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books tagged “political”
books tagged “political”
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The Adventures of Don Quixoteby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 0374519439 (0-374-51943-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Don Quixote'Book summary:The adventures of Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza continue as he carries on his quest for chivalry and romance. Part 2. (Nine 90-minute cassettes) [via]
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The Adventures of Don Quixote De La Manchaby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 0374142327 (0-374-14232-7)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus, Giroux
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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finnby Mark Twain, George SaundersISBN 0375757376 (0-375-75737-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'Book summary:?Introduction by George Saunders
[via]
Commentary by Thomas Perry Sergeant, Bernard DeVoto, Clifton Fadiman, T. S. Eliot, and Leo Marx
?"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn," Ernest Hemingway wrote. "It's the best book we've had." A complex masterpiece that spawned controversy right from the start (it was banished from the Concord library shelves in 1885), it is at heart a compelling adventure story. Huck, in flight from his murderous father, and Jim, in flight from slavery, pilot their raft through treacherous waters, surviving a crash with a steamboat and betrayal by rogues. As Norman Mailer has said, "The mark of how good Huckleberry Finn has to be is that one can compare it to a number of our best modern American novels and it stands up page for page."More editions of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
An American Storyby Debra J. DickersonISBN 037542069X (0-375-42069-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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August 1914by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, H.T. WillettsISBN 0374519994 (0-374-51999-4)
Softcover, Noonday Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'August 1914'Book summary:In his monumental narrative of the outbreak of the First World War and the ill-fated Russian offensive into East Prussia, Solzhenitsyn has written what Nina Krushcheva, in The Nation, calls "a dramatically new interpretation of Russian history." The assassination of tsarist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, a crucial event in the years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, is reconstructed from the alienating viewpoints of historical witnesses. The sole voice of reason among the advisers to Tsar Nikolai II, Stolypin died at the hands of the anarchist Mordko Bogrov, and with him perished Russia's last hope for reform. Translated by H.T. Willetts.[via]
August 1914 is the first volume of Solzhenitsyn's epic, The Red Wheel; the second is November 1916. Each of the subsequent volumes will concentrate on another critical moment or "knot," in the history of the Revolution. Translated by H.T. Willetts.More editions of August 1914:
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Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstressby Sijie Dai, Ina RilkeISBN 037541309X (0-375-41309-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress'Book summary:An enchanting literary debutalready an international best-seller.
At the height of Maos infamous Cultural Revolution, two boys are among hundreds of thousands exiled to the countryside for re-education. The narrator and his best friend, Luo, guilty of being the sons of doctors, find themselves in a remote village where, among the peasants of Phoenix mountain, they are made to cart buckets of excrement up and down precipitous winding paths. Their meager distractions include a violinas well as, before long, the beautiful daughter of the local tailor.
But it is when the two discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation that their re-education takes its most surprising turn. While ingeniously concealing their forbidden treasure, the boys find transit to worlds they had thought lost forever. And after listening to their dangerously seductive retellings of Balzac, even the Little Seamstress will be forever transformed.
From within the hopelessness and terror of one of the darkest passages in human history, Dai Sijie has fashioned a beguiling and unexpected story about the resilience of the human spirit, the wonder of romantic awakening and the magical power of storytelling. [via]More editions of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress:
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The Bear and the Dragonby Tom ClancyISBN 0375430695 (0-375-43069-5)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bear and the Dragon'Book summary:Power is delightful, and absolute power should be absolutely delightful--but not when you're the most powerful man on earth and the place is ticking like a time bomb. Jack Ryan, CIA warrior turned U.S. president, is the man in the hot seat, and in this vast thriller he's up to his nostrils in crazed Asian warlords, Russian thugs, nukes that won't stay put, and authentic, up-to-the-nanosecond technology as complex as the characters' motives are simple. Quick, do you know how to reprogram the software in an Aegis missile seekerhead? Well, if you're Jack Ryan, you'd better find someone who does, or an incoming ballistic may rain fallout on your parade. Bad for reelection prospects. "You know, I don't really like this job very much," Ryan complains to his aide Arnie van Damm, who replies, "Ain't supposed to be fun, Jack."
But you bet The Bear and the Dragon is fun--over 1,000 swift pages' worth. In the opening scene, a hand-launched RPG rocket nearly blows up Russia's intelligence chief in his armored Mercedes, and Ryan's clever spooks report that the guy who got the rocket in his face instead was the hoodlum "Rasputin" Avseyenko, who used to run the KGB's "Sparrow School" of female prostitute spies. Soon after, two apparent assassins are found handcuffed together afloat in St. Petersburg's Neva River, their bloated faces resembling Pokémon toys.
The stakes go higher as the mystery deepens: oil and gold are discovered in huge quantities in Siberia, and the evil Chinese Minister Without Portfolio Zhang Han San gazes northward with lust. The laid-off elite of the Soviet Army figure in the brewing troubles, as do the new generation of Tiananmen Square dissidents, Zhang's wily, Danielle Steel-addicted executive secretary Lian Ming, and Chester Nomuri, a hip, Internet-porn-addicted CIA agent posing in China as a Japanese computer salesman. He e-mails his CIA boss, Mary Pat "the Cowgirl" Foley, that he intends to seduce Ming with Dream Angels perfume and scarlet Victoria's Secret lingerie ordered from the catalog--strictly for God and country, of course. Soon Ming is calling him "Master Sausage" instead of "Comrade," but can anybody master Ming?
The plot is over the top, with devastating subplots erupting all over the globe and lurid characters scaring the wits out of each other every few pages, but Clancy finds time to insert hard-boiled little lessons on the vileness of Communism, the infuriating intrusions of the press on presidential power, the sexual perversions of Mao, the poor quality of Russian pistol silencers ("garbage, cans loaded with steel wool that self-destructed after less than ten shots"), the folly of cutting a man's throat with a knife ("they flop around and make noise when you do that"), and similar topics. Naturally, the book bristles like a battlefield with intriguingly intricate military hardware.
When you've got a Tom Clancy novel in hand, who needs action movies? --Tim Appelo [via]
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Before We Were Freeby Julia AlvarezISBN 0375815449 (0-375-81544-9)
Hardcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Before We Were Free'Book summary:What would life be like for a teen living under a dictatorship? Afraid to go to school or to talk freely? Knowing that, at the least suspicion, the secret police could invade your house, even search and destroy your private treasures? Or worse, that your father or uncles or brothers could be suddenly taken away to be jailed or tortured or killed? Such experiences have been all too common in the many Latin American dictatorships of the last 50 years. Author Julia Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) and her family escaped from the Trujillo regime in the Dominican Republic when she was 10, but in Before We Were Free she imagines, through the stories of her cousins and friends, how it was for those who stayed behind.
Twelve-year-old Anita de la Torre is too involved with her own life to be more than dimly aware of the growing menace all around her, until her last cousins and uncles and aunts have fled to America and a fleet of black Volkswagens comes up the drive, bringing the secret police to the family compound to search their houses. Gradually, through overheard conversations and the explanations of her older sister, Lucinda, she comes to understand that her father and uncles are involved in a plot to kill El Jefe, the dictator, and that they are all in deadly peril. Anita's story is universal in its implications--she even keeps an Anne Frank-like diary when she and her mother must hide in a friend's house--and a tribute to those brave souls who feel, like Anita's father, that "life without freedom is no life at all." (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell [via]
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The Book of Danielby E. L. DoctorowISBN 0375508341 (0-375-50834-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of Daniel'Book summary:The central figure of this novel is a young man whose parents were executed for conspiring to steal atomic secrets for Russia.
