books tagged “america”

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  • Beowulf
    by Anonymous, John McNamara
    ISBN 1593083831 (1-59308-383-1)
    Hardcover, Fine Communications

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    Book summary:

    Beowulf, by Anonymous, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influencesbiographical, historical, and literaryto enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.
     
    Widely regarded as the first true masterpiece of English literature, Beowulf describes the thrilling adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century. Its lyric intensity and imaginative vitality are unparalleled, and the poem has greatly influenced many important modern novelists and poets, most notably J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings.
     
    Part history and part mythology, Beowulf opens in the court of the Danish king where a horrible demon named Grendel devours men in their sleep every night. The hero Beowulf arrives and kills the monster, but joy turns to horror when Grendels mother attacks the hall to avenge the death of her son. Ultimately triumphant, Beowulf becomes king himself and rules peacefully for fifty years until, one dark day, a foe more powerful than any he has yet faced is arousedan ancient dragon guarding a horde of treasure. Once again, Beowulf must summon all his strength and courage to face the beast, but this time victory exacts a terrible price.
     
    New translation by John McNamara. Features an original map and genealogy chart.
     
    John McNamara is Professor of English at the University of Houston, where he teaches the early languages and literatures of England, Scotland, and Ireland, with a special focus on their oral traditions. He is the co-editor of Medieval Folklore: An Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs.
    [via]

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  • Big Sleep
    by Raymond Chandler
    ISBN 1417711302 (1-4177-1130-2)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    "His thin, claw-like hands were folded loosely on the rug, purple-nailed. A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock." Published in 1939, when Raymond Chandler was 50, this is the first of the Philip Marlowe novels. Its bursts of sex, violence, and explosively direct prose changed detective fiction forever. "She was trouble. She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. Her hair was black and wiry and parted in the middle. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full." [via]

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  • Black Like Me: Library Edition
    by John Howard Griffin, Bonazzi, Robert (AFT), Studs Terkel, Don Rutledge
    ISBN 0930324722 (0-930324-72-2)
    Hardcover, Wings Pr

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    Book summary:

    This American classic has been corrected from the original manuscripts and indexed, featuring historic photographs and an extensive biographical afterword.
    [via]

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  • The Collected Poems
    by Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath
    ISBN 1568497032 (1-56849-703-2)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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    Sylvia Plath died in 1963, and even now her outsize persona threatens to bury her poetry--the numerous biographies and studies often drawing the reader toward anecdote and away from the work. It's a relief to turn to the poems themselves and once more be jolted by their strange beauty, hard-wrought originality, and acetylene anger. "It is a heart, / This holocaust I walk in, / O golden child the world will kill and eat." While the juvenilia and poems written before 1960 that Ted Hughes has included here prefigure Plath's later obsessions, they also enable us to witness her turn from thesaurus-heavy verse to stripped-down art as they gather power through raw simplicity. "The blood jet is poetry. / There is no stopping it," she declares in "Kindness." [via]

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  • Colossus: The Price of America's Empire
    by Niall Ferguson
    ISBN 1594200130 (1-59420-013-0)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    "The United States today is an empirebut a peculiar kind of empire," writes Niall Ferguson. Despite overwhelming military, economic, and cultural dominance, America has had a difficult time imposing its will on other nations, mostly because the country is uncomfortable with imperialism and thus unable to use this power most effectively and decisively. The origin of this attitude and its persistence is a principal theme of this thought-provoking book, including how domestic politics affects foreign policy, whether it is politicians worried about the next election or citizens who "like Social Security more than national security." Ferguson, a British historian, has no objection to an American empire, as long as it is a liberal one actively underwriting the free exchange of goods, labor, and capital. Further, he writes that "empire is more necessary in the twenty-first century than ever before" as a means to "contain epidemics, depose tyrants, end local wars and eradicate terrorist organizations." The sooner America embraces this role and acts on it confidently, the better. Ferguson contrasts this persistent anti-imperialistic urge with the attitude held by the British Empire and suggests that America has much to learn from that model if it is to achieve its stated foreign policy objectives of spreading social freedom, democracy, development, and the free market to the world. He suggests that the U.S. must be willing to send money, civilians, and troops for a sustained period of time to troubled spots if there is to be real changeas in Japan and Germany after World War II--an idea that many American citizens and leaders now find repulsive. Rather than devoting limited resources and striving to get complex jobs done in a rush, Americans must be willing to integrate themselves into a foreign culture until a full Americanization has occurred, he writes. Overall, a trenchant examination of a uniquely American dilemma and its implications for the rest of the world. --Shawn Carkonen [via]

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  • The Custom of the Country
    by Edith Wharton
    ISBN 1598184016 (1-59818-401-6)
    Softcover, Alan Rodgers Books

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    Book summary:

    The Custom of the Country may well be have been the lynchpin that made Edith Wharton's career become the phenomenon that comes so easily to memory across so many decades. Oh, it's of a cloth with all her work -- there's no mistaking that a page of her writing came from her and not someone else -- but on a certain level, this novel is a mean book, and the meanness is warranted. The heroine (a woman named Undine Spragg, of all things!) is a spoiled heiress who makes her way in life by conquering one man after another after another, moving from the American heartland eastward first to New York, and ultimately to Paris.

    "Edith Wharton's finest achievement."
    -- Elizabeth Hardwick [via]

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  • Hitchcock, Jane Stanton: The Custom of the Country: Adapted from the Novel by Edith Wharton
    The Custom of the Country: Adapted from the Novel by Edith Wharton
    by Jane Stanton Hitchcock, Edith Custom of Country Wharton
    ISBN 1557832870 (1-55783-287-0)
    Softcover, Hal Leonard Corp

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  • Daisy Miller And Washington Square
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1593081057 (1-59308-105-7)
    Softcover, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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    Daisy Miller and Washington Square, by Henry James, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Strikingly modern in its psychological insight, social observation and stylistic innovation, Henry Jamess fiction continues to attract and intrigue readers a century after its initial appearance. This volume offers two of his most popular and critically admired novellas: Daisy Miller and Washington Square.

