BIOGRAPHY: ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT. An intimate, authorized yet totally frank biography of Gore Vidal (1925-2012), one of the most accomplished, visible, and controversial American novelists and cultural figures of the past century. The product of thirty years of friendship and conversation, Jay Parini's Empire of Self digs behind the glittering surface of Gore Vidal's colorful career to reveal the complex emotional and sexual truths underlying his celebrity-strewn...

Fifteen-year-old Sammy di Cantini, resident of a mining region of Pennsylvania, is determined to rise above his class, falls disastrously in love with a Protestant, and visits his Mafia brother in New York where he becomes involved in impossible struggles

Jay Parini's biography of the poet, Theodore Roethke. Parini views Roethke through the lens of a Romantic poet. With this incredibly researched and well written work, Parini reaffirms Roethke's reputation as a poet that came into his own after the publication of "The Lost Son," and then continued to develop from there and greatly extended his reputation with further works.

An acclaimed American poet, Jay Parini is widely recognized for his ability to confront modern issues in a variety of forms, while adding a highly musical sense of phrasing and a relentless sense of humor. Parini, as seen in his previous works of poetry-Anthracite Country (1982), Town Life (1988), andHouse of Days (1998)-has created a remarkable voice of his own. The Art of Subtraction: New and Selected Poems is a testament to Parini's unique poetic...

Controversial, brilliant, and ever entertaining, Gore Vidal recalls his remarkable life as America's most outspoken intellectual superstar in this enlightening documentary.

For almost half a century, Donald Everett Axinn has been writing poetry in which, as Jay Parini notes in his introduction, "the stamp of individuality, the personal voice of the poet, lives on every page." A seasoned pilot, as well as a poet and novelist, Axinn revels as much in viewing the world from above as he lovingly, though often wryly, surveys the scene around him here below. Whether in his charming love poems, his delight in the evolving seasons,...