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1968: The Year That Rocked The Worldby Mark KurlanskyISBN 0345455827 (0-345-45582-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: '1968: The Year That Rocked The World'Book summary:In this monumental new book, award-winning author Mark Kurlansky has written his most ambitious work to date: a singular and ultimately definitive look at a pivotal moment in history.
With 1968, Mark Kurlansky brings to teeming life the cultural and political history of that world-changing year of social upheaval. People think of it as the year of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Yet it was also the year of the Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy assassinations; the riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; Prague Spring; the antiwar movement and the Tet Offensive; Black Power; the generation gap, avant-garde theater, the birth of the womens movement, and the beginning of the end for the Soviet Union. From New York, Miami, Berkeley, and Chicago to Paris, Prague, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Tokyo, and Mexico City, spontaneous uprisings occurred simultaneously around the globe.
Everything was disrupted. In the Middle East, Yasir Arafats guerilla organization rose to prominence . . . both the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Biennale were forced to shut down by protesters . . . the Kentucky Derby winner was stripped of the crown for drug use . . . the Olympics were a disaster, with the Mexican government having massacred hundreds of students protesting police brutality there . . . and the Miss America pageant was stormed by feminists carrying banners that introduced to the television-watching public the phrase womens liberation.
Kurlansky shows how the coming of live television made 1968 the first global year. It was the year that an amazed world watched the first live telecast from outer space, and that TV news expanded to half an hour. For the first time, Americans watched that days battlethe Vietnam Wars Tet Offensiveon the evening news. Television also shocked the world with seventeen minutes of police clubbing demonstrators at the Chicago convention, live film of unarmed students facing Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia, and a war of starvation in Biafra. The impact was huge, not only on the antiwar movement, but also on the medium itself. The fact that one now needed television to make things happen was a cultural revelation with enormous consequences.
In many ways, this momentous year led us to where we are today. Whether through youth and music, politics and war, economics and the media, Mark Kurlansky shows how, in 1968, twelve volatile months transformed who we are as a people. But above all, he gives a new understanding to the underlying causes of the unique historical phenomenon that was the year 1968. Thoroughly researched and engagingly writtenfull of telling anecdotes, penetrating analysis, and the authors trademark incisive wit1968 is the most important book yet of Kurlanskys noteworthy career.
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyerby Mark TwainISBN 0361031602 (0-361-03160-2)
Hardcover, Prentice Hall of Canada Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer'Book summary:Few books capture both the simplicity and complexities of American life quite like these enduring "boyhood" classics by Mark Twain.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Take a lighthearted, nostalgic trip to a simpler time, seen through the eyes of a special boy named Tom Sawyer. It is a summertime world of hooky and adventure, pranks and punishment, villains and young love. [via]More editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer:
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Annie Johnby Jamaica KincaidISBN 0374525102 (0-374-52510-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Annie John'Book summary:Jamaica Kincaid beautifully delineates hatred and fear, because she knows they are often a step away from love and obsession. At the start of Annie John, her 10-year-old heroine is engulfed in family happiness and safety. Though Annie loves her father, she is all eyes for her mother. When she is almost 12, however, the idyll ends and she falls into deep disfavor. This inexplicable loss mars both lives, as each grows adept at public falsity and silent betrayal. The pattern is set, and extended: "And now I started a new series of betrayals of people and things I would have sworn only minutes before to die for." In front of Annie's father and the world, "We were politeness and kindness and love and laughter." Alone they are linked in loathing. Annie tries to imagine herself as someone in a book--an orphan or a girl with a wicked stepmother. The trouble is, she finds, those characters' lives always end happily. Luckily for us, though not perhaps for her alter ego, Kincaid is too truthful a writer to provide such a finale. [via]
The Atlantic Soundby Caryl PhillipsISBN 0375701036 (0-375-70103-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Babel-17by Samuel R. DelanyISBN 0375706690 (0-375-70669-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purityby Harry BruiniusISBN 0375413715 (0-375-41371-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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Beyond Glory: Joe Louis Vs. Max Schmeling, And a World on the Brinkby David MargolickISBN 0375726195 (0-375-72619-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazineby Lisa Jervis, Andi ZeislerISBN 0374113432 (0-374-11343-2)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Black Gold of the Sun: Searching for Home in Africa And Beyondby Ekow EshunISBN 0375424180 (0-375-42418-0)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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Blood of the Liberalsby George PackerISBN 0374527784 (0-374-52778-4)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Blood Sympathyby Reginald HillISBN 0373262108 (0-373-26210-8)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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Breath, Eyes, Memoryby Edwidge DanticatISBN 037570504X (0-375-70504-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Breath, Eyes, Memory'Book summary:Oprah Book Club® Selection, May 1998: "I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to." The place is Haiti and the speaker is Sophie, the heroine of Edwidge Danticat's novel, "Breath, Eyes, Memory." Like her protagonist, Danticat is also Haitian; like her, she was raised in Haiti by an aunt until she came to the United States at age 12. Indeed, in her short stories, Danticat has often drawn on her background to fund her fiction, and she continues to do so in her debut novel.
The story begins in Haiti, on Mother's Day, when young Sophie discovers that she is about to leave the only home she has ever known with her Tante Atie in Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti, to go live with her mother in New York City. These early chapters in Haiti are lovely, subtly evoking the tender, painful relationship between the motherless child and the childless woman who feels honor bound to guard the natural mother's rights to the girl's affections above her own. Presented with a Mother's Day card, Tante Atie responds: "'It is for a mother, your mother.' She motioned me away with a wave of her hand. 'When it is Aunt's Day, you can make me one.'" Danticat also uses these pages to limn a vibrant portrait of life in Haiti from the cups of ginger tea and baskets of cassava bread served at community potlucks to the folk tales of a "people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads."
