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Un professore di Harvard si innamora di una studentessa, e abbandona per lei la rassicurante monotonia di una vita già tracciata. Ma il mare aperto del nuovo amore lo porta a sperimentare, con l'ebbrezza della felicità, una inattesa nostalgia, un cocente senso di perdita. Ritratto appuntito di un uomo e del suo mondo (quello sofisticato, ironico, cerebrale degli intellettuali di Harvard), Le figlie degli altri riporta in scena l'America ancora puritana degli anni'70. E ne disegna un ritratto che guadagnò a Stern l'ammirazione di Saul Bellow e di Philip Roth. Introduzione di Philip Roth.

Nella sua opera d'esordio originale e tagliente, che rivaleggia con Il giorno della locusta come uno dei romanzi piu profetici che siano mai stati scritti sull'industria dell'intrattenimento americano, Richard Stern suggerisce in chiave tragicomica un probabile scenario per il futuro della televisione.«È un romanzo ricco e magnificamente cesellato, scritto da un uomo di profonda intelligenza.»Norman Mailer«Sembra Roth e invece no: è il suo maestro.»Livia Manera – La Lettura (Corriere della Sera)Nell'America della metà del Novecento, che si rilassa davanti ai teleschermi dopo aver vinto la guerra europea, un uomo venuto dal nulla crea un programma che conquista milioni di spettatori, dandogli un potere quasi sconfinato. È la prima Candid Camera della storia, e il nome del suo inventore, Golk, entra nel lessico di ogni famiglia. Golk, aggettivo, verbo, nome proprio e comune. Golk, golkare, golkismo. Ma anche «golk» come l'inverso di «god»: dio. E proprio come un dio, lui, Golk, sopra ogni cosa; deciso a colpire i potenti e a soddisfare la propria sfrenata ambizione. Completano una sconsacrata trinità i suoi due principali collaboratori: Hondorp, uno smidollato flâneur newyorkese vittima del fascino di Golk che illudendosi di prenderne il posto sarà coinvolto nella sua rovina; e Hendricks, una giovane donna assetata di esperienza che dopo i successi della crudele macchina golkiana tornerà al dorato ovile di un marito miliardario. Nella sua profetica opera d'esordio, Richard Stern propone in chiave tragicomica molti dei temi di cui si è discusso per decenni e che continuano ancor oggi ad animare libri, giornali e talk show televisivi.

«A su feliz pequeña escala, Las hijas de otros hombres fue a la década de los sesenta lo que El gran Gatsby a los años veinte o Las uvas de la ira a los treinta. Hay mucho que admirar en ella: la precisión, el tacto, la humanidad del sentimiento, su tremendo encanto... Es como si Chéjov hubiese escrito Lolita». Philip Roth «Hasta el día en que el señor Merriwether se marchó de casa —un mes después de su divorcio—, los Merriwether parecían una familia serena e ideal». Estamos en verano, a finales de la década de 1960. Las calles de Cambridge, Massachusetts, están llenas de hippies de pelo largo y coloridas prendas, pero el doctor Robert Merriwether, que enseña en Harvard y lleva mucho tiempo casado, no repara lo más mínimo en toda esa vida bullendo a su alrededor. Cultivado, reflexivo, animal de costumbres... Merriwether es todo menos un hombre impulsivo. Por eso es tan extraño, tan deslumbrante e inesperado, que mientras su esposa Sarah está de vacaciones conozca a Cynthia Ryder, y que en poco tiempo profesor y alumna empiecen un intenso romance. La novela de Richard Stern —discreto clásico moderno de la literatura norteamericana— es un elegante examen de la pasión amorosa, de su epicentro y sus réplicas, de sus devastadoras consecuencias. «Amor», piensa el doctor Merriwether. «Cuántos millares de sentimientos escondía aquella palabra famosa y petrificada, el origen de tanta historia y desorden».

In one of the world's most beautiful cities, an aging sculptor serves as an inspiration and a warning to two aspiring artists Pursuing literary glory, Edward Gunther gives up his job as a copywriter, sells everything he owns, and moves with his wife and three children from Chicago to Venice. But success does not come as quickly or as painlessly as Edward had hoped. During his first month in Italy, he struggles to get his essays published, argues with his wife about the family finances, and embarks on an unsteady affair with Nina Callahan, an American poet who insists on keeping him at arm's length. It seems that Edward's dreams will never come true, but when he discovers that Nina has befriended Thaddeus Stitch, the famous sculptor, a ray of hope appears. If anyone has the spark of genius, it is Stitch, who counted Yeats and Rilke as his friends and is inarguably one of the twentieth century's greatest artists. Perhaps some of the old man's creative energy will rub off on Edward, to whom a note of encouragement from such a luminary would mean everything. But Stitch is bitter and distant, preoccupied with his own doubts. Ancient now, he feels his talent slipping from his grasp and recognizes that the world is ready to move on without him. He knows that his masterpiece, a collection of figures and abstractions on an island in the Venetian Lagoon, will eventually disappear beneath the rising waters of the Adriatic. Over the course of a foggy winter, these three lonely souls try to come to terms with the direction of their lives and the meaning of their work. Written shortly after Richard Stern met Ezra Pound and widely recognized as a remarkable portrait of that inimitable literary lion, Stitch is an incisive and sympathetic novel about the joys and disappointments of a life devoted to art.

“The first really good book I have read about television.” —Norman Mailer In midcentury America, one man is determined to take over the airwaves with a program as audacious as it is entertaining. Bald, bombastic, and irresistible, Golk is his name and You're On Camera is his show. To “golk” someone is to trick her, on camera, into betraying her true nature. The more combative the personality, the better the joke, and to help trap his victims Golk enlists a team of misfits, including Herbert Hondorp, a scholarly layabout turned photogenic decoy, and Jeanine Hendricks, a twenty-three-old debutante with a bitter worldview. But Golk has bigger plans than just catching average Manhattanites unawares. As popular as You're On Camera has become, he knows the show is capable of making a greater, more transformative impact. The question is, will Herbert and Hendricks go along with his revolutionary agenda? Or will they bow to the power of the network and the seduction of celebrity? Combining high drama with surreal hilarity and presenting a remarkably prescient view of the future of television, Golk ranks with Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust as one of the finest novels ever written about the American entertainment industry.

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have developed rapidly in recent years and now provide powerful tools for the capture, manipulation, integration, interrogation, modelling, analysis and visualisation of data - tools that are already used for policy support in a wide range of areas at almost all geographic and administrative levels. This holds especially for emergency preparedness and health risk reduction, which are all essentially spatial problems. To date, however, many initiatives have remained disconnected and uncoordinated, leading to less powerful, less compatible and less widely implemented systems than might otherwise have been the case. The important matters discussed here include the probabilistic nature of most environmental hazards and the semi-random factors that influence interactions between these and human exposures; the effects of temporal and spatial scales on hazard assessment and imputed risk; the effects of measurement error in risk estimation and the stratification of risks and their impacts according to socioeconomic characteristics; and the quantification of socioeconomic differences in vulnerability and susceptibility to environmental hazards.

This volume provides an overview of modern acoustical techniques for the measurement of mechanical properties. Chapters include Fundamentals of Elastic Constants; Point Source/Point Receiver Methods; Laser Controlled Surface Acoustic Waves; Quantitative Acoustical Microscopy of Solids; Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy; Elastic Properties and Thermodynamics; Sound Speed as a Thermodynamic Property of Fluids; Noninvasive Determination of Sound Speed in Liquids; Introduction to the Elastic Constants of Gases; and Acoustic Measurement in Gases.