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› Find signed collectible books: 'Agatha Christie an Autobiography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Andromeda Strain'
Some biologists speculate that if we ever make contact with extraterrestrials, those life forms are likely to be--like most life on earth--one-celled or smaller creatures, more comparable to bacteria than little green men. And even though such organisms would not likely be able to harm humans, the possibility exists that first contact might be our last.
That's the scientific supposition that Michael Crichton formulates and follows out to its conclusion in his excellent debut novel, The Andromeda Strain.
A Nobel-Prize-winning bacteriologist, Jeremy Stone, urges the president to approve an extraterrestrial decontamination facility to sterilize returning astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft that might carry an "unknown biologic agent." The government agrees, almost too quickly, to build the top-secret Wildfire Lab in the desert of Nevada. Shortly thereafter, unbeknownst to Stone, the U.S. Army initiates the "Scoop" satellite program, an attempt to actively collect space pathogens for use in biological warfare. When Scoop VII crashes a couple years later in the isolated Arizona town of Piedmont, the Army ends up getting more than it asked for.
The Andromeda Strain follows Stone and rest of the scientific team mobilized to react to the Scoop crash as they scramble to understand and contain a strange and deadly outbreak. Crichton's first book may well be his best; it has an earnestness that is missing from his later, more calculated thrillers. --Paul Hughes [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Beginning With My Streets: Essays and Recollections'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bell Jar'
Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blake : A Biography'
"MARVELOUS . . . A first-rate biography of an extraordinary man." --The Wall Street Journal
"SUPERB . . . Ackroyd writes with clarity and ease: His book is consistently intelligent, entertaining and affectionate. One closes its pages full of admiration for Blake and eager to study his pictures and read his poetry. . . . Ackroyd emphasizes Blake the visionary Londoner, like Turner or Dickens, and convincingly relates the poet's work to the social upheavals of his time. . . . Above all, [he] makes Blake live for the modern reader."
--The Washington Post Book World
"LYRICAL AND ILLUMINATING . . . Ackroyd is a masterly storyteller and interpreter of Blake's writing and art."
--Chicago Tribune
"THE WORK OF A WRITER AT THE PEAK OF HIS LITERARY POWERS . . . It is one of the great strengths of Ackroyd's writing that he reminds us that every individual life and cast of mind has a tradition behind it, a context of other lives and minds which is half forgotten or not remembered at all. As a writer, he is always letting his bucket deeper and deeper down the historical well."
--The New Yorker [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Boy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Capote : A Biography'
From instant celebrity at age 23 to overweight, alcoholic loner in his 50s, Truman Capote streaked across the middle of this century on a comet of genius, self-destruction, and fame. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews with Capote and with nearly everyone who knew him, and with exclusive access to personal papers, Gerald Clarke has written the definitive biography of an incomparable man and his time.
"Extraordinary . . . Rich in intelligence and compassion . . . One can't put the book down. Few literary biographies in recent memory have been so vivid and absorbing." -- Bruce Bawer, The Wall Street Journal [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Children of Henry VIII'
At his death in 1547, King Henry VIII left four heirs to the English throne: his only son, the nine-year-old Prince Edward; the Lady Mary, the adult daughter of his first wife Katherine of Aragon; the Lady Elizabeth, the teenage daughter of his second wife Anne Boleyn; and his young great-niece, the Lady Jane Grey. In her brilliantly compelling new book, Alison Weir, author of four highly acclaimed chronicles of English royalty, paints a unique portrait of these four extraordinary rulers, examining their intricate relationships to each other and to history.
Weir opens her narrative with the death of Henry and the accession of the boy king Edward VI. Often portrayed as weak and sickly, Edward, in fact had a keen intelligence and a flair for leadership. Had he not contracted a fatal disease at the age of fifteen, Edward might have become one of England's great kings. Instead, his brief reign was marked by vicious court intrigue that took the monarchy to the verge of bankruptcy.
Edward's death in 1553 plunged England into chaos, and it was in this explosive atmosphere that the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey was crowned Queen of England. A fragile, intellectual girl, Jane was only too happy to end her nine-day rule when the rioting English populace proclaimed Mary their true and rightful sovereign. Despite her innocence, Jane was brutally executed at the age of sixteen.
Mary's reign was marked by her savage persecution of heretics (non-Catholics) and by the emotional turbulence of her marriage to King Philip II of Spain. Weir describes the mounting tensions of the final days of Mary's bloody reign, as the shrewd, politically adroit Elizabeth quietly positions herself to assume royal power. The Children of Henry VIII closes with Elizabeth's accession and the commencement of one of the longest, and most spectacularly successful, reigns in English history.
Deeply engrossing, written with grace and clarity, The Children of Henry VIII combines the best of history and biography. Weir's devoted readers will recognize this as her finest book yet. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Civil War Trilogy'
Author Jeff M. Shaara rounds out the Civil War Trilogy started by his late father Michael Shaara, whose book The Killer Angels described the Battle of Gettysburg. While Gods and Generals covered action prior to Gettysburg, The Last Full Measure picks up with Confederate General Robert E. Lee's retreat from Pennsylvania and continues through the end of the war. The younger Shaara focuses on the characters of Lee and Union commander Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, both of whom play prominent roles in the earlier books. He also introduces a new one: Ulysses S. Grant, the Union general who would finally defeat the South--something no soldier before him could manage. The Last Full Measure is often exciting and poignant, and fans of The Killer Angels and Gods and Generals won't be disappointed. A nicely boxed edition of this classic historical fiction. --John Miller [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Colin Powell'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Darwin's Ghost: The Origin of Species Updated'
Biologists have a dirty little secret: while practically everyone knows of The Origin of Species (and owes much to it), almost nobody has read it. British geneticist Steve Jones wants to make the arguments contained in that great text accessible to modern audiences, and succeeds with the delightful Darwin's Ghost. Approximating the structure of Darwin's opus, Jones uses the original chapter headings and summaries as a scaffolding to build an up-to-date demonstration of the power of a few simple ideas. Heredity, variation, and natural selection are all you need to infer evolution over time, and now that Jones can fill in the gaps in Darwin's pre-Mendelian understanding of genetics, the case becomes airtight.
