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books tagged “dutch”
books tagged “dutch”
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Alice's Adventures In Wonderlandby Lewis Carroll, John TennielISBN 0375761381 (0-375-76138-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alice's Adventures In Wonderland'Book summary:That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland : And, Through the Looking Glassby Lewis Carroll, Jenny ThorneISBN 0361028008 (0-361-02800-8)
Hardcover, Purnell, Alice Kelly
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland : And, Through the Looking Glass'Book summary:That Alice. When she's not traipsing after a rabbit into Wonderland, she's gallivanting off into the topsy-turvy world behind the drawing-room looking glass. In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's masterful and zany sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, she makes more eccentric acquaintances, including Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the White Queen, and a somewhat grumpy Humpty Dumpty. Through a giant and elaborate chess game, Alice explores this odd country, where one must eat dry biscuits to quench thirst, and run like the wind to stay in one place. As in life, Alice must stay on her toes to learn the rules of this game. Through the Looking Glass immediately took its rightful place beside its partner on the shelf of eternal classics. And luckily for generations of enraptured children, Carroll was again able to persuade John Tenniel to create the fantastic woodblock engravings that have become so indelibly associated with the Alice stories. For almost 130 years, Alice's curious adventures have amused, perplexed, and delighted readers, young and old. This gorgeous, deluxe boxed set of both volumes contains engravings from Tenniel's original woodblocks that were discovered in a London bank in 1985, and reproduced for the first time here. "'What is the use of a book,' thought Alice, 'without pictures?'" What indeed? (All ages) [via]
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Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass, and the Hunting of the Snarkby Lewis CarrollISBN 0370109279 (0-370-10927-9)
Hardcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass, and the Hunting of the Snark'Book summary:, 292 pages including Prefatory Notes at rear, illustrated throughout with numerous black and white illustrations within the text [via]
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All Men Are Mortalby Simone De Beauvoir, Leonard M. FriedmanISBN 0393308456 (0-393-30845-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Men Are Mortal'Book summary:Probably de Beauvoir's strangest and most compelling novel, this is the captivating story of a beautiful young actress who revives a downcast stranger at a French resort.
He becomes thoroughly attached to her and confides a terrifying truth: he is immortal. But having been resuscitated into enjoying life again, he soon starts breaking free from her grasp and all notions of mortality. [via]More editions of All Men Are Mortal:
Animal Liberationby Peter SingerISBN 0380713330 (0-380-71333-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Anna Kareninaby Leo TolstoyISBN 0393042774 (0-393-04277-4)
Hardcover, W. W. Norton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anna Karenina'Book summary:Some people say Anna Karenina is the single greatest novel ever written, which makes about as much sense to me as trying to determine the world's greatest color. But there is no doubt that Anna Karenina, generally considered Tolstoy's best book, is definitely one ripping great read. Anna, miserable in her loveless marriage, does the barely thinkable and succumbs to her desires for the dashing Vronsky. I don't want to give away the ending, but I will say that 19th-century Russia doesn't take well to that sort of thing. [via]
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Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annexby Anne FrankISBN 0385187157 (0-385-18715-7)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabinby Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Louis Gates, Hollis Robbins, Karen C.C. DaltonISBN 0393059464 (0-393-05946-4)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin'Book summary:Henry Louis Gates Jr. redefines Uncle Tom's Cabin with this seminal interpretation of the great American novel.
Declared worthless and dehumanizing by James Baldwin in 1949, Uncle Tom's Cabin has lacked literary credibility for fifty years. Now, in a ringing refutation of Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates Jr. demonstrates the literary transcendence of Harriet Beecher Stowe's masterpiece. Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in 1852, galvanized the American public as no other work of fiction has ever done. The editors animate pre-Civil War life with rich insights into the lives of slaves, abolitionists, and the American reading public. Examining the lingering effects of the novel, they provide new insights into emerging race-relation, women's, gay, and gender issues. With reproductions of rare prints, posters, and photographs, this book is also one of the most thorough anthologies of Uncle Tom images up to the present day. [via]More editions of The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin:
The Art of Loveby James Michie, Ovid, David MaloufISBN 0375761179 (0-375-76117-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Best English Short Stories 4by Giles Gordon, David HughesISBN 0393034410 (0-393-03441-0)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Blue Mondaysby Arnold Pomerans, Erica Pomerans, Arnon GrunbergISBN 0374114854 (0-374-11485-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Broom of the Systemby David Foster WallaceISBN 0380719916 (0-380-71991-6)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Broom of the System'Book summary:An original and exciting debut, set in 1990 Cleveland, where a bewitching heroine who works for a screwed-up publishing firm is caught up with her not-so-hot lover/boss, her grandmother--who has just run away from her nursing home--and her pet cockatiel, whose verbal banter makes him a target for religious fundamentalists. [via]
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Brothers Karamazovby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear, Larissa VolokhonskyISBN 0374528373 (0-374-52837-3)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brothers Karamazov'Book summary:Constance Garnetts translation, the basic version in English of this Russian masterpiece, has been revised by the editor for accuracy and readability.
