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› Find signed collectible books: '1984: Selected Letters'
The contents of 1984 are easy enough to describe: 57 letters and documents written in the mid-80s by novelist and critic Samuel R. Delany. Addressed to various friends, relatives, and colleagues, they present a vivid and exuberant mid-career portrait of a writer and thinker whose work has had an enormous influence across a startling range of literary and paraliterary genres, including science fiction, autobiography, pornography, historical fiction, comic books, literary criticism, queer theory, and more. All the trademark Delany touches can be found here rich descriptions of urban life, incisive social observation, sensuous and sophisticated tales of a life lived on the intersections of multiple social margins (Delany is gay and black), and, especially, passionate meditations on the intersection of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy that have made Delany a figure of paramount importance both for millions of readers, and, more specifically, for a collection of writers and thinkers a mere partial list of which reads like a Whos Who of contemporary intellectual culture: Fredric Jameson, Eve Sedgwick, Um-berto Eco (a key secondary character in the pages to follow), Donna Haraway, Henry Louis Gates, Charles Johnson, William Gibson, and, we learn here most intriguingly but perhaps least surprisingly Thomas Pynchon. -- from the introduction, by Kenneth R. James [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Allegra Maud Goldman'
A special twenty-fifth anniversary edition relaunches this beloved classic coming-of-age nove, which was called "one of those rare delights as wise as it is funny" (Alix Kates Shulman, Ms. magazine). This endearing novel chronicles the growth of the young Allegra in pre-World War II Brooklyn as she learns about sex, death, bigotry, family limitations, and what it means to be young and female and independent.
Marketing Plans for Allegra Maud Goldman:
" Advance review copies to booksellers
" Twenty-fifth anniversary press kit
" Strong media push
Edith Konecky is the author of a second novel, A Place at the Table, as well as short fiction and poetry.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Angels in America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ardent Women: The History of the Federation of Saint Benedict'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Around the World in 72 Days'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Astoria'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Berenice Abbott : Changing New York'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bergdorf Blondes'
Plum Sykes's beguiling debut welcomes readers to the glamorous world of Park Avenue Princesses, the girls who careen through Manhattan in search of the perfect Fake Bake (tan acquired from Portofino Tanning Salon), a ride on a PJ (private jet) with the ATM (rich boyfriend), and the ever-elusive fianc.
With invitations to high-profile baby showers and benefits, more Marc Jacobs clothes than is decent, and a department store heiress for a best friend, our heroine known only as Moi is living at the peak of New York society. But what is Moi to do when her engagement falls apart? Can she ever find happiness in a city filled with the distractions of Front Row Girls, dermatologists, premieres, and eyebrow waxes? Is it possible to find love in a town where her friends think that the secret to happiness is getting invited to the Van Cleef and Arpels ber-private sample sale? And how is she going to deal with the endless phone calls from her mother in England demanding that she get married to the Earl next door?
With enormous wit and an insider's eye, Sykes captures the nuances of the rich and spoiled in a heartwarming social satire, featuring a loveable "champagne bubble of a girl" who's just looking for love (and maybe the perfect pair of Chlo jeans).
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blockology: An Offbeat Walking Guide to Lower Manhattan'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Boys In The Brownstone'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Breakfast With Tiffany: A Memoir'
Ed Wintle was a successful, urbane professional whose life, at forty, was very comfortable. He had reached the point when he looked around at his well-ordered, unfettered single existence and wonderedG's 'Is this all there is' After a desperate call from his sister at her wit's end, his street-wise thirteen-year-old niece Tiffany-a writhing ball of adolescent anger-comes to live with him. If he felt he needed a shot in the arm, what he got proved more like electroshock therapy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Breakfast With Tiffany: An Memoir'
Edwin Wintle was a successful, urbane professional whose life, at forty, was very comfortable. He had reached the point when he looked around at his well-ordered, unfettered existence and wondered, "Is this all there is" After a desperate call from his sister at her wits end, his street-wise thirteen-year-old niece Tiffany -- a writhing ball of adolescent anger -- comes to live with him. If he felt he needed a shot in the arm, what he got proved more like electroshock therapy.