More than a polemic, though, Darwin's Ghost is nearly as pleasurable a read as its ancestor is--one suspects that part of Jones's mission is to inspire today's readers to turn back to the grand but humble Origin of Species. While he may not be able to quite match Darwin's vast erudition or hawk's eye for detail, he still makes the theory of evolution shudder and breathe on the page. Dog breeding, mass extinctions, and weird fossils of tiny elephants all march to his drumbeat and--just when you least expect it--return to the main point that all living things share a common ancestor. Whether you're one of the elite who's had the pleasure of Darwin's literary company or you'd like a taste of what you're missing, Darwin's Ghost will bring the spirit of the great man back into your world of ideas. --Rob Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Darwin's Radio'
All the best thrillers contain the solution to a mystery, and the mystery in this intellectually sparkling scientific thriller is more crucial and stranger than most. Why are people turning against their neighbors and their newborn children? And what is causing an epidemic of still births? A disgraced paleontologist and a genetic engineer both come across evidence of cover-ups in which the government is clearly up to no good. But no one knows what's really going on, and the government is covering up because that is what, in thrillers as in life, governments do. And what has any of this to do with the discovery of a Neanderthal family whose mummified faces show signs of a strange peeling?
Greg Bear has spent much of his recent career evoking awe in the deep reaches of space, but he made his name with Blood Music, a novel of nanotechnology that crackled with intelligence. His new book is a workout for the mind and a stunning read; human malignancy has its role in his thriller plot, but its real villain, as well as its last best hope, is the endless ingenious cruelty of the natural world and evolution. --Roz Kaveney, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Darwin's Radio : In the Next Stage of Evolution, Humans Are History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'David Brinkley'
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"It seems to me now that Huntley's and my success lay mainly in the fact that we were new, as television was new, and we had few competitors. . . . Nearly everything we did had never been done before. . . . What is now commonplace was in its beginning a grand and glorious adventure for the people of our country and the world, a vicarious balloon ride into the stars. . . ."
Just how a young man growing up in a small southern town with only one one-hundred-watt A.M. radio station and no network affiliation became one of the world's most respected broadcasters in the nation makes for a "grand and glorious adventure" in itself. Now, in this fascinating and charmingly candid memoir of a career spanning half a century, David Brinkley recollects from his own unique vantage point the remarkable, shaky beginnings of television news, the ever-changing social and political landscape of our country, and the colorful people who have crossed his path. He includes priceless moments playing poker with Harry Truman, riding the rails with Winston Churchill, being whisked off by helicopter to Camp David by Lyndon Johnson, and receiving the distinguished Medal of Freedom from George Bush. From the New Deal to the Contract with America, David Brinkley has seen it all. . . and he knows how to tell a story--especially his own.
"Reading it is like sitting in your living room, having a conversation with this wonderful man. He writes the way he talks, the words flowing easily and comfortably; the book, a wry, elegant, funny, intimate, always interesting, often insightful trip across 75 years."
--The Boston Globe
"A WEALTH OF ANECDOTES."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"CHOCK FULL OF GOOD STORIES."
--The Christian Science Monitor
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dragonholder : The Life and Dreams (So Far) of Anne McCaffrey'
In her brief note to the readers, Anne McCaffrey informs us that Dragonholder was written in response to countless requests to tell "how I spent my childhood, who my friends were, my pets, how I ever thought up Pern and its dragons--the whole nine unvarnished yards." Todd McCaffrey, her second son and a long-time science fiction (and McCaffrey) fan put together this album of family photographs and anecdotes, interspersed with behind-the-scenes stories about his mother's writing career.
The book includes everything from Anne's childhood pet--a Maine Coon cat named Thomas, who suffered her dressing him in doll clothes and wheeling him around in a stroller and whose best friend was the neighbor's collie--to tales of McCaffrey Second Sight (possessed by Anne's grandmother and mother, as well as herself) to how she came to write the stories that became Dragonflight, the first Pern novel. It covers her career from the early stories through her long struggle to make ends meet as a professional writer to her success in 1978, when The White Dragon became the first science fiction hardcover to reach The New York Times bestseller list. McCaffrey fans won't want to miss this--it's the next best thing to having your own visit with her. --Nona Vero [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'
They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.
Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-Three American Soldiers Who Fought It'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fierce Attachments: A Memoir'
Rarely is the barbed edge of mother love described with such scorching wit and raw emotion as it is in Vivian Gornick's reissued memoir. Fierce Attachments zigzags between a Bronx tenement teeming with immigrants in the 1940s and New York in the 1980s. It chronicles an almighty struggle between the author and her mother, a stubborn rabble-rouser bursting with tart, angry pronouncements, moxie, and an undeniable measure of charm. Waving away an "Eastern religionist" trying to sell her on his god, she raps out: "Young man, I am a Jew and a socialist. I think that's more than enough for one lifetime, don't you?" Her husband's untimely death is the occasion for such wild histrionics--screaming, refusing to walk, flinging herself into the grave--that when Gornick works the Middle East years later as a journalist, the ululating cries and fainting mourners at funerals seem comfortably familiar. The rapid-fire flow of confidences and furious arguments between the duo mellow slightly, believably, as they grow older together. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation'
In retrospect, it seems as if the American Revolution was inevitable. But was it? In Founding Brothers, Joseph J. Ellis reveals that many of those truths we hold to be self-evident were actually fiercely contested in the early days of the republic.