    In Daisy Miller, James paints a vivid portrait of a vibrant young American girl visiting Europe for the first time. Lovely, flirtatious, eager for experience, Daisy meets a wealthy American, Mr. Winterbourne, and a penniless but passionate Italian. Her complex encounters with them and others allow James to explore one of his favorite themes, the effect of Americans and Europeans on each other.

    Washington Squares Catherine Sloper is Daisy Millers opposite. Neither pretty nor charming, she lives with her wealthy, widowed, tyrannical father, Dr. Austin Sloper, who can barely conceal his disdain for his shy, awkward daughter. When a handsome suitor, Morris Townsend, comes calling, Catherines father refuses to believe he is anything other than a heartless fortune hunter and sets out to destroy her romance.

    Jennie A. Kassanoff is Assistant Professor of English at Barnard College. Her articles have appeared in Arizona Quarterly and PMLA. Her book, Edith Wharton and the Politics of Race, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

    [via]

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  • Blake, Michael: Dances With Wolves
    Dances With Wolves
    by Michael Blake
    ISBN 1557040915 (1-55704-091-5)
    Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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  • The Debate on the Constitution: Federalist and Antifederalist Speeches, Articles and Letters During the Struggle over Ratification/Boxed Set
    by Bernard Bailyn
    ISBN 0940450429 (0-940450-42-9)
    Hardcover, Penguin USA

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    Book summary:

    "The Debate on the Constitution" charts the course of the bloodless revolution that created the government of the United States and the world's oldest working national charter. In speeches, newspaper articles, pamphlets, and letters, this unique collection captures firsthand the energy and eloquence of the stormy ratification struggle. Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, Washington, Patrick Henry, and many less well known voices speak with passion and articulateness about issues of personal liberty and public order that continue to resonate in today's headlines. Along with a detailed chronology and notes, each volume also includes the full texts of the Declaration in Independence, Articles of Confederation, and Constitution. [via]

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  • Entretien Avec UN Vampire/Interview With the Vampire
    by Anne Rice
    ISBN 2266034839 (2-266-03483-9)
    Softcover, Distribooks Inc

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    Book summary:

    tome 1 de la saga chronique des vampires; [via]

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  • Ernest Hemingway's the Sun Also Rises
    by Ernest Hemingway
    ISBN 1555460453 (1-55546-045-3)
    Hardcover, Chelsea House Pub

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    Book summary:

    Bloom suggests that signs of the permanent canonical status of the work of Ernest Hemingway seem beyond doubt. He puts The Sun Also Rises on a short list of modern American novels that appear certain to endure.

    The title, Ernest Hemingways The Sun Also Rises, part of Chelsea House Publishers Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Ernest Hemingways The Sun Also Rises through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Ernest Hemingway, a chronology of the authors life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University. [via]

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  • Wharton, Edith: Ethan Frome
    Ethan Frome
    by Edith Wharton
    ISBN 1404349391 (1-4043-4939-1)
    Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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    Ethan Frome is a tale remembered because exactly it speaks to something inside so many of us. It's the tale of an old man, shriveled at the heart -- and how he got to be that way. It's a tale of love conflicted and compounded -- a tale of tragedy and a lifetime of its aftermath.

    ETHAN FROME [via]

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  • Hemingway, Ernest: Fiesta
    Fiesta
    by Ernest Hemingway
    ISBN 8408010093 (84-08-01009-3)
    Softcover, Planeta Pub Corp

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  • Ryan, Pam Munoz: The Flag We Love
    The Flag We Love
    by Pam Munoz Ryan, Ralph Masiello
    ISBN 1570917078 (1-57091-707-8)
    Hardcover, Charlesbridge Pub Inc

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  • Freddy and Fredericka
    by Mark Helprin
    ISBN 1594200548 (1-59420-054-8)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    Book summary:

    Freddy and Fredericka will ascend the English throne only if they reacquire the American colonies and become noble spirits in an ignoble age.

    Helprin's latest work, an extraordinarily funny allegory of a most peculiar British royal family, is immensely mocking of contemporary monarchy and yet deeply sympathetic to the individuals caught in its lonely absurdities.

    Freddy is the Prince of Wales, Fredericka his troublesome wife. An overeducated, bumbling anachronism, Freddy commits one glorious gaffe after another, for which he is massacred daily in the British press. Golden-haired Fredericka, frivolous and empty headed, is particularly fond of wearing spectacular clothing with revealing necklines. Because of the epic public relations disasters caused by these wayward heirs to the throne, they are sent, in a little-known ancient tradition, on a quest to colonize a strange and barbarous land: America.

    In a tour (de force) of the United States, they are parachuted into the gleaming hell of industrial New Jersey and make their way across the country--riding freight trains, washing dishes, stealing art, gliding down the Mississippi, impersonating dentists, fighting forest fires, and becoming ineluctably enmeshed in the madness of a presidential campaign. Amid the collisions of their royal assumptions with their life on the road, they rise to their full potential, gain the dignity and humility required of great monarchs and good people, and learn to love each other.

    There is nothing quite like it. Helprin is a lyrical writer whose graceful prose is studded with profound truths and insights. Devoted readers know him for his deeply sad stories that are yet uplifting in their conviction of the goodness and resilience of the human spirit. In what seems like a radical departure of form (as if de Tocqueville had been rewritten by Mark Twain with a deep bow to Harpo Marx), this brilliantly refashioned fairy tale is a magnificently funny farce. But behind the laughter Helprin speaks of leaps of faith and second chances, courage and the primacy of love. He leaves us with the final impression that someone has shouted successfully past the cynicism of our postmodern age in behalf of honor, beauty, nobility, and dreams that come true. [via]

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  • Churchill, Winston: The Great Democracies
    The Great Democracies
    by Winston Churchill
    ISBN 1568495072 (1-56849-507-2)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
    by Dave Eggers
    ISBN 1568959095 (1-56895-909-5)
    Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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    Book summary:

    Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:").

    But on to the true story. At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.)

