuance and meaning to their work with the perfect names!

Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we blink and go with our gut. But scientists are discovering that this is not how the mind works. Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better?

Anyone who read Fiasco, Thomas E. Ricks's superb, bestselling account of the Iraq War through 2005... has likely noticed that many of the heroes of that devastating book... have since been put in charge. As good (and influential) as Fiasco was, The Gamble may be even better, telling the remarkable story of how a few people inside and outside the Pentagon pushed the new strategy through against opposition across the political spectrum and throughout the military top brass, and then, even more remarkably, how soldiers put the difficult plan into action on the ground and managed to sharply reduce the chaotic violence in Iraq.

The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms presents more than 5,000 idioms explaining the meaning and origin of metaphorical phrases, similes, sayings, and proverbs from thoughout the English-speaking world. Full of fascinating and surprising facts, this dictionary is the perfect guide for everyone with an interest in this most colourful and quirky aspect of the English language.