Ellis focuses on six crucial moments in the life of the new nation, including a secret dinner at which the seat of the nation's capital was determined--in exchange for support of Hamilton's financial plan; Washington's precedent-setting Farewell Address; and the Hamilton and Burr duel. Most interesting, perhaps, is the debate (still dividing scholars today) over the meaning of the Revolution. In a fascinating chapter on the renewed friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson at the end of their lives, Ellis points out the fundamental differences between the Republicans, who saw the Revolution as a liberating act and hold the Declaration of Independence most sacred, and the Federalists, who saw the revolution as a step in the building of American nationhood and hold the Constitution most dear. Throughout the text, Ellis explains the personal, face-to-face nature of early American politics--and notes that the members of the revolutionary generation were conscious of the fact that they were establishing precedents on which future generations would rely.
In Founding Brothers, Ellis (whose American Sphinx won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1997) has written an elegant and engaging narrative, sure to become a classic. Highly recommended. --Sunny Delaney [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Glorious Cause: A Novel of the American Revolution'
In Rise to Rebellion, bestselling author Jeff Shaara captured the origins of the American Revolution as brilliantly as he depicted the Civil War in Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure. Now he continues the amazing saga of how thirteen colonies became a nation, taking the conflict from kingdom and courtroom to the bold and bloody battlefields of war.
It was never a war in which the outcome was obvious. Despite their spirit and stamina, the colonists were outmanned and outfought by the brazen British army. General George Washington found his troops trounced in the battles of Brooklyn and Manhattan and retreated toward Pennsylvania. With the future of the colonies at its lowest ebb, Washington made his most fateful decision: to cross the Delaware River and attack the enemy. The stunning victory at Trenton began a saga of victory and defeat that concluded with the British surrender at Yorktown, a moment that changed the history of the world.
The despair and triumph of Americas first great army is conveyed in scenes as powerful as any Shaara has written, a story told from the points of view of some of the most memorable characters in American history. There is George Washington, the charismatic leader who held his army together to achieve an unlikely victory; Charles Cornwallis, the no-nonsense British general, more than a match for his colonial counterpart; Nathaniel Greene, who rose from obscurity to become the finest battlefield commander in Washingtons army; The Marquis de Lafayette, the young Frenchman who brought a soldiers passion to America; and Benjamin Franklin, a brilliant man of science and philosophy who became the finest statesman of his day.
From Nathan Hale to Benedict Arnold, William Howe to Light Horse Harry Lee, from Trenton and Valley Forge, Brandywine and Yorktown, the American Revolutions most immortal characters and poignant moments are brought to life in remarkable Shaara style. Yet, The Glorious Cause is more than just a story of the legendary six-year struggle. It is a tribute to an amazing people who turned ideas into action and fought to declare themselves free. Above all, it is a riveting novel that both expands and surpasses its beloved authors best work. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Goldwyn: A Biography'
A biography of one of the greatest figures of the heyday of the American film industry, famous for his ruthlessness in business. Of this biography Billy Wilder said: "the best book I have ever read about Hollywood". [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Good Man of Nanking : The Diaries of John Rabe'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Shark Hunt : Strange Tales from a Strange Time'
In addition to being a testament to the undeniably beatifying properties of American excess--literary, political, chemical, you name it--Hunter Thompson is the high priest of the ad hominem attack. Anyone unlucky enough to get in the way of his satirical sledgehammer will end up with soup for brains. Still, even Thompson needs a good villain to get properly lathered up; that's why he peaked simultaneously with America's 37th president, Richard Milhous Nixon. Tricky Dick was Thompson's dark-jowled, pale-calved Muse, and with his departure Thompson seemed to lose his place a bit. Swatting flies with a baseball bat.
You need look no further for this writer's best: this collection of pieces, first published in 1979, spans all of Thompson's primo era, including short pieces and selections from longer works. The Great Shark Hunt sports a few articles filed by a pre-Gonzo Hunter S. Thompson, which show flickers of passion but no real fire; the first experiments with the author's drug-fueled brand of journalism at the Kentucky Derby; and finally the gigs that made him an American institution, in Las Vegas and on the 1972 campaign trail.
Thompson's style is so unique that a reader is tempted to think that he leapt, fully formed, into Gonzohood. However, along with the crazy, careening prose itself, one of the auxiliary pleasures of The Great Shark Hunt is the map that it gives of Thompson's ascent (or descent, if you prefer) from the workaday hyperbole of sports writing to the hell-blast vigor of his later work. The drugs are, by and large, a distraction--lifestyle points that get in the way of the genuinely perceptive journalism that Thompson created. (But they are there, always, and in quantity.) If you're looking for insight into the underbelly of America, Hunter S. Thompson is your best and only guide, and The Great Shark Hunt is an excellent place to begin the grim safari. --Michael Gerber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Grumbles from the Grave'
First Edition, 1990. Hardcover with nice dust jacket. Light wear to the jacket. Robert A. Heinlein, Author. Edited by Virginia Heinlein. Originally sold for $19.95. Cream endpages. Spine is tight and straight. Pages are clean and free of markings or tears. Black paper boards with black cloth trim that leads to the spine, gilt lettering on the spine. A Del Rey Book, published by Ballantine Books, New York. Printed in the USA. Design by Michaelis/Carpelis Design Association, Inc. Contains black and white illustrations. Total 281 numbered pages. Jacket design by Darrin Ehardt. "Long before his death in 1988, Robert A. Heinlein had expressed the desire to have a selection of his letters published, after he was gone, and entitled 'Grumbles from the Grave'. But increasing pressure from his work and a series of major illnesses made it impossible for him to undertake the job of editing this himself. Now his wife, Virginia Heinlein, has taken on the labor of fulfilling his wish." Heinlein was well known for his science fiction writings. A good book to add to your collection of Heinlein books! *5BC3 [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Guderian, Panzer General'
Guderian was a man of ideas equipped with the ability to turn inspiration into reality. A master of strategy and tactics, he was the officer most responsible for creating blitzkrieg in World War II. This biography--fully updated with new material on Enigma and Guderians reaction to the July plot--illuminates the struggles within the German hierarchy and examines why Guderian was so admired by some while denigrated by others. This revised edition of the biography of a famous German general provides insight into the man behind blitzkrieg and includes information taken directly from the extensive Guderian family archives. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Guns of the South'
Northern Virginia is ragged and ill-equipped. The battle of Gettysburg has broken the back of the Confederacy and decimated its manpower.