With Sophie's transition from a fairly happy existence with her aunt and grandmother in rural Haiti to life in New York with a mother she has never seen, Danticat's roots as a short-story writer become more evident; "Breath, Eyes, Memory" begins to read more like a collection of connected stories than a seamlessly evolved novel. In a couple of short chapters, Sophie arrives in New York, meets her mother, makes the acquaintance of her mother's new boyfriend, Marc, and discovers that she was the product of a rape when her mother was a teenager in Haiti. The novel then jumps several years ahead to Sophie's graduation from high school and her infatuation with an older man who lives next door. Unfortunately, this is also the point in the novel where Danticat begins to lay her themes on with a trowel instead of a brush: Sophie's mother becomes obsessed with protecting her daughter's virginity, going so far as to administer physical "tests" on a regular basis--testing which leads eventually to a rift in their relationship and to Sophie's struggle with her own sexuality. Soon the litany of victimization is flying thick and fast: female genital mutilation, incest, rape, frigidity, breast cancer, and abortion are the issues that arise in the final third of the novel, eventually drowning both fine writing and perceptive characterization under a deluge of angst.
Still, there is much to admire about "Breath, Eyes, Memory," and if at times the plot becomes overheated, Danticat's lyrical, vivid prose offers some real delight. If nothing else, this novel is sure to entice readers to look for Danticat's short stories--and possibly to sample other fiction from the West Indies as well. --Alix Wilber [via]
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The Bridegroomby Ha JinISBN 0375724931 (0-375-72493-1)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bridegroom'Book summary:It's the little things that kill us, as that master of the miniature Ha Jin well knows. Not oppression in general, but the tea thrown at us by railroad policemen; not failure, but the old flame who fails to visit; not grief, but the peanuts our kindergarten teacher stole from our pockets. In The Bridegroom, such moments run surprisingly deep, as if they traced the grooves history has left on individual hearts. The book's 12 tales capture a China in transition, en route from Maoism to market-friendly socialism, from isolation to increasing contact with the West. "I never thought money could make so much difference," says the narrator of "An Entrepreneur's Story," who's been transformed from black-market lowlife to new-economy hero. He wins respect and gets the girl, but it all feels too easy somehow, and he revenges himself by lighting his kerosene stove with bank notes.
Other characters navigate this sea change with similar bewilderment. The professor mistaken for "The Saboteur" thinks news articles about the end of the cultural revolution mean he can reason with the police (wrong!), while the bridegroom of the title story is hauled off to jail for so-called hooliganism rooted in "Western capitalism and bourgeois lifestyle"--that is, loving other men. "What a wonderful husband he could have been if he were not sick," his father-in-law thinks. In the story that deals most explicitly with the conflict between East and West, an American chain named Cowboy Chicken sets up shop in Muji City. The new order isn't that different from the old one, thinks one of the Chinese workers: "We nicknamed Mr. Shapiro 'Party Secretary,' because just like a Party boss anywhere he didn't do any work. The only difference was that he didn't organize political studies or demand we report to him our inner thoughts." In the end, as often happens, greed begets revolution--but whose greed? When the workers at Cowboy Chicken go on strike, jealous of one of their coworker's paychecks, they're replaced by an African American woman who teaches English at a nearby college and her students, who sing "We Shall Overcome" while they wipe tables.
But as in Jin's National Book Award-winning novel, Waiting, even the broadest political and cultural ironies are painted with an extraordinarily light-handed brush. Despite their apparent simplicity, these stories run deep; it's as if some 19th century master had wandered into our midst, writing prose whose unruffled surface recalls the virtues of the very long view. Like Chekhov, another great miniaturist and the writer he most resembles, Jin understands that humor is compassion, that a well-honed appreciation for the absurd is sometimes the best and most honest way to honor failed lives. While his characters attempt to balance the needs of the self and the demands of the state, we see less what is foreign to us than what is native to the human heart. --Mary Park [via]
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Brothers in Arms : The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Herosby Kareem Abdul-JabbarISBN 0375433643 (0-375-43364-3)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brothers in Arms : The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heros'Book summary:A powerful wartime saga in the bestselling tradition of Flags of Our Fathers, Brothers in Arms recounts the extraordinary story of the 761st Tank Battalion, the first all-black armored unit to see combat in World War II.
From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]More editions of Brothers in Arms : The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heros:
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Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnamby Andrew X. PhamISBN 0374119740 (0-374-11974-0)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam'Book summary:A great memoirist can burnish even an ordinary childhood into something bright--see, for instance, Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. So what about a really good writer with access to a dramatic and little-documented story? This is the case with Catfish and Mandala, Vietnamese American Andrew X. Pham's captivating first book, which delves fearlessly into questions of home, family, and identity. The son of Vietnamese parents who suffered terribly during the Vietnam War and brought their family to America when he was 10, Pham, on the cusp of his 30s, defied his parents' conservative hopes for him and his engineering career by becoming a poorly paid freelance writer. After the suicide of his sister, he set off on an even riskier path to travel some of the world on his bicycle. In the grueling, enlightening year that followed, he pedaled through Mexico, the American West Coast, Japan, and finally his far-off first land, Vietnam.