    The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park, and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A.H.W.O.S.G. already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting.

    All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation. --Mary Park [via]

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  • His Excellency: George Washington
    by Joseph J. Ellis
    ISBN 1400032539 (1-4000-3253-9)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    As commander of the Continental army, George Washington united the American colonies, defeated the British army, and became the world's most famous man. But how much do we really know about the first president of the United States? Today, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph J. Ellis says in this crackling biography, Americans see their first president on dollar bills, quarters, and Mount Rushmore, but only as "an icon--distant, cold, intimidating." In truth, Washington was a deeply emotional man, but one who prized and practiced self-control (an attribute reinforced during his years on the battlefield).

    Washington first gained recognition as a 21-year-old emissary for the governor of Virginia, braving savage conditions to confront encroaching French forces. As the de facto leader of the American Revolution, he not only won the country's independence, but helped shape its political personality and "topple the monarchical and aristocratic dynasties of the Old World." When the Congress unanimously elected him president, Washington accepted reluctantly, driven by his belief that the union's very viability depended on a powerful central government. In fact, keeping the country together in the face of regional allegiances and the rise of political parties may be his greatest presidential achievement.

    Based on Washington's personal letters and papers, His Excellency is smart and accessible (not to mention relatively brief, in comparison to other encyclopedic presidential tomes)--Ellis's short, succinct sentences speak volumes, allowing readers to glimpse the man behind the myth. --Andy Boynton

    Amazon.com Exclusive Content
    Curious about George?
    Amazon.com reveals a few facts about the legendary first president of the United States

    Washington bust by Jean Antoine Houdon.
    Courtesy of the Mt. Vernon Ladies' Assoc.

    1. The famous tale about Washington chopping down the cherry tree ("Father, I cannot tell a lie") is a complete fabrication.

    2. George Washington never threw a silver dollar across the Potomac River--in fact, to do so from the shore of his Mount Vernon home would have been physically impossible.

    3. George Washington did not wear wooden teeth. His poorly-fitting false teeth were in fact made of cow's teeth, human teeth, and elephant ivory set in a lead base.

    4. Early in his life, Washington was himself a slave owner. His opinions changed after he commanded a multi-racial army in the Revolutionary War. He eventually came to recognize slavery as "a massive American anomaly."

    5. In 1759, having resigned as Virginia's military commander to become a planter, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis. Washingtons marriage to the colony's wealthiest widow dramatically changed his life, catapulting him into Virginia aristocracy.

    6. Scholars have discredited suggestions that Washington's marriage to Martha lacked passion, as well as the provocative implications of the well worn phrase "George Washington slept here."

    7. Washington held his first public office when he was 17 years old, as surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia.

    8. At age 20, despite no prior military experience, Washington was appointed an adjutant in the Virginia militia, in which he oversaw several militia companies, and was assigned the rank of major.

    9. As a Virginia aristocrat, Washington ordered all his coats, shirts, pants, and shoes from London. However, most likely due to the misleading instructions he gave his tailor, the suits almost never fit. Perhaps this is why he appears in an old military uniform in his 1772 portrait.

    10. In 1751, during a trip to Barbados with his half-brother Lawrence, Washington was stricken with smallpox and permanently scarred. Fortunately, this early exposure made him immune to the disease that would wipe out colonial troops during the Revolutionary War.

    Timeline
    Important Dates in George Washington's Life

    Engraving of Mount Vernon, 1804. Courtesy of the Mt. Vernon Ladies' Assoc.

    1732: George Washington is born at his father's estate in Westmoreland County, Virginia.

    1743: Georges father, Augustine Washington, dies.

    1752: At age 20, despite the fact that he has never served in the military, Washington is appointed adjutant in the Virginia militia, with the rank of major.

    1753: As an emissary to Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie, he travels to the Ohio River valley to confront French forces--the first of a series of encounters that would lead to the French and Indian War.

    1755: Washington is appointed commander-in-chief of Virginia's militia.

    1759: He marries wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis.

    1774: Washington is elected to the First Continental Congress.

    1775: He is unanimously elected by the Continental Congress as its army's commander-in-chief. Start of the American Revolution.

    1776: On Christmas day, Washington leads his army across the Delaware River, and launches a successful attack against Hessian troops in Trenton, New Jersey.

    1781: With the French, he defeats British troops in Yorktown, Virginia, precipitating the end of the war.

    1783: The Revolutionary War officially ends.

    1788: The Constitution is ratified.

    1789: Washington is elected president.

    1797: He fulfills his last term as president.

    1799: Washington dies on December 14, sparking a period of national mourning.


    [via]

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  • Hawthorne, Nathaniel: The House of Seven Gables: Library Edition
    The House of Seven Gables: Library Edition
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Basil Davenport
    ISBN 1557423024 (1-55742-302-4)
    Hardcover, Wildside Pr

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  • House of the Seven Gables
    by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gordon Tapper
    ISBN 1593082312 (1-59308-231-2)
    Softcover, Fine Communications

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    Book summary:

    Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love. [via]

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  • How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
    by Jacob A. Riis
    ISBN 1420925032 (1-4209-2503-2)
    Softcover, Digireads.Com

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    Book summary:

    "How the Other Half Lives" is a chronicle of the conditions of abject poverty that the residents of the slums of New York at the end of the 19th century had to endure. Riis, who as an immigrant himself lived in these tenements on the lower east side of Manhattan, exposed the horrible conditions while working as a reporter for the New York Tribune. This book when first published in 1890 shed a much-needed light on the conditions of the poor. Presented here is a reproduction of that original 1890 edition with the numerous illustrations included in that volume. [via]

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  • The Illustrated Souls Of Black Folk
    by W. E. B. Du Bois, Eugene F. Provenzo, Manning Marable
    ISBN 159451030X (1-59451-030-X)
    Hardcover, Paradigm Pub

