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books tagged “memoir”
books tagged “memoir”
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Before Night Fallsby Reinaldo ArenasISBN 0670840785 (0-670-84078-5)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Before Night Falls'Book summary:Reinaldo Arenas' account of his life as a writer and a homosexual. Acknowledged as one of the great 20th-century Cuban writers, he was born in 1943 into a poor, rural Cuban family. At the age of 15 he joined Castro's guerrillas against Batista's right-wing regime, only to discover that repression under Castro would be on a monumental scale. He spent 20 years of his life trying to survive his "re-education", to safeguard his manuscripts and to maintain his sanity when he was imprisoned in El Morro prison in Havana. But, despite everything that had happened to him, including betrayal by his aunt and some of his closest "friends", Arenas triumphed, finally leaving Cuba during the Mariel exodus in 1980. But America could never replace his beloved Cuba, and his anti-Castro stance made him unsympathetic to many American intellectuals. "Before Night Falls" was begun before Arenas left Cuba and was completed in the last stage of his battle with AIDS, which dominated the last years of his life until he committed suicide on 7 December 1990 at the age of 47. It is a compelling and moving account of the hell Arenas experienced in Cuba and the purgatory he endured in the United States. It is a book both raw and fierce, tender and lyrical. It reveals a man of enormous vitality, resilience and courage. [via]
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Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, Or Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag To The Unemployment Office; A Memoirby Jen LancasterISBN 0451217608 (0-451-21760-8)
Softcover, New Amer Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, Or Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag To The Unemployment Office; A Memoir'More editions of Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, Or Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag To The Unemployment Office; A Memoir:
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Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Storyby Timothy B. TysonISBN 1400083117 (1-4000-8311-7)
Softcover, Three Rivers Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story'Book summary:"Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger."
Those words, whispered to ten-year-old Tim Tyson by one of his playmates in the late spring of 1970, heralded a firestorm that would forever transform the small tobacco market town of Oxford, North Carolina.
On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel, a rough man with a criminal record and ties to the Ku Klux Klan, and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased Marrow, beat him unmercifully, and killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. In the words of a local prosecutor: "They shot him like you or I would kill a snake."
Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets, led by 22-year-old Ben Chavis, a future president of the NAACP. As mass protests crowded the town square, a cluster of returning Vietnam veterans organized what one termed "a military operation." While lawyers battled in the courthouse that summer in a drama that one termed "a Perry Mason kind of thing," the Ku Klux Klan raged in the shadows and black veterans torched the town's tobacco warehouses.
With large sections of the town in flames, Tyson's father, the pastor of Oxford's all-white Methodist church, pressed his congregation to widen their vision of humanity and pushed the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.
Years later, historian Tim Tyson returned to Oxford to ask Robert Teel why he and his sons had killed Henry Marrow. "That nigger committed suicide, coming in here wanting to four-letter-word my daughter-in-law," Teel explained.
The black radicals who burned much of Oxford also told Tim their stories. "It was like we had a cash register up there at the pool hall, just ringing up how much money we done cost these white people," one of them explained. "We knew if we cost 'em enough goddamn money they was gonna start changing some things."
In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, Blood Done Sign My Name is a classic work of conscience, a defining portrait of a time and place that we will never forget. Tim Tyson's riveting narrative of that fiery summer and one family's struggle to build bridges in a time of destruction brings gritty blues truth, soaring gospel vision, and down-home humor to our complex history, where violence and faith, courage and evil, despair and hope all mingle to illuminate America's enduring chasm of race. [via]More editions of Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story:
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Cider With Rosieby Laurie LeeISBN 0140016821 (0-14-001682-1)
Softcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cider With Rosie'Book summary:A re-issue of the evocative and nostalgic account of Lee's country childhood in a secluded Cotswold valley. Lee describes a vanished rural world of village schools and church outings but also touches on the darker side of village life as it comes into contact with murder, rape, suicide and depression. [via]
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Clear Springsby Bobbie Ann MasonISBN 0060956291 (0-06-095629-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in Indiaby Madhur JaffreyISBN 009189929X (0-09-189929-X)
Hardcover, Ebury
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India'Book summary:Autobiography [via]
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Confessions Of An Economic Hit Manby John PerkinsISBN 1576753018 (1-57675-301-8)
Hardcover, Ingram Pub Services
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man'Book summary:John Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. "Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. --Alex Roslin [via]
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Cuba Diaries: An American Housewife in Havanaby Isadora TattlinISBN 1565123492 (1-56512-349-2)
Hardcover, Algonquin Books
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Dead Man Walkingby Helen PrejeanISBN 0679751319 (0-679-75131-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Man Walking'Book summary:In 1982, sister helen prejean became the spiritual advisor to patrick sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of louisiana's angola state prison. In the months before sonnier's death, the roman catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. At the same time, she came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute him--men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Confronting both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the needs of a crime-ridden society and the christian imperative of love, dead man walking is an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty, a book that is both enlightening and devastating [via]
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Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United Statesby Helen PrejeanISBN 0679403582 (0-679-40358-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States'Book summary:In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana's Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier's death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. At the same time, she came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute him--men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing.
Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Confronting both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the needs of a crime-ridden society and the Christian imperative of love, Dead Man Walking is an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty, a book that is both enlightening and devastating.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Dead Man Walking : An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States:
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Directing the Movies of Your Mindby A. BryISBN 0060105283 (0-06-010528-3)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Directing the Movies of Your Mind'Book summary:In 1975 Annie Dillard took up residence on an island in Puget Sound in a wooded room furnished with "one enormous window, one cat, one spider and one person." For the next two years she asked herself questions about time, reality, sacrifice death, and the will of God. In Holy the Firm she writes about a moth consumed in a candle flame, about a seven-year-old girl burned in an airplane accident, about a baptism on a cold beach. But behind the moving curtain of what she calls "the hard things -- rock mountain and salt sea," she sees, sometimes far off and sometimes as close by as a veil or air, the power play of holy fire.
This is a profound book about the natural world -- both its beauty and its cruelty -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dillard knows so well.
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Educating Alice: Adventures Of A Curious Womanby Alice SteinbachISBN 0812973607 (0-8129-7360-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Educating Alice: Adventures Of A Curious Woman'Book summary:A Pulitzer Prize-winning Author
Eight years ago, Alice Steinbach decided to take a leave from job, friends, and family for a European journey of self-discovery, and her first book, Without Reservations, was the result. Then, unwilling to return to the old routine, she quit her job and left home again - this time her objective was to find a way that would allow her, personally and professionally, to combine three of her greatest passions: learning, traveling, and writing. [via]
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Egg and Iby Betty Bard MacDonaldISBN 0891909591 (0-89190-959-1)
Hardcover, Amereon Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Egg and I'Book summary:When Betty MacDonald married a marine and moved to a small chicken farm on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, she was largely unprepared for the rigors of life in the wild. With no running water, no electricity, a house in need of constant repair, and days that ran from four in the morning to nine at night, the MacDonalds had barely a moment to put their feet up and relax. And then came the children. Yet through every trial and pitfall through chaos and catastrophe this indomitable family somehow, mercifully, never lost its sense of humor.
A beloved literary treasure for more than half a century, Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I is a heartwarming and uproarious account of adventure and survival on an American frontier. [via]More editions of Egg and I:
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Empire of the Sunby J.G. BallardISBN 156849663X (1-56849-663-X)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Empire of the Sun'Book summary:The classic, award-winning novel, made famous by Steven Spielberg's film, tells of a young boy's struggle to survive World War II in China. Jim is separated from his parents in a world at war. To survive, he must find a strength greater than all the events that surround him.
Shanghai, 1941 -- a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war...and the dawn of a blighted world.