The story, with some of a mandala's repeated symbolic motifs, works on several levels at once. It is an exploration into the meaning of home, a descriptive travelogue, and an intimate look at the Vietnamese immigrant experience. There are beautifully illuminated flashbacks to the experience of fleeing Vietnam and to an earlier, more innocent childhood. While Pham's stern father, a survivor of Vietcong death camps, regrets that Pham has not been a respectful Vietnamese son, he also reveals that he wishes he himself had been more "American" for his kids, that he had "taken [them] camping." Catfish and Mandala is a book of double-edged truths, and it would make a fascinating study even in less able hands. In those of the adventurous, unsentimental Pham, it is an irresistible story. --Maria Dolan [via]
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The Caveby Tim Krabbe, Sam GarrettISBN 0374119783 (0-374-11978-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Clan of the Cave Bearby Jean M. AuelISBN 0375431802 (0-375-43180-2)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Clan of the Cave Bear'Book summary:When her parents are killed by an earthquake, 5-year-old Ayla wanders through the forest completely alone. Cold, hungry, and badly injured by a cave lion, the little girl is as good as gone until she is discovered by a group who call themselves the Clan of the Cave Bear. This clan, left homeless by the same disaster, have little interest in the helpless girl who comes from the tribe they refer to as the "Others." Only their medicine woman sees in Ayla a fellow human, worthy of care. She painstakingly nurses her back to health--a decision that will forever alter the physical and emotional structure of the clan. Although this story takes place roughly 35,000 years ago, its cast of characters could easily slide into any modern tale. The members of the Neanderthal clan, ruled by traditions and taboos, find themselves challenged by this outsider, who represents the physically modern Cro-Magnons. And as Ayla begins to grow and mature, her natural tendencies emerge, putting her in the middle of a brutal and dangerous power struggle.
Although Jean Auel obviously takes certain liberties with the actions and motivations of all our ancestors, her extensive research into the Ice Age does shine through--especially in the detailed knowledge of plants and natural remedies used by the medicine woman and passed down to Ayla. Mostly, though, this first in the series of four is a wonderful story of survival. Ayla's personal evolution is a compelling and relevant tale. --Sara Nickerson [via]
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The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Padby Minister FaustISBN 0345466357 (0-345-46635-7)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Druid of Shannaraby Terry BrooksISBN 0345911318 (0-345-91131-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Ecology of Fearby Mike DavisISBN 0375706070 (0-375-70607-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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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:
The Elf Queen of Shannaraby Terry BrooksISBN 0345911326 (0-345-91132-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to Their Rightful Ownersby Debra J. DickersonISBN 0375713190 (0-375-71319-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and Afterby Edward W. SaidISBN 0375725741 (0-375-72574-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After'Book summary:Soon after the Oslo accords were signed in September 1993 by Israel and Palestinian Liberation Organization, Edward Said predicted that they could not lead to real peace. In these essays, most written for Arab and European newspapers, Said uncovers the political mechanism that advertises reconciliation in the Middle East while keeping peace out of the picture.
[via]
Said argues that the imbalance in power that forces Palestinians and Arab states to accept the concessions of the United States and Israel prohibits real negotiations and promotes the second-class treatment of Palestinians. He documents what has really gone on in the occupied territories since the signing. He reports worsening conditions for the Palestinians critiques Yasir Arafat's self-interested and oppressive leadership, denounces Israel's refusal to recognize Palestine's past, andin essays new to this editionaddresses the resulting unrest.
In this unflinching cry for civic justice and self-determination, Said promotes not a political agenda but a transcendent alternative: the peaceful coexistence of Arabs and Jews enjoying equal rights and shared citizenship.More editions of The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After:
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Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texasby Joyce KingISBN 0375421327 (0-375-42132-7)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas'Book summary:On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nations imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching.
In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene and extends into the minds of the young men who so casually ended a mans life. She takes us inside the prison in which two of them met for the first time, and she shows how it played a major role in shaping their attitudesracial and otherwise. The result is a deeply engrossing psychological portrait of the accused and a powerful indictment of the American prison systems ability to reform criminals. Finally, King writes with candor and clarity about how the events of that fateful night have affected heras a black woman, a native Texan, and a journalist given the agonizing assignment of covering the trials of all three defendants. More than a spectacular true-crime debut, Hate Crime is a breathtaking work of reportage and a searing look at how the question of race continues to shape life in America. [via]More editions of Hate Crime: The Story of a Dragging in Jasper, Texas:
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The Heart of a Womanby Maya AngelouISBN 0375500723 (0-375-50072-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart of a Woman'Book summary:Millions have read Maya Angelou's national bestseller The Heart of a Woman, and now you can hear her fascinating story in the author's own voice. Angelou exposes a turbulent period of her life as she struggles to raise a child, fulfill her goals as a writer, and fight for civil rights in an age of social injustice; Angelou's rich and resonating voice draws the listener into the unexpected details of her life. Working as a nightclub singer in Los Angeles, Angelou decides to move to New York with her son Guy in hopes of building stronger ties with the black art community. In an attempt to find stability for Guy and make a name for herself, her love life takes wild turns. Should she marry the bail bondsman who's as dry as stale bread or run away with the African freedom fighter? Her heart takes her to Africa, where her writing career blossoms but her marriage sours. The Heart of a Woman is filled with beautiful prose and songs; Angelou displays her music talent in several vignettes, most memorably in a scene with Billie Holiday: Angelou is performing at a nightclub when Holiday shrieks, "Stop her, stop her... she sounds like my mama!" [via]
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High Druid of Shannara: Jarka Ruusby Terry BrooksISBN 0345483898 (0-345-48389-8)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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House Gunby Nadine GordimerISBN 0374173079 (0-374-17307-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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House of Sand and Fogby Andre DubusISBN 0375708413 (0-375-70841-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'House of Sand and Fog'Book summary:Andre Dubus III wastes no time in capturing the dark side of the immigrant experience in America at the end of the 20th century. House of Sand and Fog opens with a highway crew composed of several nationalities picking up litter on a hot California summer day. Massoud Amir Behrani, a former colonel in the Iranian military under the Shah, reflects on his job-search efforts since arriving in the U.S. four years before: "I have spent hundreds of dollars copying my credentials; I have worn my French suits and my Italian shoes to hand-deliver my qualifications; I have waited and then called back after the correct waiting time; but there is nothing." The father of two, Behrani has spent most of the money he brought with him from Iran on an apartment and furnishings that are too expensive, desperately trying to keep up appearances in order to enhance his daughter's chances of making a good marriage. Now the daughter is married, and on impulse he sinks his remaining funds into a house he buys at auction, thus unwittingly putting himself and his family on a trajectory to disaster. The house, it seems, once belonged to Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic who wants it back. What starts out as a legal tussle soon escalates into a personal confrontation--with dire results.
