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› Find signed collectible books: '1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die'
For discerning bibliophiles and readers who enjoy unforgettable classic literature, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is a trove of reviews covering a century of memorable writing. Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word.The featured works have been handpicked by a team of international critics and literary luminaries, including Derek Attridge (world expert on James Joyce), Cedric Watts (renowned authority on Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene), Laura Marcus (noted Virginia Woolf expert), and David Mariott (poet and expert on African-American literature), among some twenty others.Addictive, browsable, knowledgeable1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die will be a boon companion for anyone who loves good writing and an inspiration for anyone who is just beginning to discover a love of books. Each entry is accompanied by an authoritative yet opinionated critical essay describing the importance and influence of the work in question. Also included are publishing history and career details about the authors, as well as reproductions of period dust jackets and book designs. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aeneid'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ali and Nino'
As is true of all great literature, Kurban Said's Ali and Nino has timeless appeal. Set in the years surrounding the Russian Revolution and the rise of the Soviet Union, Said's tale of an Azerbaijani Muslim boy in love with a Georgian Christian girl is both tender and disturbingly prescient. The novel, first published in 1937, begins as Ali Khan Shirvanshir is finishing his last year of high school:
We were a very mixed lot, we forty schoolboys who were having a Geography lesson one hot afternoon in the Imperial Russian Humanistic High School of Baku, Transcaucasia: thirty Mohammedans, four Armenians, two Poles, three Sectarians, and one Russian.The multi-ethnic Baku, it seems, stands at a crossroads between West and East, and, as the smug Russian professor informs his pupils, it is their responsibility to decide "whether our town should belong to progressive Europe or to reactionary Asia." For Ali Khan Shirvanshir there is no doubt--he belongs to the East; his beloved Nino, however, is "a Christian, who eats with knife and fork, has laughing eyes and wears filmy silk stockings."
Far away, to the West, there are rumblings of war. When the Russian Revolution begins, Ali Khan chooses not to fight; the Czar's fate is of little interest to a Muslim living in far away Transcaucasia. But the young man senses that another, greater danger is gathering on his country's borders--an "invisible hand" trying to force his world into new ways, the ways of the West. He assures his worried father that, like his ancestors, he is willing to die in battle, but at a time of his own choosing. In the meantime, he courts Nino and eventually marries her in the teeth of scandal and opposition. This union of East and West is at times a difficult one as Ali Khan finds himself lured further and further into European ways. When Soviet troops invade, however, he must choose once and for all whether to stand for Asia or Europe.
One of the many pleasures Ali and Nino offers is Kurban Said's lovingly rendered evocations of Muslim culture. Another is his compassionate portrait of the protagonists' difficult but profound relationship. Modern readers coming to this novel in the wake of the fall of Communism, outbreaks of sectarian violence, and the rise of religious fundamentalism will find disturbing parallels in its cautionary chronicle of cultures colliding and a way of life brutally destroyed. In the end, however, it is not historical accuracy, but rather the charm and passion of the title characters that lifts Said's only novel into literature's highest ranks. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Analysis of Human Genetic Linkage'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Applying for Research Funding: Getting Started and Getting Funded'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq'
As the death toll mounts in the Iraq War, Americans are agonizing over how the mess started and what to do now. George Packer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, joins the debate with his thoughtful book The Assassins' Gate. Packer describes himself as an ambivalent pro-war liberal "who supported a war [in Iraq] by about the same margin that the voting public had supported Al Gore." He never believed the argument that Iraq should be invaded because of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, he saw the war as a way to get rid of Saddam Hussein and build democracy in Iraq, in the vein of the U.S. interventions in Haiti and Bosnia.
