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books tagged “education”
books tagged “education”
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1000 Most Important Wordsby Norman SchurISBN 0345298632 (0-345-29863-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: '1000 Most Important Words'Book summary:Based on the contention that we do not utillize speech to its fullest extent, this guide is an essential aide to unlocking our "passive" vocabularies and developing a keener appreciation of the richness of language.
Indispensable For Writers, Speakers, Teachers!
-- Enrich your vocabulary
-- Express yourself clearly -- and beautifully
-- Fun and easy to use! [via]More editions of 1000 Most Important Words:
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All Soulsby Michael Patrick MacDonaldISBN 034544177X (0-345-44177-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'All Souls'Book summary:Michael Patrick MacDonald grew up in "the best place in the world"--the Old Colony projects of South Boston--where 85% of the residents collect welfare in an area with the highest concentration of impoverished whites in the U.S. In All Souls, MacDonald takes us deep into the secret heart of Southie. With radiant insight, he opens up a contradictory world, where residents are besieged by gangs and crime but refuse to admit any problems, remaining fiercely loyal to their community. MacDonald also introduces us to the unforgettable people who inhabit this proud neighborhood. We meet his mother, Ma MacDonald, an accordion-playing, spiked-heel-wearing, indomitable mother to all; Whitey Bulger, the lord of Southie, gangster and father figure, protector and punisher; and Michael's beloved siblings, nearly half of whom were lost forever to drugs, murder, or suicide. By turns explosive and touching, All Souls ultimately shares a powerful message of hope, renewal, and redemption. [via]
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The Amateur: An Independent Life of Lettersby Wendy LesserISBN 0375703810 (0-375-70381-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters'Book summary:In The Amateur Wendy Lesser marries two literary forms, autobiography and essay, with remarkable results. True to the spirit of the critical essay, she discusses any number of subjects in a profound and analytical way; yet in the course of reflecting on, say, vocabulary or philanthropy or dance lessons, she imparts a vivid portrait of the woman behind the ideas. Consider, for example, how Lesser bounces between intellect and slapstick. An examination of the relationship between critics and artists in "Passionate Witness" ("When you attach yourself to a cherished artist, as I have attached myself to Mark Morris, you cede to that artist a certain portion of your own intellectual development. You are not just the learned critic, commenting on the work, you are also the novice, being molded by that work") gives way to a wacky tale of high art and low comedy in "A Night at the Opera"--complete with stomach cramps, a visit to the aid station, and an eye-opening introduction to behind-the-scenes doings that rivals any drama being enacted on the stage. Over the course of 24 essays a picture gradually emerges of all the phases of Wendy Lesser's life in the world and of the mind.
Whether she's discussing her disastrous affair with a young Englishman during her postgraduate years at Cambridge, the poet Thom Gunn, or her cat, Ralph ("I had a cat without a nose"), Lesser does so with intelligence, humor, and deep insight. Reading her is something like having a conversation with an old friend--that delightful sense of kinship even when you disagree. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Annie Johnby Jamaica KincaidISBN 0374525102 (0-374-52510-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Annie John'Book summary:Jamaica Kincaid beautifully delineates hatred and fear, because she knows they are often a step away from love and obsession. At the start of Annie John, her 10-year-old heroine is engulfed in family happiness and safety. Though Annie loves her father, she is all eyes for her mother. When she is almost 12, however, the idyll ends and she falls into deep disfavor. This inexplicable loss mars both lives, as each grows adept at public falsity and silent betrayal. The pattern is set, and extended: "And now I started a new series of betrayals of people and things I would have sworn only minutes before to die for." In front of Annie's father and the world, "We were politeness and kindness and love and laughter." Alone they are linked in loathing. Annie tries to imagine herself as someone in a book--an orphan or a girl with a wicked stepmother. The trouble is, she finds, those characters' lives always end happily. Luckily for us, though not perhaps for her alter ego, Kincaid is too truthful a writer to provide such a finale. [via]
The Art of Teaching Art to Children: In School and at Homeby Gloria Bley Miller, Nancy BealISBN 0374527709 (0-374-52770-9)
Softcover, Sunburst
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The Blind Assassinby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0375430857 (0-375-43085-7)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Blind Assassin'Book summary:The Blind Assassin is a tale of two sisters, one of whom dies under ambiguous circumstances in the opening pages. The survivor, Iris Chase Griffen, initially seems a little cold-blooded about this death in the family. But as Margaret Atwood's most ambitious work unfolds--a tricky process, in fact, with several nested narratives and even an entire novel-within-a-novel--we're reminded of just how complicated the familial game of hide-and-seek can be:
What had she been thinking of as the car sailed off the bridge, then hung suspended in the afternoon sunlight, glinting like a dragonfly, for that one instant of held breath before the plummet? Of Alex, of Richard, of bad faith, of our father and his wreckage; of God, perhaps, and her fatal, triangular bargain.
Meanwhile, Atwood immediately launches into an excerpt from Laura Chase's novel, The Blind Assassin, posthumously published in 1947. In this double-decker concoction, a wealthy woman dabbles in blue-collar passion, even as her lover regales her with a series of science-fictional parables. Complicated? You bet. But the author puts all this variegation to good use, taking expert measure of our capacity for self-delusion and complicity, not to mention desolation. Almost everybody in her sprawling narrative manages to--or prefers to--overlook what's in plain sight. And memory isn't much of a salve either, as Iris points out: "Nothing is more difficult than to understand the dead, I've found; but nothing is more dangerous than to ignore them." Yet Atwood never succumbs to postmodern cynicism, or modish contempt for her characters. On the contrary, she's capable of great tenderness, and as we immerse ourselves in Iris's spliced-in memoir, it's clear that this buttoned-up socialite has been anything but blind to the chaos surrounding her. --Darya Silver [via]More editions of The Blind Assassin:
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The Book on the Bookshelfby Henry PetroskiISBN 0375406492 (0-375-40649-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book on the Bookshelf'Book summary:Consider the book. Though Goodnight Moon and Finnegans Wake differ considerably in content and intended audience, they do share some basic characteristics. They have pages, they're roughly the same shape, and whether in a bookstore, library, or private home, they are generally stored vertically on shelves. Indeed, this is so much the norm that in these days of high-tech printing presses and chain bookstores, it's easy to believe that the book, like the cockroach, remains much the same as it ever was. But as Henry Petroski makes abundantly clear in Book on the Bookshelf, books as we know them have had a long and complex evolution. Indeed, he takes us from the scroll to the codex to the hand-lettered illuminated texts that were so rare and valuable they were chained to lecterns to prevent theft. Along the way he provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about libraries (according to one possibly apocryphal account, the library at Alexandria borrowed the works of the great Greek authors from Athens, had them copied, and then sent the copies back, keeping the originals), book collectors, and the care of books.