Breakfast with Tiffany chronicles the newly minted family through a year of tumult and drama, as instant parent Uncle Eddy watches his best-laid plans go awry. With an edgy wit and compassion reminiscent of Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris, Edwin Wintle recounts not only the coming of age of his beloved, if troubled niece, but his own as well. Just when it seems there is certain disaster, the two manage to pull through it with their unconventional little family in better shape than ever. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brooklyn Boy: A Play'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Building New York's Sewers: Developing Mechanisms of Urban Management'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'City Chic: An Urban Girl's Guide to Livin' Large on Less'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cricket in Times Square'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crimes of New York: Stories of Crooks, Killers, and Corruption from the World's Toughest City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dew Breaker'
From the universally acclaimed author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Krik? Krak!, a brilliant, deeply moving work of fiction that explores the world of a dew breakera torturera man whose brutal crimes in the country of his birth lie hidden beneath his new American reality.
We meet him late in his life. He is a quiet man, a husband and father, a hardworking barber, a kindly landlord to the men who live in a basement apartment in his home. He is a fixture in his Brooklyn neighborhood, recognizable by the terrifying scar on his face. As the book unfolds, moving seamlessly between Haiti in the 1960s and New York City today, we enter the lives of those around him: his devoted wife and rebellious daughter; his sometimes unsuspecting, sometimes apprehensive neighbors, tenants, and clients. And we meet some of his victims.
In the books powerful denouement, we return to the Haiti of the dew breakers past, to his last, desperate act of violence, and to his first encounter with the woman who will offer him a form of redemptionalbeit imperfectthat will change him forever.
The Dew Breaker is a book of interconnected livesa book of love, remorse, and hope; of rebellions both personal and political; of the compromises we often make in order to move beyond the most intimate brushes with history. Unforgettable, deeply resonant, The Dew Breaker proves once more that in Edwidge Danticat we have a major American writer. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Diary Of A Married Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel'
In this irreverent take on infidelity and modern marriage, newlywed topflight prostitute Nancy Chan finds herself struggling to adjust to the realities of domestic bliss. Shes honing her respectable image as the wife of investment banker Matt, cooking fashionable meals and taking his shirts to the cleaners. But now that she and Matt share a home, its getting harder to keep her career as an exclusive call girl a secret. Nancy fears what might happen if Matt finds out, but she cant quite bring herself to give up her financial independence. And now Matt wants to start a family. Motherhood could jeopardize her businessand what will it do to her body?
Will Nancy have to give up her career to save her marriage?
If youve ever had a naughty secret or struggled with competing desires, this funny, insightful romp will strike a chord. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Diary Of A Mad Housewife'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dish It Up, Baby'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'DMZ : On the Ground'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Duplicate Keys'
Alice Ellis is a Midwestern refugee living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, she depends on the companionship and camaraderie of tightly knit circle of friends. At the center of this circle is a rock band struggling to navigate New Yorks erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders. One sunny day, Alice enters the apartment and finds two of the band members shot dead. As the double-murder sends waves of shock through their lives, this group of friends begins to unravel, and dangerous secrets are revealed one by one. When Alice begins to notice things amiss in her own apartment, the tension breaks out as it occurs to her that she is not the only person with a key, and she may not get a chance to change the locks.