Dostoevskys sources for the characters and situations of the novel are set forth in an extract from Lev Reynuss Dostoevsky and Staraya Russa and in selections from Dostoevskys letters and diary, all translated by Professor Matlaw. Konstantin Mochulskys essay provides a general discussion of the work. Important questions as to the craft of the novel, its characterization, Dostoevskys symbolism, the Grand Inquisitor, and the theme of religious salvation are surveyed in critical pieces by Dmitry Tschizewskij, Robert L. Belknap, Edward Wasiolek, Harry Slochower, D. H. Lawrence, Albert Camus, Nathan Rosen, Leonid Grossman, Ya. E. Golosovker, R. P. Blackmur, and Ralph E. Matlaw. Several of these selections are also recently translated from the Russian. A Selected Bibliography is included. [via] 
Callanetics Countdown: 30 Days to a Beautiful Body/a Firm, Shapely Body in Only Minutes a Day!by Callen PinckneyISBN 0380714531 (0-380-71453-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Caveby Tim KrabbeISBN 0374529167 (0-374-52916-7)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Chancellor Manuscriptby Robert LudlumISBN 0385272537 (0-385-27253-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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The Christmas Mysteryby Elizabeth Rokkan, Jostein Gaarder, Rosemary WellsISBN 0374123292 (0-374-12329-2)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Christmas Mystery'Book summary:The author of the critically acclaimed Sophie's World presents a Christmas adventure about a boy who discovers a magical Advent calendar in the corner of a dusty bookstore that takes him on an amazing holiday journey. 75,000 first printing. [via]
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City of Ice : A Novelby John FarrowISBN 0375501401 (0-375-50140-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'City of Ice : A Novel'Book summary:A college kid in a Santa Claus suit is tortured, murdered, and left hanging from a meat hook on Christmas Eve--a gift intended for one particular cop.
Reminiscent of Smilla's Sense of Snow, this gripping debut thriller set in bone-chilling midwinter Montreal features one of the most compelling new heroes to emerge in crime fiction: Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars. A brilliant logician, an eccentric who follows his own rules, this old-style cop is beleaguered by the virulent crime wave that has engulfed his city. While political uncertainty over separatism has damaged Montreal's social and economic life, organized crime has been quick to take advantage. The Russian Mafia, rival motorcycle gangs, and infiltrators from the CIA are engaged in violent turf wars, while the police force--teeming with corruption--struggles to keep the city safe.
Even Cinq-Mars, whose stunning arrests have made him a local hero, appears to have been compromised. How has he managed to penetrate Montreal's criminal elite? Who are his informants and how do they acquire their vast knowledge? And who is the young female American operative he seems so desperate to save from the clutches of the mob?
Against the backdrop of events in today's headlines, John Farrow constructs a vivid tableau peopled with home-grown and international criminals, each fighting for a piece of this frozen city, where dynamite and chain saws have become the weapons of choice. Taut and timely, City of Ice dazzles with its complex plot and grittily realized characters; it's a suspense read that's difficult to put down, impossible to forget. [via]More editions of City of Ice : A Novel:
Claire Marvelby John Burnham SchwartzISBN 0375719156 (0-375-71915-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Complete Fairy Tales and Storiesby H. C. Andersen, Erik Christian HaugaardISBN 0385019017 (0-385-01901-7)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Fairy Tales and Stories'Book summary:Translated by Erik Hougaard, this is the only version available in trade paperback that presents the fairy tales exactly as Andersen collected them in the original Danish edition in 1874. His notes accompany the text. [via]
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The Correctionsby Jonathan FranzenISBN 0374129983 (0-374-12998-3)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Corrections: A Novel'Book summary:Jonathan Franzen's exhilarating novel The Corrections tells a spellbinding story with sexy comic brio, and evokes a quirky family akin to Anne Tyler's, only bitter. Franzen's great at describing Christmas homecomings gone awry, cruise-ship follies, self-deluded academics, breast-obsessed screenwriters, stodgy old farts and edgy Tribeca bohemians equally at sea in their lives, and the mad, bad, dangerous worlds of the Internet boom and the fissioning post-Soviet East.
All five members of the Lambert family get their due, as everybody's lives swirl out of control. Paterfamilias Alfred is slipping into dementia, even as one of his inventions inspires a pharmaceutical giant to revolutionize treatment of his disease. His stubborn wife, Enid, specializes in denial; so do their kids, each in an idiosyncratic way. Their hepcat son, Chip, lost a college sinecure by seducing a student, and his new career as a screenwriter is in peril. Chip's sister, Denise, is a chic chef perpetually in hot water, romantically speaking; banker brother Gary wonders if his stifling marriage is driving him nuts. We inhabit these troubled minds in turn, sinking into sorrow punctuated by laughter, reveling in Franzen's satirical eye:
Gary in recent years had observed, with plate tectonically cumulative anxiety, that population was continuing to flow out of the Midwest and toward the cooler coasts.... Gary wished that all further migration [could] be banned and all Midwesterners encouraged to revert to eating pasty foods and wearing dowdy clothes and playing board games, in order that a strategic national reserve of cluelessness might be maintained, a wilderness of taste which would enable people of privilege, like himself, to feel extremely civilized in perpetuity.
Franzen is funny and on the money. This book puts him on the literary map. --Tim Appelo [via] 
Cow Who Fell in the Canalby Phyllis Krasilovsky, Peter SpierISBN 0385075855 (0-385-07585-5)
Hardcover, Random House Children's Books
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Darwin for Beginnersby Jonathan Miller, Borin Van LoonISBN 0375714588 (0-375-71458-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Darwin for Beginners'Book summary:Sociology, Theology, Christian Studies [via]
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de Kooning: An American Masterby Mark Stevens, Annalyn SwanISBN 0375711163 (0-375-71116-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'de Kooning: An American Master'Book summary:Willem de Kooning is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, a true painters painter whose protean work continues to inspire many artists. In the thirties and forties, along with Arshile Gorky and Jackson Pollock, he became a key figure in the revolutionary American movement of abstract expressionism. Of all the painters in that group, he worked the longest and was the most prolific, creating powerful, startling images well into the 1980s.
