Wild About Harry

"Wild about Harry delivers on its promise to make the Truman Scholarship application process transparent to applicants and their advisors. Truman Scholars are widely known as energetic leaders from a variety of disciplines who have in common the desire to make a difference, to bring about sustainable positive change, and to serve the greater public good"--

Wild about Harry originally published 1991.

A "melo-melo in seven scenes," Just Wild About Harry is Henry Miller's only excursion into playwriting. Harry is pure Miller, welling up from the same abundant love of life and freedom from convention that made its author the dean of writers dedicated to human liberation. Admittedly inspired by lonesco and the Theatre of the Absurd, Miller's tragicomic slapstick is nevertheless as American as the Marx Brothers and the blues--the simple story of a heartless Harry (the one the ladies are wild about) who learns a bittersweet lesson about life, death, and love. Begun in Europe in 1960, Just Wild About Harry was first published by New Directions in 1963.

But it would be unfair to the reader to reveal what happens when a gang of professional crooks gets wind of the scheme and moves to muscle in on this bettors' dream of a long-odds situation. Worked out with all the meticulous detail, terror, and suspense of a nightmare, the tale is, on one level, comparable to a Graham Greene thriller; on another, it explores a group of people, their relationships fears, and loves. For as Leslie A. Fiedler says in his introduction, "John Hawkes.. . makes terror rather than love the center of his work, knowing all the while, of course, that there can be no terror without the hope for love and love's defeat . . . ."

The first book to recount the short but fabulously rich life of Harry Connick, Jr., this candid but affectiontely-written biography tells of Connick's extraordinary rise to fame in New Orleans at the age of nine, his move to New York, and the cutting of his first nationally-released album. 100 photos, many in color.

OVER HALF A MILLION COPIES SOLD! Winner of the E.B. White Read Aloud Award It started the summer of 2002, when the Springfield librarian, Molly McGrew, by mistake drove her bookmobile into the zoo. In this rollicking rhymed story, Molly introduces birds and beasts to this new something called reading. She finds the perfect book for every animal—tall books for giraffes, tiny ones for crickets. “She even found waterproof books for the otter, who never went swimming without Harry Potter.” In no time at all, Molly has them “forsaking their niches, their nests, and their nooks,” going “wild, simply wild, about wonderful books.” Judy Sierra’s funny animal tale coupled with Marc Brown’s lush, fanciful paintings will have the same effect on young Homo sapiens. Altogether, it’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys!

In 1938, Harry Glass is a precocious eight-year-old Jewish boy born and raised in London. Unconstrained by obedience, he is as much the despair of his immigrant parents as they are a puzzle to him. As, indeed, are almost all grown-ups—teachers, neighbours, everyone except his Aunt Lily. At times, he manages to appall even her. Just speaking can become a disaster as his schoolmates’ cuss words roll innocently off his tongue at home. The mood there darkens, too, with the news from Europe. After the fall of France in 1940, Harry is evacuated to Wales and welcomed into a farm family by everyone except the daughter and a young Welsh nationalist farmhand. But the war reaches into Wales, too, with the bombing of shipyards and chance raids. After being machine-gunned from the air while on a class picnic and later witnessing supposed perfidy, Harry suffers a breakdown and is hospitalised. His ward-mates are recuperating survivors from Dunkirk and wounded Spitfire pilots from the now raging Battle of Britain. Both befriended and bedevilled, Harry comes of age as the world fights for its life.