Ballard's enduring novel of war and deprivation, internment camps and death marches, and starvation and survival is an honest coming-of-age tale set in a world thrown utterly out of joint. [via]
More editions of Empire of the Sun:
- Empire of the Sun: ISBN 0671648772 (0-671-64877-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster - Empire of the Sun: ISBN 0743265238 (0-7432-6523-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster - Empire of the Sun: ISBN 0575034831 (0-575-03483-1)
Hardcover, V. Gollancz - Empire of the Sun: ISBN 0671530518 (0-671-53051-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster - Empire of the Sun: ISBN 156849663X (1-56849-663-X)
Hardcover, Buccaneer Books
- Empire of the Sun: ISBN 0671648772 (0-671-64877-2)
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A Girl from Yamhillby Beverly ClearyISBN 0688078001 (0-688-07800-1)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Girl from Yamhill'Book summary:Generations of children have grown up with Henry Huggins, Ramona Quimby, and all of their friends, families, and assorted pets. For everyone who has enjoyed the pranks and schemes, embarrassing moments, and all of the other poignant and colorful images of childhood brought to life in Beverly Cleary books, here is the fascinating true story of the remarkable woman who created them. [via]
Holy the Firmby Annie DillardISBN 0060915439 (0-06-091543-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiographyby Lenny BruceISBN 0671751085 (0-671-75108-5)
Softcover, Fireside
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Talk Dirty and Influence People: An Autobiography'Book summary:In 1963, before the law and his drug habit brought the curtain down on the comedian, Hugh Hefner asked then-superstar Lenny Bruce to write his autobiography. Lenny hired writer Paul Krassner to help him edit the book, which appeared in Playboy over the next two years. Though it's uneven, and somewhat dated, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People deserves a look, if only to balance the movie Lenny, which many of the comedian's friends say missed the man entirely. The book is, simply, Lenny Bruce riffing on his life--from a drab childhood in Brooklyn, to stints in the navy and merchant marine, and finally to the nightclub circuit and eventual stardom. Of course, the veracity of any single anecdote is highly questionable, but How to Talk Dirty and Influence People rises above that, revealed as a fascinating expression of how this comedy icon wanted to be seen. Namely, as a rough-and-tumble kid from the streets, as a hustler and ladies' man, and, finally, as a fearless detonator of society's hypocrisy. (Notice that addict and dissolute don't make the list.)
In the movies ... Everett Sloane was a tycoon. He would get his gun off disillusioning Joel McCrea, who wanted to publish a newspaper that would make a statement, and telling him: "M'boy, you'll see when you get old that it's all a game." And I used to think, "No, it's not that way, this cynical old bastard is bullshitting, there are the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, the liars and the truth-tellers."
But Everett Sloane was right. There is only what is. The what-should-be never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is only what is.
How to Talk Dirty and Influence People doesn't catch Bruce's charisma and vaguely sinister electricity--no book could--but it is an interesting, lively read. Bruce was one of the first performers to usher in the new, more honest, more permissive, and more indulgent brand of American art. For anyone who wants to understand our comedy and culture, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People is well worth reading. --Michael Gerber [via]
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I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies): True Tales of a Loudmouth Girlby Laurie NotaroISBN 0812969006 (0-8129-6900-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost Warby Tobias Wolff, Luann WaltherISBN 0679760237 (0-679-76023-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War'Book summary:In This Boy's Life Tobias Wolf created an unforgettable memoir of an American childhood. Now he gives us a precisely and sometimes pitilessly remembered account of his young manhood - a young manhood that become entangled in the tragic adventure that was Vietnam. Mordantly funny, searingly honest, In Pharoah's Army is a war memoir in the tradition of George Orwell and Michael Herr. [via]
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The Innocents Abroad/Roughing Itby Mark Twain, Guy CardwellISBN 0940450259 (0-940450-25-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It'Book summary:Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1906. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXXII. WE were at sea now, for a very long voyage -- we were to pass through the entire length of the Levant; through the entire length of the Mediterranean proper, also, and then cross the full width of the Atlantic -- a voyage of several weeks. We naturally settled down into a very slow, stay-at-home manner of life, and resolved to be quiet, exemplary people, and roam no more for twenty or thirty days. No more, at least, than from stem to stern of the ship. It was a very comfortable prospect, though, for we were tired and needed a long rest. We were all lazy and satisfied, now, as the meager entries in my note-book (that sure index, to me, of my condition) prove. What a stupid thing a notebook gets to be at sea, any way. Please observe the style: '" Sunday--Services, as usual, at four bells. Services at night, also. No cards. "Monday--Beautiful day, but rained hard. The cattle purchased at