The first major biography of de Kooning captures both the life and work of this complex, romantic figure in American culture. Ten years in the making, and based on previously unseen letters and documents as well as on hundreds of interviews, this is a fresh, richly detailed, and masterful portrait. The young de Kooning overcame an unstable, impoverished, and often violent early family life to enter the Academie in Rotterdam, where he learned both classic art and guild techniques. Arriving in New York as a stowaway from Holland in 1926, he underwent a long struggle to become a painter and an American, developing a passionate friendship with his fellow immigrant Arshile Gorky, who was both a mentor and an inspiration. During the Depression, de Kooning emerged as a central figure in the bohemian world of downtown New York, surviving by doing commercial work and painting murals for the WPA. His first show at the Egan Gallery in 1948 was a revelation. Soon, the critics Harold Rosenberg and Thomas Hess were championing his work, and de Kooning took his place as the charismatic leader of the New York schooljust as American art began to dominate the international scene.
Dashingly handsome and treated like a movie star on the streets of downtown New York, de Kooning had a tumultuous marriage to Elaine de Kooning, herself a fascinating character of the period. At the height of his fame, he spent his days painting powerful abstractions and intense, disturbing pictures of the female figureand his nights living on the edge, drinking, womanizing, and talking at the Cedar bar with such friends as Franz Kline and Frank OHara. By the 1960s, exhausted by the feverish art world, he retreated to the Springs on Long Island, where he painted an extraordinary series of lush pastorals. In the 1980s, as he slowly declined into what was almost certainly Alzheimers, he created a vast body of haunting and ethereal late work.
This is an authoritative and brilliant exploration of the art, life, and world of an American master.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]More editions of de Kooning: An American Master:
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Dead Soulsby Nikolai Vasilevich GogolISBN 039300600X (0-393-00600-X)
Hardcover, W. W. Norton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Souls'Book summary:Gogol's 1842 novel Dead Souls, a comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims, is one of the major works of Russian literature. It was translated into English in 1942 by Bernard Guilbert Guerney; the translation was hailed by Vladimir Nabokov as "an extraordinarily fine piece of work" and is still considered the best translation of Dead Souls ever published. Long out of print, the Guerney translation of Dead Souls is now reissued. The text has been made more faithful to Gogol's original by removing passages that Guerney inserted from earlier drafts of Dead Souls. The text is accompanied by Susanne Fusso's introduction and by appendixes that present excerpts from Guerney's translations of other drafts of Gogol's work and letters Gogol wrote around the time of the writing and publication of Dead Souls. [via]
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Dispatchesby Michael HerrISBN 0380019760 (0-380-01976-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dispatches'Book summary:Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence of the people who were there. Since Dispatches was published, other excellent books have appeared on the war--may we suggest The Things They Carried, The Sorrow of War, We Were Soldiers Once ... and Young--but Herr's book was the first to hit the target head-on and remains a classic. [via]
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The Elementary Particlesby Michel HouellebecqISBN 0375727019 (0-375-72701-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elementary Particles'Book summary:Bruno and Michel are half-brothers, born to a hippie mother who believed in following her bliss. As boys they live in ignorance of each other--at one point attending the same school without knowing of their blood connection. As grown men they're not truly close, but they occasionally phone each other late at night. Bruno's a hopeless sexual obsessive, often drunk or on his way there, and Michel's a molecular biologist, distant and inaccessible.
Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles follows these brothers through the latter half of the 20th century. Bruno and Michel are buffeted by history, vessels of disappointment and desire rocked by the ocean of time. Shuttled away to a boarding school where he's sexually abused by other boys, Bruno grows up full of twisted sexual longings and a contempt for aging women so palpable that at times it's stomach-churning. At a commune in the country, Bruno takes stock:
The women were intolerable at breakfast, but by cocktail hour the mystical tarts were hopelessly vying with younger women once again. Death is the great leveler. On Wednesday afternoon he met Catherine, a fifty-year-old who had been a feminist of the old school. She was tanned, with dark curly hair; she must have been very attractive when she was twenty. Her breasts were still in good shape, he thought when he saw her by the pool, but she had a fat ass.
Michel doesn't hate women; he doesn't even notice them. Instead of leering at bodies by the pool, he stares at particles in microscopes. He wins prizes for his experiments, but never experiences the rush of life. For both men, the damage has been done by history, by mother, before the story begins. What interests Houellebecq are the permutations and recapitulations of damage--the way the particles of the self can never be completely reconstituted. --Emily White [via]More editions of The Elementary Particles:
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The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Realityby Brian GreeneISBN 0375727205 (0-375-72720-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality'Book summary:As a boy, Brian Greene read Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus and was transformed. Camus, in Greene's paraphrase, insisted that the hero triumphs "by relinquishing everything beyond immediate experience." After wrestling with this idea, however, Greene rejected Camus and realized that his true idols were physicists; scientists who struggled "to assess life and to experience the universe at all possible levels, not just those that happened to be accessible to our frail human senses." His driving question in The Fabric of the Cosmos, then, is fundamental: "What is reality?" Over sixteen chapters, he traces the evolving human understanding of the substrate of the universe, from classical physics to ten-dimensional M-Theory.
Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds. His language reflects a deep passion for science and a gift for translating concepts into poetic images. When explaining, for example, the inability to see the higher dimensions inherent in string theory, Greene writes: "We don't see them because of the way we see&like an ant walking along a lily pad&we could be floating within a grand, expansive, higher-dimensional space."
For Greene, Rhodes Scholar and professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, speculative science is not always as thorough and successful. His discussion of teleportation, for example, introduces and then quickly tables a valuable philosophical probing of identity. The paradoxes of time travel, however, are treated with greater depth, and his vision of life in a three-brane universe is compelling and--to use his description for quantum reality--"weird."