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    The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line . . . - W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903. This prophetic statement made by W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago is from The Souls of Black Folk. One hundred years later, Souls remains the most important treatment of African-American life and culture published in the Twentieth century. Richly illustrated, this special edition of Du Bois's seminal work includes historical woodcuts and engravings, photos, and documents. Most of the photos, engravings, and documents are from the 19th and early 20th century and depict American slavery and its legacy, African-American life, and the prominent figures and events associated with the book's content. Assembled by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., this illustrated edition of The Souls of Black Folk also offers extensive annotations, commentary, and related materials from government, the media, advertising, and popular culture. Documents include: the Act Establishing the Freedman's Bureau; Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Speech; W. E. B. Du Bois's essay The Talented Tenth; Ida B. Wells-Barnett's The Lynch Law in Georgia; W. E. B. Du Bois's report The Negro in the Black Belt; Alexander Crummell's sermon Common Sense and Schooling; W. E. B. Du Bois's story The Black Man Brings His Gifts; Thomas W. Higginson's Negro Spirituals, and more. Annotated, Illustrated, Documentary Editions are a new series of books created by Eugene Provenzo and Paradigm Publishers, offering classic works in Literature, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities with extensive commentary, illustrations, and related documentary sources. [via]

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  • Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
    by Harriet Ann Jacobs, Lydia Maria Francis Child
    ISBN 1406510017 (1-4065-1001-7)
    Softcover, Dodo Pr

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    Published in 1861, Harriet Jacobs's "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" was one of the first of the personal slave narratives. At the time this book was first published Harriet Jacobs was living as an escaped slave in the North, a precarious position given the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. Originally published under the pseudonym Linda Brent, "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl" is a gripping first hand account of the brutality endured by slaves and one of the few ever written by a woman. [via]

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  • Killer Angels
    by Michael Shaara
    ISBN 1417708158 (1-4177-0815-8)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    This novel reveals more about the Battle of Gettysburg than any piece of learned nonfiction on the same subject. Michael Shaara's account of the three most important days of the Civil War features deft characterizations of all of the main actors, including Lee, Longstreet, Pickett, Buford, and Hancock. The most inspiring figure in the book, however, is Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, whose 20th Maine regiment of volunteers held the Union's left flank on the second day of the battle. This unit's bravery at Little Round Top helped turned the tide of the war against the rebels. There are also plenty of maps, which convey a complete sense of what happened July 1-3, 1863. Reading about the past is rarely so much fun as on these pages. [via]

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  • Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong
    by James W. Loewen
    ISBN 1565843444 (1-56584-344-4)
    Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    Little seems to delight historian James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, more than picking apart the cherished myths of American history. Few Americans study history after high school--instead, Loewen writes, they turn to novels and Oliver Stone movies to learn about the past. And they turn to the landscape, to roadside historical markers, guidebooks, museums, and tours of battlefields, childhood homes, and massacre sites. If you were to trust those sources, Loewen suggests, you would learn, erroneously, that the first airplane flight took place not at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, but at Pittsburg, Texas. "It must be true--an impressive-looking Texas state historical marker says so!" Loewen chortles.

    In these entertaining pages, Loewen takes a region-by-region tour of the United States, pointing out historical oddments as he travels. For example, a massacre of white pioneers by Indians commemorated in Almo, Idaho, never took place, Loewen continues; neither did many other such events. Indeed, he insists, "throughout the entire West between 1842 and 1859, of more than 400,000 pioneers crossing the plains, fewer than 400, or less than .1 percent, were killed by American Indians." And if you were to visit Helen Keller's Georgia birthplace, over which a Confederate flag flies, you would get the impression that Keller had been an unreconstructed daughter of the Old South, whereas she was in fact an early supporter of the NAACP. And so on.

    After finishing Loewen's alternately angry and bemused exposé, readers will likely never trust a roadside historical marker or tour guide again--which may prompt them to turn to history books to check things out for themselves. As well they should. --Gregory McNamee [via]

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  • Little Men
    by Louisa May Alcott
    ISBN 1404314512 (1-4043-1451-2)
    Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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    Please, sir, is this Plumfield? asked a ragged boy of the man who opened the great gate at which the omnibus left him. "Yes. Who sent you?" "Mr. Laurence. I have got a letter for the lady." "All right; go up to the house, and give it to her; she'll see to you, little chap." The man spoke pleasantly, and the boy went on, feeling much cheered by the words. Through the soft spring rain that fell on sprouting grass and budding trees, Nat saw large square house before him a hospitable-looking house, with an old-fashioned porch, wide steps, and lights shining in many win-dows. Neither curtains nor shutters hid the cheerful glimmer; and, pausing a moment before he rang, Nat saw many little shadows dancing on the walls, heard the pleasant hum of young voices, and felt that it was hardly possible that the light and warmth and comfort within could be for a homeless "little chap" like him. [via]

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  • Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky and the Media : A Primer in Intellectual Self-Defence
    by Mark Achbar
    ISBN 1551640023 (1-55164-002-3)
    Softcover, Black Rose Books

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    Manufacturing Consent Noam Chomsky and the Media, the companion book to the award-winning film, charts the life of America's most famous dissident, from his boyhood days running his uncle's newsstand in Manhattan to his current role as outspoken social critic.

    A complete transcript of the film is complemented by key excerpts from the writings, interviews and correspondence. Also included are exchanges between Chomsky and his critics, historical and biographical material, filmmakers' notes, a resource guide, more than 270 stills from the film and 18 "Philosopher All-Stars" Trading Cards!
    Mark Achbar has applied a wide range of creative abilities and technical skills to over 50 films, videos, and books. He has worked as editor, researcher and production coordinator.

