Seventy Summers

Between these covers, in the form of poems and prayers, is condensed the insight and spirituality of a life lived fully in South Africa, a country first in struggle and then in transition. They are wide-ranging in their style and subject matter-from free-verse to traditional forms, from heartfelt prayers to light-hearted poems, from poems on nature to poems that ask deep spiritual questions, from poems and prayers written when all is light and full of joy, to those that take one into the depths of loss and grief. In short, they will take you between heaven and earth. They are interspersed with whimsical drawings that enhance the experience.

Tracing the transnational influences of what has been known as a uniquely American genre, “the Western,” Susan Kollin’s Captivating Westerns analyzes key moments in the history of multicultural encounters between the Middle East and the American West. In particular, the book examines how experiences of contact and conflict have played a role in defining the western United States as a crucial American landscape. Kollin interprets the popular Western as a powerful national narrative and presents the cowboy hero as a captivating figure who upholds traditional American notions of freedom and promise, not just in the region but across the globe. Captivating Westerns revisits popular uses of the Western plot and cowboy hero in understanding American global power in the post-9/11 period. Although various attempts to build a case for the war on terror have referenced this quintessential American region, genre, and hero, they have largely overlooked the ways in which these celebrated spaces, icons, and forms, rather than being uniquely American, are instead the result of numerous encounters with and influences from the Middle East. By tracing this history of contact, encounter, and borrowing, this study expands the scope of transnational studies of the cowboy and the Western and in so doing discloses the powerful and productive influence of the Middle East on the American West.

Waxman (English, U. of North Carolina) compares autobiographical writings that cover themes related to aging, namely the relationships between elderly parents and middle-aged children, the experience of turning 70, the role of race, philosophical insights and quasi- mystical experiences by the aging, and the representation of elders as sages and sibyls. She discusses works by Philip Roth, Madeleine L'Engle, Lucille Clifton, Doris Grumbach, May Sarton, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Velma Wallis, Howell Raines, Donald Hall, and Florida Scott- Maxwell. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR