Provides a detailed explanation of the different forms of poetry--sonnet, ballad, villanelle, sestina--and explains the origin, traces their history, and provides examples for each form.

Karr breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, opening our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminating the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate.

"It is widely accepted by New Testament scholars that the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles probably originated as two parts of one work by a single author. In spite of this, the books have been assigned to very different genres: Luke is traditionally viewed as a biography of Jesus, and Acts as a history of the early church. Comparing in detail the structure and content of Acts with the formal features of history, novel, epic and biography,...