Book-lover though he may be, however, Henry Petroski is, first and foremost, an engineer and so, in the end, it is the evolution of bookshelves even more than of books that fascinates him. Pigeonholes for scrolls, book presses containing thousands of chained volumes, rotating lecterns that allowed scholars to peruse more than one book at a time--these are just a few of the ingenious methods readers have devised over the centuries for storing their books: "in cabinets beneath the desks, on shelves in front of them, in triangular attic-like spaces formed under the back-to-back sloped surfaces of desktops or small tabletop lecterns that rested upon a horizontal surface." Placing books vertically on shelves, spines facing outward, is a fairly recent invention, it would seem. Well written as it is, if Book on the Bookshelf were only about books-as-furniture, it would have little appeal to the general reader. Petroski, however, uses this treatise on design to examine the very human motivations that lie behind it. From the example of Samuel Pepys, who refused to have more titles than his library could hold (about 3,000), to an appendix detailing all the ways people organize their collections (by sentimental value, by size, by color, and by price, to name a few of the more unconventional methods), Petroski peppers his account with enough human interest to keep his audience reading from cover to cover. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Borderlinersby Peter Hoeg, Barbara HavelandISBN 0374115540 (0-374-11554-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Breaking Out: Vmi and the Coming of Womenby Laura Fairchild BrodieISBN 0375705813 (0-375-70581-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Child's Conception of Movement and Speedby Jean PiagetISBN 0345328000 (0-345-32800-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Child's Conception of Timeby Jean PiagetISBN 0345327950 (0-345-32795-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Classby Paul FussellISBN 0345318161 (0-345-31816-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Class'Book summary:In Class Paul Fussell explodes the sacred American myth of social equality with eagle-eyed irreverence and iconoclastic wit. This bestselling, superbly researched, exquisitely observed guide to the signs, symbols, and customs of the American class system is always outrageously on the mark as Fussell shows us how our status is revealed by everything we do, say, and own. He describes the houses, objects, artifacts, speech, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from the top to the bottom and everybody -- you'll surely recognize yourself -- in between. Class is guaranteed to amuse and infuriate, whether your class is so high it's out of sight (literally) or you are, alas, a sinking victim of prole drift [via]
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The Complete Book of Food: A Nutritional, Medical & Culinary Guideby Carol Ann RinzlerISBN 0345348761 (0-345-34876-1)
Hardcover, World Almanac
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Construction of Reality in the Childby Jean PiagetISBN 0345328035 (0-345-32803-5)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Delivered From Distraction: Getting The Most Out Of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder.by Edward M. Hallowell, John J. RateyISBN 0345442318 (0-345-44231-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Delivered From Distraction: Getting The Most Out Of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder.'Book summary:In 1994, Driven to Distraction sparked a revolution in our understanding of attention deficit disorder. Widely recognized as the classic in the field, the book has sold more than a million copies. Now a second revolution is under way in the approach to ADD, and the news is great. Drug therapies, our understanding of the role of diet and exercise, even the way we define the disorderall are changing radically. And doctors are realizing that millions of adults suffer from this condition, though the vast majority of them remain undiagnosed and untreated. In this new book, Drs. Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey build on the breakthroughs of Driven to Distraction to offer a comprehensive and entirely up-to-date guide to living a successful life with ADD.
As Hallowell and Ratey point out, attention deficit disorder is a highly misleading description of an intriguing kind of mind. Original, charismatic, energetic, often brilliant, people with ADD have extraordinary talents and gifts embedded in their highly charged but easily distracted minds. Tailored expressly to ADD learning styles and attention spans, Delivered from Distraction provides accessible, engaging discussions of every aspect of the condition, from diagnosis to finding the proper treatment regime. Inside youll discover
" whether ADD runs in families
" new diagnostic procedures, tests, and evaluations
" the links between ADD and other conditions
" how people with ADD can free up their inner talents and strengths
" the new drugs and how they work, and why theyre not for everyone
" exciting advances in nonpharmaceutical therapies, including changes in diet, exercise, and lifestyle
" how to adapt the classic twelve-step program to treat ADD
" sexual problems associated with ADD and how to resolve them
" strategies for dealing with procrastination, clutter, and chronic forgetfulness
ADD is a trait, a way of living in the world. It only becomes a disorder when it impairs your life. Featuring gripping profiles of patients with ADD who have triumphed, Delivered from Distraction is a wise, loving guide to releasing the positive energy that all people with ADD hold inside. If you have ADD or care about someone who does, this is the book you must read. [via]More editions of Delivered From Distraction: Getting The Most Out Of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder.:
- Delivered From Distraction: Getting The Most Out Of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder.: ISBN 034544230X (0-345-44230-X)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books - Delivered From Distraction: Getting The Most Out Of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder.: ISBN 0345442318 (0-345-44231-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
- Delivered From Distraction: Getting The Most Out Of Life With Attention Deficit Disorder.: ISBN 034544230X (0-345-44230-X)
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Desert Solitaireby Edward AbbeyISBN 0345326490 (0-345-32649-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Desert Solitaire'Book summary:a passionately felt, deeply poetic book. It has philosophy. It has humor. It has its share of nerve-tingling adventures...set down in a lean, racing prose, in a close-knit style of power and beauty."the new york times bookreviewedward abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at moab, utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a fascinating, sometimes raucous, always personal account of a place that has already disappeared, but is worth remembering and living through again and again [via]
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Development As Freedomby Amartya SenISBN 0375406190 (0-375-40619-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Development As Freedom'Book summary:Development as Freedom is a general exposition of the economic ideas and analyses of Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Science. This brilliant and indispensable treatise compellingly analyzes the nature of contemporary economic development from the perspective of human freedom. Freedom, Sen persuasively argues, is at once the ultimate goal of economic life and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. It is a good to be enjoyed by the world's entire population. Drawing on moral and political philosophy and technical economic analysis, this work gives the nonspecialist reader powerful access to Sen's paradigm-altering vision and vividly shows how he, in the words of the Nobel Prize committee, has both "restored an ethical dimension to the discussion of economic problems" and "opened up new fields of study for subsequent generations of researchers."
