Books in the Very Short Introduction series

From his childhood in a family of leading American intellectuals through his mature life as a major American man of letters, Henry James created a unique body of fiction that represents one of the greatest achievements in the nation's literary history. In this introduction to the work of Henry James, Susan L. Mizruchi places his notoriously difficult and obscure writings in their historical and biographical context. Among the works treated are Washington Square, The Europeans, The Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl, and The Turn of the Screw. These complex accounts of human experience engage with the vital issues of both James's era and our own - gender relations, sexuality, the nature of modernity, the threat of relativism, the role of art. A consistent subject of both literary theory and popular culture, Henry James has had an impact that cannot be overstated.

Long before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European explorers with centuries of belief and thought in tow. From this foundation of expectation and experience, America and American thought grew in turn, enriched by the bounties of the Enlightenment, the philosophies of liberty and individuality, the tenets of religion, and the doctrines of republicanism and democracy. In engaging and accessible prose, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen's introduction to American thought considers how notions about freedom and belonging, the market and morality-and even truth-have commanded generations of Americans and been the cause of fierce debate.

The idea of the sword-wielding samurai, beholden to a strict ethical code and trained in deadly martial arts, dominates popular conceptions of the samurai. As early as the late seventeenth century, they were heavily featured in literature, art, theater, and even comedy, from the Tale of the Heike to the kabuki retellings of the 47 Ronin. This legacy remains with us today in the legendary Akira Kurosawa films, the shoguns of HBO''s Westworld, andcountless renditions of samurai history in anime, manga, and video games. Acknowledging these common depictions, this book gives readers access to the real samurai as they lived, fought, and served.Much as they capture the modern imagination, the samurai commanded influence over the politics, arts, philosophy and religion of their own time, and ultimately controlled Japan from the fourteenth century until their demise in the mid-nineteenth century. On and off the battlefield, whether charging an enemy on horseback or currying favor at the imperial court, their story is one of adventures and intrigues, heroics and misdeeds, unlikely victories and devastating defeats. This book traces thesamurai throughout this history, exploring their roles in watershed events such as Japan''s invasions of Korea at the close of the sixteenth century and the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. Coming alive in these accounts are the samurai, both famed and ordinary, who shaped Japanese history.