How did such lofty aims get so derailed? How did the U.S. get stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East? Packer traces the roots of the war back to a historic shift in U.S. policy that President Bush made immediately after 9/11. No longer would the U.S. be hamstrung by multilateralism or working through the UN. It would act unilaterally around the world--forging temporary coalitions with other nations where suitable--and defend its status as the sole superpower. But when it came to Iraq, even Bush administration officials were deeply divided. Packer takes readers inside the vicious bureaucratic warfare between the Pentagon and State Department that turned U.S. policy on Iraq into an incoherent mess. We see the consequences in the second half of The Assassins' Gate, which takes the reader to Iraq after the bombs have stopped dropping. Packer writes vividly about how the country deteriorated into chaos, with U.S. authorities in Iraq operating in crisis mode. The book fails to capture much of the debate about the war among Iraqis themselves--instead relying mostly on the views of one prominent Iraqi exile--but it is an insightful contribution to the debate about the decisions--and blunders--behind the war. --Alex Roslin [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Basic Pathophysiology: A Conceptual Approach'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Basic Pathophysiology: A Holistic Approach'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Before Adam: Easyread Large Edition'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Biochemistry: A Case-Oriented Approach'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blindness'
In an unnamed city in an unnamed country, a man sitting in his car waiting for a traffic light to change is suddenly struck blind. But instead of being plunged into darkness, this man sees everything white, as if he "were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea." A Good Samaritan offers to drive him home (and later steals his car); his wife takes him by taxi to a nearby eye clinic where they are ushered past other patients into the doctor's office. Within a day the man's wife, the taxi driver, the doctor and his patients, and the car thief have all succumbed to blindness. As the epidemic spreads, the government panics and begins quarantining victims in an abandoned mental asylum--guarded by soldiers with orders to shoot anyone who tries to escape. So begins Portuguese author José Saramago's gripping story of humanity under siege, written with a dearth of paragraphs, limited punctuation, and embedded dialogue minus either quotation marks or attribution. At first this may seem challenging, but the style actually contributes to the narrative's building tension, and to the reader's involvement.
In this community of blind people there is still one set of functioning eyes: the doctor's wife has affected blindness in order to accompany her husband to the asylum. As the number of victims grows and the asylum becomes overcrowded, systems begin to break down: toilets back up, food deliveries become sporadic; there is no medical treatment for the sick and no proper way to bury the dead. Inevitably, social conventions begin to crumble as well, with one group of blind inmates taking control of the dwindling food supply and using it to exploit the others. Through it all, the doctor's wife does her best to protect her little band of blind charges, eventually leading them out of the hospital and back into the horribly changed landscape of the city.
Blindness is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing as it does the total breakdown in society that follows upon this most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. His people learn to live in inexpressible filth, they commit acts of both unspeakable violence and amazing generosity that would have been unimaginable to them before the tragedy. The very structure of society itself alters to suit the circumstances as once-civilized, urban dwellers become ragged nomads traveling by touch from building to building in search of food. The devil is in the details, and Saramago has imagined for us in all its devastation a hell where those who went blind in the streets can never find their homes again, where people are reduced to eating chickens raw and packs of dogs roam the excrement-covered sidewalks scavenging from corpses.
And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty. Upon being told she is beautiful by three of her charges, women who have never seen her, "the doctor's wife is reduced to tears because of a personal pronoun, an adverb, a verb, an adjective, mere grammatical categories, mere labels, just like the two women, the others, indefinite pronouns, they too are crying, they embrace the woman of the whole sentence, three graces beneath the falling rain." In this one woman Saramago has created an enduring, fully developed character who serves both as the eyes and ears of the reader and as the conscience of the race. And in Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Calculation of Genetic Risks: Worked Examples in DNA Diagnostics'
"It will be the basic aim of this book," writes Peter J. Bridge, "to impart to the reader the fundamentals of how we start with laboratory results and end up with numbers representing genetic risks." This practical guide for both clinical and research geneticists explains how to calculate an individual's genetic risk based on information available from genetic testing and from family pedigrees. Bridge begins with the general theory of estimating genetic risks, then progresses through familial and isolated cases, both simple and complex. A major strength of the book lies in the wealth of worked examples provided throughout the text. The disorders are selected to be widely applicable or adaptable as needed.
New to this edition are sections on consanguinity, multipoint linkage analysis, nonparametric methods, homozygosity mapping, and physical mapping. Also new is a chapter on other DNA-based calculations, including sections on paternity, zygosity, family reconstructions, and quantification of mitochondrial mutations.