To a world divided between those who fear the ruthlessness of the free market under prevailing conditions of global capitalism and those who fear the terror of authoritarian states that stifle indi-
vidual liberty as well as initiative, Development as Freedom presents a necessary intellectual and moral framework of analysis and scrutiny. By rigorously addressing one of the largest questions of all--"What is the relation between our economic wealth and our ability to live as we would like?"--Sen allows economics once again, as it did in the time of Adam Smith, to address the social basis of individual well-being and freedom. He also confronts the human dilemma that "despite unprecedented increases in overall opulence, the contemporary world denies elementary freedoms to vast numbers--perhaps even the majority--of people." This is a landmark work that shows how in individual human freedom--the exclusive possession, Sen shows, of no particular nation, region or historical, intellectual or religious tradition--lies the capacity for political participation, economic development and social progress. [via]More editions of Development As Freedom:
Dictionary of Misinformationby Tom BurnamISBN 0345321340 (0-345-32134-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Dreamers, Discoverers, and Dynamos: How to Help the Child Who Is Bright, Bored, and Having Problems in Schoolby Lucy Jo PalladinoISBN 0345405730 (0-345-40573-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Educating Alice : Adventures of a Curious Womanby Alice SteinbachISBN 0375504419 (0-375-50441-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Esperantoby John Hartley, Cresswell, John & Hartley, JohnISBN 0340270225 (0-340-27022-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Essaysby George Orwell, John CareyISBN 0375415033 (0-375-41503-3)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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A Fine Balance : A Novelby Rohinton MistryISBN 0375414819 (0-375-41481-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Fine Balance : A Novel'Book summary:With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India. The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.
As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state. [via]More editions of A Fine Balance : A Novel:
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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generationby Joseph J. EllisISBN 0375705244 (0-375-70524-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation'Book summary: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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The Future of Ideas : The Fate of the Commons in a Connected Worldby Lawrence LessigISBN 0375505784 (0-375-50578-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Future of Ideas : The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World'Book summary:If The Future of Ideas is bleak, we have nobody to blame but ourselves. Author Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor and keen observer of emerging technologies, makes a strong case that large corporations are staging an innovation-stifling power grab while we watch idly. The changes in copyright and other forms of intellectual property protection demanded by the media and software industries have the potential to choke off publicly held material, which Lessig sees as a kind of intellectual commons. He eloquently and persuasively decries this lopsided control of ideas and suggests practical solutions that consider the rights of both creators and consumers, while acknowledging the serious impact of new technologies on old ways of doing business. His proposals would let existing companies make money without using the tremendous advantages of incumbency to eliminate new killer apps before they can threaten the status quo. Readers who want a fair intellectual marketplace would do well to absorb the lessons in The Future of Ideas. --Rob Lightner [via]
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Geeks : How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idahoby Jon KatzISBN 037550298X (0-375-50298-X)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Geeks : How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho'Book summary:Teenage hackers Jesse Dailey and Eric Twilegar are the heroes of Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet out of Idaho, a thoughtful, affecting pop ethnography--and heroes is exactly what Jon Katz wants you to see them as. To the rest of the world, themselves included, they are geeks, which is a complicated thing to be these days. With the rise of the networked economy, the world and its wealth have become increasingly dependent on the expertise of Star Wars-loving, cola-swilling propellerheads everywhere. Yet at the same time, the typical geek--especially the typical adolescent geek--remains a consummate outsider, with passions for technological arcana that are both alienating and empowering.
Katz, a writer for both Rolling Stone and the profoundly geeky Web site Slashdot.org, does a fine job of mapping this ambiguous new state of affairs (the Geek Ascendancy, he calls it). But the book's heart and soul is the well-told tale of Jesse and Eric's adventurous flight from lonely, dead-end lives in Idaho Mormon country to brighter possibilities in Chicago.
Katz argues that this great escape couldn't have happened without the networks (both social and technological) that are the lifeblood of '90s geekdom, but he doesn't let his celebratory argument get in the way of the story. Although he's a tireless advocate for geeks (the last chapters retrace his impassioned advocacy for brooding teenage weirdos in the face of post-Columbine media attacks), he presents their culture warts and all, with its tendencies toward social awkwardness and arrogance recognizably intact. He doesn't demand your sympathy for his heroes and their world--but he wins it anyway, by bringing them vividly and honestly to life. --Julian Dibbell [via]
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Give Your Child a Superior Mind: A Program for the Preschool Childby Siegfried Engelmann, Therese EngelmannISBN 0346125324 (0-346-12532-4)
Softcover, Cornerstone Library
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Hard Lessons : The Promise of an Inner City Charter Schoolby Jonathan SchorrISBN 0345447026 (0-345-44702-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Hidden Truth of Your Name: A Complete Guide to First Names and What They Say About the Real Youby The Nomenology ProjectISBN 034542266X (0-345-42266-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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A History of Knowledge: Past, Present and Futureby Charles Van DorenISBN 0345373162 (0-345-37316-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of Knowledge: Past, Present and Future'Book summary:A one-voume reference to the history of ideas that is a compendium of everything that humankind has thought, invented, created, considered, and perfected from the beginning of civilization into the twenty-first century. Massive in its scope, and yet totally accessible, A HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE covers not only all the great theories and discoveries of the human race, but also explores the social conditions, political climates, and individual men and women of genius that brought ideas to fruition throughout history.
"Crystal clear and concise...Explains how humankind got to know what it knows."