Jane Smiley applies her distinctive rendering of time, place, and the enigmatic intricacies of personal relationships to the twists and turns of suspense. The result is a brilliant literary thriller that will keep readers guessing up to its final, shocking conclusion. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Elements of Style'
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author of the essay collection Shiksa Goddess ("Utterly delicious"-Judith Thurman), a dazzling debut novel, a comedy about New York's urban gentry living in a post-9/11 world-the arbiters of fashion and the doyennes of charity balls; about the rich and the nouveau rich(er), the glamorous and the desperate to be.We meet Francesca Weissman, the Upper East Side pediatrician rated number one by Manhattan magazine, who takes us into the upper strata of privilege and aspiration (she's originally from Queens with a father in hosiery; life on the fringes of glittering New York is fine with her) . . . Samantha Acton, thoroughbred descendant of the Van Rensselaers and the Carnegies, who defines the social order in the great tradition of Mrs. Astor and Babe Paley . . . Judy Tremont from Modesto, California, daughter of a cop-her life's work, her obsession, is New York society and its richest families . . . Barry Santorini, Republican, moviemaker, winner of twelve Oscars, and his wife, the Italian supermarket heiress and former media rep for Giorgio Armani . . . and many more. As Elements of Style opens out, we see a madcap mosaic of the social lives and mores of twenty-first century Manhattan-of romance, work, family, and friendship. Satiric, fierce, touching-and deliciously Wasserstein."Pure Wendy! She effortlessly makes the leap from stage to page with a novel that is loving, compassionate, flat-out funny. Wendy loved the word 'scintillating,' which is the best way to describe her stunning Elements of Style."-John Guare"Wasserstein gets the trappings and tribulations (of friendship and of romance) right, making her depiction of the rich and fab trying to connect with one another witty and entertaining."-Publishers Weekly"Bold, nimble, and funny to its fingertips, Elements of Style is a delight, a triumph. A book that no self-respecting New Yorker should be without. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Ex Machina 1: The First Hundred Days'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ex Machina,Tag book 2: Tag'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Firehouse'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fodor's 2003 New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fodor's See It New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'For Your Paws Only'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'For Your Paws Only'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Freaky Friday'
A thirteen-year-old girl gains a much more sympathetic understanding of her relationship with her mother when she has to spend a day in her mother's body. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'From The Velvets To The Voidoids: The Birth Of American Punk Rock'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Funerals for Friends'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Gaslight New York Revisited'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir'
Just two hours ago, I had been heating up some lentil soup at my moms in Brooklyn, thinking Id eat it and maybe read some Edith Wharton before bed. Now here I was at a runaway shelter, staring at a nuns mustache and wondering where I was going to spend the rest of my adolescence.
At fifteen, sick of her moms spineless reactions to abusive menand afraid of her stepfathers unpredictable behaviorJanice Erlbaum walked out of her familys apartment and never returned. What followed that fateful decision is the heart of this amazing, fascinating, and disturbing memoir.
From her first frightening night at a shelter, trying to sleep in a large room filled with yelling girls, Janice knew she was in over her head. She was beaten up, shaken down, and nearly stabbed by a pregnant girl. But it was still better than living at home. Just like that, she was halfway homeless, always one step away from being sent upstate to Lockdown.
As Janice slipped further into street life, she nevertheless continued to attend high school, harbor crushes, even play the lead in the spring production of Guys and Dolls. She also roamed the streets, clubs, bars, and parks of New York City with her two best girlfriends, on the prowl for hard drugs and boys on skateboards. Together they scored coke at Danceteria, smoked angel dust in East Village squats, commiserated over their crazy mothers, and slept with one anothers boyfriends on a regular basis.