His name is Daniel Isaacson, and as the story opens, his parents have been dead for many years. He has had a long time to adjust to their deaths. He has not adjusted.
Out of the shambles of his childhood, he has constructed a new lifemarriage to an adoring girl who gives him a son of his own, and a career in scholarship. It is a life that enrages him.
In the silence of the library at Columbia University, where he is supposedly writing a Ph.D. dissertation, Daniel composes something quite different.
It is a confession of his most intimate relationshipswith his wife, his foster parents, and his kid sister Susan, whose own radicalism so reproaches him.
It is a book of memories: riding a bus with his parents to the ill-fated Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill; watching the FBI take his father away; appearing with Susan at rallies protesting their parents innocence; visiting his mother and father in the Death House.
It is a book of investigation: transcribing Daniels interviews with people who knew his parents, or who knew about them; and logging his strange researches and discoveries in the library stacks.
It is a book of judgments of everyone involved in the caselawyers, police, informers, friends, and the Isaacson family itself.
It is a book rich in characters, from elderly grand- mothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pen-tagon. It is a book that spans the quarter-century of American life since World War II. It is a book about the nature of Left politics in this countryits sacrificial rites, its peculiar cruelties, its humility, its bitterness. It is a book about some of the beautiful and terrible feelings of childhood. It is about the nature of guilt and innocence, and about the relations of people to nations.
It is The Book of Daniel. [via]More editions of The Book of Daniel:
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The Book of Warby Sun-TzuISBN 0375754776 (0-375-75477-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Book of War'Book summary:Civilization might have been spared much of the damage suffered in the world wars this century if the influence of Clausewitz's On War had been blended with and balanced by a knowledge of Sun-tzu's The Art of Warfare. --B.H. Liddel Hart
For two thousand years, Sun-tzu's The Art of Warfare was the indispensable volume of warcraft. Although his work is the first known analysis of war and warfare, Sun-tzu struck upon a thoroughly modern concept: "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." Karl von Clausewitz, the canny military theorist who famously declared that war is a continuation of politics by other means, also claims paternity of the notion "total war." His is the magnum opus of the era of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic vars.
Now these two great military minds are made to share the same tent, metaphorically speaking, in The Book of War. What a bivouac it is, and what a conversation into the night.
Military writer Ralph Peters has written a new Introduction for this Modern Library edition. [via]More editions of The Book of War:
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Burrby Gore VidalISBN 0375708731 (0-375-70873-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Burr'Book summary:Gore Vidal's Narratives of Empire series spans the history of the United States from the Revolution to the post-World War II years. With their broad canvas and large cast of fictional and historical characters, the novels in this series present a panorama of the American political and imperial experience as interpreted by one of its most worldly, knowing, and ironic observers.
Burr is a portrait of perhaps the most complex and misunderstood of the Founding Fathers. In 1804, while serving as vice president, Aaron Burr fought a duel with his political nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, and killed him. In 1807, he was arrested, tried, and acquitted of treason. In 1833, Burr is newly married, an aging statesman considered a monster by many. Burr retains much of his political influence if not the respect of all. And he is determined to tell his own story. As his amanuensis, he chooses Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, a young New York City journalist, and together they explore both Burr's past and the continuing political intrigues of the still young United States. [via]More editions of Burr:
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Cancer Wardby Aleksandr SolzhenitsynISBN 0374511993 (0-374-51199-3)
Softcover, Noonday Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cancer Ward'Book summary:Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable cross-section of contemporary Russian characters and attitudes. The experiences of the central character, Oleg Kostoglotov, closely reflect the author's own: Solzhenitsyn himself became a patient in a cancer ward in the mid-1950s, on his release from a labor camp, and later recovered. Translated by Nicholas Bethell and David Burg.[via]More editions of Cancer Ward:
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Children at Warby Peter Warren SingerISBN 0375423494 (0-375-42349-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Children at War'Book summary:From U.S. soldiers having to fight children in Afghanistan and Iraq to juvenile terrorists in Sri Lanka to Palestine, the new, younger face of battle is a terrible reality of 21st century warfare. Indeed, the very first American soldier killed by hostile fire in the "War on Terrorism" was shot by a fourteen-year-old Afghan boy. Children at War is the first comprehensive examination of a disturbing and escalating phenomenon: the use of children as soldiers around the globe. Interweaving explanatory narrative with the voices of child soldiers themselves, P.W. Singer, an internationally recognized expert in modern warfare, introduces the brutal reality of conflict, where children are sent off to fight in war-torn hotspots from Colombia and the Sudan to Kashmir and Sierra Leone. He explores the evolution of this phenomenon, how and why children are recruited, indoctrinated, trained, and converted to soldiers and then lays out the consequences for global security, with a special case study on terrorism. With this established, he lays out the responses that can end this horrible practice. What emerges is not only a compelling and clarifying read on the darker reality of modern warfare, but also a clear and urgent call for action.[via]More editions of Children at War:
The Closed Circleby Jonathan CoeISBN 0375713956 (0-375-71395-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraqby Michael R. Gordon, Bernard E. TrainorISBN 0375422625 (0-375-42262-5)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraq'Book summary:Informed by unparalleled access to still-secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military's own internal after-action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq-a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on classified United States government intelligence, it also provides a unique account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted their war strategy.
Written by Michael R. Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, who spent the war with the Allied land command, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former director of the National Security Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cobra II traces the interactions among the generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush. It dramatically reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought them, providing reliable accounts of the clashes waged by conventional and Special Operations forces. It documents with precision the failures of American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.
Unimpeachably sourced, Cobra II describes how the American rush to Baghdad provided the opportunity for the virulent insurgency that followed. The brutal aftermath in Iraq was not inevitable and was a surprise to the generals on both sides; Cobra II provides the first authoritative account as to why. It is a book of enduring importance and incisive analysis-a comprehensive account of the most reported yet least understood war in American history. [via]More editions of Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion And Occupation of Iraq:
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The Cost of Livingby Arundhati RoyISBN 0375756140 (0-375-75614-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Cost of Living'Book summary:From the bestselling author of The God of Small Things comes a scathing and passionate indictment of big government's
disregard for the individual.
In her Booker Prize-winning novel, The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy turned a compassionate but unrelenting eye on one family in India. Now she lavishes the same acrobatic language and fierce humanity on the future of her beloved country. In this spirited polemic, Roy dares to take on two of the great illusions of India's progress: the massive dam projects that were supposed to haul this sprawling subcontinent into the modern age--but which instead have displaced untold millions--and the detonation of India's first nuclear bomb, with all its attendant Faustian bargains.
Merging her inimitable voice with a great moral outrage and imaginative sweep, Roy peels away the mask of democracy and prosperity to show the true costs hidden beneath. For those who have been mesmerized by her vision of India, here is a sketch, traced in fire, of its topsy-turvy society, where the lives of the many are sacrificed for the comforts of the few. [via]More editions of The Cost of Living:
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Count of Monte Cristoby Alexandre DumasISBN 037576030X (0-375-76030-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Count of Monte Cristo'Book summary:Introduction by Lorenzo Carcaterra
[via]
A popular bestseller since its publication in 1844, The Count of Monte Cristo is one of the great page-turning thrillers of all time. Set against the tumultuous years of the post-Napoleonic era, Alexandre Dumass grand historical romance recounts the swashbuckling adventures of Edmond Dantès, a dashing young sailor falsely accused of treason. The story of his long imprisonment, dramatic escape, and carefully wrought revenge offers up a vision of France that has become immortal. As Robert Louis Stevenson declared, I do not believe there is another volume extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance.
INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDEMore editions of Count of Monte Cristo:
Culture Warriorby Bill O'ReillyISBN 0375435050 (0-375-43505-0)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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The Day the Sky Fell : A History of Terrorismby Milton MeltzerISBN 037582250X (0-375-82250-X)
Softcover, Random House Children's Books
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The Demonic Comedyby Paul William RobertsISBN 0374527466 (0-374-52746-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Husseinby Paul William RobertsISBN 0374138230 (0-374-13823-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Demonsby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Pevear, Joseph FrankISBN 0375411224 (0-375-41122-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Demons'Book summary:(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)
The award-winning translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky continue their acclaimed series of Dostoevsky translations with this novel, also known as The Possessed.
Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horrified Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a novel-pamphlet in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russiaa novel that is rivaled only by The Brothers Karamazov as Dostoevskys greatest. [via]More editions of Demons:
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The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed Americaby Erik LarsonISBN 0375725601 (0-375-72560-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America'Book summary:Author Erik Larson imbues the incredible events surrounding the 1893 Chicago World's Fair with such drama that readers may find themselves checking the book's categorization to be sure that The Devil in the White City is not, in fact, a highly imaginative novel. Larson tells the stories of two men: Daniel H. Burnham, the architect responsible for the fair's construction, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer masquerading as a charming doctor. Burnham's challenge was immense. In a short period of time, he was forced to overcome the death of his partner and numerous other obstacles to construct the famous "White City" around which the fair was built. His efforts to complete the project, and the fair's incredible success, are skillfully related along with entertaining appearances by such notables as Buffalo Bill Cody, Susan B. Anthony, and Thomas Edison. The activities of the sinister Dr. Holmes, who is believed to be responsible for scores of murders around the time of the fair, are equally remarkable. He devised and erected the World's Fair Hotel, complete with crematorium and gas chamber, near the fairgrounds and used the event as well as his own charismatic personality to lure victims. Combining the stories of an architect and a killer in one book, mostly in alternating chapters, seems like an odd choice but it works. The magical appeal and horrifying dark side of 19th-century Chicago are both revealed through Larson's skillful writing. --John Moe [via]
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Don Quixoteby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Tobias George SmollettISBN 037575699X (0-375-75699-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don Quixote'Book summary:Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they wend their way across sixteenth-century Spain. Milan Kundera calls Cervantes the founder of the Modern Era and Lionel Trilling observes that it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the acclaimed Tobias Smollett translation; as Salman Rushdie declares, To my mind, this is the only English rendering of the Quixote that reads like a great novel, a novel of immense daring, much wildness and many colours. It releases Don Quixote from the grey academic prison of many more recent translations, unleashing him upon the English language in all his brilliant, foolish glory . This edition also contains new endnotes. [via]More editions of Don Quixote:
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Don Quixote of the Manchaby Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra, Walter Crane, Judge Parry, Edward Abbott ParryISBN 037540659X (0-375-40659-X)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Don Quixote of the Mancha'Book summary:The story of the Spanish knight whose devotion to tales of chivalry leads him and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, into a series of bizarre adventures blends fantasy, comedy, and drama in a way that has gripped the world's imagination for centuries. This edition has been abridged and adapted for children, and enhanced by the delightful illustrations of Walter Crane. [via]
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Dutchby Edmund MorrisISBN 0375756450 (0-375-75645-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dutch'Book summary:In what must surely be one of the most unusual and critically scrutinized biographies ever written, Edmund Morris has created a difficult but fascinating chronicle nearly as enigmatic as his book's inscrutable subject. Read by the author himself, this audio version comes replete with a special acknowledgment of the controversial nature of the book and an especially poignant closing passage addressing Reagan's senescent slide into dementia. In the explanatory preface Morris describes the rationale behind his unconventional effort: "When the biographer sits talking with the still living subject, as I did so often with President Reagan ... the story of his journey becomes, in effect, an autobiography, that interrelates with the biography he's writing. In other words, this is the true story of a real person told by an imaginary narrator who eventually mutates into myself." A curious and debatable strategy. However, using this unprecedented approach, Morris has created an unarguably intimate, highly detailed, and powerfully moving memoir which reaches a level of emotional resonance rarely achieved in more traditional biographies. (Running time: 9 hours, 6 cassettes) --George Laney [via]
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The Edward Said Readerby Edward W. Said, Andrew RubinISBN 0375709363 (0-375-70936-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Edward Said Reader'Book summary:Edward Said, the renowned literary and cultural critic and passionately engaged intellectual, is one of our era's most formidable, provocative, and important thinkers. For more than three decades his books, which include Culture and Imperialism, Peace and Its Discontents, and the seminal study Orientalism, have influenced not only our worldview but the very terms of public discourse.
The Edward Said Reader includes key sections from all of Said's books, from the groundbreaking 1966 study of Joseph Conrad to his new memoir, Out of Place. Whether he is writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, music or the media, Said's uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Edward Said Reader will prove a joy to the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars of politics, history, literature, and cultural studies: in short, of all those fields that his work has influenced and, in some cases, transformed. [via]More editions of The Edward Said Reader:
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The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Testby Tom WolfeISBN 0374147043 (0-374-14704-3)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test'Book summary:They say if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. But, fortunately, Tom Wolfe was there, notebook in hand, politely declining LSD while Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters fomented revolution, turning America on to a dangerously playful way of thinking as their Day-Glo conveyance, Further, made the most influential bus ride since Rosa Parks's. By taking On the Road's hero Neal Cassady as his driver on the cross-country revival tour and drawing on his own training as a magician, Kesey made Further into a bully pulpit, and linked the beat epoch with hippiedom. Paul McCartney's Many Years from Now cites Kesey as a key influence on his trippy Magical Mystery Tour film. Kesey temporarily renounced his literary magic for the cause of "tootling the multitudes"--making a spectacle of himself--and Prankster Robert Stone had to flee Kesey's wild party to get his life's work done. But in those years, Kesey's life was his work, and Wolfe infinitely multiplied the multitudes who got tootled by writing this major literary-journalistic monument to a resonant pop-culture moment.
Kesey's theatrical metamorphosis from the distinguished author of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest to the abominable shaman of the "Acid Test" soirees that launched The Grateful Dead required Wolfe's Day-Glo prose account to endure (though Kesey's own musings in Demon Box are no slouch either). Even now, Wolfe's book gives what Wolfe clearly got from Kesey: a contact high. --Tim Appelo [via]
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The Female Eunuchby Germaine Greer, Jennifer BaumgardnerISBN 0374527628 (0-374-52762-8)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Female Eunuch'Book summary:The clarion call to change that galvanized a generation.[via]
When Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was first published it created a shock wave of recognition in women, one that could be felt around the world. It went on to become an international bestseller, translated into more than twelve languages, and a landmark in the history of the women's movement. Positing that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation, Greer looks at the inherent and unalterable biological differences between men and women as well as at the profound psychological differences that result from social conditioning. Drawing on history, literature, biology, and popular culture, Greer's searing examination of women's oppression is a vital, passionately argued social commentary that is both an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.More editions of The Female Eunuch:
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The Firmby John GrishamISBN 0375433465 (0-375-43346-5)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Firm'Book summary:D.W. Moffett uses his youthful voice to outstanding effect in this excellent abridgment of Grisham's bestselling thriller about a Harvard Law grad aggressively recruited by a curiously obscure firm. "We're small and very selective... we screened over two thousand third-year law students at the best schools. Only one letter was sent." They've decided he's their man and to get him they offer top dollar, dangle a BMW, and woo his wife with offers impossible to refuse. But as the wide-eyed youngsters soon discover, there's a catch. Moffett gives an excellent performance, bringing the story to life with vibrant and believable characterizations and a smooth, knowing narrative. (Running time: 3 hours, 2 cassettes) --George Laney [via]
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The French Revolution: A Historyby Thomas Carlyle, John D. RosenbergISBN 0375760229 (0-375-76022-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The French Revolution: A History'Book summary:The book that established Thomas Carlyles reputation when first published in 1837, this spectacular historical masterpiece has since been accepted as the standard work on the subject. It combines a shrewd insight into character, a vivid realization of the picturesque, and a singular ability to bring the past to blazing life, making it a reading experience as thrilling as any novel. As John D. Rosenberg observes in his Introduction, The French Revolution is one of the grand poems of [Carlyles] century, yet its poetry consists in being everywhere scrupulously rooted in historical fact.