In the final pages Greene turns from science fiction back to the fringes of science fact, and he returns with rigor to frame discoveries likely to be made in the coming decades. "We are, most definitely, still wandering in the jungle," he concludes. Thanks to Greene, though, some of the underbrush has been cleared. --Patrick O'Kelley [via]
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Fairy Tales and Legendsby H.C. Andersen, Rex WhistlerISBN 0370010388 (0-370-01038-8)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasureby John Cleland, Gary GautierISBN 0375758089 (0-375-75808-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure'Book summary:Fanny Hill, shrouded in controversy for most of its more than 250-year life, and banned from publication in the United States until 1966, was once considered immoral and without literary merit, even earning its author a jail sentence for obscenity.
The tale of a naïve young prostitute in bawdy eighteenth-century London who slowly rises to respectability, the noveland its popularityendured many bannings and critics, and today Fanny Hill is considered an important piece of political parody and sexual philosophy on par with French libertine novels.
This uncensored version is set from the 1749 edition and includes commentary by Charles Rembar, the lawyer who defended the novel in the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case, and newly commissioned notes. [via]More editions of Fanny Hill or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure:
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Fathers and Sonsby Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Constance Black Garnett, Elizabeth Cheresh AllenISBN 0375758399 (0-375-75839-9)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fathers and Sons'Book summary:This new translation by Richard Freeborn makes Turgenev's masterpiece about the conflict between generations seem as fresh, outspoken, and exciting as it was to those readers who first encountered its famous hero. The controversial portrayal of Bazarov, the 'nihilist' or 'new man', shocked Russian society when the novel was published in 1862. The image of humanity liberated by science from age-old conformities and prejudices is one that can threaten establishments of any political or religious persuasion, and is especially potent at the present time. Richard Freeborn is the first translator to have had access to Turgenev's working manuscript. An appendix contains the first English translation of some of Turgenev's preparatory sketches for the novel. [via]
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Foucault's Pendulumby Umberto Eco, William WeaverISBN 0345418271 (0-345-41827-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Foucault's Pendulum'Book summary:"As brilliant and quirky as THE NAME OF THE ROSE, as mischievous and wide-raning....A virtuoso performance."
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Three clever book editors, inspired by an extraordinary fable they heard years befoe, decide to have a little fun. Randomly feeding esoteric bits of knowledge into an incredible computer capable of inventing connections between all their entires, they think they are creating a long lazy game--until the game starts taking over....
Here is an incredible journey of thought and history, memory and fantasy, a tour de force as enthralling as anything Umberto Eco--or indeed anyone--has ever devised.
From the Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Foucault's Pendulum:
Hallucinating Foucaultby Patricia DunckerISBN 0375701850 (0-375-70185-0)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Hanna's Daughtersby Marianne FredrikssonISBN 0345433491 (0-345-43349-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hanna's Daughters'Book summary:Hanna. Johanna. Anna. Three women, three generations, one family.
A #1 international bestseller in Europe, this luminous, heartfelt novel spans more than a hundred years in the lives of three remarkable women--a daughter, mother, and grandmother--lives shaped by the epic sweep of history and linked through a century of great love and great loss.
As Anna holds vigil at her mother's bedside, she longs for reconciliation--not just with her mother, Johanna, but with her grandmother, Hanna, a woman she never really knew. Determined to piece together the fragments of her past, Anna sifts through tattered letters, cracked diaries, and old photographs, as the vivid lives of Hanna and Johanna at last begin to unfold.
Through shades of memory and history, longing to join the ancient threads of the family tapestry, Anna begins searching for answers to questions that have haunted her for a lifetime. What was it like for her grandmother, Hanna, more than one hundred years ago, when she married a miller and raised an illegitimate child in a staunch, rural community? What drove Anna's own mother, Johanna, once a fiery revolutionary, to settle down and become a housewife? And why did the ties binding Anna to her mother and grandmother drive all three apart--only to bring them back together again?
Rich in insight, and resonating with truth and revelation, Hanna's Daughters is an unforgettable story, exploring the volatile ties of mothers and daughters. If you have ever wanted to connect with the past, or rediscover family, this novel will strike a chord in your heart. Marianne Fredriksson has created nothing short of a masterpiece. [via] 
Hans Andersenby H. C. Andersen, Michael Foreman, Erik Christian HaugaardISBN 0385133642 (0-385-13364-2)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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Hans Christian Andersen the Complete Fairy Tales and Storiesby H. C. Andersen, Virginia HavilandISBN 0385189516 (0-385-18951-6)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hans Christian Andersen the Complete Fairy Tales and Stories'Book summary:Translated by Erik Hougaard, this is the only version available in trade paperback that presents the fairy tales exactly as Andersen collected them in the original Danish edition in 1874. His notes accompany the text. [via]
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The History of Danish Dreamsby Peter HoegISBN 0385315910 (0-385-31591-0)
Softcover, Dell Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History of Danish Dreams'Book summary:One of Scandinavia's most talented young authors follows an eccentric family as they try to cope with the transition of Denmark from medieval society to modern welfare state. By the author of Smilla's Sense of Snow. [via]
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Homer: The Odysseyby Homer, Robert FitzgeraldISBN 0385050402 (0-385-05040-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Homer: The Odyssey'Book summary:Here is a new Loeb Classical Library edition of the resplendent epic tale of Odysseus's long journey home from the Trojan War and the legendary temptations, delays, and perils he faced at every turn. Homer's classic poem features Odysseus's encounters with the beautiful nymph Calypso; the queenly but wily Circe; the Lotus-eaters, who fed his men their memory-stealing drug; the man-eating, one-eyed Cyclops; the Laestrygonian giants; the souls of the dead in Hades; the beguiling Sirens; the treacherous Scylla and Charybdis. Here, too, is the hero's faithful wife, Penelope, weaving a shroud by day and unraveling it by night, in order to thwart the numerous suitors attempting to take Odysseus's place.