From reviews of the first edition: "To use a computer package intelligently and safely, you need to have in reserve the ability to do the calculation by hand, at least approximately, so as to appreciate which factors contribute to the risk. And the current computer packages cannot cope with several factors which can crucially affect the final risk, such as germinal mosaicism or the risk of maternal cell contamination... Bridge's book is very thorough. Every combination of pedigree structure and marker data is discussed, with numerous tables showing the result of systematically varying one or more parameters." -- Journal of Medical Genetics
"A useful reference book." -- American Journal of Human Genetics
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Catalog of Prenatally Diagnosed Conditions'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chicago Loop'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Coming Up for Air: How to Build a Balanced Life in a Workaholic World'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cultural and Ethnic Diversity: A Guide for Genetics Professionals'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars'
David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, part of Chelsea House Publishers' Bloom's Guides collection, presents concise critical excerpts from Snow Falling on Cedars to provide a scholarly overview of the work. This comprehensive study guide also features "The Story Behind the Story," which details the conditions under which Snow Falling on Cedars was written. This title also includes a short biography on Guterson and a descriptive list of characters. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America'
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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› Find signed collectible books: 'Diary Of A Seducer'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'
The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.
This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens.
This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Exploring Collaborative Research in Primary Care'
The contributors to this book suggest that the failure of much primary care research is due to specialization and the fact that this in turn results in an emphasis on individual problems or illnesses and a reliance on technology. From this premise, they build an impressive case for multimethod research, moving beyond the perspective of any one discipline. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Exploring Collaborative Research in Primary Care'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Finding and Buying Your Place in the Country'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Flight from Science and Reason'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fruit Desserts'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Genetic Medicine: A Logic of Disease'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Genetic Testing for Alzheimer Disease: Ethical and Clinical Issues'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Genetic Variation and Disorders in Peoples of African Origin'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of a Dog'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart of Darkness'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Selected Poems'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heredity and Your Family's Health'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hippodrome'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A History of the World in 6 Glasses'
From beer to Coca-Cola, the six drinks that have helped shape human historyThroughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization.For Tom Standage, each drink is a kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite drink the same way again. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The History Of The World In Six Glasses'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Homer's The Iliad'
In his introduction Harold Bloom states that, together with the Bible, the Iliad "represents the foundation of Western literature, thought, and spirituality." The piece is the focus of this title in our Bloom's Notes series. Along with a collection of some of the best criticism available on the work, this text includes a structural and thematic analysis, an index of themes and ideas, and more. This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. These texts are the ideal aid for all students of literature, presenting concise, easy-to-understand biographical, critical, and bibliographical information on a specific literary work. Also provided are multiple sources for book reports and term papers with a wealth of information on literary works, authors, and major characters. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Human Pharmacology: Molecular to Clinical'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Integrating Research: A Guide for Literature Reviews'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Intercultural Interactions: A Practical Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Interpreter of Maladies: Library Edition'
Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret.
I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Marquise of O--, and Other Stories'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Maximizing the Value of 360-Degree Feedback: A Process for Successful Individual and Organizational Development'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Me Talk Pretty One Day'
"It's a pretty grim world when I can't even feel superior to a toddler." Welcome to the curious mind of David Sedaris, where dogs outrank children, guitars have breasts, and French toddlers unmask the inadequacies of the American male. Sedaris inhabits this world as a misanthrope chronicling all things petty and small. In Me Talk Pretty One Day Sedaris is as determined as ever to be nobody's hero--he never triumphs, he never conquers--and somehow, with each failure, he inadvertently becomes everybody's favorite underdog. The world's most eloquent malcontent, Sedaris has turned self-deprecation into a celebrated art form--one that is perhaps best experienced in audio. "Go Carolina," his account of "the first battle of my war against the letter s" is particularly poignant. Unable to disguise the lisp that has become his trademark, Sedaris highlights (to hilarious extent) the frustration of reading "childish s-laden texts recounting the adventures of seals or settlers named Sassy or Samuel." Including 23 of the book version's 28 stories, two live performances complete with involuntary laughter, and an uncannily accurate Billie Holiday impersonation, the audio is more than a companion to the text; it stands alone as a performance piece--only without the sock monkeys. (Running time: 5 hours, 4 cassettes) --Daphne Durham [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Medical Genetics'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Memoirs of a Good-For-Nothing'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'National Geographic Historical Atlas of the United States'
More often than not, we think of a country's history as a narrative, a sequential tale of great people and important events. But sometimes it's more revealing to think of history as a map of the eras, inventions, ideas, and people that have shaped our country for more than five hundred years, from the first visitors to North America's shores to the first years of the 21st century.