Janice Erlbaum paints a wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in the 1980s, bouncing from shelters to group homes, from tenement squats to legendary nightclubs. A moving and tremendously entertaining ride through the seediest parts of New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Riots of New York: 1712-1873'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harriet the Spy'
Ages 8-12. Thirty-two years before it was made into a movie, Harriet the Spy was a groundbreaking book: its unflinchingly honest portrayal of childhood problems and emotions changed children's literature forever. Happily, it has neither dated nor become obsolete and remains one of the best children's novels ever written. The fascinating story is about an intensely curious and intelligent girl, who literally spies on people and writes about them in her secret notebook, trying to make sense of life's absurdities. When her classmates find her notebook and read her painfully blunt comments about them, Harriet finds herself a lonely outcast. Fitzhugh's writing is astonishingly vivid, real and engaging, and Harriet, by no means a typical, loveable heroine, is one of literature's most unforgettable characters. School Library Journal wrote, "a tour de force... bursts with life." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books called it "a very, very funny story." And The Chicago Tribune raved, "brilliantly written... a superb portrait of an extraordinary child." [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Haunted Bookshop'
Short excerpt: If you are ever in Brooklyn, that borough of superb sunsets and magnificent vistas of husband-propelled baby-carriages, it is to be hoped you may chance upon a quiet by-street where there is a very remarkable bookshop. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heat'
Bill Buford's funny and engaging book Heat offers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen. Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to read Heat and give us his take. We loved it. So did he. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham
Anthony Bourdain is host of the Discovery Channel's No Reservations, executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan, and author of the bestselling and groundbreaking Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, A Cook's Tour, Bone in the Throat, and many others. His latest book, The Nasty Bits will be released on May 16, 2006.Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the real Mario Batali and of the real Marco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.
Thirdly, Heat reveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why. I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence. Heat brims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Zola's The Belly of Paris on my bookshelf. --Anthony Bourdain
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The High Style of Dorothy Draper: An Exhibiton at the Museum of the City of New York'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hipster Handbook'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Investment Biker: Around the World With Jim Rogers'
Jim Rogers became a Wall Street legend when he and George Soros founded the Quantum Fund. This is the fascinating story of his 1990 investing trip around the world by motorcycle, with many tidbits of hard-headed advice for investing in foreign markets. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Killers Choice'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Killer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Leadership'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lower East Side Remembered & Revisited'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lucia, Lucia: A Novel'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mad Man'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Making of an American'
In all of which I have made no account of a factor which is at the bottom of half our troubles with our immigrant population, so far as they are not of our own making: the loss of reckoning that follows uprooting; the cutting loose from all sense of responsibility, with the old standards gone, that makes the politician's job so profitable in our large cities, and that of the patriot and the housekeeper so wearisome. We all know the process. The immigrant has no patent on it. It afflicts the native, too, when he goes to a town where he is not known. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'My Less Than Secret Life: A Diary, Fiction, Essays'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A New Deal for New York'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A New Yorker by Choice'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'NFT-New York City: 2003'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night & Day New York'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Not for Tourists Guide to New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Town: One Hundred Years of Spectacle in Times Square'
Described as a continuous carnival and the crossroads of the world, Times Square is a singular phenomenon: the spot where imagination and veracity intersect. To esteemed scholar and author Marshall Berman, it is also the flashing, teeming, and strangely beautiful nexus of his life. In this remarkable book, Berman takes us on a thrilling illustrated tour of Times Square, revealing a landscape both mythic and real. On the Town is a unique look through the lens of the ideas and works of art that inspiredor were inspired bythis landmarks allure.
Times Square pulses with life, drawing countless millions who long to be surrounded by too many in the midst of too much. Beyond the immense crowds, the intoxicating lights, the imposing architecture, and even the recent incursion of corporate headquarters that limn the Squares present boundaries, there is an indefatigable humanity (and undeniable sexual tension) that, for more than a century, has nourished creative expression.
Interleafing his own recollections with astute social commentary, Berman reveals how movies, graphic arts, literature, popular music, television, and, of course, the Broadway theater have reflected Times Squares voluminous light to illuminate a vast spectrum of themes and vignettes. Berman shows us Times Square as it is seen in Alfred Eisenstadts iconic photography, the movies of Busby Berkeley, John Schlesinger, and Martin Scorsese, and the stage choreography of Jerome Robbins.
Conversely, we see how Times Squares distinctive aura finds its source in a stunningly diverse list of performers, writers, and impresarios, including Theodore Dreiser, Florenz Ziegfeld, Ethel Merman, Al Jolson, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. Berman also celebrates the unsung heroes of Times Squarethe artists, engineers, and hucksters behind the Squares landmark signs that, throughout the decades, re-created raging waterfalls, blew smoke rings, bathed onlookers in the Squares eerily welcoming light, and projected the image of what Americans want to be against a surface of who we really are.