Clifton Fadiman
Selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the History Book Club [via]More editions of A History of Knowledge: Past, Present and Future:
Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peersby Gordon NeufeldISBN 037550821X (0-375-50821-X)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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How Reading Changed My Lifeby Anna QuindlenISBN 0345422783 (0-345-42278-3)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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How to Speak Like a Proby Leon FletcherISBN 0345410351 (0-345-41035-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sapphoby Sappho, Anne CarsonISBN 0375410678 (0-375-41067-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho'Book summary:A bilingual edition of the work of the Greek poet Sappho, in a new translation by Anne Carson.Sappho lived on the island of Lesbos from about 630 b.c. She was a musical genius who devoted her life to composing and performing songs. Of the nine books of lyrics Sappho is said to have composed, none of the music is extant and only one poem has survived complete. All the rest are fragments. In If Not, Winter Carson presents all of Sappho's fragments in Greek and in English. Brackets and space give the reader a sense of what is absent as well as what is present on the papyrus. Carson's translation illuminates Sappho's reflections on love, desire, marriage, exile, cushions, bees, old age, shame, time, chickpeas and many other aspects of the human situation. [via]
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Interactive Excellence- : Defining and Developing New Standardsby Edwin SchlossbergISBN 0345423712 (0-345-42371-2)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Introducing Functional Grammarby Michael A.K. HallidayISBN 0340574917 (0-340-57491-7)
Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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An Introduction To Functional Grammarby Geoff Thompson, Christian M.I.M. MatthiessenISBN 0340761679 (0-340-76167-9)
Softcover, Hodder Arnold
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An Introduction To Functional Grammar'Book summary:This third edition of An Introduction to Functional Grammar has been extensively revised. While retaining the organization and coverage of the earlier editions, it incorporates a considerable amount of new material. This includes strengthening the grammar through the use of data from a large-scale corpus, upgrading the description throughout, and giving greater emphasis to the systemic perspective, in which grammaticalization is understood in the context of an overall model of language.
The approach taken in the book overcomes the distinction between theoretical and applied linguistics. The description of grammar is grounded in a comprehensive theory, but it is a theory which evolves in the process of being applied. [via]More editions of An Introduction To Functional Grammar:
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The Invisible Manby Ralph EllisonISBN 0375507914 (0-375-50791-4)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invisible Man'Book summary:We rely, in this world, on the visual aspects of humanity as a means of learning who we are. This, Ralph Ellison argues convincingly, is a dangerous habit. A classic from the moment it first appeared in 1952, Invisible Man chronicles the travels of its narrator, a young, nameless black man, as he moves through the hellish levels of American intolerance and cultural blindness. Searching for a context in which to know himself, he exists in a very peculiar state. "I am an invisible man," he says in his prologue. "When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination--indeed, everything and anything except me." But this is hard-won self-knowledge, earned over the course of many years.
As the book gets started, the narrator is expelled from his Southern Negro college for inadvertently showing a white trustee the reality of black life in the south, including an incestuous farmer and a rural whorehouse. The college director chastises him: "Why, the dumbest black bastard in the cotton patch knows that the only way to please a white man is to tell him a lie! What kind of an education are you getting around here?" Mystified, the narrator moves north to New York City, where the truth, at least as he perceives it, is dealt another blow when he learns that his former headmaster's recommendation letters are, in fact, letters of condemnation.
What ensues is a search for what truth actually is, which proves to be supremely elusive. The narrator becomes a spokesman for a mixed-race band of social activists called "The Brotherhood" and believes he is fighting for equality. Once again, he realizes he's been duped into believing what he thought was the truth, when in fact it is only another variation. Of the Brothers, he eventually discerns: "They were blind, bat blind, moving only by the echoed sounds of their voices. And because they were blind they would destroy themselves.... Here I thought they accepted me because they felt that color made no difference, when in reality it made no difference because they didn't see either color or men."
Invisible Man is certainly a book about race in America, and sadly enough, few of the problems it chronicles have disappeared even now. But Ellison's first novel transcends such a narrow definition. It's also a book about the human race stumbling down the path to identity, challenged and successful to varying degrees. None of us can ever be sure of the truth beyond ourselves, and possibly not even there. The world is a tricky place, and no one knows this better than the invisible man, who leaves us with these chilling, provocative words: "And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?" --Melanie Rehak [via]
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A Is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United Statesby Jill LeporeISBN 0375704086 (0-375-70408-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Is That in the Bible?by Charles PotterISBN 034532109X (0-345-32109-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Keeping Your Personal Journalby George SimonsISBN 0345336631 (0-345-33663-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Know Your Child: How to Discover and Enhance Your Child's Potentialby Miriam StoppardISBN 0345370562 (0-345-37056-2)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academeby Russell JacobyISBN 0374521751 (0-374-52175-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Laws of Order: A Book of Hierarchies, Rankings, Infrastructures, Measurements, and Sizesby Jeff RovinISBN 0345365852 (0-345-36585-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Laws of Order: A Book of Hierarchies, Rankings, Infrastructures, Measurements, and Sizes'Book summary:A guide to the rules that govern a variety of systems includes descriptions of the pecking order of witch covens, lists who eats whom in the food chain, and explains how atoms are arranged. [via]
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Learning to Readby Margaret Meek, Margaret Meek SpencerISBN 0370301544 (0-370-30154-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Loosing My Espanish: A Novelby H. G. CarrilloISBN 0375423192 (0-375-42319-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Lifeby Sissela BokISBN 0375705287 (0-375-70528-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life'Book summary:A thoughtful addition to the growing debate over public and private morality. Looks at lying and deception in law, family, medicine, government. [via]
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Microcosmographia Academicaby F.M. CornfordISBN 0370001451 (0-370-00145-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Mom and Dad Conversation Pieceby Paul Lowrie, Bret NicholausISBN 034540713X (0-345-40713-X)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Wildflowers: Western Regionby Richard Spellenberg, National Audubon SocietyISBN 0375402330 (0-375-40233-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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No Man in the Houseby Cecil FosterISBN 0345380673 (0-345-38067-3)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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Not in Front of the Children: Indecency, Censorship, and the Innocence of Youthby Marjorie HeinsISBN 0374175454 (0-374-17545-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Not in Front of the Children: Indecency, Censorship, and the Innocence of Youth'Book summary:The first comprehensive history of our battles over children and censorship.
From Huckleberry Finn to Harry Potter, Internet filters to the V-chip, censorship exercised on behalf of children and adolescents is often based on the assumption that they must be protected from "indecent" information that might harm their development -- whether in art, in literature, or on a Web site. But where does this assumption come from, and is it true?