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition, complete and unabridged, is unavailable anywhere else. [via]More editions of The French Revolution: A History:
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The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected Worldby Lawrence LessigISBN 0375726446 (0-375-72644-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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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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Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshireby Amanda ForemanISBN 0375753834 (0-375-75383-4)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire'Book summary:The winner of Britain's prestigious Whitbread Prize and a bestseller there for months, this wonderfully readable biography offers a rich, rollicking picture of late-eighteenth-century British aristocracy and the intimate story of a woman who for a time was its undisputed leader. Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, and was nearly as famous in her day. In 1774, at the age of seventeen, Georgiana achieved immediate celebrity by marrying one of England's richest and most influential aristocrats, the Duke of Devonshire. Launched into a world of wealth and power, she quickly became the queen of fashionable society, adored by the Prince of Wales, a dear friend of Marie-Antoinette, and leader of the most important salon of her time. Not content with the role of society hostess, she used her connections to enter politics, eventually becoming more influential than most of the men who held office.
Her good works and social exploits made her loved by the multitudes, but Georgiana's public success, like Diana's, concealed a personal life that was fraught with suffering. The Duke of Devonshire was unimpressed by his wife's legendary charms, preferring instead those of her closest friend, a woman with whom Georgiana herself was rumored to be on intimate terms. For over twenty years, the three lived together in a jealous and uneasy ménage à trois, during which time both women bore the Duke's children--as well as those of other men.
Foreman's descriptions of Georgiana's uncontrollable gambling, all- night drinking, drug taking, and love affairs with the leading politicians of the day give us fascinating insight into the lives of the British aristocracy in the era of the madness of King George III, the American and French revolutions, and the defeat of Napoleon.
A gifted young historian whom critics are already likening to Antonia Fraser, Amanda Foreman draws on a wealth of fresh research and writes colorfully and penetratingly about the fascinating Georgiana, whose struggle against her own weaknesses, whose great beauty and flamboyance, and whose determination to play a part in the affairs of the world make her a vibrant, astonishingly contemporary figure.
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Good Muslim, Bad Muslim : America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terrorby Mahmood MamdaniISBN 0375422854 (0-375-42285-4)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Muslim, Bad Muslim : America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror'Book summary:In this brilliant look at the rise of political Islam, the distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen?
Mamdani dispels the idea of good (secular, westernized) and bad (premodern, fanatical) Muslims, pointing out that these judgments refer to political rather than cultural or religious identities. The presumption that there are good Muslims readily available to be split off from bad Muslims masks a failure to make a political analysis of our times. This book argues that political Islam emerged as the result of a modern encounter with Western power, and that the terrorist movement at the center of Islamist politics is an even more recent phenomenon, one that followed Americas embrace of proxy war after its defeat in Vietnam. Mamdani writes with great insight about the Reagan years, showing Americas embrace of the highly ideological politics of good against evil. Identifying militant nationalist governments as Soviet proxies in countries such as Nicaragua and Afghanistan, the Reagan administration readily backed terrorist movements, hailing them as the moral equivalents of Americas Founding Fathers. The era of proxy wars has come to an end with the invasion of Iraq. And there, as in Vietnam, America will need to recognize that it is not fighting terrorism but nationalism, a battle that cannot be won by occupation.
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a provocative and important book that will profoundly change our understanding both of Islamist politics and the way America is perceived in the world today. [via]More editions of Good Muslim, Bad Muslim : America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror:
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Great Expectationsby Charles Dickens, Bernard ShawISBN 0375757015 (0-375-75701-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Great Expectations'Book summary:Introduction by George Bernard Shaw Pip, a poor orphan being raised by a cruel sister, does not have much in the way of great expectations-until he is inexplicably elevated to wealth by an anonymous benefactor. Full of unforgettable characters-including a terrifying convict named Magwitch, the eccentric Miss Havisham, and her beautiful but manipulative niece, Estella, Great Expectations is a tale of intrigue, unattainable love, and all of the happiness money can't buy. "Great Expectations has the most wonderful and most perfectly worked-out plot for a novel in the English language," according to John Irving, and J. Hillis Miller declares, "Great Expectations is the most unified and concentrated expression of Dickens's abiding sense of the world, and Pip might be called the archetypal Dickens hero." INCLUDES A MODERN LIBRARY READING GROUP GUIDE [via]
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The Greatest Generationby Tom BrokawISBN 0375502025 (0-375-50202-5)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Greatest Generation'Book summary:Veteran reporter and NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw went to France to make a documentary marking the 40th anniversary of D-day in 1984. Although he was thoroughly briefed on the historical background of the invasion, he was totally unprepared for how it would affect him emotionally. Flooded with childhood memories of World War II, Brokaw began asking veterans at the ceremony to revisit their past and talk about what happened, triggering a chain reaction of war-torn confessions and Brokaw's compulsion to capture their experiences in what he terms "the permanence a book would represent."
After almost 15 years and hundreds of letters and interviews, Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation, a representative cross-section of the stories he came across. However, this collection is more than a mere chronicle of a tumultuous time, it's history made personal by a cast of everyday people transformed by extraordinary circumstances: the first women to break the homemaker mold, minorities suffering countless indignities to boldly fight for their country, infantrymen who went on to become some of the most distinguished leaders in the world, small-town kids who became corporate magnates. From the reminiscences of George Bush and Julia Child to the astonishing heroism and moving love stories of everyday people, The Greatest Generation salutes those whose sacrifices changed the course of American history. --Rebekah Warren [via]
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The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflectionsby Tom BrokawISBN 037540922X (0-375-40922-X)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Greatest Generation Speaks: Letters and Reflections'Book summary:The popularity and credibility of charismatic news anchor Tom Brokaw ensured bestseller status for The Greatest Generation, Brokaw's homage to the Americans who survived and overcame the depression and World War II. The Greatest Generation Speaks expands his thesis that we owe a huge debt of gratitude to those tough and courageous men and women for ensuring the freedoms and comforts that Americans enjoy today. Their stories, culled from letters, interviews, and personal histories of the Greatest Generation and their family members, are anecdotal but extremely powerful, showing how men and women were sustained by simple ideals of patriotism, family, and fair play. This individualistic portrait is exactly how Americans saw themselves: Brokaw's book is a valid reflection of the times.