Combining the unparalleled cartography and the extraordinary graphic archive of the National Geographic Society, this marvelous volume charts an engrossing web of connections, vividly displayed in a series of concise, self-contained essays and scores of maps that are the heart of a stunning visual chronicle that unfolds our history in a new and fascinating way. Each chapter is introduced by a time line that sets its subjects in context, then dozens of photographs, period maps, and illustrations capture the flavor of life in eras and places as varied as Texas cow towns and Tennessee coal mines, colonial Boston and gold-rush California.
Subject maps trace the great rivers and rough trails settlers followed as they fanned out across an unexplored continent, with a lively text that explains who they were and why they headed West, and are accompanied by a sidebar in which Mark Twain reminisces about life as a Mississippi steamboat pilot. We learn how an 1859 gusher at Titusville, Pennsylvania, led to a nationwide search for "black gold," and how John D. Rockefeller channeled it into Standard Oil. We learn how Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Henry Ford's Model T, and dozens of other inventions transformed our landscape; and we watch as social movements--labor unions, women's suffrage, civil rights--Sstruggle to include the disenfranchised in the American Dream. In these pages we find political battles and military campaigns, immigrants and industrialists, ordinary people and Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush.
Wide-ranging, entertaining, and as expansive as America itself, the Historical Atlas of the United States is an important reference and an indispensable guide to the many intertwined paths that have led to the nation we know. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New York Public Library American History Desk Reference'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Night Studies'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Nursing the Finest Art: An Illustrated History'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'
"Tell us, Goddess, daughter of Zeus, start in your own place: when all the rest at Troy had fled from that steep doom and gone back home, away from war and the salt sea, only this man longed for his wife and a way home." Homer's Odyssey , at once an exciting epic of strife and subterfuge and a deeply felt tale of love and devotion, stands at the very beginning of the Western literary tradition. From ancient Greece to the present day its influence on later literature has been unsurpassed, and for centuries translators have approached the meter, tone, and pace of Homer's poetry with a variety of strategies. Chapman and Pope paid keen attention to color, drama, and vivacity of style, rendering the Greek verse loosely and inventively. In the twentieth century, translators such as Lattimore kept rigorously close to the sense of each word in the original; others, including Fitzgerald and Fagles, have departed further from the language of the original, employing their own inventive modern style. Poet and translator Edward McCrorie now opens new territory in this striking rendition, which captures the spare, powerful tone of Homer's epic while engaging contemporary readers with its brisk pace, idiomatic language, and lively characterization. McCrorie closely reproduces the Greek metrical patterns and employs a diction and syntax that reflects the plain, at times stark, quality of Homer's lines, rather than later English poetic styles. Avoiding both the stiffness of word-for-word literalism and the exaggeration and distortion of free adaptation, this translation dramatically evokes the ancient sound and sense of the poem. McCrorie's is truly an Odyssey for the twenty-first century. To accompany this innovative translation, noted classical scholar Richard Martin has written an accessible and wide-ranging introduction explaining the historical and literary context of the Odyssey , its theological and cultural underpinnings, Homer's poetic strategies and narrative techniq [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey'
"Tell us, Goddess, daughter of Zeus, start in your own place:
when all the rest at Troy had fled from that steep doom
and gone back home, away from war and the salt sea,
only this man longed for his wife and a way home."
Homer's Odyssey, at once an exciting epic of strife and subterfuge and a deeply felt tale of love and devotion, stands at the very beginning of the Western literary tradition. From ancient Greece to the present day its influence on later literature has been unsurpassed, and for centuries translators have approached the meter, tone, and pace of Homer's poetry with a variety of strategies. Chapman and Pope paid keen attention to color, drama, and vivacity of style, rendering the Greek verse loosely and inventively. In the twentieth century, translators such as Lattimore kept rigorously close to the sense of each word in the original; others, including Fitzgerald and Fagles, have departed further from the language of the original, employing their own inventive modern style.