    "A juicily subversive biographical/philosophical documentary bristling and buzzing with ideas."Washington Post

    "You will see the whole sweep of the most challenging critic in modern political thought."Boston Globe

    "One of our real geniuses, an excellent introduction."Village Voice

    "An intellectually challenging crash course in the man's cooly contentious analysis, laying out his thoughts in a package that is clever and accessible."Los Angeles Times

    Contents:
    The Man. Early Influences. Vietnam A Turning Point. On His Role. The Media. Thought Control in Democratic Societies. A Propaganda Model. The Gulf "War". A Case Study Cambodia & East Timor. Concision A Structural Constraint. "Sports Rap with Noam Chomsky." A Cabal of Anti-Conspiricists. Media in Media, Pennsylvania. Alternative Media. The Linguist. Basic Premises. Nim Chimsky: Chimpanzee. And the Elusive Connection to his Politics. The Social Order. On Education. Anarchism/Libertarian Socialism. Resistance & Critical Analysis. The Critics (Media-Based). William F. Buckley, Jr. "Firing Line". David Frum Journalist, Washington Post. Jeff Greenfield Producer, "Nightline". Karl E. Meyer Editorial Writer, The New York Times. Peter Worthington Editor, The Ottawa Sun. The Critics (Other Elites). Fritz Bolkestein Former Dutch Minister of Defense. Michel Foucault Philosopher. Yossi Olmert Tel Aviv University. John Silber
    [via]

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  • Smiley, Jane: Moo
    Moo
    by Jane Smiley
    ISBN 1568952422 (1-56895-242-2)
    Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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  • My Life
    by Bill Clinton
    ISBN 140003003X (1-4000-3003-X)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    Loved and reviled, respected and resented, Bill Clinton is one of the more polarizing and complex politicians of our age. As the 42nd President, he presided over a period of dizzying economic growth and technological progress, and achieved such foreign policy successes as the ratification of NAFTA, helping to bring several former Eastern Bloc nations into NATO, and assisting China's entrance into the World Trade Organization. His time in office was also marked by a string of scandals, most notably the Monica Lewinsky debacle and the subsequent impeachment trial, which largely overshadowed his triumphs.

    Just 53 years old when he left office, Clinton continues to keep a high profile, having formed the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation to focus on the battle against HIV/AIDS around the world; racial, ethnic, and religious reconciliation; economic empowerment of poor people; nd leadership development and citizen service. His memoir, My Life, due out on June 30, 2004, is an opportunity for Clinton to reveal his political philosophy and perspective on past events as well as a chance to influence his own place in history. [via]

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  • Churchill, Winston: The New World
    The New World
    by Winston Churchill
    ISBN 1568495056 (1-56849-505-6)
    Hardcover, Buccaneer Books

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  • Novels, 1942-1952
    by John Steinbeck, Robert Demott
    ISBN 1931082073 (1-931082-07-3)
    Hardcover, Penguin Group USA

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    This third volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck's writings shows one of America's most enduring popular writers continuing restlessly to explore new subject matter and new approaches to storytelling.

    The Moon Is Down (1942), set in an unnamed Scandinavian country under German occupation, dramatizes the transformation of ordinary life under totalitarian rule and the underground struggle against the Nazi invaders. In Cannery Row (1945) Steinbeck paid tribute to his closest friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, in the central character of Doc, proprietor of the Western Biological Laboratory and spiritual and financial mainstay of a cast of philosophical drifters and hangers-on. The comic and bawdy evocation of the main street of Monterey's sardine-canning district has made this one of the most popular of all Steinbeck's novels. Steinbeck's long involvement with Mexican culture is distilled in The Pearl (1947). Expanding on an anecdote he had heard about a boy who found a pearl of unusual size, Steinbeck turned it into an allegory of the corrupting influence of sudden wealth. The Pearl appears here with the original illustrations by José Clemente Orozco.

    Ambitious in scale and original in structure, East of Eden (1952) recounts the violent and emotionally turbulent history of a Salinas Valley family through several generations. Drawing on Biblical parallels, East of Eden is an epic that explores the writer's deepest and most anguished concerns within a landscape that for him had mythic resonance.
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  • Poisonwood Bible
    by Barbara Kingsolver
    ISBN 1417687703 (1-4176-8770-3)
    Hardcover, Bt Bound

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    Oprah Book Club® Selection, June 2000: As any reader of The Mosquito Coast knows, men who drag their families to far-off climes in pursuit of an Idea seldom come to any good, while those familiar with At Play in the Fields of the Lord or Kalimantaan understand that the minute a missionary sets foot on the fictional stage, all hell is about to break loose. So when Barbara Kingsolver sends missionary Nathan Price along with his wife and four daughters off to Africa in The Poisonwood Bible, you can be sure that salvation is the one thing they're not likely to find. The year is 1959 and the place is the Belgian Congo. Nathan, a Baptist preacher, has come to spread the Word in a remote village reachable only by airplane. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared would be an understatement: "We came from Bethlehem, Georgia, bearing Betty Crocker cake mixes into the jungle," says Leah, one of Nathan's daughters. But of course it isn't long before they discover that the tremendous humidity has rendered the mixes unusable, their clothes are unsuitable, and they've arrived in the middle of political upheaval as the Congolese seek to wrest independence from Belgium. In addition to poisonous snakes, dangerous animals, and the hostility of the villagers to Nathan's fiery take-no-prisoners brand of Christianity, there are also rebels in the jungle and the threat of war in the air. Could things get any worse?

    In fact they can and they do. The first part of The Poisonwood Bible revolves around Nathan's intransigent, bullying personality and his effect on both his family and the village they have come to. As political instability grows in the Congo, so does the local witch doctor's animus toward the Prices, and both seem to converge with tragic consequences about halfway through the novel. From that point on, the family is dispersed and the novel follows each member's fortune across a span of more than 30 years.

    The Poisonwood Bible is arguably Barbara Kingsolver's most ambitious work, and it reveals both her great strengths and her weaknesses. As Nathan Price's wife and daughters tell their stories in alternating chapters, Kingsolver does a good job of differentiating the voices. But at times they can grate--teenage Rachel's tendency towards precious malapropisms is particularly annoying (students practice their "French congregations"; Nathan's refusal to take his family home is a "tapestry of justice"). More problematic is Kingsolver's tendency to wear her politics on her sleeve; this is particularly evident in the second half of the novel, in which she uses her characters as mouthpieces to explicate the complicated and tragic history of the Belgian Congo.