Dubus tells his tragic tale from the viewpoints of the two main adversaries, Behrani and Kathy. To both of them, the house represents something more than just a place to live. For the colonel, it is a foot in the door of the American dream; for Kathy, a reminder of a kinder, gentler past. In prose that is simple yet evocative, House of Sand and Fog builds to its inevitable denouement, one that is painfully dark but unfailingly honest. --Alix Wilber [via]
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The Hundred Secret Sensesby Amy TanISBN 0375701524 (0-375-70152-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hundred Secret Senses'Book summary:The Hundred Secret Senses is an exultant novel about China and America, love and loyalty, the identities we invent and the true selves we discover along the way. Olivia Laguni is half-Chinese, but typically American in her uneasiness with her patchwork family. And no one in Olivia's family is more embarrassing to her than her half-sister, Kwan Li. For Kwan speaks mangled English, is cheerfully deaf to Olivia's sarcasm, and sees the dead with her "yin eyes."
Even as Olivia details the particulars of her decades-long grudge against her sister (who, among other things, is a source of infuriatingly good advice), Kwan Li is telling her own story, one that sweeps us into the splendor, squalor, and violence of Manchu China. And out of the friction between her narrators, Amy Tan creates a work that illuminates both the present and the past sweetly, sadly, hilariously, with searing and vivid prose.
"Truly magical...unforgettable...this novel...shimmer[s] with meaning."--San Diego Tribune
"The Hundred Secret Senses doesn't simply return to a world but burrows more deeply into it, following new trails to fresh revelations."--Newsweek [via]More editions of The Hundred Secret Senses:
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I'm the One That I Wantby Margaret ChoISBN 0345440145 (0-345-44014-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'I'm the One That I Want'Book summary:Don't come to this bitter, engrossing memoir for a quick and easy laugh. The material that Margaret Cho has turned to such riotous ends in her stand-up act has a very different flavor on the page. An unpopular child (okay, hated and reviled), Cho made friends with the drag queens who worked in her father's bookstore, soon becoming a fag hag, and finding this mutual attraction "both nurturing and powerful, sweet and sour, retail and wholesale." "Drag queens are strong because they have so much to fight against," writes Cho, "homophobia, sexism, pink eye." To support herself at the beginning of her comedy career, Cho worked at FAO Schwarz, sometimes moonlighting in phone sex. Occasionally the jobs would overlap, and she would find herself doing phone sex dressed as Raggedy Ann. There isn't much here about Cho's early success, but she does delve at length into her disastrous sitcom, and devotes many pages to her battles with her weight, with drugs, and with alcohol, and her hopeless relationships with men (none of the bisexual material from her stage act is included here). Cho's message is about self-esteem in the face of consistent opposition from her family, the network that aired a "Margaret Cho" sitcom but permitted her no creative control, and a society that rewards women for thinness, whiteness, meekness, and a shut mouth. --Regina Marler [via]
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In a Sunburned Countryby Bill BrysonISBN 0375430563 (0-375-43056-3)
Hardcover, Random House Large Print
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In a Sunburned Country'Book summary:Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures: toxic caterpillars, aggressive seashells, crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and the deadliest of them all, the dreaded box jellyfish. And that's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the "under-discovered" Down Under in search of all things interesting.
Bryson, who could make a pile of dirt compelling--and yes, Australia is mostly dirt--finds no shortage of curiosities. When he isn't dodging Portuguese man-of-wars or considering the virtues of the remarkable platypus, he visits southwest Gippsland, home of the world's largest earthworms (up to 12 feet in length). He discovers that Australia, which began nationhood as a prison, contains the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world (297 miles), as well as the world's largest monolith (the majestic Uluru) and largest living thing (the Great Barrier Reef). He finds ridiculous place names: "Mullumbimby Ewylamartup, Jiggalong, and the supremely satisfying Tittybong," and manages to catch a cricket game on the radio, which is like
listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.
"You see," Bryson observes, "Australia is an interesting place. It truly is. And that really is all I'm saying." Of course, Bryson--who is as much a travel writer here as a humorist, naturalist, and historian--says much more, and does so with generous amounts of wit and hilarity. Australia may be "mostly empty and a long way away," but it's a little closer now. --Rob McDonald [via]
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In the Fallby Jeffrey LentISBN 037570745X (0-375-70745-X)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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The Interpreterby Kim Suki, Suki KimISBN 0374177139 (0-374-17713-9)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoptionby Randall KennedyISBN 0375702644 (0-375-70264-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption'Book summary:From the author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word and Race, Crime, and the Lawa tour de force about the controversial issue of personal interracial intimacy as it exists within ever-changing American social mores and within the rule of law.
