Toward the End of Time
A journal by an aging banker in which he reflects on subjects ranging from the decline of
civilizations to the many-universes theory. The year is 2020 and America is in chaos
following a nuclear war with China. Ben Turnbull, the hero of John Updike's 18th novel, is
a 66-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A
recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought
social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of
taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life,
traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed
comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five
children and 10 grandchildren.
Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions
and vagaries of the 'many-worlds' hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum
theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in
the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded
existence move toward the end of time.
Writers
Inferno of Dante: A New Verse Translation
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Robert Pinsky's acclaimed translation of The Inferno was awarded the Los Angeles
Times Book Prize for Poetry and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award given by
the Academy of American Poets. As Edward Hirsch wrote in The New Yorker, "Robert
Pinsky's translation is fast-paced, idiomatic, and accurate. . . It maintains the original's
episodic and narrative velocity. . . . Pinsky succeeds in creating a supple American
equivalent for Dante's vernacular music where many others have failed".
FROM THE CRITICS
Publisher's Weekly
Though transforming Dante's terza rima into readable English has bogged down many a
distinguished translator, Pinsky (The Want Bone) more than meets the challenge. His
rendering has an efficient feel; the lines seem slimmer and less unwieldy than most
contemporary verse translations. Each one of the cantos features a good number of
stanzas dominated by monosyllables-his answer, along with intriguing patterns of
assonance, to approximating the splendor of Dante's profusion of rhymes, which are
impossible to replicate in English. The coherent narration of the translation is also
welcome, as it keeps a harness on the sometimes meandering diction of the original.
Pinsky's voice is nearly irresistible when rounding out the grotesqueries of Dante's Hell:
his versions of the ninth and final circle bring the bizarre terror of the fiery pit to life.
Plainspoken yet elegant, this Inferno sustains a tactile succession of images over 34
cantos, and lends itself to being read aloud. Illustrations not seen by PW.
President Kennedy: Profile Of Power
Three decades after his death, here is the startling story of John F. Kennedy's three
years in the White House. Based on previously unavailable White House files,
letters and records, and hundreds of new interviews, Richard Reeves has written
the first objective account of Kennedy's presidency. President Kennedy is a
dramatic day-by-day, often minute-by-minute, Oval Office narrative of what it
was, and is, like to be President. This is the view from the center of power during
the years when the United States faced nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union
and something close to racial war at home. This is brilliant, relevant history, vividly
told. Kennedy lived along a line where charm became power. He proved that the
only qualification for the most powerful job in the world was wanting it. He would
not wait his turn, sure that he could always prevail one-on-one - until, in pain and
heavily medicated, he was humiliated in Vienna in 1961 at a summit with Nikita
Khrushchev. He came home in despair, thinking he would be the last U.S.
President, asking for the number of expected American deaths in the war that
seemed inevitable - 70 million, he was told. He began a massive military build-up
and a secret search for peace. On the day in 1963 when that peace seemed
possible, he gave the greatest speech of his life on ending the Cold War - on the
same day that four black girls were blown to bits at a church in Birmingham and a
Buddhist monk burned himself to death in Saigon to protest a government created
by the United States. Within weeks, Kennedy and Khrushchev agreed on a nuclear
test ban treaty, hundreds of thousands of blacks led by Martin Luther King, Jr.,
marched on Washington, and Kennedy ordered the overthrow of the U.S.-backed
government in South Vietnam - beginning a cycle of assassinations that ended with
his own death and those of King and his brother Robert Kennedy. These were the
days when the world held its breath. The Bay of Pigs. The Freedom Rides.