Part love letter, part revelatory semiotic exposition of a place known to all, On the Town is a nonstop excursion to the heart of American civilization, written by one of our keenest, most entertaining cultural observers. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parties'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Plunkitt of Tammany Hall'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Prince of Tides'
PAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born.
Filled with the vanishing beauty of the South Carolina low country as well as the dusty glitter of New York City, The Prince of Tides is PAT CONROY at his very best. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Princess of 72nd Street'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Promise'
Reuven Malter lives in Brooklyn, hes in love, and hes studying to be a rabbi. He also keeps challenging the strict interpretations of his teachers, and if he keeps it up, his dream of becoming a rabbi may die.
One day, worried about a disturbed, unhappy boy named Michael, Reuven takes him sailing and cloud-watching. Reuven also introduces him to an old friend, Danny Saundersnow a psychologist with a growing reputation. Reconnected by their shared concern for Michael, Reuven and Danny each learns what it is to take on lifewhether sacred truths or a troubled childaccording to his own lights, not just established authority.
In a passionate, energetic narrative, The Promise brilliantly dramatizes what it is to master and use knowledge to make ones own way in the world [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Quinn's Book'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ragged Dick'
Part of a series of rags to riches stories of boys achieving the American dream of wealth through hard work, these works can also be seen as helpful in understanding the development of American cultural and social ideals. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Ragged Dick'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Requiem for a Dream'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rise of David Levinsky'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Seen Art'
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![[???]: Shecky's Bar, Club and Lounge Guide 2001 New York [???]: Shecky's Bar, Club and Lounge Guide 2001 New York](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0966265882.01._SL160_SCLZZZZZZZ__.jpg)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sister Carrie'
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser's revolutionary first novel, was published in 1900--sort of. The story of Carrie Meeber, an 18-year-old country girl who moves to Chicago and becomes a kept woman, was strong stuff at the turn of the century, and what Dreiser's wary publisher released was a highly expurgated version. Times change, and we now have a restored "author's cut" of Sister Carrie that shows how truly ahead of his time Dreiser was. First and foremost, he has written an astute, nonmoralizing account of a woman and her limited options in late-19th-century America. That's impressive in and of itself, but Dreiser doesn't stop there. Digging deeply into the psychological underpinnings of his characters, he gives us people who are often strangers to themselves, drifting numbly until fate pushes them on a path they can later neither defend nor even remember choosing.
Dreiser's story unfolds in the measured cadences of an earlier era. This sometimes works brilliantly as we follow the choices, small and large, that lead some characters to doom and others to glory. On the other hand, the middle chapters--of which there are many--do drag somewhat, even when one appreciates Dreiser's intentions. If you can make it through the sagging midsection, however, you'll be rewarded by Sister Carrie's last 150 pages, which depict the harrowing downward spiral of one of the book's central characters. Here Dreiser portrays with brutal power how the wrong decision--or lack of decision--can lay waste to a life. --Rebecca Gleason [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Starstruck: Photographs from a Fan'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Subway Pictures'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Subways : The Tracks That Built New York City'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tales of a New York Limo Driver: Sex, Excess And Stupidity on Four Wheels'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Time Out New York 2007: Eating and Drinking Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.'
John D. Rockefeller, Sr.--history's first billionaire and the patriarch of America's most famous dynasty--is an icon whose true nature has eluded three generations of historians. Now Ron Chernow, the National Book Award-winning biographer of the Morgan and Warburg banking families, gives us a history of the mogul "etched with uncommon objectivity and literary grace . . . as detailed, balanced, and psychologically insightful a portrait of the tycoon as we may ever have" (Kirkus Reviews). Titan is the first full-length biography based on unrestricted access to Rockefeller's exceptionally rich trove of papers. A landmark publication full of startling revelations, the book will indelibly alter our image of this most enigmatic capitalist.