    Despite these weaknesses, Kingsolver's fully realized, three-dimensional characters make The Poisonwood Bible compelling, especially in the first half, when Nathan Price is still at the center of the action. And in her treatment of Africa and the Africans she is at her best, exhibiting the acute perception, moral engagement, and lyrical prose that have made her previous novels so successful. --Alix Wilber [via]

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  • Prozac Nation
    by Elizabeth Wurtzel
    ISBN 1573225126 (1-57322-512-6)
    Softcover, Riverhead Books

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    Elizabeth Wertzel writes with her finger in the faint pulse of a generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. A memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation still manages to be a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era. [via]

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  • The Right Stuff
    by Tom Wolfe
    ISBN 1579124585 (1-57912-458-5)
    Hardcover, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Incorporated

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    Tom Wolfe began The Right Stuff at a time when it was unfashionable to contemplate American heroism. Nixon had left the White House in disgrace, the nation was reeling from the catastrophe of Vietnam, and in 1979--the year the book appeared--Americans were being held hostage by Iranian militants. Yet it was exactly the anachronistic courage of his subjects that captivated Wolfe. In his foreword, he notes that as late as 1970, almost one in four career Navy pilots died in accidents. "The Right Stuff," he explains, "became a story of why men were willing--willing?--delighted!--to take on such odds in this, an era literary people had long since characterized as the age of the anti-hero."

    Wolfe's roots in New Journalism were intertwined with the nonfiction novel that Truman Capote had pioneered with In Cold Blood. As Capote did, Wolfe tells his story from a limited omniscient perspective, dropping into the lives of his "characters" as each in turn becomes a major player in the space program. After an opening chapter on the terror of being a test pilot's wife, the story cuts back to the late 1940s, when Americans were first attempting to break the sound barrier. Test pilots, we discover, are people who live fast lives with dangerous machines, not all of them airborne.

    Wolfe traces Alan Shepard's suborbital flight and Gus Grissom's embarrassing panic on the high seas (making the controversial claim that Grissom flooded his Liberty capsule by blowing the escape hatch too soon). The author also produces an admiring portrait of John Glenn's apple-pie heroism and selfless dedication. By the time Wolfe concludes with a return to Yeager and his late-career exploits, the narrative's epic proportions and literary merits are secure. Certainly The Right Stuff is the best, the funniest, and the most vivid book ever written about America's manned space program. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]

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  • Road Scholar: Coast to Coast Late in the Century
    by Andrei Codrescu, David Graham
    ISBN 1562828789 (1-56282-878-9)
    Hardcover, Hyperion Books

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    Book summary:

    Codrescu embraces the tradition of seeking America from the driver's seat. He starts out by saying that "all my life I had two claims to fame: I was born in Transylvania and I didn't drive a car." To make a film, Codrescu loses one of those claims. He takes driving lessons, then tours the country making a film of the America he finds. He sees the Statue of Liberty, a Roller Skating Gospel Rink near Chicago, Sikhs in Albuquerque, and ends in San Francisco's North Beach. His writing is lyrical, insightful, and very original. [via]

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  • Robert Frank: The Americans
    by Robert Frank
    ISBN 1881616126 (1-881616-12-6)
    Softcover, Perseus Distribution Services

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    Armed with a camera and a fresh cache of film and bankrolled by a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Robert Frank crisscrossed the United States during 1955 and 1956. The photographs he brought back form a portrait of the country at the time and hint at its future. He saw the hope of the future in the faces of a couple at city hall in Reno, Nevada, and the despair of the present in a grimy roofscape. He saw the roiling racial tension, glamour, and beauty, and, perhaps because Frank himself was on the road, he was particularly attuned to Americans' love for cars. Funeral-goers lean against a shiny sedan, lovers kiss on a beach blanket in front of their parked car, young boys perch in the back seat at a drive-in movie. A sports car under a drop cloth is framed by two California palm trees; on the next page, a blanket is draped over a car accident victim's body in Arizona.

    Robert Frank's Americans reappear 40 years after they were initially published in this exquisite volume by Scalo. Each photograph (there are more than 80 of them) stands alone on a page, while the caption information is included at the back of the book, allowing viewers an unfettered look at the images. Jack Kerouac's original introduction, commissioned when the photographer showed the writer his work while sitting on a sidewalk one night outside of a party, provides the only accompanying text. Kerouac's words add narrative dimension to Frank's imagery while in turn the photographs themselves perfectly illustrate the writer's own work. [via]

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  • Robert Frank: The Americans
    by Jack Kerouac, Robert Frank
    ISBN 3931141802 (3-931141-80-2)
    Hardcover, Scalo Verlag Ac

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    Mitte der 50er-Jahre in einem Aufzug in Miami Beach. In einen Gedanken verloren oder ihn noch suchend blickt das Liftgirl an die Decke des Fahrstuhls. Die Anzeige der Zieletage leuchtet bereits. Gleich wird sich die Tür schließen.

    Robert Franks Bildband The Americans erschien 1958 in Frankreich, ein Jahr später in den USA. 83 Schwarzweißfotografien zeigen Menschen und Szenen aus Amerika, die Frank in den Jahren 1955/56 im Rahmen eines Stipendiums der John Simon Guggenheim Foundation während einer Reise durch die 48 Bundesstaaten abgelichtet hatte. Eine Aufnahme zeigt einen Mann in einer Bar in Las Vegas vor einer Jukebox stehen. Eine andere den Blick aus einem Hotelfenster in Butte, Montana. Eine weitere ein Autokino in Detroit. Franks Fotos sind unmittelbar, offen und unabgeschlossen. Sie vermitteln immer auch etwas Gewöhnliches, was den Mythos vom Land der unbegrenzten Möglichkeiten entschleiert und beim Erscheinen des Buches in Amerika heftige Reaktionen auslöste. Dennoch oder gerade deswegen wurde The Americans stilbildend und inspirierte eine ganze Generation vor allem amerikanischer Fotografen.