Alexandria for beef ought to be shingled. Or else fattened. The water stands in deep puddles in the depressions forward of their after shoulders. Also here and there all over their backs. It is well they are not cows-- it would soak in and ruin the milk. The poor devil eagle* from Syria * Afterwards presented to the Central Park. looks miserable and droopy in the rain perched on the forward capstan. He appears to have his own opinion of a sea voyage, and if it were put into language and the language solidified, it would probably essentially dam the widest river in the world. "Tuesday--Somewhere in the neighborhood of the island of Malta. Can not stop there. Cholera. Weather very stormy. Many passengers seasick and invisible. "Wednesday--Weather still very savage. Storm blew two land birds to sea, and they came on board. A hawk was blown off, also. He circled round and round the shi... [via]
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The Invention of Solitudeby Paul AusterISBN 0140106286 (0-14-010628-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Invention of Solitude'Book summary:Beginning with the deconstructed detective novels of the New York Trilogy, Paul Auster has proved himself to be one of the most adventurous writers in contemporary fiction. In book after book, he seems compelled to reinvent his style from scratch. Yet he always returns to certain preoccupations--most notably, solitude and coincidence--and these themes get a powerful workout in this early memoir. In the first half, "Portrait of an Invisible Man," Auster comes to terms with the death of his father, and as he investigates this elusive figure, he makes a rather shocking (and enlightening) discovery about his family's history. The second half, "The Book of Memory," finds the author on more abstract ground, toying with the entwined metaphors of coincidence, translation, solitude, and language. But here, too, the autobiographical element gives an extra kick to Auster's prose and keeps him from sliding off into armchair aesthetics. An eloquent, mesmerizing book. [via]
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Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsiveby Emily ColasISBN 0671024388 (0-671-02438-8)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive'More editions of Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive:
- Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive (Oc: ISBN 0756756766 (0-7567-5676-6)
Hardcover, Diane Pub Co - Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive: ISBN 067102437X (0-671-02437-X)
Hardcover, Pocket Books - Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive: ISBN 0671024388 (0-671-02438-8)
Softcover, Pocket Books
- Just Checking: Scenes from the Life of an Obsessive-Compulsive (Oc: ISBN 0756756766 (0-7567-5676-6)
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Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Languageby Eva HoffmanISBN 0140127739 (0-14-012773-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language'Book summary:The condition of exile is an exaggeration of the process of change and loss that many people experience as they grow and mature, leaving behind the innocence of childhood. Eva Hoffman spent her early years in Cracow, among family friends who, like her parents, had escaped the Holocaust and were skeptical of the newly imposed Communist state. Hoffman's parents managed to immigrate to Canada in the 1950s, where Eva was old enough to feel like a stranger--bland food, a quieter life, and schoolmates who hardly knew where Poland was. Still, there were neighbors who knew something of Old World ways, and a piano teacher who was classically Middle European in his neurotic enthusiasm for music. Her true exile came in college in Texas, where she found herself among people who were frightened by and hostile to her foreignness. Later, at Harvard, Hoffman found herself initially alienated by her burgeoning intellectualism; her parents found it difficult to comprehend. Her sense of perpetual otherness was extended by encounters with childhood friends who had escaped Cracow to grow up in Israel, rather than Canada or the United States, and were preoccupied with soldiers, not scholars. Lost in Translation is a moving memoir that takes the specific experience of the exile and humanizes it to such a degree that it becomes relevant to the lives of a wider group of readers. [via]
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Memoirs of a Beatnikby Diane Di PrimaISBN 0867193468 (0-86719-346-8)
Softcover, Last Gasp of San Francisco
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My Losing Seasonby Pat ConroyISBN 0553381903 (0-553-38190-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Losing Season'Book summary:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
[via]
Pat Conroy, one of Americas premier novelists, has penned a deeply affecting coming-of-age memoir about family, love, loss, basketballand life itself. During one unforgettable season as a Citadel cadet, Conroy becomes part of a basketball team that is ultimately destined to fail. And yet for a military kid who grew up on the move, the Bulldogs provide a sanctuary from the cold, abrasive father who dominates his lifeand a crucible for becoming his own man.
With all the drama and incandescence of his bestselling fiction, Conroy re-creates his pivotal senior year as captain of the Citadel Bulldogs. He chronicles the highs and lows of that fateful 196667 season, his tough disciplinarian coach, the joys of winning, and the hard-won lessons of losing. Most of all, he recounts how a group of boys came together as a team, playing a sport that would become a metaphor for a man whose spirit could never be defeated.
