German science fiction offers a most interesting contribution to the history and criticism of science fiction. William B. Fischer examines two writers, Kurd Lasswitz and Hans Dominik. He concludes that German science fiction is in distinct contrast to the “normative” tradition of modern Anglo-American science fiction and to many other literary traditions as well. His book demonstrates vividly the social relevance and enduring cultural vitality of science fiction.

In Praise of Ambiguity presents a discourse about the seriousness of play. Erasmus and Huizinga are its main subjects, their books In Praise of Folly (1511) and Homo Ludens (1938) its main texts. Though published more than four hundred years apart, Otterspeer treats those books as contemporaries and asks what they still have to say to us. The main theme of both books is the contrast between two attitudes of life: the conviction that each subject has two or more sides as opposed to the certainty that there is always only one side to the subject. It is relativism versus essentialism, play versus seriousness.

In these times of populism and fundamentalism, the relationship between play and seriousness is more significant than ever. Erasmus and Huizinga conceive a compromise as brilliant as it is paradoxical: turn seriousness into play, play into seriousness. Their solution is the life blood of literature. Literature is always paradoxical, always "true" and "not true' at the same time, both reality and fiction. Ambiguity is its home territory. Literature is the best answer to the purity and peremptoriness of prophets.

Nearly a quarter of the population of Budapest at the fin de siècle was Jewish. This demographic fact appears startling primarily because of its virtual absence from canonical histories of the city.

Famed for its cosmopolitan culture and vibrant nightlife, Budapest owed much to its Jewish population. Indeed, it was Jews who helped shape the city's complex urban modernity between 1867 and 1914. Yet these contributions were often unacknowledged, leading to a metaphoric, if not literal, invisible status for many of Budapest's Jews.

In the years since, particularly between the wars, anti-Semites within and outside Budapest sought to further erase Jewish influences in the city. Appellations such as the "sinful city" and "Judapest" left a toxic inheritance that often inhibited serious conversation or scholarly research on the subject.

Into this breach strides Mary Gluck, whose goal is no less than to retrieve the lost contours of Jewish Budapest. She delves into the popular culture of the city's coffee houses, music halls, and humor magazines to uncover the enormous influence of assimilated Jews in creating modernist Budapest. She explores the paradox of this culture, which was Jewish-identified yet lacked a recognizable Jewish face. Because much of the Jewish population embraced and promoted a secular, metropolitan culture, their influence as Jews was both profound and invisible.

Johan Huizinga’s much-loved and much-contested Autumn of the Middle Ages, first published in 1919, encouraged an image of the Late French Middle Ages as a flamboyant but empty period of decline and nostalgia. Many studies, particularly literary studies, have challenged Huizinga’s perceptions of individual works or genres. Still, the vision of the Late French and Burgundian Middle Ages as a sad transitional phase between the High Middle Ages and the Renaissance persists. Yet, a series of exceptionally significant cultural developments mark the period.

The Waxing of the Middle Ages sets out to provide a rich, complex, and diverse study of these developments and to reassert that late medieval France is crucial in its own right. The collection argues for an approach that views the late medieval period not as an afterthought, or a blind spot, but as a period that is key in understanding the fluidity of time, traditions, culture, and history. Each essay explores some “cultural form,” to borrow Huizinga’s expression, to expose the false divide that has dominated modern scholarship.