    Robert Frank wurde 1924 in Zürich geboren und wanderte 1947 in die USA aus. Dort war er zunächst als Mode- und Werbefotograf sowie als Fotojournalist tätig. Durch Walker Evans inspiriert und unterstützt, erhielt er Mitte der 50er-Jahre als erster Europäer das Guggenheim-Stipendium. Seit den 60er-Jahren arbeitet er zunehmend mit dem Medium Film, auf das er in seinem fotografischen Spätwerk immer wieder Bezug nimmt.

    In einem einleitenden Text zu The Americans schreibt Jack Kerouac, einer der bekanntesten Autoren der Beatgeneration: "Wer diese Bilder nicht mag, mag auch keine Gedichte..." Mit seiner rasanten Sprache erweckt er die Fotoaufnahmen Franks zum Leben und stellt letztendlich die Frage: "Das liebe kleine einsame Liftgirl, das in einem Aufzug voller Schemen seufzend nach oben blickt, wie ist ihr Name und wo wohnt sie?" --Stefan Meyer [via]

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  • Warren, Robert Penn: Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men
    Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men
    by Robert Penn Warren
    ISBN 1555460631 (1-55546-063-1)
    Hardcover, Facts on File

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  • The Shipping News
    by Annie Proulx
    ISBN 1568950691 (1-56895-069-1)
    Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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    In this touching and atmospheric novel set among the fishermen of Newfoundland, Proulx tells the story of Quoyle. From all outward appearances, Quoyle has gone through his first 36 years on earth as a big schlump of a loser. He's not attractive, he's not brilliant or witty or talented, and he's not the kind of person who typically assumes the central position in a novel. But Proulx creates a simple and compelling tale of Quoyle's psychological and spiritual growth. Along the way, we get to look in on the maritime beauty of what is probably a disappearing way of life. [via]

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  • Song Of Solomon
    by Toni Morrison
    ISBN 140003342X (1-4000-3342-X)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. [via]

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  • The Souls of Black Folk
    by W. E. B. Du Bois
    ISBN 1406511196 (1-4065-1119-6)
    Softcover, Dodo Pr

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    William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.

    With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]

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  • Studs Terkel's Working: A Teaching Guide
    by Rick Ayers
    ISBN 1565846265 (1-56584-626-5)
    Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc

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    Book summary:

    An invaluable educational resource for introducing Studs Terkel's classic work of oral history to today's students. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer/journalist Studs Terkel is world famous for his oral histories, considered an innovator in modern ethnographic research. Working, Terkel's most popular book, provides a powerful and original perspective on one of the most basic components of human experience: work. The farmer, receptionist, college professor, mail carrier, stockbroker, athlete, and many others share their daily routines and dreams in their own words. Working has long been recognized as an ideal teaching tool, presenting provocative material certain to engage students, ignite classroom discussion, and inspire thoughtful writing. Now, helping educators discover a variety of approaches for using Working in the classroom, Rick Ayers presents a comprehensive teaching guide to this celebrated classic. With its 200 pages of classroom materials--including questions, topics for discussion, tips for taking oral histories, and a bibliography of related resources--Ayers' teaching guide is certain to be welcomed by educators everywhere. As an added bonus, it includes a new interview with Terkel himself, offering insight into the making of Working. [via]

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  • Sula
    by Toni Morrison
    ISBN 1400033438 (1-4000-3343-8)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    In Sula, Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for literature, tells the story of two women--friends since childhood, separated in young adulthood, and reunited as grown women. Nel Wright grows up to become a wife and mother, happy to remain in her hometown of Medallion, Ohio. Sula Peace leaves Medallion to experience college, men, and life in the big city, an exceptional choice for a black woman to make in the late 1920s.

    As girls, Nel and Sula are the best of friends, only children who find in each other a kindred spirit to share in each girl's loneliness and imagination. When they meet again as adults, it's clear that Nel has chosen a life of acceptance and accommodation, while Sula must fight to defend her seemingly unconventional choices and beliefs. But regardless of the physical and emotional distance that threatens this extraordinary friendship, the bond between the women remains unbreakable: "Her old friend had come home.... Sula, whose past she had lived through and with whom the present was a constant sharing of perceptions. Talking to Sula had always been a conversation with herself."

    Lyrical and gripping, Sula is an honest look at the power of friendship amid a backdrop of family, love, race, and the human condition. --Gisele Toueg [via]

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  • This Side of Paradise
    by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    ISBN 1404333517 (1-4043-3351-7)
    Softcover, Indypublish.Com

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    Fitzgerald's first novel, reprinted in the handsome Everyman's Library series of literary classic, uses numerous formal experiments to tell the story of Amory Blaine, as he grows up during the crazy years following the First World War. It also contains a new introduction by Craig Raine that describes critical and popular reception of the book when it came out in 1920. [via]

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  • Thousand Acres
    by Jane Smiley
    ISBN 1400033837 (1-4000-3383-7)
    Softcover, Random House Inc

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    Book summary:

    Aging Larry Cook announces his intention to turn over his 1,000-acre farm--one of the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa--to his three daughters, Caroline, Ginny and Rose. A man of harsh sensibilities, he carves Caroline out of the deal because she has the nerve to be less than enthusiastic about her father's generosity. While Larry Cook deteriorates into a pathetic drunk, his daughters are left to cope with the often grim realities of life on a family farm--from battering husbands to cutthroat lenders. In this winner of the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Smiley captures the essence of such a life with stark, painful detail. [via]

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  • Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
    by Ron Chernow
    ISBN 1400077303 (1-4000-7730-3)
    Softcover, Vintage Books

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    John D. Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist.
            Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
            Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
            While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.
            John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.


