Books with title The Last Gentleman

One day old Mr. Franklin asks Bet to go out to the field and read aloud from a book about earthworms. Why? Who is listening? Soon, Bet becomes the most trusted friend of her listener, who turns out to be a bewitched mole. At first she and the mole simply sit together in their field, reading, talking, sharing hopes and fears. But soon Bet is helping the Little Gentleman unravel his long and legendary past, a past that includes the death of a king and a pouch of magic herbs. Bet begins to believe the mole's powers are stronger than he knows. She thinks he can even shift her size and take her exploring in his tunnels if he tries. Nothing is impossible. When the mole finally reveals his deepest wish, Bet knows she can help him. But will it change everything?

National Book Award Finalist: A lonely Southerner forges a surprising bond with a New York family in this “brilliant” novel by the author of The Moviegoer (Time). Will Barrett has never felt at peace. After moving from his native South to New York City, Will’s most meaningful human connections come through the lens of a telescope in Central Park, from which he views the comings and goings of the eccentric Vaught family. But Will’s days as a spectator end when he meets the Vaught patriarch and accepts a job in the Mississippi Delta as caretaker for the family’s ailing son, Jamie. Once there, he is confronted not only by his personal demons, but also his growing love for Jamie’s sister, Kitty, and a deepening relationship with the Vaught family that will teach him the true meaning of home.

Williston Bibb Barrett is the last gentleman, a twenty-five-year-old wanderer from the South living in New York City with no plans for the future and detached roots from his past. The simple purchase of a telescope one summer day changes his life. For while searching for an elusive peregrine falcon in Central Park, Will accidentally spots a beautiful young woman and falls madly and hopelessly in love. And so begins the last gentleman's quest for home, identity, and the meaning of contemporary life.

"The Last Gentleman is lovely and brilliant...a highly whimsical kind of picaresque tale that puts one in mind of both Faulkner and Camus," wrote Joyce Carol Oates when Walker Percy's novel was first published in 1966. Williston Bibb Barrett, the last gentleman of the story, is a displaced Southerner who has dropped out of Princeton owing to a nervous condition that his psychoanalyst associates with an inability to fit into groups. While living in New York City, our wayfarer-hero falls in love with a young woman he spies through a telescope...and sets out on a cross-country odyssey in search of home, identity, and the meaning of contemporary life. "The Last Gentleman is a fantastically intuitive report on how America feels to the touch," said Wilfrid Sheed. "Page-for-page and line-for-line this is certainly one of the best-written books in recent memory. As a Southern writer, Percy inherits the remains of a sonorous musical language. But beyond that, his unique point of view forms beautiful sentences like a diamond cutting glass." Alfred Kazin agreed: "Percy is a natural writer, downright, subtle, mischievous . . . a philosopher among novelists." With a new Introduction by Robert Coles.The Modern Library has played a significant role in American cultural life for the better part of a century. The series was founded in 1917 by the publishers Boni and Liveright and eight years later acquired by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer. It provided the foundation for their next publishing venture, Random House. The Modern Library has been a staple of the American book trade, providing readers with afford-able hardbound editions of impor-tant works of literature and thought. For the Modern Library's seventy-fifth anniversary, Random House redesigned the series, restoringas its emblem the running torch-bearer created by Lucian Bernhard in 1925 and refurbishing jackets, bindings, and type, as well as inau-gurating a new program of selecting titles. The Modern Library continues to provide the world's best books, at the best prices.

Join the charismatic gentleman bat on a night time stroll down cobblestone streets where the town is lively and energetic. Along the way he meets his lady friend. Dancing and merriment fill their evening until the weather takes a turn. But not to worry, when you're called the gentleman bat, you always come prepared. The Gentleman Bat is an original story with a timeless appeal. While it takes place in the Victorian-era, it has the universal appeal of two friends, or perhaps more than friends, enjoying a walk together. But what really sets The Gentleman Bat apart are the illustrations. Piotr Parda's watercolor and bamboo pen and ink paintings are meticulously crafted. The Gentleman Bat is sure to become a favorite book for children and the adults in their lives.

Williston Bibb Barrett, the last gentleman of the story, is a displaced Southerner who has dropped out of Princeton owing to a nervous condition that his psychoanalyst associates with an inability to fit into groups. While living in New York City, our wayfarer-hero falls in love with a young woman he spies through a telescope...and sets out on a cross-country odyssey in search of home, identity, and the meaning of contemporary life.

Williston Bibb Barrett is a rather unusual and inquisitive young Southerner with a special gift for cultivating the possibilities of life. He suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia and disconcerting attacks of déjà vu. He clings to certain old-fashioned notions of behavior, and yet he finds himself constantly impelled to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. And he lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened. The novel follows Will Barrett’s adventures as he becomes involved in the complex troubles, loves, and fortunes of a Southern family, the Vaughts, that is living in the shadow of their youngest son’s illness. With settings ranging from New York to Alabama, Louisiana to New Mexico, this is an ambitious, funny, compulsively readable novel about the dilemmas of modern man.

Williston Bibb Barrett is a rather unusual and inquisitive young Southerner with a special gift for cultivating the possibilities of life. He suffers from occasional bouts of amnesia and disconcerting attacks of déjà vu. He clings to certain old-fashioned notions of behavior, and yet he finds himself constantly impelled to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. And he lives with the secret suspicion that the great world catastrophe that everyone fears will happen has already happened. The novel follows Will Barrett’s adventures as he becomes involved in the complex troubles, loves, and fortunes of a Southern family, the Vaughts, that is living in the shadow of their youngest son’s illness. With settings ranging from New York to Alabama, Louisiana to New Mexico, this is an ambitious, funny, compulsively readable novel about the dilemmas of modern man.

At sixteen, Edward Beauclerk Maurice impulsively signed up with the Hudson's Bay Company -- the company of Gentleman Adventurers -- and ended up at an isolated trading post in the Canadian Arctic, where there was no communication with the outside world and only one ship arrived each year. But he was not alone. The Inuit people who traded there taught him how to track polar bears, build igloos, and survive ferocious winter storms. He learned their language and became completely immersed in their culture, earning the name Issumatak, meaning “he who thinks.”In The Last Gentleman Adventurer, Edward Beauclerk Maurice relates his story of coming of age in the Arctic and transports the reader to a time and a way of life now lost forever.