Then Andries Rhoodie, a strange man with an unplaceable accent, approaches Lee with an extraordinary offer. Rhoodie demonstrates an amazing rifle; its rate of fire is incredible, its lethal efficiency breathtaking--and Rhoodie guarantees unlimited quantities to the Confederates.
The name of the weapon is the AK-47.
"As a Civil War historian, I literally could not put The Guns of the South down. It is absolutely unique--without question the most fascinating Civil War novel I have ever read. Harry Turtledove knows his Civil War. And best of all, The Guns of the South is not simply great entertainment; it is also a serious and successful effort to come to grips with the central issues of the war. It is must reading for every Civil War student."
--Professor James M. McPherson, Edwards Professor of American History, Princeton University; Author of Pulitzer Prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Henry VIII: The King and His Court'
Contemporary observers described the young king in glowing terms. At over six feet tall, with rich auburn hair, clear skin, and a slender waist, he was, to many, "the handsomest prince ever seen." From this starting point in Henry VIII, the King and His Court, biographer extraordinare Alison Weir reveals a Henry VIII far different from the obese, turkey-leg gnawing, womanizing tyrant who has gone down in history. Henry embodied the Renaissance ideal of a man of many talents--musician, composer, linguist, scholar, sportsman, warrior--indeed, the Dutch humanist Erasmus (not a man inclined to flattery) declared him a "universal genius." In scholarly yet readable style, Weir brings Henry and his court to life in meticulous, but never tedious, detail. Weir describes everything from courtly fashions to political factions and elaborate meals to tournament etiquette. Along the way she offers up charming--if all too brief--glimpses of Henry's court: tiny Princess Mary, still a very young girl, at her betrothal ceremony saying to the proxy, "Are you the Dauphin of France? If you are, I want to kiss you"; Henry weeping with joy as he held his long-awaited son and heir for the first time; Henry showing off his legs to the Venetian ambassador ("Look here! I have also a good calf to my leg"); Henry's courtiers dressing in heavily padded clothes to emulate--and flatter--their increasingly stout monarch. She also reveals some surprises, for example, that Henry and Katherine were still hunting together as late as 1530, even though Henry was desperately trying to have their marriage annulled. Weir also describes surprisingly happier times in their relationship; Henry loved to dress up in costume, and "was especially fond of bursting in upon Queen Katherine and her ladies in the Queen's Chambers.... Henry took a boyish delight in these disguisings and Katherine seemingly never tired of feigning astonishment that it was her husband who had surprised her." Henry's queens receive relatively little attention here (for them, see Weir's excellent Six Wives of Henry VIII), but this book is fascinating and a joy to read. Alison Weir has done it again. --Sunny Delaney [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Histories'
Since the release of the film version of Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, there has been renewed interest in the Histories of Herodotus--the book the dying patient treasures so much.
The writings of Herodotus are the ground zero of Western history. He lived during the fifth century B.C.E, and his Histories chronicle the events of the Persian Wars, which were within living memory when he wrote. He was the first writer to examine real, rather than mythical history, and although his work lacks the rigor of later histories, it has a breathtaking scope. Herodotus is a wonderful storyteller, and in recalling the wars with Persian invaders, he ranges across the ancient world, mixing politics with natural history and anthropology. These are traveler's tales, and a great deal of their appeal to a modern audience lies in the way Herodotus describes the cultures that influence his story. The societies of Scythians, Arabs, and Egyptians are depicted in detail, from their political structures to their dining habits. Herodotus created a sense of history for his people, and he gives us a picture of a distant past that reminds us of the vast continuum of civilization. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Am Jackie Chan : My Life in Action'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Am Jackie Chan: My Life in Action'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'If This Was Happiness : A Biography of Rita Hayworth'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jackie Oh!'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Journals of Sylvia Plath'
No other major contemporary American writer has inspired such intense curiosity about her life as Sylvia Plath. Now the intimate and eloquent personal diaries of the twentieth century's most important female poet reveal for the first time the true story behind "The Bell Jar" and her tragic suicide at thirty. They paint, as well, a revealing portrait of the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose stature has seldom been equalled.