Poet and translator Edward McCrorie now opens new territory in this striking rendition, which captures the spare, powerful tone of Homer's epic while engaging contemporary readers with its brisk pace, idiomatic language, and lively characterization. McCrorie closely reproduces the Greek metrical patterns and employs a diction and syntax that reflects the plain, at times stark, quality of Homer's lines, rather than later English poetic styles. Avoiding both the stiffness of word-for-word literalism and the exaggeration and distortion of free adaptation, this translation dramatically evokes the ancient sound and sense of the poem. McCrorie's is truly an Odyssey for the twenty-first century.
To accompany this innovative translation, noted classical scholar Richard Martin has written an accessible and wide-ranging introduction explaining the historical and literary context of the Odyssey, its theological and cultural underpinnings, Homer's poetic strategies and narrative techniques, and his cast of characters. In addition, Martin provides detailed notesfar more extensive than those in other editionsaddressing key themes and concepts; the histories of persons, gods, events, and myths; literary motifs and devices; and plot development. Also included is a pronunciation glossary and character index.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Odyssey of Homer'
This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On Beauty'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Pathophysiology: Clinical Concepts of Disease Processes'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary'
The compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, 70 years in the making, was an intellectually heroic feat with a twist worthy of the greatest mystery fiction: one of its most valuable contributors was a criminally insane American physician, locked up in an English asylum for murder. British stage actor Simon Jones leads us through this uncommon meeting of minds (the other belonging to self-educated dictionary editor James Murray) at full gallop. Ultimately, it's hard to say which is more remarkable: the facts of this amazingly well-researched story, or the sound of author Simon Winchester's erudite prose. Jones's reading smoothly transports listeners to the 19th century, reminding us why so many brilliant people obsessively set out to catalogue the English language. This unabridged version contains an interview between Winchester and John Simpson, editor of the Oxford dictionary. (Running time: 6.5 hours, 6 cassettes) --Lou Schuler [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Rivers of Eros'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Scotland: The Story of a Nation'
Near Stirling, Scotland, stands a memorial to the warrior William Wallace, put to death at the orders of the English king Edward I in 1305. Within that memorial stands a glass case, and inside of it stands a broadsword 1.7 meters long. Legend has it that the hero himself wielded the weapon, and so "Wallace's Sword" it is.
Magnus Magnusson, a native of Iceland who has long lived in and written about Scotland, may spoil it for some readers when he writes that Wallace's Sword probably wasn't Wallace's. To use it, Wallace would have had to have stood at least 6-foot-6 in height and to have lived two centuries later. The business of the sword is just one of the "cherished conceptions" about Scottish history that Magnusson picks apart and then, corrected and improved, restores. At other turns he considers the true identity of the legendary king Macbeth (and entertains some surprising but plausible theories about the king's alter ego); reconstructs decisive battles such as Otterburn, Flodden, and Glencoe; and looks closely at the complicated negotiations (and, many would say, treacheries) that led to the union with England of 1707. Magnusson closes with an account of modern independence movements and the recent return of some measure of national autonomy, opening a "new chapter in a nation's story, which the people of Scotland are now beginning to write."
Lucid, witty, and unafraid of controversy, Magnusson's book does a fine job of condensing a complex history, stretching out for 10 millennia, into a single volume. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Siege of Krishnapur'
"The first sign of trouble at Krishnapur came with a mysterious distribution of chapatis, made of coarse flour and about the size and thickness of a biscuit; towards the end of February 1857, they swept the countryside like an epidemic."
Students of history will recognize 1857 as the year of the Sepoy rebellion in India--an uprising of native soldiers against the British, brought on by Hindu and Muslim recruits' belief that the rifle cartridges they were provided had been greased with pig or cow fat. This seminal event in Anglo-Indian relations provides the backdrop for J.G. Farrell's Booker Prize-winning exploration of race, culture, and class, The Siege of Krishnapur.
