Books published by publisher WW Norton

The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales is a work that celebrates the best-loved tales of childhood and presents them through the vision of Maria Tatar, a leading authority in the field of folklore and children's literature. Gathering together 25 of our most cherished fairy tales, including enduring classics like "Beauty and the Beast," and "Jack and the Beanstalk," Tatar guides readers through the stories, exploring their historical origins, their cultural complexities, and their psychological effects. Offering new translations of non-English stories by Hans Christian Andersen, Brothers Grimm, or Charles Perrault, Tatar captures the rhythms of oral storytelling and, with over 300 paintings and drawings by illustrators such as Gustave Doré, George Cruikshank, and Maxfield Parrish, she expands our literary and visual sensibilities. Disseminated across a wide variety of historical and contemporary media ranging from opera and drama to cinema and advertising, they constitute a vital part of our storytelling capital. What has kept them alive over the centuries is exactly what keeps life pulsing with vitality and variety: anxieties, fears, desires, romance, passion, and love. Fairy tales tell us about the quest for romance and riches, for power and privilege, and, most importantly, they show us a way out of the woods back to the safety and security of home. Challenging the notion that fairy tales should be read for their moral values, Tatar demonstrates throughout how fairy tales can be seen as models for navigating reality, helping children to develop the wit and courage needed to survive in a world ruled by adults. This volume seeks to reclaim this powerful cultural legacy, presenting the stories that we all think we know while at the same time providing the historical contexts that unlock the mysteries of the tales. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales is a volume that will rank as a work to be treasured by students, parents, and children.

High adventure and grand history from a master of the craft in a beautifully illustrated volume.With characteristic flair, Felipe Fernández-Armesto gives us an entertaining and insightful history of world exploration. Presenting the subject for the first time on a truly global scale, Fernández-Armesto tracks the pathfinders who, over the last five millennia, lay down the routes of contact that have drawn together the farthest reaches of the world. From the maritime expeditions connecting Queen Hatshepsut's Egypt to the exotic land of Punt in the second millennium BCE, through the merchants and missionaries of the ancient Silk Roads and the great Iberian explorers of the fifteenth century, to the nineteenth-century explorations of the polar regions, interior Africa, North America, and the South Pacific, Fernández-Armesto spins a grand narrative full of character and story. Deftly embedding these explorations in the cultures, politics, and technologies of their times, he creates a history with unusual depth and breadth. Here is an intellectual adventure as rewarding as it is thrilling. 16 pages of color; 48 maps; 44 illustrations.

The sixteenth volume in the Aubrey/Maturin series, and Patrick O'Brian's first bestseller in the United States. At the outset of this adventure filled with disaster and delight, Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin pursue an American privateer through the Great South Sea. The strange color of the ocean reminds Stephen of Homer's famous description, and portends an underwater volcanic eruption that will create a new island overnight and leave an indelible impression on the reader's imagination. Their ship, the Surprise, is now also a privateer, the better to escape diplomatic complications from Stephen's mission, which is to ignite the revolutionary tinder of South America. Jack will survive a desperate open boat journey and come face to face with his illegitimate black son; Stephen, caught up in the aftermath of his failed coup, will flee for his life into the high, frozen wastes of the Andes; and Patrick O'Brian's brilliantly detailed narrative will reunite them at last in a breathtaking chase through stormy seas and icebergs south of Cape Horn, where the hunters suddenly become the hunted.

A major history of Civil War America through the lens of its two towering figures: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass."My husband considered you a dear friend," Mary Todd Lincoln wrote to Frederick Douglass in the weeks after Lincoln's assassination. The frontier lawyer and the former slave, the cautious politician and the fiery reformer, the president and the most famous black man in America—their lives traced different paths that finally met in the bloody landscape of secession, Civil War, and emancipation. Opponents at first, they gradually became allies, each influenced by and attracted to the other. Their three meetings in the White House signaled a profound shift in the direction of the Civil War, and in the fate of the United States. In this first book to draw the two together, James Oakes has written a masterful narrative history. He brings these two iconic figures to life and sheds new light on the central issues of slavery, race, and equality in Civil War America.