In Not in Front of the Children, Marjorie Heins explores the fascinating history of "indecency" laws and other restrictions aimed at protecting youth. From Plato's argument for rigid censorship, through Victorian laws aimed at repressing libidinous thoughts, to contemporary battles over sex education in public schools and violence in the media, Heins guides us through what became, and remains, an ideological minefield. With fascinating examples drawn from around the globe, she suggests that the "harm-to-minors" argument rests on shaky foundations.
There is an urgent need for informed, dispassionate debate about the perceived conflict between the free-expression rights of young people and the widespread urge to shield, protect, or censor them. Not in Front of the Children will spur this long-needed conversation. [via]
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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:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
One of the supreme masterpieces of world literature, the Homeric saga of the shipwrecks, wanderings, and homecoming of the master tactician Odysseus encompasses a virtual inventory of the themes and attitudes that have shaped Western culture. The tale of Odysseuss encounters with such obstacles as Calypso, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, and the lotus-eaters, and his dramatic return to Ithaca and his patient wife, Penelope, forms a prototype for all subsequent Western epics.
Robert Fitzgeralds much-acclaimed translation, fully possessing as it does the body and spirit of the original, has helped to assure the continuing vitality of Europes most influential work of poetry. This edition includes twenty-five new line drawings by Barnaby Fitzgerald. [via] 
Old Schoolby Tobias WolffISBN 0375701494 (0-375-70149-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Old School'Book summary: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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On Being Literateby Margaret Meek SpencerISBN 0370311906 (0-370-31190-6)
Hardcover, Bodley Head
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Positive Disciplineby Jane NelsenISBN 0345487672 (0-345-48767-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Positive Discipline'Book summary:For twenty-five years, Positive Discipline has been the gold standard reference for grown-ups working with children. Now Jane Nelsen, distinguished psychologist, educator, and mother of seven, has written a revised and expanded edition. The key to positive discipline is not punishment, she tells us, but mutual respect. Nelsen coaches parents and teachers to be both firm and kind, so that any childfrom a three-year-old toddler to a rebellious teenagercan learn creative cooperation and self-discipline with no loss of dignity. Inside youll discover how to
" bridge communication gaps
" defuse power struggles
" avoid the dangers of praise
" enforce your message of love
" build on strengths, not weaknesses
" hold children accountable with their self-respect intact
" teach children not what to think but how to think
" win cooperation at home and at school
" meet the special challenge of teen misbehavior
It is not easy to improve a classic book, but Jane Nelson has done so in this revised edition. Packed with updated examples that are clear and specific, Positive Discipline shows parents exactly how to focus on solutions while being kind and firm. If you want to enrich your relationship with your children, this is the book for you.
Sal Severe, author of How to Behave So Your Children Will, Too!
Millions of children have already benefited from the counsel in this wise and warmhearted book, which features dozens of true stories of positive discipline in action. Give your child the tools he or she needs for a well-adjusted life with this proven treasure trove of practical advice. [via]
Quick Studies: The Best of Lingua Francaby Alexander StarISBN 0374528632 (0-374-52863-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Quirky Kids: Understanding and Helping Your Child Who Doesn't Fit in- When to Worry and When Not to Worryby Perri Klass, Eileen CostelloISBN 0345451430 (0-345-45143-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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- Quirky Kids : Understanding and Helping Your Child Who Doesn't Fit In--When to Worry and When Not to Worry: ISBN 0345451422 (0-345-45142-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group - Quirky Kids: Understanding and Helping Your Child Who Doesn't Fit in- When to Worry and When Not to Worry: ISBN 0345451430 (0-345-45143-0)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
- Quirky Kids : Understanding and Helping Your Child Who Doesn't Fit In--When to Worry and When Not to Worry: ISBN 0345451422 (0-345-45142-2)
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The Random House Basic Dictionary: Germanby Jenni K. MoultonISBN 0345346009 (0-345-34600-9)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Random House Basic Dictionary: German'Book summary:The best dictionary bargain around, THE RANDOM HOUSE BASIC DICTIONARY FOR GERMAN is ideal for students, teachers, and travelers. It offers a pronunciation guide, a listing of useful phrases, plus days and months, numbers, signs--over 40,000 modern entries in all. [via]
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The Random House Basic Dictionary Spanish-English, English-Spanishby Donald SolaISBN 0345337115 (0-345-33711-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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![[???]: Random House Webster's College Dictionary](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0375407413.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg "[???]: Random House Webster's College Dictionary")
Random House Webster's College DictionaryISBN 0375407413 (0-375-40741-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Random House Webster's College Dictionaryby Random House Dictionary StaffISBN 0375425608 (0-375-42560-8)
Hardcover, Random House Information Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Random House Webster's College Dictionary'Book summary:Webster's annually updated dictionary offers an outstanding blend of new-millennium lingo and the classic words and origins of the English language. For instance, it includes extensive computer terminology, such as bot, cookie, and terabyte, as well as cyberjargon, such as clicks-and-mortar ("adj. pertaining to being a company that does business on the Internet and in traditional stores or offices"). It even has slang listings for my bad! ("slang. my fault! my mistake!") and senior moment ("n. ((often facetious)) a brief lapse in memory or moment of confusion, esp. in an older person"). Inclusions like these appeal especially to generation X and even generation Y ("n. the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the United States").
Readers of all generations will appreciate the numerous tutorials, such as "Guide for Writers" and "Avoiding Offensive Language," as well as the latest political and geographical updates. Including the computer lingo and trendy slang is definitely edgy ("adj. daringly innovative; on the cutting edge"). But, when it comes to being a solid reference tool, it's the sophisticated definitions, line drawings, maps, charts, essays, and usage advice that make Webster's dictionary unequivocally candy ("slang. someone or something that is excellent. pleasing or pleasurable"). --Gail Hudson [via]
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Random House Webster's College Dictionaryby Random House StaffISBN 0375425616 (0-375-42561-6)
Hardcover, Random House Information Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Random House Webster's College Dictionary'Book summary:Webster's annually updated dictionary offers an outstanding blend of new-millennium lingo and the classic words and origins of the English language. For instance, it includes extensive computer terminology, such as bot, cookie, and terabyte, as well as cyberjargon, such as clicks-and-mortar ("adj. pertaining to being a company that does business on the Internet and in traditional stores or offices"). It even has slang listings for my bad! ("slang. my fault! my mistake!") and senior moment ("n. ((often facetious)) a brief lapse in memory or moment of confusion, esp. in an older person"). Inclusions like these appeal especially to generation X and even generation Y ("n. the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the United States").