During a period of economic hardship and in a country united by the war effort, choices were simple; few people questioned why America was fighting Germany and Japan. Adversity brought out the best, especially in an optimistic culture like America's. As the soldier who found Beethoven's pianos in a Weimar house says after his unit is shelled, "Nothing like a close call to make the morning more beautiful." The greatest impression that war veterans seem to carry back from war is a sense of comradeship that, in spite of pain and loss, render their war years the most rewarding of all their life experiences. Modern life doesn't necessarily have the same certainties. The Greatest Generation Speaks is a healthy reminder of the foundations on which American society is built. --John Stevenson [via]
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Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diaryby Joseph Conrad, Caryl PhillipsISBN 037575377X (0-375-75377-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diary'Book summary:Introduction by Caryl PhillipsCommentary by H. L. Mencken, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chinua Achebe, and Philip GourevitchOriginally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890-the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad: "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . . He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life." [via]
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How to Be Alone: Essaysby Jonathan FranzenISBN 0374173273 (0-374-17327-3)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Be Alone: Essays'Book summary:Jonathan Franzen is smart and brash, the kind of person you want as your social critic but not as a brother-in-law. Many of the 14 essays in How to Be Alone, by the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Corrections, first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and elsewhere. A long, much-discussed rumination on the American novel, (newly) titled "Why Bother?," is included, as well as essays on privacy obsession, the U.S. post office, New York City, big tobacco, and new prisons. At his best, as in "My Father's Brain," a piece on his father's struggle with Alzheimer's, Franzen can make the ordinary world utterly riveting. But at times, it can be difficult to discern where Franzen stands on any particular subject, as he often takes both sides of an argument. Valid attempts to reflect ambiguity s! ometimes lead to obfuscation, especially in his essays on privacy and tobacco, although his belief that small-town America of years gone by offered the individual little privacy certainly rings true. Franzen can write with panache, as in this comment after he watched, without headphones, a TV show during a flight: "(It) became an exposé of the hydraulics of insincere smiles." A few of the shorter pieces appear to be filler. Franzen shines brightest when he gets edgy and a little angry, as in "The Reader in Exile": "Instead of Manassas battlefield, a historical theme park. Instead of organizing narratives, a map of the world as complex as the world itself. Instead of a soul, membership in a crowd. Instead of wisdom, data." --Mark Frutkin, Amazon.ca [via]
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I Am the Cheeseby Robert CormierISBN 0375840397 (0-375-84039-7)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I Am the Cheese'Book summary:Imagine discovering that your whole life has been a fiction, your identity altered, and a new family history created. Suddenly nothing is as it once seemed; you can trust no one, maybe not even yourself. It is exactly this revelation that turns 14-year-old Adam Farmer's life upside down. As he tries to ascertain who he really is, Adam encounters a past, present, and future too horrible to contemplate. Suspense builds as the fragments of the story are assembled--a missing father, government corruption, espionage--until the shocking conclusion shatters the fragile mosaic. Young adult readers will easily relate to the shy and confused Adam, whose desperate searching for self resembles a disturbingly exaggerated version of the identity crisis common to the teenage years.
First published in 1977, I Am the Cheese provides an exciting introduction to psychological thrillers. This sensitive, emotional, subtly crafted novel by Robert Cormier (author of The Chocolate War) was a New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year, as well as a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year. --Emilie Coulter [via]
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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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Killing Groundby Mary Lee SettleISBN 0374181071 (0-374-18107-1)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Laramie Projectby Moises KaufmanISBN 0375727191 (0-375-72719-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Laramie Project'Book summary:On October 7, 1998, a young gay man was discovered bound to a fence in the hills outside Laramie, Wyoming, savagely beaten and left to die in an act of hate that shocked the nation. Matthew Shepards death became a national symbol of intolerance, but for the people of Laramie the event was deeply personal, and its they we hear in this stunningly effective theater piece, a deeply complex portrait of a community. [via]
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The Last of the Wineby Mary RenaultISBN 0375726810 (0-375-72681-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last of the Wine'Book summary:In The Last of the Wine, two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic games, fight in the wars against Sparta, and study under Socrates. As their relationship develops, Renault expertly conveys Greek culture, showing the impact of this supreme philosopher whose influence spans epochs. [via]
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Like No Other Time : The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Foreverby Tom DaschleISBN 0375432833 (0-375-43283-3)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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The Majesty of the Law : Reflections of a Supreme Court Justiceby Sandra Day O'ConnorISBN 0375509259 (0-375-50925-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Majesty of the Law : Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice'Book summary:In The Majesty of the Law, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor explores the law, her life as a Justice, and how the Court has evolved and continues to function, grow, and change as an American institution. Tracing some of the origins of American law through history, people, and ideas, OConnor sheds new light on the basics, and through personal observation she explores the development of institutions and ideas we have come to regard as fundamental.
OConnor discusses notable cases that have shaped American democracy and the Court as we know it today, and she traces the turbulent battle women have fought for a place in our nations legal system since Americas inception. Straight-talking, clear-eyed, inspiring, The Majesty of the Law is more than a reflection on OConnors own experiences as the first female Justice of the Supreme Court; it also contains a discussion of how the suffrage movement changed the lives of womenin voting booths, jury boxes, and homes across the country.
In The Majesty of the Law, Sandra Day OConnor reveals some of what she has learned and believes about American law and life, insights gleaned over her years as one of the most powerful and inspiring women in American history. [via]More editions of The Majesty of the Law : Reflections of a Supreme Court Justice:
Mark Twain on the Damned Human Raceby TwainISBN 0374521514 (0-374-52151-4)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vineby Tom WolfeISBN 0374204241 (0-374-20424-1)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine'Book summary:"When are the 1970s going to begin?" ran the joke during the Presidential campaign of 1976. With his own patented combination of serious journalism and dazzling comedy, Tom Wolfe met the question head-on in these rollicking essays -- and even provided the 1970s with its name: "The Me Decade."[via]More editions of Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine:
Meet Abraham Lincolnby Barbara Cary, Stephen MarchesiISBN 0375803963 (0-375-80396-3)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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The Metaphysical Clubby Louis MenandISBN 0374528497 (0-374-52849-7)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America'Book summary:If past is prologue, then The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand may suggest an intellectual course for the United States in the 21st century. At least Menand, a frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, thinks so. This enthralling study of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey shows how these four men developed a philosophy of pragmatism following the Civil War, a period Menand likens to post-cold-war times. Together, "they were more responsible than any other group for moving American thought into the modern world."
Despite this potentially forbidding theme, The Metaphysical Club is not a dry tome for academics. Instead, it is a quadruple biography, a wonderfully told story of ideas that advances by turning these thinkers into characters and bringing them to life. Menand links them through the Metaphysical Club, a conversational club formed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872. It lasted but a few months, and references to it appear only in Peirce's writings (its real significance seems rather limited), though Holmes and James were both members. (Dewey was much younger than these three, and more an heir than a contemporary.) It is difficult to describe in a sentence or two what they accomplished, though Menand takes a stab at it: "They helped put an end to the idea that the universe is an idea, that beyond the mundane business of making our way as best we can in a world shot through with contingency, there exists some order, invisible to us, whose logic we transgress at our peril." Academic freedom and cultural pluralism are just two of their legacies, and they are linchpins of democracy in a nonideological age, says Menand.
A book like this is necessarily idiosyncratic, yet at the same time this one is sweeping. It presents an accessible survey of intellectual life from roughly the end of the Civil War to the start of the cold war. Dozens of figures receive fascinating thumbnail sketches, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Darwin to Jane Addams and Eugene Debs. The result is a grand portrait of an age that will appeal to anyone with even a modest interest in the history of philosophy and ideas. --John Miller [via]
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The Minority Reportby Philip K. DickISBN 0375421874 (0-375-42187-4)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Minority Report'Book summary:In the world of The Minority Report, Commissioner John Anderton is the one to thank for the lack of crime. He is the originator of the Precrime System, which uses "precogs"--people with the power to see into the future--to identify criminals before they can do any harm. Unfortunately for Anderton, his precogs perceive him as the next criminal. But Anderton knows he has never contemplated such a thing, and this knowledge proves the precogs are fallible. Now, whichever way he turns, Anderton is doomed--unless he can find the precogs's "minority report"--the dissenting voice that represents his one hope of getting at the truth in time to save himself from his own system.