The works attributed to Homer include the two oldest and greatest European epic poems, the Odyssey and Iliad. These texts have long stood in the Loeb Classical Library with a faithful and literate prose translation by A. T. Murray. George Dimock now brings the Loeb's Odyssey up to date, with a rendering that retains Murray's admirable style but is worded for today's readers. The two-volume edition includes a new introduction, notes, and index.
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Hopscotchby Julio CortazarISBN 0380003724 (0-380-00372-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hopscotch'Book summary:This is the tragic history of two men and their circle of friends who live in Buenos Aires and Paris. Anticipating the age of the Web with a non-structure that allows readers to take the chapters in any order they wish, the book invites them to be the architects of the novel themselves. [via]
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How to Want What You Have: Discovering the Magic and Grandeur of Ordinary Existenceby Timothy MillerISBN 0380726823 (0-380-72682-3)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Want What You Have: Discovering the Magic and Grandeur of Ordinary Existence'Book summary:This is not a collection of encouraging essays on simplicity, nor is it perky advice on how to get by with less. Timothy Miller, a clinical psychologist, sets out to uncover in recent scientific studies the roots of the insatiable appetite of humans. After establishing our instinctual need for More, he pursues its destructive consequences and then he outlines a methodology for transcending the cycle. His infinitely pragmatic advice centers on his elaboration of Compassion, Attention, and Gratitude. Here is perennial wisdom transformed into practical science. [via]
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I'm Ok-You're Okby Thomas HarrisISBN 038000772X (0-380-00772-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Iliadby Robert Fitzgerald, HomerISBN 0385059418 (0-385-05941-8)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Iliad'Book summary:This translation of The Iliad equals Fitzgerald's earlier Odyssey in power and imagination. It recreates the original action as conceived by Homer, using fresh and flexible blank verse that is both lyrical and dramatic. [via]
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Inshallahby Oriana FallaciISBN 0385419872 (0-385-41987-2)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Inshallah'Book summary:A young Italian solder who witnessed the assault on the American Marine barracks in Beirut narrates a tale of French, American, and Italian soldiers, Arabs living lives of desperation, and the women in their lives. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. Tour. [via]
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The Kama Sutra Of Vatsyanaby Richard F. Burton, Called Mallanaga VatsyayanaISBN 0375759247 (0-375-75924-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kama Sutra Of Vatsyana'Book summary:Sir Richard F. Burtons translation of The Kama Sutra remains one of the best English interpretations of this early Indian treatise on politics, social customs, love, and intimacy. Its crisp style set a new standard for Sanskrit translation.
The Kama Sutra stands uniquely as a work of psychology, sociology, Hindu dogma, and sexology. It has been a celebrated classic of Indian literature for 1,700 years and a window for the West into the culture and mysticism of the East.
This Modern Library Paperback Classic reprints the authoritative text of Sir Richard F. Burtons 1883 translation. [via]More editions of The Kama Sutra Of Vatsyana:
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The Kite Runnerby Khaled HosseiniISBN 0385660073 (0-385-66007-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kite Runner'Book summary:The "kite runner" of Khaled Hosseini's deeply moving fiction debut is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Growing up in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, Hassan was narrator Amir's closest friend even though the loyal 11-year-old with "a face like a Chinese doll" was the son of Amir's father's servant and a member of Afghanistan's despised Hazara minority. But in 1975, on the day of Kabul's annual kite-fighting tournament, something unspeakable happened between the two boys.
Narrated by Amir as a 40-year-old novelist living in California, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and the kind of ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir's equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth. The first Afghan novel to be written in English, The Kite Runner begins in the final days of King Zahir Shah's 40-year reign and traces the country's fall from a secluded oasis to a tank-strewn battlefield controlled by the Russians and then the trigger-happy Taliban. When Amir returns to Kabul to rescue Hassan's orphaned child, the personal and the political get tangled together in a plot that is as suspenseful as it is taut with feeling.
The son of an Afghan diplomat whose family received political asylum in the United States in 1980, Hosseini combines the unflinching realism of a war correspondent with the satisfying emotional pull of master storytellers such as Rohinton Mistry. Like the kite that is its central image, the story line of this mesmerizing first novel occasionally dips and seems almost to dive to the ground. But Hosseini ultimately keeps everything airborne until his heartrending conclusion in an American picnic park. --Lisa Alward [via]
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The Lily Theatreby Lulu WangISBN 0385489862 (0-385-48986-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town Americaby Bill BrysonISBN 0385658613 (0-385-65861-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America'Book summary:A travelogue by Bill Bryson is as close to a sure thing as funny books get. The Lost Continent is no exception. Following an urge to rediscover his youth (he should know better), the author leaves his native Des Moines, Iowa, in a journey that takes him across 38 states. Lucky for us, he brought a notebook.
With a razor wit and a kind heart, Bryson serves up a colorful tale of boredom, kitsch, and beauty when you least expect it. Gentler elements aside, The Lost Continent is an amusing book. Here's Bryson on the women of his native state: "I will say this, however--and it's a strange, strange thing--the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable ... I don't know what it is that happens to them, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowing that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked."