Fears of transgressive interracial relationships, informed over the centuries by ugly racial biases and fantasies, still linger in American society today. This brilliant studyranging from plantation days to the presentexplores the historical, sociological, legal, and moral issues that continue to feed and complicate that fear.
In chapters filled with provocative and cleanly stated logic and enhanced by intriguing historical anecdotes, Randall Kennedy tackles such subjects as the presence of sex in racial politics and of race in sexual politics, the prominence of legal institutions in defining racial distinction and policing racial boundaries, the imagined and real pleasures that have attended interracial intimacy, and the competing arguments around interracial romance, sex, and family life throughout American history.
In Interracial Intimacies, Randall Kennedy offers nothing less than a bracing, much-needed ethic of multiracial living. [via]More editions of Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption:
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King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Heroby David RemnickISBN 0375702296 (0-375-70229-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero'Book summary:"Succeeds more than any previous book in bringing Ali into focus . . . as a starburst of energy, ego and ability whose like will never be seen again." -The Wall Street Journal"Best Nonfiction Book of the Year" -Time"Penetrating . . . reveal[s] details that even close followers of [Ali] might not have known. . . . An amazing story." -The New York TimesOn the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali then known as Cassius Clay stepped into the ring with Sonny Liston, he was widely regarded as an irritating freak who danced and talked way too much. Six rounds later Ali was not only the new world heavyweight boxing champion: He was "a new kind of black man" who would shortly transform America's racial politics, its popular culture, and its notions of heroism. No one has captured Ali--and the era that he exhilarated and sometimes infuriated--with greater vibrancy, drama, and astuteness than David Remnick, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lenin's Tomb and editor of The New Yorker . In charting Ali's rise from the gyms of Louisville, Kentucky, to his epochal fights against Liston and Floyd Patterson, Remnick creates a canvas of unparalleled richness. He gives us empathetic portraits of wisecracking sportswriters and bone-breaking mobsters; of the baleful Liston and the haunted Patterson; of an audacious Norman Mailer and an enigmatic Malcolm X. Most of all, King of the World does justice to the speed, grace, courage, humor, and ebullience of one of the greatest athletes and irresistibly dynamic personalities of our time."Nearly pulse-pounding narrative power . . . an important account of a period in American social history." -Chicago Tribune"A pleasure . . . haunting . . . so vivid that one can imagine Ali saying, 'How'd you get inside my head, boy?'" -Wilfrid Sheed, Time [via]
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The Kingdom of This Worldby Alejo Carpentier, Harriet De OnisISBN 0374521972 (0-374-52197-2)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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The Kingdom of This Worldby Harriet De OnisISBN 0374530114 (0-374-53011-4)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kingdom of This World'Book summary:A few years after its liberation from the brutality of French colonial rule in 1803, Haiti endured a period of even greater brutality under the reign of King Henri-Christophe, who was born a slave in Grenada but rose to become the first black king in the Western Hemisphere. In prose of often dreamlike coloration and intensity, Alejo Carpentier records the destruction of the black regimebuilt on the same corruption and contempt for human life that brought down the French while embodying the same hollow grandeur of false elegance, attained only through slave laborin an orgy of voodoo, race hatred, madness, and erotomania.[via]More editions of The Kingdom of This World:
Ladies And Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, And The Battle For The Soul Of A Cityby Jonathan MahlerISBN 0374175284 (0-374-17528-4)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Loverby Marguerite Duras, Barbara Bray, Maxine Hong KingstonISBN 0375700528 (0-375-70052-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Lover'Book summary:An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984.
Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts.
Long unavailable in hardcover, this edition of The Lover includes a new introduction by Maxine Hong Kingston that looks back at Duras's world from an intriguing new perspective--that of a visitor to Vietnam today. [via] -
The Marchby E.L. DoctorowISBN 0375506713 (0-375-50671-3)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The March'Book summary:As the Civil War was moving toward its inevitable conclusion, General William Tecumseh Sherman marched 60,000 Union troops through Georgia and the Carolinas, leaving a 60-mile-wide trail of death, destruction, looting, thievery and chaos. In The March, E.L. Doctorow has put his unique stamp on these events by staying close to historical fact, naming real people and places and then imagining the rest, as he did in Ragtime.
Recently, the Civil War has been the subject of novels by Howard Bahr, Michael Shaara, Charles Frazier, and Robert Hicks, to name a few. Its perennial appeal is due not only to the fact that it was fought on our own soil, but also that it captures perfectly our long-time and ongoing ambivalence about race. Doctorow examines this question extensively, chronicling the dislocation of both southern whites and Negroes as Sherman burned and destroyed all that they had ever known. Sherman is a well-drawn character, pictured as a crazy tactical genius pitted against his West Point counterparts. Doctorow creates a context for the march: "The brutal romance of war was still possible in the taking of spoils. Each town the army overran was a prize... There was something undeniably classical about it, for how else did the armies of Greece and Rome supply themselves?"
The characters depicted on the march are those people high and low, white and black, whose lives are forever changed by war: Pearl, the newly free daughter of a white plantation owner and one of his slaves, Colonel Sartorius, a competent, remote, almost robotic surgeon; several officers, both Union and Confederate; two soldiers, Arly and Will, who provide comic relief in the manner of Shakespeare's fools until, suddenly, their roles are not funny anymore.
Doctorow has captured the madness of war in his description of the condition of a dispossessed Southern white woman: "What was clear at this moment was that Mattie Jameson's mental state befitted the situation in which she found herself. The world at war had risen to her affliction and made it indistinguishable." And later, " This was not war as adventure, nor war for a solemn cause, it was war at its purest, a mindless mass rage severed from any cause, ideal, or moral principle."
