In the Bronze Age world of 2000 B.C.E., Hastinapura is a male-governed trading outpost, in the midst of many smaller matriarchies. This novel is the untold story of Hastinapura, narrated through the voices of three women whose desires, hopes and actions drive the dramatic events of the ancient city and introduces the reader to the possibly unfamiliar world of matriarchal power and matrilineal inheritance. Shantanu, the Kuru ruler of Hastinapura, has given his word to his consort Satyavati, that her descendants will rule as Matriarchs. But decades pass without a daughter or grand-daughter being born. Instead, sons inherit, extending the customs of a caravan to create a patrilineal tradition. I have no daughter, becomes Satyavati's lifelong lament and that of Kunti, Matriarch of Bhojpura, as her city collapses. It also echoes in the heart of the blindfolded Gaandhaari, who endures countless agonizing childbirths, hoping for a daughter. But when the girl child finally comes, Gaandhaari’s own position hangs in the balance of destiny. The Last Matriarchs of Hastinapura, Book II of the Fall of the Kurus series, follows the lives of Satyavati, Gaandhaari, and Kunti, as they manoeuvre to ensure that their descendants rule the burgeoning Hastinapura Empire. When compromise fails, partition seems the only solution - Hastinapura for the Kauravas, and Indraprastha for the Pandavas. But, like other partitions before and since, this too provides no permanent solution.

The five volumes in A History of the Book in America offer a sweeping chronicle of our country's print production and culture from colonial times to the end of the twentieth century. This interdisciplinary, collaborative work of scholarship examines the book trades as they have developed and spread throughout the United States; provides a history of U.S. literary cultures; investigates the practice of reading and, more broadly, the uses of literacy; and links literary culture with larger themes in American history. Now available for the first time, this complete Omnibus ebook contains all 5 volumes of this landmark work. Volume 1 The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World Edited by Hugh Amory and David D. Hall 664 pp., 51 illus. Volume 2 An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790-1840 Edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley 712 pp., 66 illus. Volume 3 The Industrial Book, 1840-1880 Edited by Scott E. Casper, Jeffrey D. Groves, Stephen W. Nissenbaum, and Michael Winship 560 pp., 43 illus. Volume 4 Print in Motion: The Expansion of Publishing and Reading in the United States, 1880-1940 Edited by Carl F. Kaestle and Janice A. Radway 688 pp., 74 illus. Volume 5 The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America Edited by David Paul Nord, Joan Shelley Rubin, and Michael Schudson 632 pp., 95 illus.

The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World carries the interrelated stories of publishing, writing, and reading from the beginning of the colonial period in America up to 1790. Three major themes run through the volume: the persisting connections between the book trade in the Old World and the New, evidenced in modes of intellectual and cultural exchange and the dominance of imported, chiefly English books; the gradual emergence of a competitive book trade in which newspapers were the largest form of production; and the institution of a “culture of the Word,” organized around an essentially theological understanding of print, authorship, and reading, complemented by other frameworks of meaning that included the culture of republicanism. The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World also traces the histories of literary and learned culture, censorship and “freedom of the press,” and literacy and orality. Contributors: Hugh Amory Ross W. Beales, The College of the Holy Cross John Bidwell, Princeton University Library Richard D. Brown, University of Connecticut Charles E. Clark, University of New Hampshire James N. Green, Library Company of Philadelphia David D. Hall, Harvard Divinity School Russell L. Martin, Southern Methodist University E. Jennifer Monaghan, Brooklyn College of The City University of New York James Raven, University of Essex Elizabeth Carroll Reilly, Hardwick, Massachusetts A. Gregg Roeber, Pennsylvania State University David S. Shields, University of South Carolina Calhoun Winton, University of Maryland