Yes, Bill, but be honest: what do you really think? [via]
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Lust for Lifeby Irving StoneISBN 0385042701 (0-385-04270-1)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lust for Life'Book summary:The book captures the atmosphere of the Paris of the Post-Impressionists and reconstructs the development of Van Gogh's art. [via]
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Maigret Has Doubtsby Georges SimenonISBN 0380704102 (0-380-70410-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Maigret in Courtby Georges SimenonISBN 0380704110 (0-380-70411-0)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Moby Dickby Herman MelvilleISBN 039309670X (0-393-09670-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moby Dick'Book summary:Avec Moby Dick, Melville a donné naissance à un livre-culte et inscrit dans la mémoire des hommes un nouveau mythe : celui de la baleine blanche. Fort de son expérience de marin, qui a nourri ses romans précédents et lui a assuré le succès, l'écrivain américain, alors en pleine maturité, raconte la folle quête du capitaine Achab et sa dernière rencontre avec le grand cachalot. Véritable encyclopédie de la mer, nouvelle Bible aux accents prophétiques, parabole chargée de thèmes universels, Moby Dick n'en reste pas moins construit avec une savante maîtrise, maintenant un suspense lent, qui s'accélère peu à peu jusqu'à l'apocalypse finale. L'écriture de Melville, infiniment libre et audacieuse, tour à tour balancée, puis hachée au rythme des houles, des vents et des passions humaines, est d'une richesse exceptionnelle. Il faut remonter à Shakespeare pour trouver l'exemple d'une langue aussi inventive, d'une poésie aussi grandiose. --Scarbo [via]
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The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Wayby Bill BrysonISBN 0380715430 (0-380-71543-0)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way'Book summary:Who would have thought that a book about English would be so entertaining? Certainly not this grammar-allergic reviewer, but The Mother Tongue pulls it off admirably. Bill Bryson--a zealot--is the right man for the job. Who else could rhapsodize about "the colorless murmur of the schwa" with a straight face? It is his unflagging enthusiasm, seeping from between every sentence, that carries the book.
Bryson displays an encyclopedic knowledge of his topic, and this inevitably encourages a light tone; the more you know about a subject, the more absurd it becomes. No jokes are necessary, the facts do well enough by themselves, and Bryson supplies tens per page. As well as tossing off gems of fractured English (from a Japanese eraser: "This product will self-destruct in Mother Earth."), Bryson frequently takes time to compare the idiosyncratic tongue with other languages. Not only does this give a laugh (one word: Welsh), and always shed considerable light, it also makes the reader feel fortunate to speak English. [via]
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My Garden (Book)by Jamaica Kincaid, Jill FoxISBN 0374527768 (0-374-52776-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Garden (Book)'Book summary:Jamaica Kincaid, author of Annie John, writes of gardens and gardeners in her most insightful and engaging book to date.
In My Garden (Book), Jamaica gathers all she loves about gardening and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer, but not winter, which is so unremittingly white. She adores rhododendron Jane Grant and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily and dreams of ways to trap small plant-eating animals. The sources of her inspiration-seed catalogues (the glossy ones and, even better, the nonglossy ones), legendary gardeners such as Gertrude Jekyll and Graham Stuart Thomas, famous gardens like Monet's at Giverny and Vita Sackville-West's at Sissinghurst-receive keen scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where one of her favorite school subjects was botany, and considers the implications of the English formal garden in colonized countries; and she visits historic English gardens on English soil.
My Garden (Book) is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the gardeners who tend them.
Illustrations
Jamaica Kincaid's most recent book (as editor) is an anthology of writing on plants, My Favorite Plant (FSG, 1998). She lives in Vermont with her husband and children, and teaches at Harvard University. [via]
News of a Kidnappingby Gabriel García Márquez, Edith GrossmanISBN 0375400516 (0-375-40051-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Odysseyby Homer, Robert FitzgeraldISBN 0374525749 (0-374-52574-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'Book summary:A retelling of Homer's epic that describes the adventures of the hero Odysseus as he encounters many monsters and other obstacles on his journey home from the Trojan War. [via]
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- The Odyssey: ISBN 0393007448 (0-393-00744-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - The Odyssey: ISBN 0374224382 (0-374-22438-2)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux - The Odyssey: ISBN 0393041336 (0-393-04133-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - The Odyssey: ISBN 0393099717 (0-393-09971-7)
Softcover, Norton - The Odyssey: ISBN 0393041611 (0-393-04161-1)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - The Odyssey: ISBN 0374525749 (0-374-52574-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The Odyssey: ISBN 0393007448 (0-393-00744-8)
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Oliver Twistby Charles Dickens, George CruikshankISBN 0375757848 (0-375-75784-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Oliver Twist'Book summary:Dickens's classic morality tale of a starving orphan caught between opposing forces of good and evil is a powerful indictment of Victorian England's Poor Laws. Filled with dark humor and an unforgettable cast of characters Oliver Twist, Fagin, Nancy, Bill Sykes, and the Artful Dodger, to name a few Dickens's second novel is a compelling social satire that has remained popular since it was first serialized in 1837-39.
