New Books List

"Beginning Urdu" is a complete first-year textbook designed to help learners acquire the language by actively using it in realistic situations. This book and its accompanying audio files can be download via website, which contain all that is needed to complete one full year of study, including clear explanations of language structures; useful, fun, and engaging activities; and an organizational format that makes it easy to chart student progress. This title develops all four skills-listening, speaking, reading, writing-through a wide range of tasks and activities, including role plays, games, and short conversations. It is beautifully illustrated with full-color, authentic images and written in an accessible style. It introduces the sound system and script of Urdu. It is organized around functional themes such as home and family, everyday life, the marketplace, personal responsibilities, and travel. It features straightforward grammatical explanations and topically organized vocabulary lists for each of the 34 chapters. It integrates cultural information within the thematic units and also presents culture through aphorisms, poetry, and photographs. It provides an activity set for each unit along with review activities, including tips for increasing fluency and sets of questions to help personalize learning. It contains Urdu-English and English-Urdu glossaries. It includes three appendices-Urdu numbers, additional grammatical structures for moving to advanced levels of proficiency, and a suggested syllabus. "Beginning Urdu" covers approximately 150 contact hours and is designed to bring learners to the ACTFL proficiency level of mid- to high-intermediate in all four skills. This book also serves as a valuable resource for independent learners.

Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's stunning novel of duty and desire set amongst the decadent, faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War. The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian Flyte at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognise his spiritual and social distance from them. Evelyn Waugh (1903-66) was born in Hampstead, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and in Yugoslavia. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags and then in 1945 Brideshead Revisited. Men at Arms (1952) was the first volume of 'The Sword of Honour' trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; the other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, followed in 1955 and 1961. If you enjoyed Brideshead Revisited, you might like Waugh's Vile Bodies, also available in Penguin Classics. 'Lush and evocative ... Expresses at once the profundity of change and the indomitable endurance of the human spirit' The Times