Like the mysteriously appearing chapatis, life in British India seems, on the surface, innocuous enough. Farrell introduces us gradually to a large cast of characters as he paints a vivid portrait of the Victorians' daily routines that are accompanied by heat, boredom, class consciousness, and the pursuit of genteel pastimes intended for cooler climates. Even the siege begins slowly, with disquieting news of massacres in cities far away. When Krishnapur itself is finally attacked, the Europeans withdraw inside the grounds of the Residency where very soon conditions begin to deteriorate: food and water run out, disease is rampant, people begin to go a little mad. Soon the very proper British are reduced to eating insects and consorting across class lines. Farrell's descriptions of life inside the Residency are simultaneously horrifying and blackly humorous. The siege, for example, is conducted under the avid eyes of the local populace, who clearly anticipate an enjoyable massacre and thus arrive every morning laden with picnic lunches (plainly visible to the starving Europeans). By turns witty and compassionate, The Siege of Krishnapur comprises the best of all fictional worlds: unforgettable characters, an epic adventure, and at its heart a cultural clash for the ages. Quite simply, this is a splendid novel. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sister Carrie'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Snow Falling on Cedars'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Spot of Bother'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stir-Fry'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'
The young Robert Louis Stevenson suffered from repeated nightmares of living a double life, in which by day he worked as a respectable doctor and by night he roamed the back alleys of old-town Edinburgh. In three days of furious writing, he produced a story about his dream existence. His wife found it too gruesome, so he promptly burned the manuscript. In another three days, he wrote it again. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was published as a "shilling shocker" in 1886, and became an instant classic. In the first six months, 40,000 copies were sold. Queen Victoria read it. Sermons and editorials were written about it. When Stevenson and his family visited America a year later, they were mobbed by reporters at the dock in New York City. Compulsively readable from its opening pages, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is still one of the best tales ever written about the divided self.
This University of Nebraska Press edition is a small, exquisitely produced paperback. The book design, based on the original first edition of 1886, includes wide margins, decorative capitals on the title page and first page of each chapter, and a clean, readable font that is 19th-century in style. Joyce Carol Oates contributes a foreword in which she calls Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde a "mythopoetic figure" like Frankenstein, Dracula, and Alice in Wonderland, and compares Stevenson's creation to doubled selves in the works of Plato, Poe, Wilde, and Dickens.
This edition also features 12 full-page wood engravings by renowned illustrator Barry Moser. Moser is a skillful reader and interpreter as well as artist, and his afterword to the book, in which he explains the process by which he chose a self-portrait motif for the suite of engravings, is fascinating. For the image of Edward Hyde, he writes, "I went so far as to have my dentist fit me out with a carefully sculpted prosthetic of evil-looking teeth. But in the final moments I had to abandon the idea as being inappropriate. It was more important to stay in keeping with the text and, like Stevenson, not show Hyde's face." (Also recommended: the edition of Frankenstein illustrated by Barry Moser) --Fiona Webster [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stress & Health: Biological and Psychological Interactions'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process'
The dissertation can often seem like an overwhelming and insurmountable obstacle to obtaining that advanced degree--unless you have a handy, comprehensive guide to help you survive the process. Surviving Your Dissertation offers students the perfect guide for preparing the best dissertation. Using examples from a wide range of disciplines, Kjell Erik Rudestam and Rae R. Newton provide readers with expert advice on the entire dissertation process: selecting a suitable topic, conducting a review of the literature, building an argument, presenting the material, presenting data and results and managing data overload, methods for developing appropriate writing skills, ways to construct tables and figures, working with faculty committees, [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary'
...color images have been prudently added to this edition.. .each illustration--from precise anatomical renderings and color plates to slides and radiologic images--has been carefully selected by a team of Taber's consultants. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary'
The most comprehensive resource for nursing and allied health professionals, Taber's contains 56,486 entries (over 2,600 new terms) and more than 200 two-color clinically precise illustrations. Easy to carry, this cutting-edge volume offers appendices which contain the information of a 25-volume series. Provides numerous updates and the Taber's Feature Finder, which shows readers how to identify and utilize the information. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary: Deluxe Thumb-Indexed Version'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary: Deluxe Thumb-Indexed Version'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary/Deluxe Indexed'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'What Jesus Meant'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'What You Really Need to Know About Cancer: A Comprehensive Guide for Patients and Their Families'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Willa Cather on Writing: Critical Studies on Writing As an Art'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wisdom of the Body'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century'
A New York Times Bestseller
The groundbreaking new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Thomas Friedman is a timely and essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Wrong Medicine: Doctors, Patients, and Futile Treatment'
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