The text for this Modern Library Paperback Classic is taken from the 1846 New Edition, revised and corrected by the author. It includes new explanatory notes and an appendix, A Brief History of the English Poor Laws. [via]More editions of Oliver Twist:
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Pninby Vladimir NabokovISBN 0385191162 (0-385-19116-2)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pnin'Book summary:Professor Timofey Pnin, previously of Tsarist Russia, is now precariously positioned at the heart of campus America. Battling with American life and language, Pnin must face great hazards in this new world: the ruination of his beautiful lumber-room-as-office; the removal of his teeth and the fitting of new ones; the search for a suitable boarding-house; and, the trials of taking the wrong train. [via]
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The Readerby Bernhard SchlinkISBN 0375707972 (0-375-70797-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Reader'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, February 1999: Originally published in Switzerland, and gracefully translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway, The Reader is a brief tale about sex, love, reading, and shame in postwar Germany. Michael Berg is 15 when he begins a long, obsessive affair with Hanna, an enigmatic older woman. He never learns very much about her, and when she disappears one day, he expects never to see her again. But, to his horror, he does. Hanna is a defendant in a trial related to Germany's Nazi past, and it soon becomes clear that she is guilty of an unspeakable crime. As Michael follows the trial, he struggles with an overwhelming question: What should his generation do with its knowledge of the Holocaust? "We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable.... Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?"
The Reader, which won the Boston Book Review's Fisk Fiction Prize, wrestles with many more demons in its few, remarkably lucid pages. What does it mean to love those people--parents, grandparents, even lovers--who committed the worst atrocities the world has ever known? And is any atonement possible through literature? Schlink's prose is clean and pared down, stripped of unnecessary imagery, dialogue, and excess in any form. What remains is an austerely beautiful narrative of the attempt to breach the gap between Germany's pre- and postwar generations, between the guilty and the innocent, and between words and silence. --R. Ellis [via]
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Red and the Blackby Stendhal, Robert M. AdamsISBN 0393098214 (0-393-09821-4)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Red and the Black'Book summary:The text of Stendhal's classic novel Le Rouge et le Noir in this volume is an entirely new translation which renders the novelist's strict, hard style into contemporary colloquial English. For the first time in an English translation, notes are given that explain the book's local allusions and concealed autobiographical reminiscences. Students interested in the backgrounds of the novel may read the newspaper account, for the first time in English, of the murder trial upon which some of the novel's events are founded. Other materials, on Stendhal's style and on the 1830's background, are also provided. As with all Norton Critical Editions in Continental literature, a number of commentaries are here translated for the first time: Henri Martineau, Jean Prevost, George Poulet, Jean-Pierre Richard, G. Tomasi di Lampedusa, Alain, Paul Valery, Paul Bourget, and Hippolyte Tame. Other critics are Erich Auerbach, Rene Girard, F. W. I. Hemmings, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Marcel Proust, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jose Ortega y Gasset, and Robert M. Adams.
Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative text, contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations-from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory-as well as a bibliography and a chronology of the author's life and work. [via]
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Second Nature : A Gardener's Educationby Michael PollanISBN 0385312660 (0-385-31266-0)
Softcover, Dell Publishing
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Self-Analysisby Karen HorneyISBN 0393311651 (0-393-31165-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Self-Analysis'Book summary:In this book, Dr. Horney discusses the possibilities of self-analysisto what extent individuals can use the techniques of psychoanalysis on their own to solve problems.
She discusses the driving forces in the neuroses, the different stages of psychoanalytic understanding, the patient's and the analyst's share in the psychoanalytic process, occasional and systematic self-analysis, and the realistic expectations of undertaking self-analysis. [via]More editions of Self-Analysis:
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The Sufferings of Young Wertherby Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheISBN 039309880X (0-393-09880-X)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sufferings of Young Werther'Book summary:J.W. von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther [via]
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This Earth of Mankindby Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Max LaneISBN 0380719746 (0-380-71974-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Time Shifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Lifeby Stephan RechtschaffenISBN 0385483902 (0-385-48390-2)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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The Tin Drumby Günter GrassISBN 0375420576 (0-375-42057-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tin Drum'Book summary:Meet Oskar Matzerath, "the eternal three-year-old drummer." On the morning of his third birthday, dressed in a striped pullover and patent leather shoes, and clutching his drumsticks and his new tin drum, young Oskar makes an irrevocable decision: "It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; that I would stop right there, remain as I was--and so I did; for many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same attire." Here is a Peter Pan story with a vengeance. But instead of Never-Never Land, Günter Grass gives us Danzig, a contested city on the Polish-German border; instead of Captain Hook and his pirates, we have the Nazis. And in place of Peter himself is Oskar, a twisted puer aeternis with a scream that can shatter glass and a drum rather than a shadow. First published in 1959, The Tin Drum's depiction of the Nazi era created a furor in Germany, for the world of Grass's making is rife with corrupt politicians and brutal grocers in brown shirts:
There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langasser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze.
As Oskar grows older (though not taller), portents of war transform into the thing itself. Danzig is the first casualty when, in the summer of 1939, residents turn against each other in a pitched battle between Poles and Germans. In the years that follow, Oskar goes from one picaresque adventure to the next--he joins a troupe of traveling musicians; he becomes the leader of a group of anarchists; he falls in love; he becomes a recording artist--until some time after the war, he is convicted of murder and confined to a mental hospital.The Tin Drum uses savage comedy and a stiff dose of magical realism to capture not only the madness of war, but also the black cancer at the heart of humanity that allows such degradations to occur. Grass wields his humor like a knife--yes, he'll make you laugh, but he'll make you bleed, as well. There have been many novels written about World War II, but only a handful can truly be called great; The Tin Drum, without a doubt, is one. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Uncle Tom's Cabinby Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jane SmileyISBN 0375756930 (0-375-75693-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'Book summary:When Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852, it became an international blockbuster, selling more than 300,000 copies in the United States alone in its first year. Progressive for her time, Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the earliest writers to offer a shockingly realistic depiction of slavery. Her stirring indictment and portrait of human dignity in the most inhumane circumstances enlightened hundreds of thousands by revealing the human costs of slavery, which had until then been cloaked and justified by the racist misperceptions of the time. Langston Hughes called it "a moral battle cry," noting that "the love and warmth and humanity that went into its writing keep it alive a century later," and Tolstoy described it as "flowing from love of God and man." [via]
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Wampeters Foma and Granfalloonsby Kurt VonnegutISBN 0385294220 (0-385-29422-0)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions)by Kurt VonnegutISBN 0385333811 (0-385-33381-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions)'Book summary:Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions) is a rare opportunity to experience Kurt Vonnegut speaking in his own voice about his own life, his views of the world, his writing, and the writing of others. An indignant, outrageous, witty, deeply felt collection of reviews, essays, and speeches, this is a window not only into Vonneguts mind but also into his heart.