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Not Buying It: My Year Without Shoppingby Judith LevineISBN 0743269365 (0-7432-6936-5)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping'Book summary:Many of us have tried to call a halt to our spending at one time or another. But what if we decided not to buy anything for a whole year? Obviously, we would need necessities like food and soap, but how would be manage without new clothes, treats, entertainment? Funny, smart and self-deprecating, Not Buying It is a close look at our society's obsession with shopping and the cold turkey confession of a woman we can all identify with - someone who can't live without French roast coffee and expensive wool socks, but who has had enough of spending money for the sake of it. Without consumer goods and experiences, Levine and her partner Paul pursue their careers, nurture family relationships and try to keep their sanity and humour intact. Tracking their progress and lapses, she contemplates the meanings of need and desire, scarcity and security, consumerism and citizenship. She asks the big questions - can the economy survive without shopping? Are Q-tips a necessity? A thought-provoking account of the pleasures and perils of the purchase-driven life, Not Buying It will get readers talking about their reliance on the act of buying and the possibility of getting off the merry-go-round. [via]
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Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passionby Leona Rostenberg, Madeleine SternISBN 0786214147 (0-7862-1414-7)
Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion'Book summary:Like 84, Charing Cross Road, Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine Stern's charming bibliocentric memoir is as much about relationships as it is about books. Charing Cross chronicled the decades-long epistolary friendship between American book lover Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, the equally devoted British bookseller in the London shop from whom she bought many of her treasures. Rostenberg and Stern's book once again proves how a passion for great literature can make for fast friends. And in their case, these two octogenarians occupy the same geographical space, sharing both their professional and private lives.
In their introduction, Rostenberg and Stern write: "Several readers inferred ... that our relationship was a Lesbian one. This was a misconception. The 'deep, deep love' that existed and exists between us ... has no bearing upon sex." With that out of the way early on, the two recount the stories of their lives in alternating sections. And oh, what lives they've had! From identifying some of Louisa May Alcott's previously anonymous early writings to traveling the world in search of rare volumes and pamphlets, they have done and seen it all. Successful antiquarian book dealers Rostenberg and Stern undoubtedly are, but as this memoir makes clear, their greatest accomplishment just might be that rarer commodity of friendship that lasts a lifetime. --Alix Wilber [via]
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One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officerby Nathaniel C. FickISBN 0618773436 (0-618-77343-6)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer'Book summary:A former captain in the Marines First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle.[via]
If the Marines are the few, the proud, Recon Marines are the fewest and the proudest. Only one Marine in a hundred qualifies for Recon, charged with working clandestinely, often behind enemy lines. Ficks training begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth, and advances to the pinnacleReconfour years later, on the eve of war with Iraq. Along the way, he learns to shoot a man a mile away, stays awake for seventy-two hours straight, endures interrogation and torture at the secretive SERE course, learns to swim with Navy SEALs, masters the Eleven Principles of Leadership, and much more.
His vast skill set puts him in front of the front lines, leading twenty-two Marines into the deadliest conflict since Vietnam. He vows he will bring all his men home safely, and to do so hell need more than his top-flight education. Hell need luck and an increasingly clear vision of the limitations of his superiors and the missions they assign him. Fick unveils the process that makes Marine officers such legendary leaders and shares his hard-won insights into the differences between the military ideals he learned and military practice, which can mock those ideals. One Bullet Away never shrinks from blunt truths, but it is an ultimately inspiring account of mastering the art of war.More editions of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer:
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The Outermost Houseby Henry BestonISBN 014017012X (0-14-017012-X)
Softcover, Penguin Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Outermost House'Book summary:In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, "I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go." Beston stayed for a year, meditating on humanity and the natural world. In The Outermost House, originally published in 1928, he poetically chronicled the four seasons at the beach; the ebb and flow of the tides, the migration of birds, storms, stars, and solitude. The landscape was his major character, and his writing provides a snapshot of the Cape, a place physically changed yet as soulful 80 years later. Like Henry D. Thoreau before him, and Rachel Carson after him, Beston was a writer of stunning beauty, importance and vision. Robert Finch once wrote of him, His are burnished, polished sentences, richly metaphoric and musical, that beg to be read aloud. The Outermost House is a classic of American nature literature. It is now available, for the first time, on audio. *Including an interview with Beston biographer, Dr. Daniel G. Payne *Unabridged on 5 CDs / approximately 5 hours *Narrated by Brett Barry [via]
