Time And Tide

Frank Conroy first visited Nantucket with a gang of college friends in 1955. They came on a whim, and for Conroy it was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with this "small, relaxed oasis in the ocean." This book, part travel diary, part memoir, is a hauntingly evocative and personal journey through Nantucket: its sweeping dunes, rugged moors, remote beaches, secret fishing spots, and hidden forests and cranberry bogs. Admirers of Conroy’s classic and acclaimed memoir Stop-Time will again delight in what James Atlas, writing in the New York Times, called his "genius for close observation." In Time and Tide, Conroy recounts the island’s history from the glory days of the whaling boom to the present, when tourism dominates. He vividly evokes the clash of cultures between the working class and the super-rich, with the fragile ecology of the island always in the balance. But most fascinating of all, he tells his own story--of playing jazz piano in the island’s bars; of raising a barn in the early '60s with the help of a bunch of hippie carpenters; of leasing an old, failed bar with two island pals and turning it into the Roadhouse, a club "that was to be ours, the year-rounders, and to hell with the summer people." There’s a marvelous story of his first golf game, played on an ancient nine-hole course with two friends, a part-time sommelier and a builder from the South who invented the one-handed pepper mill. This is a book that revels in friendship, music, history, and the gorgeous landscape of a unique American place, and is a wonderful work by one of our greatest contemporary writers.

A newly reissued novel from the author of Girl, “one of the most celebrated writers in the English language” (NPR’s Weekend Edition) “As her disturbing novel clearly reveals, Edna O’Brien possesses what Henry James called an imagination for disaster...[Time and Tide] is an anthology of heightened moments...never less than brilliantly expressed.” —Joel Conarroe, The New York Times Book Review Time and Tide is a fragmented novel detailing the loves and catastrophes—and catastrophic loves—of Nell, an Irish woman trying to make a life for herself in the literary world of London. "A whimsical beauty who has swapped the suffocating narrowness of her native land for the loveless brutality of England" (The Independent), Nell is in flight from bitter, controlling, and small-minded parents, yet risks becoming just such a mother to her own sons. She seeks comfort and acceptance, yet finds death, drugs, and "an orgy of humiliation" (The New York Times Book Review). She seeks companionship, yet finds one after another predatory man: sadists, alcoholics, unscrupulous doctors, and even child molesters. Can Nell extract from the "the vast inhospitality of a creaking world" some measure of beauty and grace? The answer, of course, is yes—but at the price of many illusions.

"The first in-depth study of the landmark modern feminist magazine, "Time and Tide." Unique in establishing itself as the only female-run intellectual weekly in the golden age of the weekly review, "Time and Tide" both challenged persistent prejudices against women's participation in public life and played an instrumental role in redefining women's gender roles and identities. Drawing on extensive new archival research, Catherine Clay recovers the contributions to this magazine of both well- and lesser-known British women writers, editors, critics and journalists and explores a cultural dialogue about literature, politics and the arts that took place beyond the parameters of modernist 'little magazines.' The book makes a major contribution to the history of women's writing and feminism in Britain between the wars."--Publisher's description.

Featuring colorful beach umbrellas and dreamy blue horizons, this beautiful oversized book offers a breath of fresh air and evokes fantasies of Mediterranean travel. Photographer Christian Chaize returned many times over the course of eight years to shoot an intimate beach in the south of Portugal from the same vantage point. The resulting photographs provide an enchanting portrait of the tides, light, weather, and people that shape and reshape the landscape each day. A charming and thought-provoking meditation, Time and Tide will appeal to anyone who loves the beach or appreciates the miracle of close looking inherent in photography.

On the theory of tidal evolution.

Sir Charles Kao is generally regarded as the father of fiber optics, based in part on his discovery that signal loss in fiber cables was a direct result of impurities in the glass rather than a flaw in the technology—a breakthrough that affects nearly every aspect of our presentday communication infrastructure. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009 " groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication," this memoir chronicles the personal and scientific odyssey of one of the twentieth century's most influential scientists. Beginning with his childhood in wartorn Shanghai and Hong Kong, Kao explores the turbulent rift that forced him from his family. Later, he details his early work and experience that established the basis for his seminal research with glass fibers in the 1960s. Following this groundbreaking work, the memoir covers Kao's time as a professor and Vice Chancellor of The Chinese University of Hong Kong up until 2009 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Also Available by Charles K. Kao, A Choice Fulfilled: The Business of High Technology.

An evocative exploration of the natural life of Maine's Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park.