"A revelation." The New York Times [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Kay Boyle: Author of Herself'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Killer Angels'
"My favorite historical novel . . . a superb re-creation of the Battle of Gettysburg, but its real importance is its insight into what the war was about, and what it meant."-James M. McPherson In the four most bloody and courageous days of our nation's history, two armies fought for two conflicting dreams. One dreamed of freedom, the other of a way of life. Far more than rifles and bullets were carried into battle. There were memories. There were promises. There was love. And far more than men fell on those Pennsylvania fields. Bright futures, untested innocence, and pristine beauty were also the casualties of war. Michael Shaara's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is unique, sweeping, unforgettable-the dramatic story of the battleground for America's destiny. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Leon's Story'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Leonardo: The First Scientist'
This book is both a revelatory biography and an accessible study of Leonardo's life and multi-faceted work as a scientist and engineer. It covers all aspects of the man's life but is also a re-interpretation of the voluminous evidence to paint an original picture of Leonardo da Vinci not only as the archetypal polymath, but as the first true scientist. Topics include: * A detailed investigation of how Leonardo's manuscripts and notebooks were lost to the world and kept secret during his own lifetime and how this altered the progress of science. * A thorough analysis of his work as a scientist and how he predated many of the great figures of the 16th and 17th centuries, including Galileo, Kepler, William Harvey, Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. * Leonardo's legacy -- what did Leonardo leave in his notebooks and how may they be viewed in the light of modern scientific understanding? What did he achieve in science? [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Less Than One: Selected Essays'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Death of Mozart'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima'
Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at the writer, Stokes guides the reader through the milestones of Mishima's meteoric and eclectic career and delves into the artist's major works and themes. This biography skillfully and compassionately illuminates the achievements and disquieting ideas of a brilliant and deeply troubled man, an artist of whom Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata had said, "A writer of Mishima's caliber comes along only once every two or three hundred years." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Life and Death of Yukio Mishima'
Novelist, playwright, film actor, martial artist, and political commentator, Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) was arguably the most famous person in Japan at the time of his death. Henry Scott Stokes, one of Mishima's closest friends, was the only non-Japanese allowed to attend the trial of the men involved in Mishima's spectacular suicide. In this insightful and empathetic look at the writer, Stokes guides the reader through the milestones of Mishima's meteoric and eclectic career and delves into the artist's major works and themes. This biography skillfully and compassionately illuminates the achievements and disquieting ideas of a brilliant and deeply troubled man, an artist of whom Nobel Laureate Yasunari Kawabata had said, "A writer of Mishima's caliber comes along only once every two or three hundred years." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lorca: A Dream of Life'
Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) was not yet 40 when he was executed by Falangists during the Spanish Civil War, yet he already towered over literature in Spain. He was arguably his generation's greatest poet and playwright. Although Lorca was best known in his lifetime for works like Gypsy Ballads and Blood Wedding, which expressed the soulful intensity of his native Andalusia, this well-researched, probing biography reminds readers that he was both cosmopolitan and unpredictable as an artist and a man. Despite his privileged background, Lorca was "a poet of the people who viewed poetry as something that walks along the streets," someone who wrote as naturally as he breathed and loved music and drawing nearly as much as poetry and drama. Leslie Stainton, an American scholar who lived in Spain for several years while researching this book, perceptively analyzes Lorca's homosexuality, his left-wing political views, and his artistic convictions, painting an intriguing picture of a man whose strong feelings and beliefs were tempered by a dislike of being pinned down. Though judiciously critical in evaluating Lorca's work, the author conveys with force her appreciation of his ability to forge new language for the exploration of age-old themes: "the capriciousness of time, the impossibility of love, the phantoms of identity, art, childhood, sex, and death." --Wendy Smith [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Lord Rochester's Monkey: Being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Love and Exile: An Autobiographical Trilogy'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lyndon: An Oral Biography'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lytton Strachey'
"A triumphant success. . . . His prose is confident, clear . . . occasionally perfect." Dennis Potter, The Times (London)
"It is impossible to suppose that this Life' will ever be superseded . . . the best literary biography to appear for many years."John Rothenstein, New York Times "Written with vivacity and scrupulousness. . . . [Michael Holroyd] has a great novelist's sense of the obstinate mystery of the human person."George Steiner, The New Yorker 30 b/w and 4 color photographs [via]› Find signed collectible books: 'The Man Who Listens to Horses'
Monty Roberts is, as they say, the real horse whisperer--even if he does revile the last third of Nicholas Evans's romance. Yet Roberts also makes clear from the start that listening and close attention have more to do with gentling an animal than soi-disant whispering. As far as he's concerned, silent communication can "effectively cross over the boundary between human (the ultimate fight animal) and horse (the flight animal). Using their language, their system of communication, I could create a strong bond of trust. I would achieve cross-species communication." And achieve it he does. After one short session, he has even the wildest stallion nickering with ungulate abandon.
Roberts's descriptions of "joining up," as he calls it with horses--as well as with the deer who cavort on his California farm like so many hyperintelligent Bambis--are inspirational in the best sense of the word. Surprisingly, though, it took him long years to persuade most of the humans in his life that pain and punishment are not the way to go. Indeed, the author expends many a page on past mistakes and disasters, familial and professional. Yet The Man Who Listens to Horses remains a powerfully positive document--and not just for Mr. Ed. Best of all, when it comes to his life's work, Roberts is far more practical than mystical. Instead of portraying himself as Equus's messiah, he'd rather share his hard-won knowledge. Having overcome years of rejection and ridicule, the author is certainly not short in the self-esteem department, as some passages in this book demonstrate. No matter. He always checks his ego before entering the corral. --Kerry Fried [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Markings'
A book of meditations. A revealing spiritual self-portrait by one of the great peacmakers of our times.
Maturity: Among other things, the unclouded happiness of the child at play who takes it for granted that he is at one with his playmates.
Never, "for the sake of peace and quiet," deny your own experience or convictions.
The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others.
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached the top. Then you will see how low it was. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs Of Hadrian: and Reflections on the composition of memoirs of Hadrian'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Milosz's ABC's'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Mishima: A Vision of the Void'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl'
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume.
Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or, the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History'
Would you believe that nutmeg formed the basis of one of the most bitter international conflicts of the 17th century, and was also intimately connected to New York City's rise to global preeminence? Strange but true: nutmeg was, in fact, one of the most prized commodities in Renaissance Europe, and its fascinating story is told in Giles Milton's delightful Nathaniel's Nutmeg.
The book deals with the competition between England and Holland for possession of the spice-producing islands of Southeast Asia throughout the 17th century. Packed with stories of heroism, ambition, ruthlessness, treachery, murder, torture, and madness, Nathaniel's Nutmeg offers a compelling story of European rivalry in the tropics, thousands of miles from home, and the mutual incomprehensibility which often comically characterized relations between the Europeans and the local inhabitants of the prized islands.
At the center of the action lies Nathaniel Courthope, a trusty lieutenant of the East India Company, who took and held the tiny nutmeg-producing island of Run in the face of overwhelming Dutch opposition for more than five years, before being treacherously murdered in 1620. To avenge his death, and the loss of the island, the British took the Dutch North American colony at Manhattan. (As Milton wittily remarks, although Courthope's death "robbed England of her nutmeg, it gave her the biggest of apples").