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Papillonby Henri Charriere, Jean-Pierre Castelnau, June P. WilsonISBN 0061120669 (0-06-112066-9)
Softcover, Perennial
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Patrimony: A True Storyby Philip RothISBN 0679752935 (0-679-75293-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Patrimony: A True Story'Book summary:With the honesty of a skilled biographer and the sensitivity of a caring son, Roth chronicles the life of his father, Herman, in this gripping work which won a 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award. Roth holds little back in describing his father as a man of rare intensity and fierce independence who, for better or worse, stood by his principles and held others to his own rigorous standards. Writes Roth, "His obsessive stubbornness--his stubborn obsessiveness--had very nearly driven my mother to a breakdown in her final years." Frank throughout, Roth calls his father "a pitiless realist, but I wasn't his offspring for nothing, and I could be pretty realistic, too." [via]
Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoirby Zoe TropeISBN 0060529385 (0-06-052938-5)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoir'Book summary:I wrote a story about you. Well, sort of, see, it's mostly about me. Well, entirely about me, but here's the catch: I'm you. No, really, I mean it. Not like that transcendentalism stuff we're learning in English class, but really, truly, I'm you. I know what it feels like when your heart beats so hard against your white bone ribs, when you sing in the shower with soap in your eyes, when you run until you get a side ache. I wrote this story about you because I am so in love with you, your broken-fence teeth and your tissue-paper scars. I love you when you're so exhausted it could topple you to the ground, so in love it could snap guitar strings, so sickly sweet it could make lips smile. This is a reckless love story. This is my shameless confession. [via]
More editions of Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoir:
- Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoir: ISBN 0060529369 (0-06-052936-9)
Hardcover, Harpercollins Childrens Books - Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoir: ISBN 0060529377 (0-06-052937-7)
Hardcover, Harpercollins - Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoir: ISBN 0060529385 (0-06-052938-5)
Softcover, HarperCollins Publishers
- Please Don't Kill the Freshman: A Memoir: ISBN 0060529369 (0-06-052936-9)
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Recollections of My Life As a Woman: The New York Yearsby Diane Di PrimaISBN 0670851663 (0-670-85166-3)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Recollections of My Life As a Woman: The New York Years'Book summary:An evocative, gritty memoir by the leading woman writer of the Beat Generation.
In this rich and passionate memoir, influential poet Diane di Prima explores the first three decades of her extraordinary life. Only by heroic effort was she able to break away from her intense Brooklyn Italian family to follow through on the lifelong commitment to poetry she made in high school. Immersed in the proto-Beat world of Manhattan's early 1950s Bohemia, she emerged as a major force, not only establishing herself as a poet, but also coediting the influential literary newsletter, The Floating Bear, and cofounding The Poet's Theatre.
Recollections of My Life as a Woman chronicles the intense, creative cauldron of those years as the Beat movement emerged on both coasts, and the country accelerated into the sixties. Poetry, painting, dance, and theater flowed into one another, and well-known figures from all those worlds-including Merce Cunningham, Frank O'Hara, Audre Lorde, Trisha Brown, and Franz Kline-move through her story. Di Prima was a deliberate single parent at a time when that was unheard of, and her relationships and sexuality were as revolutionary as her writing. This is a powerful and unique remembering of how one woman's life revealed itself to her. [via]More editions of Recollections of My Life As a Woman: The New York Years:
Riding in Cars With Boys: Confessions of a Bad Girl Who Makes Goodby Beverly DonofrioISBN 0688083374 (0-688-08337-4)
Hardcover, Harpercollins
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River Town: Two Years on the Yangtzeby Peter HesslerISBN 0060855029 (0-06-085502-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze'Book summary:In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. Expecting a calm couple of years, Hessler at first does not realize the social, cultural, and personal implications of being thrust into a such radically different society. In River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Hessler tells of his experience with the citizens of Fuling, the political and historical climate, and the feel of the city itself.
"Few passengers disembark at Fuling ... and so Fuling appears like a break in a dream--the quiet river, the cabins full of travelers drifting off to sleep, the lights of the city rising from the blackness of the Yangtze," says Hessler. A poor city by Chinese standards, the students at the college are mainly from small villages and are considered very lucky to be continuing their education. As an English teacher, Hessler is delighted with his students' fresh reactions to classic literature. One student says of Hamlet, "I don't admire him and I dislike him. I think he is too sensitive and conservative and selfish." Hessler marvels,
You couldn't have said something like that at Oxford. You couldn't simply say: I don't like Hamlet because I think he's a lousy person. Everything had to be more clever than that ... you had to dismantle it ... not just the play itself but everything that had ever been written about it.