A film version of The Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, will be released this summerfurther proof of the enduring appeal of Philip K. Dick's visionary fiction. [via]More editions of The Minority Report:
The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peaceby Dennis RossISBN 0374529809 (0-374-52980-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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No Safe Placeby Richard North PattersonISBN 0375702962 (0-375-70296-2)
Softcover, Random House Large Print
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No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novelby Christopher BuckleyISBN 0375758755 (0-375-75875-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Of Paradise and Power : America and Europe in the New World Orderby Robert KaganISBN 0375432914 (0-375-43291-4)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Of Paradise and Power : America and Europe in the New World Order'Book summary:From a leading scholar of our countrys foreign policy, the brilliant essay about America and the world that has caused a storm in international circles now expanded into book form.
European leaders, increasingly disturbed by U.S. policy and actions abroad, feel they are headed for what the New York Times (July 21, 2002) describes as a moment of truth. After years of mutual resentment and tension, there is a sudden recognition that the real interests of America and its allies are diverging sharply and that the trans-atlantic relationship itself has changed, possibly irreversibly. Europe sees the United States as high-handed, unilateralist, and unnecessarily belligerent; the United States sees Europe as spent, unserious, and weak. The anger and mistrust on both sides are hardening into incomprehension.
This past summer, in Policy Review, Robert Kagan reached incisively into this impasse to force both sides to see themselves through the eyes of the other. Tracing the widely differing histories of Europe and America since the end of World War II, he makes clear how for one the need to escape a bloody past has led to a new set of transnational beliefs about power and threat, while the other has perforce evolved into the guarantor of that postmodern paradise by dint of its might and global reach. This remarkable analysis is being discussed from Washington to Paris to Tokyo. It is esssential reading. [via]More editions of Of Paradise and Power : America and Europe in the New World Order:
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Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996by Seamus HeaneyISBN 0374526788 (0-374-52678-8)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Opened Ground: Selected Poems 1966-1996'Book summary:For Seamus Heaney, "opened ground" is a necessity--a way of getting to the root of things. The book bearing that name spans three decades, beginning with "Digging," his exhilarating portrait of the artist as a young revolutionary. "Between my finger and my thumb / The squat pen rests; snug as a gun," Heaney boasts (although by the end of the poem, his weapon has metamorphosed into something closer to the spade his grandfather and father once relied upon). The last entry, the sonnet "Postscript," appears some 400 pages later, which makes Opened Ground a capacious selection of his work. But at this point Heaney requires the largest of hold-alls. There are beautiful, pastoral lyrics here, sequences such as "Glanmore Sonnets" and "Clearances," and a multitude of love poems, not solely to his wife but to his parents and children. And in Heaney's hands, small domestic moments and objects--a scrabble board, a swing, a kite, a bed sawn in half to get it downstairs--invariably become both reality and soaring myth.
At the same time, his Ireland is the site of "neighborly murders," and the past and larger world he confronts is one threatened by history and brutal sectarianism. Heaney has declared, "Fear is the emotion that the muse thrives on. That's always there"--and terror is pervasive in his "land of password, handgrip, wink and nod, / Of open minds as open as a trap." Many of his poems that explore the Troubles reflect his own considerable concern that he has long "confused evasion and artistic tact." Others might be termed self-reflexive, since Heaney uses them to unearth his own role. "Kinship" features a simple, brilliant (not to mention canine!) simile:
I step through origins
In a later poem, "From the Frontier of Writing," he compares the struggle for inspiration to being stopped at a roadblock: "And everything is pure interrogation / until a rifle motions you and you move / with guarded unconcerned acceleration." Heaney's gift is dazzling, and would be almost unbearable were it not matched by vigilance, self-doubt, and regret--and his longing for the day in which "justice can rise up / And hope and history rhyme." --Kerry Fried [via]
like a dog turning
its memories of wilderness
on the kitchen mat.
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Our Gangby Philip RothISBN 0375726845 (0-375-72684-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Pelican Briefby John GrishamISBN 0375433481 (0-375-43348-1)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Pelican Brief'Book summary:John Grisham's head was full of movies when he wrote The Pelican Brief, which is such a brisk page-turner you could use it to dry your hair. He had Julia Roberts in mind for the heroine, Darby Shaw, a brilliant Tulane law student who comes up with an ingenious theory to explain the baffling assassinations of two Supreme Court justices in one day. They were shot and strangled by ace international terrorist Khamel, who loves the film Three Days of the Condor, but government gumshoes don't get what connects the deaths. Silly government guys! They died so the conservative president, who just wants to be left alone to play golf, will appoint new, conservative justices who will help out a case involving an industrialist who is the enemy of pelicans and other living things. It's all spelled out for them in Darby's brief. She likes to do legal feats to impress her boyfriend, her boyish law prof Thomas (who, like Grisham, prefers to shave at most once a week, and is cool, smart, and antiauthoritarian). The prof likes to paint her toes red, in homage to Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. (Sarandon also starred in the film version of Grisham's The Client.)
But when Thomas gets splattered by a car bomb meant for Darby, she escapes the hospital and hooks up with a Washington Post reporter, Gray Grantham, who sleuths like the guys in All the President's Men.
Grisham wishes he hadn't written The Pelican Brief quite so quickly (his first novel, A Time to Kill, went through dozens of drafts), but Pelican's very breathlessness contributes to its dreamy, cinematic chase-o-rama atmosphere. [via]
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Persepolisby Marjane SatrapiISBN 0375423966 (0-375-42396-6)
Softcover, Pantheon Books
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Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farinaby David HajduISBN 0374281998 (0-374-28199-8)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina'Book summary:David Hajdu (pronounced HAY-doo), the prizewinning author of the magisterial jazz biography Lush Life, now steam-cleans the legend of the lost folk generation in Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña. What a ripping read! It's like an invitation to the wildest party Greenwich Village ever saw. You feel swept up in the coffeehouse culture that transformed ordinary suburban kids into ragged, radiant avatars of a traditional yet bewilderingly new music. Hajdu's sociomusical analysis is as scholarly as (though less arty than) Greil Marcus's work; he deftly sketches the sources and evolving styles of his ambitious, rather calculating subjects, proving in the process that genius is not individual--it's rooted in a time and place. Hajdu says Dylan heisted many early tunes (e.g., "Maggie's Farm" from Pete Seeger's "Down on Penny's Farm"): "Dylan [told] a radio interviewer that he felt as if his music had always existed and he just wrote it down ... [in fact], much of his early work had existed as other writers' melodies, chord structures, or thematic ideas." But Dylan and company made it all their own, and Hajdu vividly evokes the scenes they made.
Positively 4th Street is very much a group portrait. When something amazing happens, Hajdu puts you right there. The unknown Baez barefoot in the rain, bedazzling the Newport Jazz Festival and becoming immortal overnight. The irresistibly irresponsible Fariña talking his folk-star wife out of shooting him dead with his own pistol. The "little spastic gnome" Dylan transmogrified into greatness onstage, bashing Joan with the searing lyrics of "She Belongs to Me." A stoned Fariña advising Dylan to cynically hitch his wagon to Joan's rising star and "start a whole new genre. Poetry set to music, but not chamber music or beatnik jazz, man... poetry you can dance to."