Inevitably inviting comparisons with Dava Sobel's Longitude, Nathaniel's Nutmeg is a charming story that throws light on a neglected period of European history, and analyzes its fascination with the "spicy" East. --Jerry Brotton, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Native Realm: A Search for Self-Definition'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nicholas and Alexandra'
The story of the love that ended an empire
In this commanding book, Pulitzer Prizewinning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs lives: Nicholass political naïveté, Alexandras obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexiss brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and historythe story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Now'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Now and Then : From Coney Island to Here'
Catch-18 was the intended title of Joseph Heller's most famous novel, Catch-22, which the author renamed to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's bestseller Mila 18. It's hard now to imagine anyone ever mistaking a single line written by Heller for the work of someone else; his atmospheric new memoir grabs readers' attention with the same plain, powerful prose; blunt, but oddly tender, humor; and striking ability to recreate a particular time and place that distinguishes all his fiction.
The brief, haunting section on his air force service confirms that Heller drew on his own experiences for Catch-22. But it's his boyhood home, Brooklyn's Coney Island in the 1920s and '30s, that prompts Now and Then's best pages. You can practically taste the cheap ice cream and hot knishes, hear the shrieks of kids on the amusement park's hurtling rides, see the facades of long-demolished apartment buildings, and smell the sand-and-salt odor wafting from the beach. The dignity and emotional reticence of Heller's widowed mother, the security he felt in an impoverished but safe immigrant neighborhood, come to life just as vividly.
Scattered anecdotes about famous friends (including Irwin Shaw and James Jones) are also evocative, and occasional comments about his novels' themes reveal Heller to be a better self-critic than most writers. But it's his affectionate tribute to a vanished New York that most clearly displays this popular author's narrative skills and engaging personality. --Wendy Smith [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Old School'
Tobias Wolff's Old School is at once a celebration of literature and delicate hymn to a lost innocence of American life and art. Set in a New England prep school in the early 1960s, the novel imagines a final, pastoral moment before the explosion of the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the suicide of Ernest Hemingway.
The unnamed narrator is one of several boys whose life revolves around the school's English teachers, those polymaths who seemed to know "exactly what was most worth knowing." For the boys, literature is the center of life, and their obsession culminates in a series of literary competitions during their final year. The prize in each is a private audience with a visiting writer who serves as judge for the entries.
At first, the narrator is entirely taken with the battle. As he fails in his effort to catch Robert Frost's attention and then is unable--due to illness--to even compete for his moment with Ayn Rand, he devotes his energies to a masterpiece for his hero, Hemingway. But, confronting the blank page, the narrator discovers his cowardice, his duplicity. He has withheld himself, he realizes, even from his roommate. He has used his fiction to create a patrician gentility, a mask for his middle class home and his Jewish ancestry. Through the competition for Hemingway, fittingly, all of his illusions about literature dissolve.
Old School is a small, neatly made book, spare and clear in its prose. Each chapter is self-contained and free of anything extraneous to the essentials of plot, mood, and character. Near the end of the novel, the narrator, now a respected writer, imagines that he might one day write about his school days. But he is daunted. "Memory," he says, "is a dream to begin with, and what I had was a dream of memory, not to be put to the test." Old School enters this interplay between dreams and the adult interrogation of memory. Risking sentimentality, Wolff confronts a golden age that never was. From the confrontation, he distills a powerful novel of failed expectations and, ultimately, redemptive self-awareness. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pope Joan'
One of the most controversial women of history is brought to brilliant life in Donn Woolfolk Cross's tale of Pope Joan, a girl whose origins should have kept her in squalid domesticity. Instead, through her intelligence, indomitability and courage, she ascended to the throne of Rome as Pope John Anglicus.
The time is 814, the place is Ingelheim, a Frankland village. It is the harshest winter in living memory when Joan is born to an English father and a Saxon mother. Her father is a canon, filled with holy zeal and capable of unconscionable cruelty. His piety does not extend to his family members, especially the females. His wife, Gudrun, is a young beauty to whom he was attracted beyond his will--and he hates her for showing him his weakness. Gudrun teaches Joan about her gods, and is repeatedly punished for it by the canon. Joan grows to young womanhood with the combined knowledge of the warlike Saxon gods and the teachings of the Church as her heritage. Both realities inform her life forever.
When her brother John, not a scholarly type, is sent away to school, Joan, who was supposed to be the one sent to school, runs away and joins him in Dorstadt, at Villaris, the home of Gerold, who is central to Joan's story. She falls in love with Gerold and their lives interesect repeatedly even through her Papacy. She is looked upon by all who know that she is a woman as a "lusus naturae," a freak of nature. "She was... male in intellect, female in body, she fit in nowhere; it was as if she belonged to a third amorphous sex." Cross makes the case over and over again that the status of women in the Dark Ages was little better than cattle. They were judged inferior in every way, and necessary evils in the bargain.
After John is killed in a Viking attack, Joan sees her opportunity to escape the fate of all her gender. She cuts her hair, dons her dead brother's clothes and goes into the world as a young boy. Gerold is away from Villaris at the time of the attack and comes home to find his home in ruins, his family killed and Joan among the missing. After the attack, Joan goes to a Benedictine monastery, is accepted as a young man of great learning, and eventually makes her way to Rome.