Readers of all generations will appreciate the numerous tutorials, such as "Guide for Writers" and "Avoiding Offensive Language," as well as the latest political and geographical updates. Including the computer lingo and trendy slang is definitely edgy ("adj. daringly innovative; on the cutting edge"). But, when it comes to being a solid reference tool, it's the sophisticated definitions, line drawings, maps, charts, essays, and usage advice that make Webster's dictionary unequivocally candy ("slang. someone or something that is excellent. pleasing or pleasurable"). --Gail Hudson [via]
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Reversalsby Eileen SimpsonISBN 0374523169 (0-374-52316-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Reversals'Book summary:There was something wrong with my brain. What had previously been a shadowy suspicion that hovered on the edge of consciousness became certain knowledge the year I was nine and entered fourth grade. I seemed to be like other children, but I was not like them; I could not learn to read or spell.
In this first account of what it is like to grow up dyslexic, Eileen Simpson vividly recreates the frightening world of a child living in the limbo of illiteracy. Simpson's lack of reading skills so exasperated her teachers and relatives that they began to think she was mentally retarded. She could get lost walking to the grocery store; at times she felt as if she had no control over her speech. It was not until she was twenty-two that her future husband, the poet John Berryman, finally named her mysterious ailment.
Simpson intersperses her narrative with nontechnical explanations of dyslexia and what is being done to treat it. But despite growing public awareness and advances in research, dyslexia remains a frustrating and frightening disorder.Eileen Simpson is a psychotherapist and writer whose work includes Poets in Their Youth. She lives in New York City.In this firsthand account of what it is like to grow up dyslexic, Eileen Simpson vividly re-creates the frightening world of a child living in the limbo of illiteracy. Simpson's lack of reading skills so exasperated her teaches and relatives that they began to think she was mentally retarded. She could get lost walking to the grocery store; at times she felt as if she had no control over her speech. It was not until she was twenty-two that her future husband, the poet John Berryman, finally named her mysterious ailment.
Simpson intersperses her narrative with nontechnical explanations of dyslexia and what is being done to treat it. But despite growing public awareness and advances in research, dyslexia remains a frustrating disorder."The estimated 23 million or more dyslexics in this country and those close to them have reason to be grateful to Eileen Simpson."The New York Times Book Review[via]
"Takes the reader to the heart of an alien condition; reading can offer no richer experience."Frances Taliaferro, Harper's Magazine
"Essential for libraries with parent guidance collections, and highly recommended for all who have struggled to help children who cannot read."Library JournalMore editions of Reversals:
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Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Childrenby Jonathan KellermanISBN 0345429397 (0-345-42939-7)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children'Book summary:Jonathan Kellerman is best known as the author of a series of bestselling suspense novels starring psychologist sleuth Dr. Alex Delaware, but his nonliterary background is as a children's clinical psychologist. In Savage Spawn, inspired by the schoolyard shootings that took place in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Springfield, Oregon, in 1998, he brings his training to bear on the question of how children can become cold-blooded killers. Kellerman has as much--perhaps more--to say about the broader issue of the nature of psychopathy, however, than he does about youth violence, though he does occasionally bring the two themes together. But Savage Spawn is essentially a hundred-page-plus op-ed piece rooted in Kellerman's belief that there are fundamentally bad people in the world and that the response to the perpetrators of violent acts such as the shooting at Jonesboro should be to "lock them up till they die." (Although published shortly after the multiple-death shooting in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999, the book was clearly written before this incident took place.) Readers may ultimately prefer more detailed considerations such as William Pollack's Real Boys or Lost Boys, by James Garbarino. [via]
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School Savvy: Everything You Need to Know to Guide Your Child Through Today's Schoolsby Diane Harrington, Laurette YoungISBN 0374523800 (0-374-52380-0)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deafby Oliver W. SacksISBN 0375704078 (0-375-70407-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf'Book summary:Like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, this is a fascinating voyage into a strange and wonderful land, a provocative meditation on communication, biology, adaptation, and culture. In Seeing Voices, Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the subject of deafness, and the result is a deeply felt portrait of a minority struggling for recognition and respect--a minority with its own rich, sometimes astonishing, culture and unique visual language, an extraordinary mode of communication that tells us much about the basis of language in hearing people as well. Seeing Voices is, as Studs Terkel has written, "an exquisite, as well as revelatory, work." [via]
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A Short History of Nearly Everythingby Bill BrysonISBN 0375432000 (0-375-43200-0)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'Book summary:One of the worlds most beloved and bestselling writers takes his ultimate journey -- into the most intriguing and intractable questions that science seeks to answer.