Over the course of two years, Hessler and Meier learn more they ever guessed about the lives, dreams, and expectations of the Fuling people.Hessler's writing is lovely. His observations are evocative, insightful, and often poignant--and just as often, funny. It's a pleasure to read of his (mis)adventures. Hessler returned to the U.S. with a new perspective on modern China and its people. After reading River Town, you'll have one, too. --Dana Van Nest [via]
More editions of River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze:
- River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze: ISBN 0060195444 (0-06-019544-4)
Hardcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited - River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze: ISBN 0060953748 (0-06-095374-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins - River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze: ISBN 0060855029 (0-06-085502-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
- River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze: ISBN 0060195444 (0-06-019544-4)
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Roughing Itby Mark TwainISBN 1419145509 (1-4191-4550-9)
Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Roughing It'Book summary:"This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there is information in the volume . . ." Thus begins Mark Twain's Prefatory to Roughing It. The book is a humorous account of Twain's six years spent in Nevada, San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands (as Hawaii was known at the time) and is comprised of various anecdotes and tall tales, told as only Mark Twain can tell them. [via]
More editions of Roughing It:
- Roughing It: ISBN 1598180401 (1-59818-040-1)
Softcover, Alan Rodgers Books - Roughing It: ISBN 1421807653 (1-4218-0765-3)
Hardcover, 1st World Library - Roughing It: ISBN 1582873518 (1-58287-351-8)
Hardcover, North Books - Roughing It: ISBN 1582878439 (1-58287-843-9)
Hardcover, North Books - Roughing It: ISBN 1404327630 (1-4043-2763-0)
Softcover, Indypublish.Com - Roughing It: ISBN 0451524071 (0-451-52407-1)
Softcover, New Amer Library Classics - Roughing It: ISBN 0486427048 (0-486-42704-8)
Softcover, Dover Pubns - Roughing It: ISBN 0520238923 (0-520-23892-3)
Softcover, Univ of California Pr - Roughing It: ISBN 0743436504 (0-7434-3650-4)
Softcover, Pocket Classics - Roughing It: ISBN 0809531828 (0-8095-3182-8)
Softcover, Wildside Pr - Roughing It: ISBN 0520024788 (0-520-02478-8)
Softcover, Univ of California Pr - Roughing It: ISBN 0520205596 (0-520-20559-6)
Softcover, Univ of California Pr - Roughing It: ISBN 0870527088 (0-87052-708-8)
Softcover, Hippocrene Books - Roughing It: ISBN 0520205588 (0-520-20558-8)
Hardcover, Univ of California Pr - Roughing It: ISBN 0809439964 (0-8094-3996-4)
Hardcover, Time-Life Books - Roughing It: ISBN 087052707X (0-87052-707-X)
Hardcover, Marboro Books - Roughing It: ISBN 0895776286 (0-89577-628-6)
Hardcover, Reader's Digest Association - Roughing It: ISBN 3829053894 (3-8290-5389-4)
Hardcover, Konemann - Roughing It: ISBN 1419145509 (1-4191-4550-9)
Softcover, Kessinger Pub Co
- Roughing It: ISBN 1598180401 (1-59818-040-1)
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A Rumor of Warby Philip CaputoISBN 080504695X (0-8050-4695-X)
Softcover, Henry Holt & Co
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Rumor of War'Book summary:The classic Vietnam memoir, as relevant today as it was almost thirty years ago.
In March of 1965, Marine Lieutenent Philip J. Caputo landed at Da Nang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history's ugliest wars, he returned home--physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.
A Rumor of War is more than one soldier's story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America's indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as Caputo explains, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to men."
"A singular and marvelous work." --The New York Times
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Rumor of War: With a Twentieth Anniversary Postscript by the Authorby Philip CaputoISBN 0708958648 (0-7089-5864-8)
Hardcover, Ulverscroft Large Print Books
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The Sacred Journeyby Frederick BuechnerISBN 0060611839 (0-06-061183-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days'Book summary:"A child takes life as it comes because he has no other way of taking it," Frederick Buechner writes in this first of his autobiographical books. With this statement he attempts to explore the event that is at the center of this book, and which forms the (missing) center around which so much of Buechner's fiction and essays take shape: the suicide of his father when he was 10 and his brother 8.
