Product Description: Seventeenth-century North America was a dangerous, untamed land, a vast wilderness where settlers, fur traders, and missionaries all struggled to eke out an existence. But the New World was also a place that attracted a special breed—men with a thirst for adventure and discovery...read more

Product Description: "Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are." This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein’s erudite and witty book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honoré de Balzac’s The Human Comedy...read more

Every year for the thirty they have been married, Louis Begley and Anka Muhlstein have escaped to Venice to write. In Venice for Lovers, Begley and Muhlstein fashion their own personal homages to Venice, one with a novella, the other with a personal essay. In her contribution to the book, Muhlstein charmingly describes how she and her husband dine at the same restaurant every night for years on end, and how becoming friends with restaurateurs has been an unsurpassed means of getting to know the city and its inhabitants, far from the tourists in San Marco Square. They meet Venetians like Ernesto, who tells them of the great flood that nearly destroyed the beautiful city; and Nerone, an authoritarian chef who serves the freshest seafood and throws yesterday’s catch to the cats. And they spend blissful hours at Da Fiore, named by the International Herald Tribune as one of the ten best restaurants in the world but which, unfazed, retains its rustic simplicity. In his short novella, Begley writes a story of falling in love with―and in―Venice. His twenty-year-old protagonist, enamored with an older, far worldlier woman, is lured by her to the City of Water, only to be unceremoniously dumped after a brief rendezvous. But he discovers a lasting love for Venice itself―not an uncommon romance, as Begley’s brilliant essay on the city’s place within world literature demonstrates. By turns humorous, nostalgic, and spellbinding, Venice for Lovers is a memorable collaboration by two fine stylists―a very private view of a place that will forever inspire dreams of love and passion.

Product Description: Dual biography investigates perennial question for any ambitious woman: to marry or not to marry. In this major double biography, Anka Muhlstein examines the turbulent relationship between Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots...read more

Product Description: "We must rejoice at the publication of these memoirs. . . . Providing portraits and some unforgettable scenes with a keen sense of detail, Mme de Boigne's memoirs were greatly admired by Marcel Proust."—Victor Brombert (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The Marquis de Custine's record of his trip to Russia in 1839 is a brilliantly perceptive, even prophetic, account of one of the world's most fascinating and troubled countries. It is also a wonderful piece of travel writing. Custine, who met with people in all walks of life, including the Czar himself, offers vivid descriptions of St...read more

Product Description: Venice for Lovers is a memorable collaboration by two fine stylists who have fashioned their own personal homages to Venice, one with a novella, the other with a personal essay. Every year for all the thirty they have been married, Begley and Muhlstein have escaped to Venice to write...read more

Product Description: Biography. Anka Muhlstein's lively biography, translated by Teresa Waugh, introduces American readers to Astolphe de Custine, a passionate literary figure, a poet, playwright, essayist, traveler, aristocrat and homosexual adventurer...read more

Traces the life of James Rothschild, explains how he made a fortune and earned a title in Paris, and assesses his influence on nineteenth-century politics