    From the Hardcover edition. [via]

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  • Washington Square
    by Henry James
    ISBN 1420925199 (1-4209-2519-9)
    Softcover, Digireads.Com

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    Book summary:

    "Washington Square" is the story of Catherine Sloper, a young heiress who is wooed by Morris Townsend, a handsome gentleman who is more interested in Catherine's inheritance than he is in her. When the two get engaged against the wishes of her stubborn father Catherine must make a choice between the only man she will ever love and the wealth that she will inherit. Named for the upscale area of New York in which the novel is set, "Washington Square" is a classic examination of social class in mid-19th century New York. [via]

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  • We Need to Talk about Kevin
    by Lionel Shriver
    ISBN 1582432678 (1-58243-267-8)
    Hardcover, Counterpoint

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    A stunning examination of how tragedy affects a town, a marriage, and a family, for readers of Rosellen Brown's Before and After and Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World . That neither nature nor nurture bears exclusive responsibility for a child's character is self-evident. But such generalizations provide cold comfort when it's your own son who's just opened fire on his fellow students and whose class photograph--with its unseemly grin--is blown up on the national news. The question of who's to blame for teenage atrocity tortures our narrator, Eva Khatchadourian. Two years ago, her son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin's upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in particular. How much is her fault? We Need to Talk About Kevin offers no pat explanations for why so many white, well-to-do adolescents--whether in Pearl, Paducah, Springfield, or Littleton--have gone nihilistically off the rails while growing up in suburban comfort. Instead, Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors for the larger tragedy--the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose. [via]

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  • Why Do People Hate America?
    by Ziauddin Sardar, Merryl Wyn Davies
    ISBN 184046383X (1-84046-383-X)
    Softcover, Icon

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    Book summary:

    The controversial bestseller that caused huge waves in the UK! The Independent calls it "required reading." Noam Chomsky says it "contains valuable information that we should know, over here, for our own good, and the world's." We call it our biggest book so far and will be backing it from day one with guaranteed co-op spending, a national publicity and review blitz, talk radio bookings, various retail sales aids including postcards, and of course the usual full court press on the Web and via email.

    This is NOT just another 9/11 book: it is the book for those of us trying to understand why America--and Americans--are targets for hate. Many people do hate America, in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa, as well as in the Middle East. Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies explore the global impact of America's foreign policy and its corporate and cultural power, placing this unprecedented dominance in the context of America's own perception of itself. In doing so, they consider TV and the Hollywood machine as a mirror which reflects both the American Dream and the American Nightmare. Their analysis provides an important contribution to a debate which needs to be addressed by people of all nations, cultures, religions and political persuasions--and especially by Americans.

    Described by The Times Higher Education Supplement as "packed with tightly argued points," the book is carefully researched and built to withstand the inevitable criticism that will be aimed at it. A book that some reviewers will love to hate and others will praise for its insights, it's guaranteed to cause a stir.

    [via]

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  • Working
    by Studs Terkel
    ISBN 1565843428 (1-56584-342-8)
    Softcover, New Pr

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    Book summary:

    Studs Terkel records the voices of America. Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Terkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives.... In the first trade paperback edition of his national bestseller, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Studs Terkel presents "the real American experience" (Chicago Daily News)--"a magnificent book . . .. A work of art. To read it is to hear America talking." (Boston Globe). [via]

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  • Interview Mit Einem Vampir
    by Anne Rice
    ISBN 3442430534 (3-442-43053-4)
    Softcover, Distribooks Inc

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  • Die Studen
    by Micheal Cunningham
    ISBN 3442726298 (3-442-72629-8)
    Softcover, Distribooks Inc

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    Book summary:

    Die Stunden ist eine Hommage an Virginia Woolf und zugleich ein sehr eigenständiges Werk. Während Michael Cunningham sein literarisches Idol zu neuem Leben erweckt, verflechtet er ihre Geschichte mit denen von zwei weiteren, eher zeitgenössischen Frauen. Eines grauen Morgens im Jahre 1923, in einem Vorort von London, erwacht Woolf von einem Traum, der bald zu ihrem Roman Mrs. Dalloway führen sollte. In der Gegenwart, an einem schönen Junitag in Greenwich Village in New York, bereitet die 52-jährige Clarissa Vaughan eine Party für ihre alte Liebe vor, einen Dichter, der an Aids stirbt. Und in Los Angeles im Jahre 1949 bemüht sich die schwangere und ruhelose Laura Brown so gut sie kann, sich für den Geburtstag ihres Mannes zurecht zu machen, kann aber irgendwie nicht aufhören, Woolf zu lesen. Das Leben dieser drei Frauen verbindet sowohl der Roman aus dem Jahre 1925 als auch die wenigen kostbaren Momente der Möglichkeit, zu denen sie alle immer wieder zurückkehren. Clarissa wird irgendwann zu folgender Feststellung kommen: "Als Trost gibt es nur dies: hier und da eine Stunde, wenn unser Leben -- entgegen aller Erwartungen -- sich zu öffnen scheint und uns alles schenkt, was wir uns jemals gewünscht haben... Trotzdem, wir lieben die Stadt, den Morgen; wir hoffen, mehr als alles andere, mehr zu bekommen."

    Wenn Cunningham zwischen den drei Frauen hin- und herwechselt, sind die Übergänge völlig nahtlos. Ein Kapitel am Anfang des Buches endet damit, dass Woolf ihren Stift nimmt und ihren ersten Satz schreibt: "Mrs. Dalloway sagte, sie würde die Blumen selbst kaufen." Das nächste Kapitel beginnt damit, dass sich Laura an diesem Satz und an der literarischen Welt erfreut, in die sie gerade im Begriff ist, sich zu begeben. Clarissas Tag ist, auf der anderen Seite, ein Spiegelbild von Mrs. Dalloways -- allerdings mit einem entsprechenden Maß an moderner Angleichung, da Cunningham seine Quelle der Inspiration aktualisiert und ausfeilt. Clarissa weiß, daß ihr Wunsch, ihrem Freund eine perfekte Party zu bieten, für viele trivial erscheinen mag. Sie findet das jedoch besser, als sich dem Unglück und der Verzweiflung zu verschließen. Wie seine literarische Inspiration ist Die Stunden eine Hymne an das Bewusstsein und an die Schönheit und die Verluste, die man damit wahrnimmt. Es erinnert uns auch daran -- wie uns Cunningham immer wieder bewusst macht -- dass Kunst bei weitem nicht nur "der Welt der Gegenstände" angehört. --Kerry Fried [via]

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