{"product_id":"czeslaw-milosz-a-california-life-9781597145497","title":"Czeslaw Milosz: A California Life","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe first book about the Nobel Laureate's transformative but conflicted time in the Golden State.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"There is much to learn from this book about Milosz and California, yes, but also about poetry and the world.\"--\u003cb\u003eIlya Kaminsky\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eCzeslaw Milosz, one of the greatest poets and thinkers of the past hundred years, is not generally considered a Californian. But the Nobel laureate spent four decades in Berkeley--more time than any other single place he lived--and he wrote many of his most enduring works there. This is the first book to look at his life through a California lens. Filled with original research and written with the grace and liveliness of a novel, it is both an essential volume for his most devoted readers and a perfect introduction for newcomers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMilosz was a premier witness to the sweep of the twentieth century, from the bombing of Warsaw in World War II to the student protests of the sixties and the early days of the high-tech boom. He maintained an open-minded but skeptical view of American life, a perspective shadowed by the terrors he experienced in Europe. In the light of recent political instability and environmental catastrophe, his poems and ideas carry extra weight, and they are ripe for a new generation of readers to discover them. This immersive portrait demonstrates what Milosz learned from the Golden State, and what Californians can learn from him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHaven, Cynthia L.:\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e - \u003cb\u003eCynthia L. Haven\u003c\/b\u003e is a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar and author of 2018's \u003ci\u003eEvolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard\u003c\/i\u003e, the first-ever biography of the French theorist. She has published two previous books on Czeslaw Milosz: \u003ci\u003eAn Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czeslaw Milosz\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eCzeslaw Milosz: Conversations\u003c\/i\u003e. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna, as well as a visiting writer and scholar at Stanford's Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and a Voegelin Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. She has written for the \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e and has also contributed to the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eNation\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eVirginia Quarterly Review\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, and other publications.","brand":"Heyday Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50482516033810,"sku":"9781597145497","price":18.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_dd90d0e2-79cb-4aa3-809d-051aeb4ea75a.jpg?v=1730346921","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/czeslaw-milosz-a-california-life-9781597145497","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}