In A Walk in the Woods, Bill Bryson trekked the Appalachian Trail -- well, most of it. In In A Sunburned Country, he confronted some of the most lethal wildlife Australia has to offer. Now, in his biggest book, he confronts his greatest challenge: to understand -- and, if possible, answer -- the oldest, biggest questions we have posed about the universe and ourselves. Taking as territory everything from the Big Bang to the rise of civilization, Bryson seeks to understand how we got from there being nothing at all to there being us. To that end, he has attached himself to a host of the worlds most advanced (and often obsessed) archaeologists, anthropologists, and mathematicians, travelling to their offices, laboratories, and field camps. He has read (or tried to read) their books, pestered them with questions, apprenticed himself to their powerful minds. A Short History of Nearly Everything is the record of this quest, and it is a sometimes profound, sometimes funny, and always supremely clear and entertaining adventure in the realms of human knowledge, as only Bill Bryson can render it. Science has never been more involving or entertaining. [via]More editions of A Short History of Nearly Everything:
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The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darknessby Karen ArmstrongISBN 0375413189 (0-375-41318-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness'Book summary:Karen Armstrong speaks to the troubling years following her decision to leave the life of a Roman Catholic nun and join the secular world in 1969. What makes this memoir especially fascinating is that Armstrong already wrote about this era once---only it was a disastrous book. It was too soon for her to understand how these dark, struggling years influenced her spiritual development, and she was too immature to protect herself from being be bullied by the publishing world. As a result, she agreed to portray herself only in as "positive and lively a light as possible"---a mandate that gave her permission to deny the truth of her pain and falsify her inner experience. The inspiration for this new approach comes from T. S. Eliot's Ash Wednesday, a series of six poems that speak to the process of spiritual recovery. Eliot metaphorically climbs a spiral staircase in these poems---turning again and again to what he does not want to see as he slowly makes progress toward the light. In revisiting her spiral climb out of her dark night of the soul, Armstrong gives readers a stunningly poignant account about the nature of spiritual growth. Upon leaving the convent, Armstrong grapples with the grief of her abandoned path and the uncertainty of her place in the world. On top of this angst, Armstrong spent years suffering from undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy, causing her to have frequent blackout lapses in memory and disturbing hallucinations---crippling symptoms that her psychiatrist adamantly attributed to Armstrong's denial of her femininity and sexuality. The details of this narrative may be specific to Armstrong's life, but the meanin! g she makes of her spiral ascent makes this a universally relevant story. All readers can glean inspiration from her insights into the nature of surrender and the possibilities of finding solace in the absence of hope. Armstrong shows us why spiritual wisdom is often a seasoned gift---no matter how much we strive for understanding, we can't force profound insights to occur simply because our publisher is waiting for them. With her elegant, humble and brave voice, she inspires readers to willingly turn our attention toward our false identities and vigilantly defended beliefs in order to better see the truth and vulnerability of our existence. Herein lies the staircase we can climb to enlightenment. --Gail Hudson [via]
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Sputnik Sweetheart : A Novelby Haruki Murakami, Philip GabrielISBN 0375411690 (0-375-41169-0)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sputnik Sweetheart : A Novel'Book summary:Sputnik Sweetheart finds Haruki Murakami in his minimalist mode. Shorter than the sweeping Wind-up Bird Chronicle, less playfully bizarre than A Wild Sheep Chase, the author's seventh novel distills his signature themes into a powerful story about the loneliness of the human condition. "There was nothing solid we could depend on," the reader is told. "We were nearly boundless zeros, just pitiful little beings swept from one kind of oblivion to another."
The narrator is a teacher whose only close friend is Sumire, an aspiring young novelist with chronic writer's block. Sumire is suddenly smitten with a sophisticated businesswoman and accompanies her love object to Europe where, on a tiny Greek island, she disappears "like smoke." The schoolteacher hastens to the island in search of his friend. And there he discovers two documents on her computer, one of which reveals a chilling secret about Sumire's lover.
Sputnik Sweetheart is a melancholy love story, and its deceptively simple prose is saturated with sadness. Characters struggle to connect with one another but never quite succeed. Like the satellite of the title they are essentially alone. And by toning down the pyrotechnics of his earlier work, Murakami has created a world that is simultaneously mundane and disturbing--where doppelgängers and vanishing cats produce a pervasive atmosphere of alienation, and identity itself seems like a terribly fragile thing. --Simon Leake [via]
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Straight Manby Richard RussoISBN 0375701907 (0-375-70190-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Sun-Tzu: The Art of Warfare The First English Translation Incorporating the Recently Discovered Yin-Ch'Ueh-Shan Textsby Roger T. Ames, Sun-TzuISBN 034536239X (0-345-36239-X)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sun-Tzu: The Art of Warfare The First English Translation Incorporating the Recently Discovered Yin-Ch'Ueh-Shan Texts'Book summary:The most widely read military classic in human history, newly translated and revised in accordance with newly discovered materials of unprecedented historical significance. Fluid, crisp and rigorously faithful to the original, this new text is destined to stand as the definitive version of this cornerstone work of Classical Chinese. Of compelling importance not only to students of Chinese history and literature, but to all readers interested in the art or the philosophy of war. [via]
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Teach Yourself Sanskritby CoulsonISBN 0340059826 (0-340-05982-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Teaching Children Responsibilityby Linda Eyre, Richard EyreISBN 0345327039 (0-345-32703-9)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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To Serve Them All My Daysby R. F. DelderfieldISBN 0340149965 (0-340-14996-5)
Hardcover, Hodder and Stoughton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To Serve Them All My Days'Book summary:Young David Powlett-Jones, a Welsh miner's son, is invalided home from France when he suffers severe shell shock on the Western Front. At a remote English public school in Devon the debilitated veteran, himself barely out of his teens, decides temporarily to try his hand at teaching while striving to awaken from the nightmare of World War I -- the national catastrophe that sweeps England out of the comfortable certainties of the Victorian Age into the moral perplexities and harsh economic realities of more modern times. [via]
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A Tribe Apartby Patricia HerschISBN 034543594X (0-345-43594-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The Unburiedby Charles PalliserISBN 0374280355 (0-374-28035-5)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Unburied'Book summary:Though putatively a mystery set (mostly) in the Victorian age, Charles Palliser's The Unburied has more in common with Umberto Eco than Arthur Conan Doyle. Like The Name of the Rose, this novel is set in a scholarly community and features a lost manuscript as the McGuffin of choice. And here, too, the mystery is not really what the book is about at all. Palliser's tale centers on Edward Courtine, a Cambridge don with a bee in his bonnet about Alfred the Great. It doesn't take a great medievalist to figure out that Courtine has allowed emotion to cloud his reason concerning the Saxon monarch: his version of Alfred's life and character is so forgiving as to be downright suspicious.
When it is suggested that a source dear to his heart may in fact be fraudulent, he accuses his critics of cowardice. According to Courtine, those revisionist scoundrels doubt the veracity of his beloved source "because their own self-serving cynicism is reproached by the portrait of the king that Grimbald offers. You see, his account confirms how extraordinarily brave and resourceful and learned Alfred was, and what a generous and much-loved man." Now Courtine has come to the cathedral town of Thurcester because he believes Grimbald's original manuscript may be in the cathedral library--a manuscript that he hopes will validate his own version of the great king's reign.