The book is as delectably gossipy as Vanity Fair (one of Hajdu's employers). Richard married the exceedingly young beauty Mimi and helmed their career, but he might have dumped her for big sister Joan, whose madcap humor and verbal wit harmonized with his--except that he ineptly killed himself on a motorcycle first. Bob mumblingly courted both sisters, but when he cruelly taunted the insecure Joan, Mimi yanked his hair back until he cried. The account of Bob and Joan's musical-erotic passion is first-rate music history and uproarious soap opera. Hajdu's research is prodigious--even Fariña's close chum Thomas Pynchon granted interviews--and his anecdotes are often off-the-cuff funny: "[Rock manager Albert Grossman] was easy to deal with.... It wasn't till maybe two days after you would see Albert that you'd realize your underwear had been stolen." Full disclosure: Hajdu was one of my long-ago bosses at Entertainment Weekly, but that's certainly not why I heartily endorse this book. It's scholarship with a human face, akin to "poetry you can dance to." --Tim Appelo [via]
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Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchersby Tom WolfeISBN 0374246009 (0-374-24600-9)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionageby Joseph E. PersicoISBN 0375761268 (0-375-76126-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Runby Douglas E. WinterISBN 037540838X (0-375-40838-X)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Runaway Juryby John GrishamISBN 0375433449 (0-375-43344-9)
Softcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Runaway Jury'Book summary:Millions of dollars are at stake in a huge tobacco-company case in Biloxi, and the jury's packed with people who have dirty little secrets. A mysterious young man takes subtle control of the jury as the defense watches helplessly, but they soon realize that he in turn is controlled by an even more mysterious young woman. Lives careen off course as they bend everyone in the case to their will. [via]
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The Shape of a Pocketby John BergerISBN 0375718885 (0-375-71888-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Shape of a Pocket'Book summary:The Shape of a Pocket [Paperback] by Berger, John [via]
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The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White Houseby John F. HarrisISBN 0375760849 (0-375-76084-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Tin Drumby Günter GrassISBN 0375420576 (0-375-42057-6)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tin Drum'Book summary:Meet Oskar Matzerath, "the eternal three-year-old drummer." On the morning of his third birthday, dressed in a striped pullover and patent leather shoes, and clutching his drumsticks and his new tin drum, young Oskar makes an irrevocable decision: "It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; that I would stop right there, remain as I was--and so I did; for many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same attire." Here is a Peter Pan story with a vengeance. But instead of Never-Never Land, Günter Grass gives us Danzig, a contested city on the Polish-German border; instead of Captain Hook and his pirates, we have the Nazis. And in place of Peter himself is Oskar, a twisted puer aeternis with a scream that can shatter glass and a drum rather than a shadow. First published in 1959, The Tin Drum's depiction of the Nazi era created a furor in Germany, for the world of Grass's making is rife with corrupt politicians and brutal grocers in brown shirts:
There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langasser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze.
As Oskar grows older (though not taller), portents of war transform into the thing itself. Danzig is the first casualty when, in the summer of 1939, residents turn against each other in a pitched battle between Poles and Germans. In the years that follow, Oskar goes from one picaresque adventure to the next--he joins a troupe of traveling musicians; he becomes the leader of a group of anarchists; he falls in love; he becomes a recording artist--until some time after the war, he is convicted of murder and confined to a mental hospital.The Tin Drum uses savage comedy and a stiff dose of magical realism to capture not only the madness of war, but also the black cancer at the heart of humanity that allows such degradations to occur. Grass wields his humor like a knife--yes, he'll make you laugh, but he'll make you bleed, as well. There have been many novels written about World War II, but only a handful can truly be called great; The Tin Drum, without a doubt, is one. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Electionby Jeffrey ToobinISBN 0375761071 (0-375-76107-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election'Book summary:From the best-selling author of A Vast Conspiracy and The Run of His Life comes Too Close to Call--the definitive story of the Bush-Gore presidential recount. A political and legal analyst of unparalleled journalistic skill, Jeffrey Toobin is the ideal writer to distill the events of the thirty-six anxiety-filled days that culminated in one of the most stunning Supreme Court decisions in history.
Packed with news-making disclosures and written with the drive of a legal thriller, Too Close to Call takes us inside James Baker's private jet, through the locked gates to Al Gore's mansion, behind the covered-up windows of Katherine Harris's office, and even into the secret conference room of the United States Supreme Court. As the scene shifts from Washington to Austin and into the remote corners of the enduringly strange Sunshine State, Toobin's book will transform what you thought you knew about the most extraordinary political drama in American history.
The Florida recount unfolded in a kaleidoscopic maze of bizarre concepts (chads, pregnant and otherwise), unfamiliar people in critically important positions (the Florida Supreme Court), and familiar people in surprising new places (the Miami relatives of Elián González, in a previously undisclosed role in this melodrama). With the rich characterization that is his trademark, Toobin portrays the prominent strategists who masterminded the campaigns--the Daleys and the Roves--and also the lesser-known but influential players who pulled the strings, as well as the judges and justices whose decisions determined the final outcome. Toobin gives both camps a treatment they have not yet received--remarkably evenhanded, nonpartisan, and entirely new.
The post-election period posed a challenge to even the most zealous news junkie: how to keep up with what was happening and sort out the important from the trivial. Jeffrey Toobin has now done this--and then some. With clarity, insight, humor, and a deep understanding of the law, he deconstructs the events, the players, and the often Byzantine intricacies of our judicial system. A remarkable account of one of the most significant periods in our country's history, Too Close to Call is endlessly surprising, frequently poignant, and wholly addictive.
From the Hardcover edition. [via]More editions of Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election:
Trickster's Choiceby Tamora PierceISBN 0375814728 (0-375-81472-8)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Trickster's Choice'Book summary:To the great joy of her many fans, Tamora Pierce with this book begins a new saga of Tortall to add to The Song of the Lioness Quartet, the Immortals Quartet, and The Protector of the Small tetralogy. At the center of each of these books is always a strong and resourceful young woman who masters the arts of swordplay and knightly warfare in the magical medieval country of Tortall. Alianne, or Aly, daughter of the warrior queen Alanna the Lioness, has all these skills, but also a delicious sense of humor, which serves her well when she is chosen by the trickster god Kyprioth to serve as his secret agent and a slave for a year in the embattled Copper Isles. There the dark-skinned natives, or raka, have been conquered and crushed by the laurin, light-skinned people from the mainland. The burning raka resentment is fueled by prophecies of a twice royal queen who will free them, aided by the "wise one, the cunning one, the strong one, the warrior, and the crows." Just how each of the colorful characters and Aly herself fit into this prophecy and Kyprioths tricky plan keeps readers guessing. Aly plots to show her skill at spying as she flirts with the god and is courted by Nawat, a crow transformed into a handsome young man, who is puzzled when she rejects his attempts to mate-feed her with grubs and ants.
The pages of this long but fast-paced adventure zip by, enlivened by intrigue, skirmishes, comedy, romance, and lots of dramatic clothes. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell [via]
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Trickster's Queenby Tamora PierceISBN 0375828788 (0-375-82878-8)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Trickster's Queen'Book summary:Alys adventure continues. . . . No longer a slave, Alannas daughter is now spying as part of an underground rebellion against the colonial rulers of the Copper Isles. The people in the rebellion believe that a prophecy in which a new queen will rise up to take the throne is about to be realized. Aly is busy keeping the potential teenage queen and her younger siblings safe, while also keeping her in the dark about her future. But Aly, who is usually adept at anticipating danger and changes, is in for a few nasty surprises.
New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Tamora Pierce captured the imagination of readers 20 years ago with Alanna: The First Adventure. As of August 2003, she has written 21 books including three completed quartets: The Song of the Lioness, The Immortals, and The Protector of the Small, set in the fantasy realm of Tortall. She has also written the Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens quartets. The author lives in New York, NY.