Born the son of a flamboyant, bigamous snake-oil salesman and a pious, straitlaced mother, Rockefeller rose from rustic origins to become the world's richest man by creating America's most powerful and feared monopoly, Standard Oil. Branded "the Octopus" by legions of muckrakers, the trust refined and marketed nearly 90 percent of the oil produced in America.
Rockefeller was likely the most controversial businessman in our nation's history. Critics charged that his empire was built on unscrupulous tactics: grand-scale collusion with the railroads, predatory pricing, industrial espionage, and wholesale bribery of political officials. The titan spent more than thirty years dodging investigations until Teddy Roosevelt and his trustbusters embarked on a marathon crusade to bring Standard Oil to bay.
While providing abundant new evidence of Rockefeller's misdeeds, Chernow discards the stereotype of the cold-blooded monster to sketch an unforgettably human portrait of a quirky, eccentric original. A devout Baptist and temperance advocate, Rockefeller gave money more generously--his chosen philanthropies included the Rockefeller Foundation, the University of Chicago, and what is today Rockefeller University--than anyone before him. Titan presents a finely nuanced portrait of a fascinating, complex man, synthesizing his public and private lives and disclosing numerous family scandals, tragedies, and misfortunes that have never before come to light.
John D. Rockefeller's story captures a pivotal moment in American history, documenting the dramatic post-Civil War shift from small business to the rise of giant corporations that irrevocably transformed the nation. With cameos by Joseph Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, Jay Gould, William Vanderbilt, Ida Tarbell, Andrew Carnegie, Carl Jung, J. Pierpont Morgan, William James, Henry Clay Frick, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, Titan turns Rockefeller's life into a vivid tapestry of American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is Ron Chernow's signal triumph that he narrates this monumental saga with all the sweep, drama, and insight that this giant subject deserves.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Veg Out: Vegetarian Guide to New York City'
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John Irving fans will not be startled to find that A Widow for One Year is a sprawling farce-tragedy crawling with characters who are writers. In the opening scene, 4-year-old Ruth Cole walks in on her melancholy mother, Marion, who is in flagrante with 16-year-old Eddie, the driver for drunken Ted (Ruth's dad and Marion's estranged, womanizing husband).
Eddie spends the rest of his life obsessively writing novels like Sixty Times, his roman à clef about his 60 seductions by Marion. Ted is a failed novelist who gets rich and famous writing creepy children's stories based on tales he tells Ruth (such as The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls). Marion abandons Ruth, Ted, and Eddie and becomes a successful pseudonymous novelist. And Ruth becomes the most richly celebrated writer of them all because of her early training by Ted, who not only told her stories, but also helped her craft narratives to explain their home's many photographs of her brothers, who died in a gory car wreck the year before she was born. Grief over the boys is why Ruth's mother does not dare to love her.
Ruth, Irving's first female main character, works brilliantly, first as an imaginative, almost Salingeresque child coming to terms with her bewildering family, then as a grownup striving to understand her mother's motives--or at least to track her down. Ted is a mordantly funny caricature, interestingly sinister and plausibly self-justifying when most inexcusable. Eddie is a lovable schlemiel, yet not too sentimentally drawn. And what set pieces Irving can write! The story of the boys' death is horrific and effective in dramatizing the character of Ted, who narrates it. Ted's attempted murder by a spurned lover is as hilarious as the VW-down-the-marble-stairway scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany (which has been adapted by Disney Studios), though not quite on a par with the celebrated "Pension Grillparzer" episode in The World According to Garp (reissued in a 20th anniversary edition by Modern Library).
Irving has the effrontery to get away with practically any scene that comes into his head--Ruth winds up an eyewitness to a hooker's murder in Amsterdam, a Dutch detective starts tracking her down (just as Ruth is hunting Marion), and the multiple plot strands all converge in a finale that neatly echoes the opening scene. It's all done with the outrageously coincidental yet minutely realistic brio of Charles Dickens, with a sad, self-conscious jokiness like that of Irving's mentor, Kurt Vonnegut. --Tim Appelo [via]
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