Palliser takes his time setting up his story, seeding it with clues that more often than not lead to dead ends. We learn, for example, that Courtine was once married, that his wife ran off with another man, and that he blames his school pal Austin Fickling for the rupture in his marital bliss. Dark doings at the cathedral are also hinted at, with quite a lot of space devoted to a murder that occurred centuries earlier. Meanwhile, ecclesiastical renovations turn up some unpleasant surprises--and as yet another murder ensues, Courtine is swept up in less scholarly pursuits. As the hapless academic (a Watson without a Holmes) pursues one red herring after another, it becomes apparent that Courtine's psyche is the real mystery on hand. History, he discovers, can obscure as much as it elucidates. All these years, his obsession with an idealized past has provided an excellent refuge from the realities of his present. In the end, what he uncovers is the secret of himself--and the reader of The Unburied is treated to a fine ghost story, in which the ghosts are quite literally all in the mind. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Uncle Tungsten: Memories Of A Chemical Boyhoodby Oliver W. SacksISBN 0375704043 (0-375-70404-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Uncle Tungsten: Memories Of A Chemical Boyhood'Book summary: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]More editions of Uncle Tungsten: Memories Of A Chemical Boyhood:
Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and France's Greatest Treasureby Petie Kladstrup, Donald KladstrupISBN 0340766778 (0-340-76677-8)
Hardcover, Trafalgar Square
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Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetypeby Clarissa Pinkola EstesISBN 0345396812 (0-345-39681-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype'Book summary:The author is not only a Jungian analyst, but a storyteller. She is steeped in the traditions of storytelling from both the Latin and the Hungarian sides of her family, and I very much enjoyed the ways in which she uses this legacy of the storyteller as healer to make her points. I never thought of storytelling in this way before, but reading this book I found it to be true. (I feel that her stories have helped heal me.) I am a storyteller myself, of a sort, so for me the book was a kind of homecoming. If you have ever wondered why fairy tales seem so cruel and peculiar, you will find the answers in this book. Fairy tales have been mangled in the translation, but this author shows you where they came from and what they are really about. While I am a huge believer in free-market capitalism, growth, business, and civilization (as opposed to back-to-nature Green-ery), I have tremendous concerns about the increasingly violent and impersonal nature of our society. This book shows you how to cultivate a healing, loving attitude toward the world without becoming a doormat--quite the contrary, it shows how love can give you more strength and power than you'll ever find in a boardroom. [via]
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- Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype: ISBN 0345409876 (0-345-40987-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books - Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype: ISBN 0345377443 (0-345-37744-3)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books - Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype: ISBN 0345396812 (0-345-39681-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
- Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype: ISBN 0345409876 (0-345-40987-6)
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Workingby Studs TerkelISBN 0345325699 (0-345-32569-9)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Working'Book summary:Studs Turkel records the voices of America. Men and women from every walk of life talk to him, telling him of their likes and dislikes, fears, problems, and happinesses on the job. Once again, Turkel has created a rich and unique document that is as simple as conversation, but as subtle and heartfelt as the meaning of our lives.... [via]
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The Working Poor: Invisible In Americaby David K. ShiplerISBN 0375408908 (0-375-40890-8)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Working Poor: Invisible In America'Book summary:Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. The term by which they are usually described, working poor, should be an oxymoron. Nobody who works hard should be poor in America. from the Introduction
From the author of the Pulitzer Prizewinning Arab and Jew, a new book that presents a searing, intimate portrait of working American families struggling against insurmountable odds to escape poverty.
As David K. Shipler makes clear in this powerful, humane study, the invisible poor are engaged in the activity most respected in American ideologyhard, honest work. But their version of the American Dream is a nightmare: low-paying, dead-end jobs; the profound failure of government to improve upon decaying housing, health care, and education; the failure of families to break the patterns of child abuse and substance abuse. Shipler exposes the interlocking problems by taking us into the sorrowful, infuriating, courageous lives of the poorwhite and black, Asian and Latino, citizens and immigrants. We encounter them every day, for they do jobs essential to the American economy.
We meet drifting farmworkers in North Carolina, exploited garment workers in New Hampshire, illegal immigrants trapped in the steaming kitchens of Los Angeles restaurants, addicts who struggle into productive work from the cruel streets of the nations capitaleach life another aspect of a confounding, far-reaching urgent national crisis. And unlike most works on poverty, this one delves into the calculations of some employers as welltheir razor-thin profits, their anxieties about competition from abroad, their frustrations in finding qualified workers.
This impassioned book not only dissects the problems, but makes pointed, informed recommendations for change. It is a book that stands to make a difference. [via]More editions of The Working Poor: Invisible In America:
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You Just Don't Understand : Women and Men in Conversationby Deborah TannenISBN 0345372050 (0-345-37205-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'You Just Don't Understand : Women and Men in Conversation'Book summary:"A chatty, earnest and endearing book that promises here-and-now rewards for taking the trouble to listen more carefully to what others are saying--and to be more sensitive to what others are hearing."LOS ANGELES TIMESDiscover how men and women can interpret the same conversation differently, even when there is no apparent misunderstanding. Discover why sinscere attempts to communicate are so often confounded, and how we can prevent or relieve some of the frustration. This fascinating, helpful, and controversial book--on the NEW YORK TIMES Bestseller list for two years!--explores, in depth the differing style men and women articulate, and how to work through it and get to the heart of the matter. [via]
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Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Fiveby Penelope LeachISBN 0375700005 (0-375-70000-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Your Baby and Child: From Birth to Age Five'Book summary:Penelope Leach's Your Baby & Child has been a beloved favorite for years. With this new, revised edition, Leach has updated her information and approach to reflect new findings in the field of child development, and to respond to the changing needs of today's families. Leach has utter respect for children and their parents; she explains development, child care, and parenting concerns clearly and without condescension.
Each developmental stage--newborn, settled baby, older baby, toddler, and young child--is discussed in terms of feeding, teeth and teething, growing, excreting, crying, sleeping, playing, and everyday care. For each stage, an additional set of appropriate topics is discussed, including muscle power, speech, child care, and appropriate toys. Colorful and expressive photos display infant, childhood, and toddler behavior. With her common-sense, child-positive approach, Leach carefully dispels negative parenting attitudes, and teaches readers how to stop, listen, and learn from their children. --Ericka Lutz [via]
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