The author is at pains to tell the reader in an Epilogue that she has written the story as fiction because it is impossible to document Joan's accesion to the Papacy. The Catholic Church has done everything possible to deny this embarrassment. Whether or not one believes in Joan as Pope, this is a compelling story, filled with all kinds of lore: the brutishness of the Dark Ages, Vatican intrigue, politics and favoritism and most of all, the place of women in the Church and in the world. --Valerie Ryan [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina'
David Hajdu (pronounced HAY-doo), the prizewinning author of the magisterial jazz biography Lush Life, now steam-cleans the legend of the lost folk generation in Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. What a ripping read! It's like an invitation to the wildest party Greenwich Village ever saw. You feel swept up in the coffeehouse culture that transformed ordinary suburban kids into ragged, radiant avatars of a traditional yet bewilderingly new music. Hajdu's sociomusical analysis is as scholarly as (though less arty than) Greil Marcus's work; he deftly sketches the sources and evolving styles of his ambitious, rather calculating subjects, proving in the process that genius is not individual--it's rooted in a time and place. Hajdu says Dylan heisted many early tunes (e.g., "Maggie's Farm" from Pete Seeger's "Down on Penny's Farm"): "Dylan [told] a radio interviewer that he felt as if his music had always existed and he just wrote it down ... [in fact], much of his early work had existed as other writers' melodies, chord structures, or thematic ideas." But Dylan and company made it all their own, and Hajdu vividly evokes the scenes they made.
Positively 4th Street is very much a group portrait. When something amazing happens, Hajdu puts you right there. The unknown Baez barefoot in the rain, bedazzling the Newport Jazz Festival and becoming immortal overnight. The irresistibly irresponsible Fariña talking his folk-star wife out of shooting him dead with his own pistol. The "little spastic gnome" Dylan transmogrified into greatness onstage, bashing Joan with the searing lyrics of "She Belongs to Me." A stoned Fariña advising Dylan to cynically hitch his wagon to Joan's rising star and "start a whole new genre. Poetry set to music, but not chamber music or beatnik jazz, man... poetry you can dance to."
The book is as delectably gossipy as Vanity Fair (one of Hajdu's employers). Richard married the exceedingly young beauty Mimi and helmed their career, but he might have dumped her for big sister Joan, whose madcap humor and verbal wit harmonized with his--except that he ineptly killed himself on a motorcycle first. Bob mumblingly courted both sisters, but when he cruelly taunted the insecure Joan, Mimi yanked his hair back until he cried. The account of Bob and Joan's musical-erotic passion is first-rate music history and uproarious soap opera. Hajdu's research is prodigious--even Fariña's close chum Thomas Pynchon granted interviews--and his anecdotes are often off-the-cuff funny: "[Rock manager Albert Grossman] was easy to deal with.... It wasn't till maybe two days after you would see Albert that you'd realize your underwear had been stolen." Full disclosure: Hajdu was one of my long-ago bosses at Entertainment Weekly, but that's certainly not why I heartily endorse this book. It's scholarship with a human face, akin to "poetry you can dance to." --Tim Appelo [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Princes in the Tower'
"Comprehensive and insightful, THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER offers a unique perspective on a profound mystery." Faye KellermanDespite five centuries of investigation by historians, the sinister deaths of the boy king Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York, remain one of the most fascinating murder mysteries in English history. Did Richard III really kill the young princes, as is commonly believed, or was the murderer someone else entirely? Carefully examining every shred of contemporary evidence as well as the dozens of modern accounts, Weir reconstructs the entire chain of events leading to the double murder to arrive at a conclusion Sherlock Holmes himself could not dispute. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Reporter's Life'
If you're looking for something in between Charles Dickens and James Thurber, try Walter Cronkite's A Reporter's Life. This humble but very exciting autobiography is full of interesting characters and lightly told anecdotes. (Early on in the narrative, young Cronkite recalls running from a cigar store, where he has surreptitiously memorized box scores, down the street to the radio station where he can report them over his daily news broadcast.) The full, even tones of Cronkite's voice rise to describe the best fight he'd ever seen on a movie screen and fall to recall the day John Kennedy died. A hundred years of American history are offered with refreshing color and candor, a tale many may only know as a semester-long drone in high school. The audio version of A Reporter's Life has the advantage of Cronkite's famously unassuming voice, perfectly suited to the weight and manner of prose that delights with understatement. Cronkite's affections, both for his wife and for his own success, are tempered with charming modesty. He delivers keen and respectful observations of U.S. presidents and other heads of state that he has worked with, as though they were simply colleagues he has known through the years. For example, when Walter Cronkite returned from Vietnam after the Tet Offensive, he announced on national television that he deemed the war to be a stalemate, after which President Johnson is said to have turned off the set and said, "Well, we've lost middle America." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Romanovs: The Final Chapter'
In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow mass grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, a few miles from the infamous cellar room where the last tsar and his family had been murdered seventy-three years before. But were these the bones of the Romanovs? And if these were their remains, where were the bones of the two younger Romanovs supposedly murdered with the rest of the family? Was Anna Anderson, celebrated for more than sixty years in newspapers, books, and film, really Grand Duchess Anastasia? The Romanovs provides the answers, describing in suspenseful detail the dramatic efforts to discover the truth. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie presents a colorful panorama of contemporary characters, illuminating the major scientific dispute between Russian experts and a team of Americans, whose findings, along with those of DNA scientists from Russia, America, and Great Britain, all contributed to solving one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan'
Samurai William tells how, in 1598, William Adams, an English seaman of humble origin, sailed out of Rotterdam on a Danish ship en route to the East Indies. After 20 months at sea in which they survived a series of disasters, starvation and disease, Adams and a few remaining sailors floated into a harbour on the island of Kyushu in southwestern Japan. Though not the first Westerner to reach Japan--Portuguese traders and Jesuit monks from Spain had arrived about 60 years earlier--Adams was the first Englishman to arrive. The impact this one man would have on future relations between East and West is the subject of this engrossing book.