As we have come to expect, Doctorow puts the reader in the picture; never more so than in recalling "The March" and letting us see it as a cautionary tale for our times. --Valerie Ryan [via]
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Middlesexby Jeffrey EugenidesISBN 0374199698 (0-374-19969-8)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Middlesex'Book summary:"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974." And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the "roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time." The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.
Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides's command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie's shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:
Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." & I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.
When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you'll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it--putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight--just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. --Brad Thomas Parsons [via]
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The Mimic Menby V.S. NaipaulISBN 0375707174 (0-375-70717-4)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Mirror To America: The Autobiography Of John Hope Franklinby John Hope FranklinISBN 0374530475 (0-374-53047-5)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin'Book summary:[via]John Hope Franklin lived through Americas most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally protected racial segregation. A renowned scholar, he has explored that transformation in its myriad aspects, notably in his 3.5-million-copy bestseller, From Slavery to Freedom. Born in 1915, he, like every other African American, could not help but participate: he was evicted from whites-only train cars, confined to segregated schools, threatenedonce with lynchingand consistently subjected to racisms denigration of his humanity. Yet he managed to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard; become the first black historian to assume a full professorship at a white institution, Brooklyn College; and be appointed chair of the University of Chicagos history department and, later, John B. Duke Professor at Duke University. He has reshaped the way African American history is understood and taught and become one of the worlds most celebrated historians, garnering over 130 honorary degrees. But Franklins participation was much more fundamental than that.From his effort in 1934 to hand President Franklin Roosevelt a petition calling for action in response to the Cordie Cheek lynching, to his 1997 appointment by President Clinton to head the Presidents Initiative on Race, and continuing to the present, Franklin has influenced with determination and dignity the nations racial conscience. Whether aiding Thurgood Marshalls preparation for arguing Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, marching to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965, or testifying against Robert Borks nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987, Franklin has pushed the national conversation on race toward humanity and equality, a life long effort that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nations highest civilian honor, in 1995. Intimate, at times revelatory, Mirror to America chronicles Franklins life and this nations racial transformation in the twentieth century, and is a powerful reminder of the extent to which the problem of America remains the problem of color.More editions of Mirror To America: The Autobiography Of John Hope Franklin:
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Mixed: My Life in Black And Whiteby Angela NisselISBN 0345481143 (0-345-48114-3)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mixed: My Life in Black And White'Book summary:Tell anyone who asks that youre half-black and half-white, just like David Hasselhoff from Knight Rider. Angelas mother
Love has no color, insist Angela Nissels parents, but does it have a clue? In this candid, funny, and poignant memoir, Angela recounts growing up biracial in Philadelphiamoving back and forth between black inner-city schools and white prep schoolswhere her racial ambiguity and doomed attempts to blend in dog her teen years. Once in college, Angela experiments with black activism (hoping to find clarity in extremism), capitalizes on her exotic look at a strip club, and ends up with a major case of the blues (aka, a racial identity problem). Yet Angela is never down for the count. After moving to Los Angeles, she discovers that being multiracial is anything but simple, especially in terms of dating and romance.
By turns a comedy of errors and a moving coming-of-age chronicle, Mixed traces one womans unforgettable journey to self-acceptance and belonging.
Praise for Mixed
I love Angela Nissel's writing. Reading Mixed was like getting a letter from a best friend I forgot I had. How ironic that a book written by someone who felt like no one "got" her will surely be one of those rare books everyone gets- black, white, both, neither. Hilarious, sweet, and honest, Mixed is the perfect read if you've ever felt like the one standing on the outside-- and let's face it, who hasn't? - -Jill Soloway, author of Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants
Nissel is humorous, poignant, and proud yet also empathetic and generous as she recounts her constant struggle to answer the perennial question persons of mixed race seem required to ask of themselves in our societywhere do I fit in?.... All readers stand to learn from her account. Booklist
Colorful anecdotes, marvelous dialogue and a thoughtful narrative make this memoir a delight. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"If David Sedaris was a straight biracial female, this is the book he'd write. This book is so funny I've already started telling people I helped Angela write it." -- Bill Lawrence, creator of Scrubs
"Growing up black and white, I always felt I had the best of both worlds. I feel the same way about Mixed. It's the perfect blend of hilarious comedy and sometimes tragic reality." -- Yvette Lee Bowser, creator of Living Single and executive producer of Half and Half
"Mixed is a hilarious must-read for anyone searching for the enchanting path to self-discovery. Angela Nissel's precise account of living the mixed race experience not only hit home with me, but the journey is deliciously enlightening and heart-rending at the same time. It's a journey well worth taking." --Halle Berry [via]More editions of Mixed: My Life in Black And White:
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Monkey Huntingby Cristina GarciaISBN 0345466101 (0-345-46610-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Monkey Hunting'Book summary:The new novel-her first in six years-from the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban and The Agüero Sisters follows one family from China to Cuba to America in an emotionally resonant tale of immigration, assimilation, and the powerful integrity of self. In 1857, when Chen Pan signs a contract that will take him from China "beyond the edge of the world to Cuba," he has no idea that he will be enslaved on a sugarcane plantation . . . or that he will eventually, miraculously, escape his bonds and embark on a prosperous life in Havana's Chinatown . . . or that he will buy a mulatto woman out of slavery and take her into his home and heart . . . or that he will end his long days in Havana, surrounded by children and grandchildren, as Cuban as he is Chinese. In a vivid tapestry of incident and feeling, Chen Pan's life story is interwoven with those of two of his descendants: his granddaughter, Chen Fang, born in China and raised as a boy so she could be educated, her life coming to its end in one of Mao's hellish prisons, and Domingo, Chen Pan's great-great-grandson, who, with his father, becomes an American citizen after Castro's revolution, only to lose his parent to the false promises of the American dream, and himself, finally, to the madness of wartime Vietnam. Deeply stirring, wonderfully evocative of time and place, rendered in the lyrical prose that is Cristina García's hallmark, Monkey Hunting brilliantly illuminates a generations-long struggle toward a sense of true belonging. [via]
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Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girlby Frederick Douglass, Harriet JacobsISBN 0345478231 (0-345-47823-1)
Softcover, Bantam Classic & Loveswept
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl'Book summary:This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume.
Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglass's own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobs's account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations. [via]More editions of Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave & Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl:
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The Newlywedsby Elizabeth BevarlyISBN 0373613938 (0-373-61393-8)
Softcover, Harlequin Enterprises, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Newlyweds'Book summary:Follow the investigation by a "husband and wife" team as true crime turns to true love. . .
Known more for her work ethic than for her romantic history, FBI agent Bridget Logan landed an assignment that involved issues too close to home-and a "husband" as part of the sting. If Agent Samuel Jones weren't so sexy, Bridget would have had no problem handling this case. But he was, and for the first time in her career, Bridget had trouble keeping a cool head under fire. A lot was at stake, though, and Bridget was determined to solve this case and move on, no harm done. But then her "husband" made love to her. . .and suddenly their role as a devoted couple transformed into a passion over which neither had control! [via]
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Nightby Elie Wiesel, Marion WieselISBN 0374500010 (0-374-50001-0)
Softcover, Hill & Wang Pub
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night'Book summary:A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel[via]
Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man.
Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be. -
No Country For Old Menby Cormac McCarthyISBN 0375706674 (0-375-70667-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Country For Old Men'Book summary:Set in our own time along the bloody frontier between Texas and Mexico, this is Cormac McCarthys first novel since Cities of the Plain completed his acclaimed, best-selling Border Trilogy.
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Packing the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victims burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes how desperately Moss and his young wife need protection. One party in the failed transaction hires an exSpecial Forces officer to defend his interests against a mesmerizing freelancer, while on either side are men accustomed to spectacular violence and mayhem. The pursuit stretches up and down and across the border, each participant seemingly determined to answer what one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?
A harrowing story of a war that society is waging on itself, and an enduring meditation on the ties of love and blood and duty that inform lives and shape destinies, No Country for Old Men is a novel of extraordinary resonance and power. [via]More editions of No Country For Old Men:
No Free Lunch : One Man's Journey from Welfare to the American Dreamby Rodney Carroll, Gary KartonISBN 0345452291 (0-345-45229-1)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner Cityby Katherine S. NewmanISBN 0375703799 (0-375-70379-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City'Book summary:Harvard anthropologist Katherine S. Newman explodes the myth of America's unmotivated poor in No Shame in My Game, a study of low-wage workers and their job-seeking peers in central Harlem. This is a frontline perspective: in addition to hundreds of interviews, Newman also put her research assistants behind the counters of the fast-food restaurants alongside the study's subjects. The results show that America's largest group of impoverished citizens is not the unemployed, but the working poor. But what will move readers most is the struggling workers themselves, who suffer the indignities, exhaustion, and low compensation of jobs as "burger flippers" because, as one fast-food restaurant employee, Larry, says, "It's my job. You ain't puttin' no food on my table; you ain't puttin' no clothes on my back. I will walk tall with my Burger Barn uniform on." Newman explains how obstacles such as cuts in welfare, lack of health insurance (almost half of employed Americans under the poverty line have no coverage), and substandard education undercut even the most determined efforts of working poor like Larry. Fortunately, she also offers a thick list of old and new potential solutions to this crisis, from Earned Income Tax Credits to new training programs linking private industry to public schools with at-risk youth. An essential, eye-opening read. --Maria Dolan [via]
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Novaby Samuel R. DelanyISBN 0375706704 (0-375-70670-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nova'Book summary:Given that the suns of Draco stretch almost sixteen light years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor of the 32nd century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the core of a recently imploded sun in order to obtain seven tons of it. The potential for profit is so great that Lorq has little difficulty cobbling together an alluring crew that includes a gypsy musician and a moon-obsessed scholar interested in the ancient art of writing a novel. What the crew doesnt know, though, is that Lorqs quest is actually fueled by a private revenge so consuming that hell stop at nothing to achieve it. In the grandest manner of speculative fiction, Nova is a wise and witty classic that casts a fascinating new light on some of humanitys oldest truths and enduring myths. [via]
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One Night at the Call Centerby Chetan BhagatISBN 0345498321 (0-345-49832-1)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Night at the Call Center'Book summary:Press 1 for technical support.
Press 2 for broken hearts.
Press 3 if your life has totally crashed. . . .
Six friends work nights at a call center in India, providing technical support for a major U.S. appliance corporation. Skilled in patienceand accent managementthey help American consumers keep their lives running. Yet behind the headsets, everybodys heart is on the line.
Shyam (Sam to his callers) has lost his self-confidence after being dumped by the girl who just so happens to be sitting next to him. Priyankas domineering mother has arranged for her daughters upscale marriage to an Indian man in Seattle. Esha longs to be a model but discovers its a horizontal romp to the runway. Lost, dissatisfied Vroom has high ideals, but compromises them by talking on the phone to idiots each night. Traditional Radhika has just found out that her husband is sleeping with his secretary. And Military Uncle (nobody knows his real name) sits alone working the online chat.