As with much of Buechner's work, there is a movement in this narrative from suffering to grace, a grace that comes in unexpected ways and places. Here it comes through the preacher George Buttrick on a Sunday sermon: Jesus refused Satan's crown, Buttrick said, but "he is crowned in the heart of the people who believe in him. And that inward coronation takes place ... 'among confession, and tears, and great laughter.'" It was when he heard this final statement, Buechner writes, that something turned over for him, and led him to speak to Buttrick and ultimately led him--driven literally by Buttrick--to Union Theological Seminary. Here in this beautiful book this soul-changing journey across Manhattan stands for "the sacred journey" of a life--and of all of our lives. Whether it ends in truth or dream we cannot know, but Buechner sides with King Rinkitink of Oz who says, "Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders." --Doug Thorpe [via]
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Self-consciousness: Memoirsby John UpdikeISBN 044921821X (0-449-21821-X)
Softcover, Crest
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A Severe Mercyby Sheldon VanaukenISBN 0060688246 (0-06-068824-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Severe Mercy'Book summary:A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, is a heart-rending love story described by its author as "the spiritual autobiography of a love rather than of the lovers." Vanauken chronicles the birth of a powerful pagan love borne out of the relationship he shares with his wife, Davy, and describes the growth of their relationship and the dreams that they share. As a symbol of their love, they name their dream schooner the Grey Goose, "for the grey goose, if its mate is killed flies on alone and never takes another."
While studying at Oxford, Sheldon and Davy develop a friendship with C.S. Lewis, under whose influence and with much intellectual scrutiny they accept the Christian doctrine. As their devotion to God intensifies, Sheldon realizes that he is no longer Davy's primary love--God is. Within this discovery begins a brewing jealousy.
Shortly after, Davy acquires a fatal illness. After her death Sheldon embarks on an intense experience of grief, "to find the meaning of it, taste the whole of it ... to learn from sorrow whatever it had to teach." Through painstaking reveries, he comes to discover the meaning of "a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love." He learns that her death "had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealously of God. It saved her faith from assault. ...And it saved our love from perishing."
Replete with 18 letters from C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy addresses some of the universal questions that surround faith--the existence of God and the reasons behind tragedy. --Jacque Holthusen [via]
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The Songlinesby Bruce ChatwinISBN 0670806056 (0-670-80605-6)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Songlines'Book summary:The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included In Patagonia, a fabulist travel narrative, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and The Songlines, his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made The Songlines one of his last books. [via]
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Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Seaby Richard Henry DanaISBN 0140390081 (0-14-039008-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea'Book summary:In 1834, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., left the comforts of genteel Boston to endure the hardships and abuses of the most exploited segment of the American working class. [via]
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The Virgin of Benningtonby Kathleen NorrisISBN 157322913X (1-57322-913-X)
Softcover, Riverhead Books
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Walden and Civil Disobedienceby Henry David ThoreauISBN 006080615X (0-06-080615-X)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Walden and Civil Disobedience'Book summary:'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.' Disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods by Walden Pond. Walden, the classic account of his stay there, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But even as Thoreau disentangled himself from worldly matters, his solitary musings were often disturbed by his social conscience. 'Civil Disobedience', expressing his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, has influenced nonviolent resistance movements worldwide. Michael Meyer's introduction points out that Walden is not so much an autobiographical study as a 'shining example' of Transcendental individualism. So, too, 'Civil Disobedience' is less a call to political activism than a statement of Thoreau's insistence on living a life of principle. [via]
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Walden on the Duty of Civil Disobedienceby PearsonISBN 0030093201 (0-03-009320-1)
Softcover, Harcourt College Pub
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Walden on the Duty of Civil Disobedience'Book summary:Henry David Thoreau's classic Walden is now available through Buki Editions! This edition includes both Walden and his essay On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Includes a fully-functioning table of contents. [via]
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Walden, or Life in the Woods, and on the Duty of Civil Disobedienceby Henry David Thoreau, Charles R. AndersonISBN 002054720X (0-02-054720-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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When Rabbit Howlsby Truddi ChaseISBN 0515103292 (0-515-10329-2)
Softcover, Berkley Pub Group
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The Winged Seed: A Remembranceby Li-Young LeeISBN 1886913285 (1-886913-28-5)
Softcover, Ruminator Books
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Antes Que Anochezcaby Reinaldo ArenasISBN 8472234851 (84-7223-485-1)
Hardcover, Tusquets Editores
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Antes Que Anochezca: Autobiografia, Memorias'Book summary:El 7 de diciembre de 1990 el escritor cubano Reinaldo Arenas, en fase terminal del SIDA, se suicidaba en Nueva York dejando este estremecedor testimonio personal y politico, que termino apenas unos dias antes de poner fin a su vida. Arenas, en efecto, reunia las tres condiciones mas idoneas para convertirse en uno de los muchos opositores engendrados por los dirigentes cubanos: ser escritor, homosexual y disidente. [via]
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