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War and Peaceby Leo TolstoyISBN 0345472403 (0-345-47240-3)
Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept
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› Find signed collectible books: 'War and Peace'Book summary:Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoys genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicleall of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individuals place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: To read him . . . is to find ones way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane. [via]
While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying The West From Withinby Bruce BawerISBN 0385514727 (0-385-51472-7)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Wish You Wellby David BaldacciISBN 0375430911 (0-375-43091-1)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wish You Well'Book summary:David Baldacci has made a name for himself crafting big, burly legal thrillers with larger-than-life plots. However, Wish You Well, set in his native Virginia, is a tale of hope and wonder and "something of a miracle" just itching to happen. This shift from contentious urbanites to homespun hill families may come as a surprise to some of Baldacci's fans--but they can rest assured: the author's sense of pacing and exuberant prose have made the leap as well.
The year is 1940. After a car accident kills 12-year-old Lou's and 7-year-old Oz's father and leaves their mother Amanda in a catatonic trance, the children find themselves sent from New York City to their great-grandmother Louisa's farm in Virginia. Louisa's hardscrabble existence comes as a profound shock to precocious Lou and her shy brother. Still struggling to absorb their abandonment, they enter gamely into a life that tests them at every turn--and offers unimaginable rewards. For Lou, who dreams of following in her father's literary footsteps, the misty, craggy Appalachians and the equally rugged individuals who make the mountains their home quickly become invested with an almost mythic significance:
They took metal cups from nails on the wall and dipped them in the water, and then sat outside and drank. Louisa picked up the green leaves of a mountain spurge growing next to the springhouse, which revealed beautiful purple blossoms completely hidden underneath. "One of God's little secrets," she explained. Lou sat there, cup cradled between her dimpled knees, watching and listening to her great-grandmother in the pleasant shade...
Baldacci switches deftly between lovingly detailed character description (an area in which his debt to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harper Lee seems evident) and patient development of the novel's central plot. If that plot is a trifle transparent--no one will be surprised by Amanda's miraculous recovery or by the children's eventual battle with the nefarious forces of industry in an attempt to save their great-grandmother's farm--neither reader nor character is the worse for it. After all, nostalgia is about remembering things one already knows. --Kelly Flynn [via]More editions of Wish You Well:
Within a Budding Groveby Marcel ProustISBN 0375752196 (0-375-75219-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Centuryby Thomas L. FriedmanISBN 0374292795 (0-374-29279-5)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century'Book summary:When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, and they come to the chapter "Y2K to March 2004," what will they say was the most crucial development? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations, giving them a huge new stake in the success of globalization? And with this "flattening" of the globe, which requires us to run faster in order to stay in place, has the world gotten too small and too fast for human beings and their political systems to adjust in a stable manner?In this brilliant new book, the award-winning New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman demystifies the brave new world for readers, allowing them to make sense of the often bewildering global scene unfolding before their eyes. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman explains how the flattening of the world happened at the dawn of the twenty-first century; what it means to countries, companies, communities, and individuals; and how governments and societies can, and must, adapt. The World Is Flat is the timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists. [via]
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Valuesby Robert M. PirsigISBN 0370103386 (0-370-10338-6)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values'Book summary:In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.
Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.
In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]
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Zeno's Conscienceby Italo Svevo, William WeaverISBN 0375727760 (0-375-72776-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Zeno's Conscienceby William Weaver, Italo SvevoISBN 0375413308 (0-375-41330-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Zeno's Conscience'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The modern Italian classic discovered and championed by James Joyce, Zenos Conscience is a marvel of psychological insight, published here in a fine new translation by William Weaverthe first in more than seventy years.
Italo Svevos masterpiece tells the story of a hapless, doubting, guilt-ridden man paralyzed by fits of ecstasy and despair and tickled by his own cleverness. His doctor advises him, as a form of therapy, to write his memoirs; in doing so, Zeno reconstructs and ultimately reshapes the events of his life into a palatable reality for himselfa reality, however, founded on compromise, delusion, and rationalization.
With cigarette in hand, Zeno sets out in search of health and happiness, hoping along the way to free himself from countless vices, not least of which is his accursed last cigarette! (Zenos famously ineffectual refrain is inevitably followed by a lapse in resolve.) His amorous wanderings win him the shrill affections of an aspiring coloratura, and his confidence in his financial savoir-faire involves him in a hopeless speculative enterprise. Meanwhile, his trusting wife reliably awaits his return at appointed mealtimes.
Zenos adventures rise to antic heights in this pioneering psychoanalytic novel, as his restlessly self-preserving commentary inventively embroiders the truth. Absorbing and devilishly entertaining, Zenos Conscience is at once a comedy of errors, a sly testimonial to the joys of procrastination, and a surpassingly lucid vision of human nature by one of the most important Italian literary figures of the twentieth century. [via]More editions of Zeno's Conscience:
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