They all try to make it through their shiftsand maintain their sanityunder the eagle eye of a boss whose ego rivals his incompetence. But tonight is no ordinary night. Tonight is Thanksgiving in America: Appliances are going haywire, and the phones are ringing off their hooks. Then one call, from one very special caller, changes everything.
Chetan Bhagats delicious romantic comedy takes us inside the world of the international call center, where cultural cross-wires come together with perfect pathos, hilarity, and spice. [via]More editions of One Night at the Call Center:
A Place to Land : Lost and Found in an Unlikely Friendshipby Martha ManningISBN 0345450574 (0-345-45057-4)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Televisionby Donald BogleISBN 0374527180 (0-374-52718-0)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Project Girlby Janet McDonaldISBN 0374237573 (0-374-23757-3)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Robinson Crusoeby Daniel Defoe, Derick BownISBN 0361027958 (0-361-02795-8)
Hardcover, Purnell
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Robinson Crusoe'Book summary:This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. [via]
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Scales of Goldby Dorothy DunnettISBN 0375704809 (0-375-70480-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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The Scions of Shannaraby Terry BrooksISBN 034591130X (0-345-91130-X)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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Seeds of Destructionby Thomas MertonISBN 0374515867 (0-374-51586-7)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Sidewalkby Mitchell Duneier, Ovie CarterISBN 0374527253 (0-374-52725-3)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sidewalk'Book summary:"I've had the luxury--if you can call it the luxury," says Hakim Hasan, "of working in the formal economy, and of working at certain companies that required a certain level of training, however rudimentary, and a certain level of education." Instead, he chooses to sell books from a table on the sidewalk in New York's Greenwich Village. Soon after he met sociologist Mitchell Duneier, Hakim described himself as a "public character," and sent Duneier scurrying to reread Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities to find out what he meant.
That moment was one of Duneier's inspirations to spend years studying--getting to know, really--Hakim and other book and magazine vendors on his patch of Sixth Avenue. Sidewalk explains much about the street vendors: How did this become legal? Where do vendors obtain their merchandise? How do they interact with potential customers? When do they find time to go to the bathroom (and, for that matter, where do they go)? But it's ultimately about the people themselves--quoted at length from Duneier's tape-recorded interviews and photographed by Ovie Carter--as they do their best to live successfully on their own terms, with all the good and bad consequences that entail. Some of these people (almost all men) are drug addicts, yes, and some of them choose to live as "unhoused" individuals. But many of them find a strong sense of purpose and identity in their work and choose to live in ways that best facilitate that work; they are as motivated--more, perhaps--as workers holding "respectable" office jobs. Nonacademic readers may glaze over at some of Duneier's longer explanations of his methodology, and he seems occasionally overapologetic when quoting the uncensored language of his subjects, but few books succeed at plunging the reader into a community and delineating the character of its members as Sidewalk does. [via]
A Small Placeby Jamaica KincaidISBN 0374527075 (0-374-52707-5)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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Strakenby Terry BrooksISBN 0345451139 (0-345-45113-9)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The Tenantsby Bernard MalamudISBN 0374521026 (0-374-52102-6)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Tenants'Book summary:With a new introduction by Aleksandar Hemon[via]
In The Tenants (1971), Bernard Malamud brought his unerring sense of modern urban life to bear on the conflict between blacks and Jews then inflaming his native Brooklyn. The sole tenant in a rundown tenement, Henry Lesser is struggling to finish a novel, but his solitary pursuit of the sublime grows complicated when Willie Spearmint, a black writer ambivalent toward Jews, moves into the building. Henry and Willie are artistic rivals and unwilling neighbors, and their uneasy peace is disturbed by the presence of Willie's white girlfriend Irene and the landlord Levenspiel's attempts to evict both men and demolish the building. This novel's conflict, current then, is perennial now; it reveals the slippery nature of the human condition, and the human capacity for violence and undoing.
Trainby Pete DexterISBN 037571409X (0-375-71409-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Tuff : A Novelby Paul BeattyISBN 0375401229 (0-375-40122-9)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachiby Arthur JapinISBN 0375718893 (0-375-71889-3)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi: A Novel'Book summary:The first ten years of my life I was not black. Thus begins this startlingly eloquent and beautiful tale based on the true story of Kwasi Boachi, a 19th- century African prince who was sent with his cousin, Kwame, to be raised in Holland as a guest of the royal family. Narrated by Kwasi himself, the story movingly portrays the perplexing dichotomy of the cousins' situation: black men of royal ancestry, they are subject to insidious bigotry even as they enjoy status among Europes highest echelons. As their lives wind down different pathsKwame back to Africa where he enlists in the Dutch army, Kwasi to an Indonesian coffee plantation where success remains mysteriously elusivethey become aware of a terrible truth that lies at the heart of their experiences. Vivid, subtle, poignant and profound, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi is an exquisite masterpiece of story and craft, a heartrending work that places Arthur Japin on a shelf that includes Joseph Conrad, J.M. Coetzee, Kazuo Ishiguro and Nadine Gordimer. [via]
White Guysby Anthony GiardinaISBN 0374281440 (0-374-28144-0)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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The Wishsong of Shannaraby Terry BrooksISBN 0345911296 (0-345-91129-6)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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The World of Shannaraby Terry Brooks, Teresa Patterson, David CherryISBN 034548388X (0-345-48388-X)
Hardcover, Ballantine Books
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Wuthering Heightsby Emily BronteISBN 0361031637 (0-361-03163-7)
Hardcover, Purnell
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Caramelo : En Españolby Sandra Cisneros, Liliana ValenzuelaISBN 0375415092 (0-375-41509-2)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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