From the Hardcover edition. [via] 
The Truth About The Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us And What To Do About Itby Marcia AngellISBN 0375760946 (0-375-76094-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Ulyssesby James JoyceISBN 0375507949 (0-375-50794-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ulysses'Book summary:Ulysses has been labeled dirty, blasphemous, and unreadable. In a famous 1933 court decision, Judge John M. Woolsey declared it an emetic book--although he found it sufficiently unobscene to allow its importation into the United States--and Virginia Woolf was moved to decry James Joyce's "cloacal obsession." None of these adjectives, however, do the slightest justice to the novel. To this day it remains the modernist masterpiece, in which the author takes both Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. It is funny, sorrowful, and even (in a close-focus sort of way) suspenseful. And despite the exegetical industry that has sprung up in the last 75 years, Ulysses is also a compulsively readable book. Even the verbal vaudeville of the final chapters can be navigated with relative ease, as long as you're willing to be buffeted, tickled, challenged, and (occasionally) vexed by Joyce's sheer command of the English language.
Among other things, a novel is simply a long story, and the first question about any story is: What happens?. In the case of Ulysses, the answer might be Everything. William Blake, one of literature's sublime myopics, saw the universe in a grain of sand. Joyce saw it in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904, a day distinguished by its utter normality. Two characters, Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom, go about their separate business, crossing paths with a gallery of indelible Dubliners. We watch them teach, eat, stroll the streets, argue, and (in Bloom's case) masturbate. And thanks to the book's stream-of-consciousness technique--which suggests no mere stream but an impossibly deep, swift-running river--we're privy to their thoughts, emotions, and memories. The result? Almost every variety of human experience is crammed into the accordian folds of a single day, which makes Ulysses not just an experimental work but the very last word in realism.
Both characters add their glorious intonations to the music of Joyce's prose. Dedalus's accent--that of a freelance aesthetician, who dabbles here and there in what we might call Early Yeats Lite--will be familiar to readers of Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man. But Bloom's wistful sensualism (and naive curiosity) is something else entirely. Seen through his eyes, a rundown corner of a Dublin graveyard is a figure for hope and hopelessness, mortality and dogged survival: "Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really?" --James Marcus [via]
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The Underdogsby Mariano Azuela, Ilan Stavans, E. Munguia, Beth JorgensenISBN 0375759425 (0-375-75942-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Underdogs'Book summary:Hailed as the greatest novel of the Mexican Revolution, The Underdogs recounts the story of an illiterate but charismatic Indian peasant farmers part in the rebellion against Porfirio Díaz, and his subsequent loss of belief in the cause when the revolutionary alliance becomes factionalized. Azuelas masterpiece is a timeless, authentic portrayal of peasant life, revolutionary zeal, and political disillusionment. [via]
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The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertaintyby Thomas E. PattersonISBN 0375713794 (0-375-71379-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty'Book summary:The disputed presidential election of 2000 highlighted a range of flaws in the American voting system, from ballot procedures to alleged voter intimidation to questions about the fairness of the Electoral College. But as Harvard University political scientist Thomas E. Patterson shows, one problem dwarfs all of these, a predicament that has been increasing since the 1960s and threatens the very foundations of our democracy: fewer and fewer Americans participate in elections. They are less likely to vote, less likely to contribute money to campaigns, and less likely to talk about candidates. They even are less likely to tune in the televised presidential debates.
In 1960, 63 percent of Americans voted in the presidential election; in 2000, only 51 percent did. In 1996, more Americans abstained than voted. This decline is surprising not only in itselfAmerica, as our politicians never tire of telling us, is a standard-bearer for democracybut also because it contradicts the received wisdom about voting patterns: the number of college graduates has risen, racial bars to voting have fallen, and registration laws have been simplified. Yet, even as the United States has made balloting easier and has produced more citizens who, judged by their educational achievements, should vote, the percentage of voters has decreased.
Patterson, whose landmark study Out of Order examined the effects of media saturation on the democratic process, takes a clear-eyed look at this situation. Based on more than 80,000 interviews conducted during the 2000 presidential campaign, The Vanishing Voter reveals the political sources of voter discontent. Patterson explains the parts that changes in partisan politics, media coverage, candidate strategy, and electoral reform have played in discouraging voters from going to the polls. And he suggests specific remedies for repairing the process.
Thoughtful and timely, The Vanishing Voter contains a crucial message for all who care about democracy. [via]More editions of The Vanishing Voter: Public Involvement in an Age of Uncertainty:
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War and Peaceby Leo Tolstoy, Constance Black GarnettISBN 0375760644 (0-375-76064-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'War and Peace'Book summary:Often called the greatest novel ever written, War and Peace is at once an epic of the Napoleonic Wars, a philosophical study, and a celebration of the Russian spirit. Tolstoys genius is seen clearly in the multitude of characters in this massive chronicleall of them fully realized and equally memorable. Out of this complex narrative emerges a profound examination of the individuals place in the historical process, one that makes it clear why Thomas Mann praised Tolstoy for his Homeric powers and placed War and Peace in the same category as the Iliad: To read him . . . is to find ones way home . . . to everything within us that is fundamental and sane. [via]
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We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwandaby Philip GourevitchISBN 0374286973 (0-374-28697-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda'Book summary:"Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.
The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan [via]
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White Teeth: A Novelby Zadie SmithISBN 0375703861 (0-375-70386-1)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'White Teeth: Reader's Companion'Book summary:On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel. Epic and intimate, hilarious and poignant, White Teeth is the story of two North London families--one headed by Archie, the other by Archie's best friend, a Muslim Bengali named Samad Iqbal. Pals since they served together in World War II, Archie and Samad are a decidedly unlikely pair. Plodding Archie is typical in every way until he marries Clara, a beautiful, toothless Jamaican woman half his age, and the couple have a daughter named Irie (the Jamaican word for "no problem"). Samad--devoutly Muslim, hopelessly "foreign"--weds the feisty and always suspicious Alsana in a prearranged union. They have twin sons named Millat and Magid, one a pot-smoking punk-cum-militant Muslim and the other an insufferable science nerd. The riotous and tortured histories of the Joneses and the Iqbals are fundamentally intertwined, capturing an empire's worth of cultural identity, history, and hope.Zadie Smith's dazzling first novel plays out its bounding, vibrant course in a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute. A winning debut in every respect, White Teeth marks the arrival of a wondrously talented writer who takes on the big themes--faith, race, gender, history, and culture--and triumphs. [via]
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The Wizard of Ozby L. Frank Baum, Charles SantoreISBN 0375811370 (0-375-81137-0)
Hardcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Wizard of Oz'Book summary:In the 100 years since L. Frank Baum first published his Wonderful Wizard of Oz, countless authors and illustrators have adapted, interpreted, and retold this story of Dorothy and her unusual companions, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. But for sheer opulence and sumptuous color, award-winning artist Charles Santore's 100th anniversary edition takes the cake. Santore's large, fairy-tale style watercolors feature ominous, shadowy forests, magnificent but deadly poppies, the whimsical, green-tinted landscapes of Oz, and the golden gray fields of Kansas. Each page is awash in color; many of the two-page spreads have no text to distract readers from the illustrations' myriad details--not-yet-blooming poppy buds, the Tin Woodman's watering can head, and the radiant good witch, Glinda, posing on her ruby-encrusted throne. The text is condensed rather than adapted; so virtually every word is Baum's own. Although some scenes have been left out, Baum's classic story rings through, loud and clear. Sharing this lush edition with a favorite child would be the perfect way to celebrate a century of Oz. (Ages 4 to 8) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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Antes De Ser Libresby Julia Alvarez, Liliana ValenzuelaISBN 0375815457 (0-375-81545-7)
Softcover, Random House Espanol
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