After landing, Adams spent some time in prison and was nearly executed before he made an unlikely ally in Tokugawa Ieyasu, a powerful feudal lord who would later become shogun of Japan. Intrigued by the outside world and impressed with the sailor's navigational abilities, Ieyasu commissioned Adams to oversee the construction of some ships to be used for both trade and exploration. In time, Adams mastered the language and complex social customs of Japan, began teaching the shogun about geometry and mathematics and served as a translator and political counsellor to Ieyasu. For his service, he was awarded great wealth, land holdings and even a lordship, making him the first foreigner ever to be honoured as a samurai. When news of his high standing reached England, a small crew of Englishmen were sent to Japan to use Adams's political connections to open trade between the two countries.
Giles Milton, author of Nathaniel's Nutmeg does a masterful job of covering Adams's remarkable life. His narrative moves along briskly as he recounts harrowing sea adventures, fascinating details about Japanese culture and the attempts of various countries, including Holland, Portugal, Spain and England, to gain a foothold in Japan to exploit the rich trade possibilities. Samurai William is an impressive achievement and a thoroughly entertaining read. --Shawn Carkonen, Amazon.com [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Still Me'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sweet And Low: A Family Story'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Uncle Tungsten : Memories of a Chemical Boyhood'
From his earliest days, Oliver Sacks, the distinguished neurologist who is also one of the most remarkable storytellers of our time, was irresistibly drawn to understanding the natural world. Born into a large family of doctors, metallurgists, chemists, physicists, and teachers, his curiosity was encouraged and abetted by aunts, uncles, parents, and older brothers. But soon after his sixth birthday, the Second World War broke out and he was evacuated from London, as were hundreds of thousands of children, to escape the bombing. Exiled to a school that rivaled Dickens's grimmest, fed on a steady diet of turnips and beetroots, tormented by a sadistic headmaster, and allowed home only once in four years, he felt desolate and abandoned.
When he returned to London in 1943 at the age of ten, he was a changed, withdrawn boy, one who desperately needed order to make sense of his life. He was sustained by his secret passions: for numbers, for metals, and for finding patterns in the world around him. Under the tutelage of his "chemical" uncle, Uncle Tungsten, Sacks began to experiment with "the stinks and bangs" that almost define a first entry into chemistry: tossing sodium off a bridge to see it take fire in the water below; producing billowing clouds of noxious-smelling chemicals in his home lab. As his interests spread to investigations of batteries and bulbs, vacuum tubes and photography, he discovered his first great scientific heroes, men and women whose genius lay in understanding the hidden order of things and disclosing the forces that sustain and support the tangible world. There was Humphry Davy, the boyish chemist who delighted in sending flaming globules of metal shooting across his lab; Marie Curie, whose heroic efforts in isolating radium would ultimately lead to the unlocking of the secrets of the atom; and Dmitri Mendeleev, inventor of the periodic table, whose pursuit of the classification of elements unfolds like a detective story.
Uncle Tungsten vividly evokes a time when virtual reality had not yet displaced a hands-on knowledge of the world. It draws us into a journey of discovery that reveals, through the enchantment and wonder of a childhood passion, the birth of an extraordinary and original mind. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Undercover Economist'
The economy [isnt] a bunch of rather dull statistics with names like GDP (gross domestic product), notes Tim Harford, columnist and regular guest on NPRs Marketplace, economics is about who gets what and why. In this acclaimed and riveting bookpart exposé, part users manualthe astute and entertaining columnist from the Financial Times demystifies the ways in which money works in the world. From why the coffee in your cup costs so much to why efficiency is not necessarily the answer to ensuring a fair society, from improving health care to curing crosstown trafficall the dirty little secrets of dollars and cents are delightfully revealed by The Undercover Economist.
A rare specimen: a book on economics that will enthrall its readers . . . It brings the power of economics to life.
Steven D. Levitt, coauthor of Freakonomics
A playful guide to the economics of everyday life, and as such is something of an elder sibling to Steven Levitts wild child, the hugely successful Freakonomics.
The Economist
A tour de force . . . If you need to be convinced of the everrelevant and fascinating nature of economics, read this insightful and witty book.
Jagdish Bhagwati, author of In Defense of Globalization
This is a book to savor.
The New York Times
Harford writes like a dream. From his book I found out why theres a Starbucks on every corner [and] how not to get duped in an auction. Reading The Undercover Economist is like spending an ordinary day wearing X-ray goggles.
David Bodanis, author of Electric Universe
Much wit and wisdom.
The Houston Chronicle
From Publishers Weekly
Nattily packaged-the cover sports a Roy Lichtensteinesque image of an economist in Dick Tracy garb-and cleverly written, this book applies basic economic theory to such modern phenomena as Starbucks' pricing system and Microsoft's stock values. While the concepts explored are those encountered in Microeconomics 101, Harford gracefully explains abstruse ideas like pricing along the demand curve and game theory using real world examples without relying on graphs or jargon. The book addresses free market economic theory, but Harford is not a complete apologist for capitalism; he shows how companies from Amazon.com to Whole Foods to Starbucks have gouged consumers through guerrilla pricing techniques and explains the high rents in London (it has more to do with agriculture than one might think). Harford comes down soft on Chinese sweatshops, acknowledging "conditions in factories are terrible," but "sweatshops are better than the horrors that came before them, and a step on the road to something better." Perhaps, but Harford doesn't question whether communism or a capitalist-style industrial revolution are the only two choices available in modern economies. That aside, the book is unequaled in its accessibility and ability to show how free market economic forces affect readers' day-to-day.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Harford exposes the dark underbelly of capitalism in Undercover Economist. Compared with Steven Levitts and Stephen J. Dubners popular Freakonomics (*** July/Aug 2005), the book uses simple, playful examples (written in plain English) to elucidate complex economic theories. Critics agree that the book will grip readers interested in understanding free-market forces but disagree about Harfords approach. Some thought the author mastered the small ideas while keeping in sight the larger context of globalization; others faulted Harford for failing to criticize certain economic theories and to ground his arguments in political, organizational structures. Either way, his case studiessome entertaining, others indicative of times to comewill make you think twice about that cup of coffee.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'VN : The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov'
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