books tagged “social commentary” (Social commentary)

books tagged “social commentary”

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Bridget Jones
by Helen Fielding

ISBN 0140298479 (0-14-029847-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Fans of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary will recall that at the end of that sly and funny version of Pride and Prejudice, singleton heroine Bridget landed her Mr. Darcy at last--Mark Darcy, that is. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason picks up four weeks later, and already the honeymoon is over. In addition to discovering that the man of her dreams votes conservative, left-leaning Bridget is also feeling just a mite uncomfortable with the realities of sharing bed and board with another person:
V. complicated actually having man in house as cannot freely spend requisite amount of time in bathroom or turn into gas chamber as conscious of other person late for work, desperate for pee etc.; also disturbed by Mark folding up underpants at night, rendering it strangely embarrassing now simply to keep all own clothes in pile on floor.
But all of these problems pale to insignificance with the arrival on the scene of Rebecca, a beautiful, man-hunting arch-nemesis with "thighs like a baby giraffe" and absolutely no girlfriend code of ethics when it comes to poaching another woman's man. Before long, Rebecca's manipulations, Bridget's own insecurities, and a string of misunderstandings (starting with a naked Filipino boy in Mark Darcy's bed and ending with a suggestive valentine from Bridget's dry cleaner) result in "128 lbs. (good), alcohol units 0 (excellent), cigarettes 5 (a pleasant, healthy number), no. times driven past Mark Darcy's house 2 (v.g.), no. of times looked up Mark Darcy's name in phone book to prove still exists 18 (v.g.), 1471 calls 12 (better), no. of phone calls from Mark 0 (tragic).
Fortunately, Bridget has plenty of other problems to distract her. Her mother has returned from a trip to Kenya with a young Masai in tow--to her father's consternation; her best friends Jude, Shazzer, and Tom are all trapped in dating hell themselves; her apartment is in shambles thanks to a dotty carpenter; an unreliable ex-boyfriend has just reentered her life; and now someone is sending Bridget death threats--could it be Mark Darcy? If Bridget Jones's Diary was a modern riff on Pride and Prejudice, its sequel borrows several themes and devices (not to mention a section heading) from another Austen novel, Persuasion. And as in Austen's fiction, here the journey is the destination. A happy ending for Bridget and her pals is a foregone conclusion; how they get there, however, will have you on the edge of your chair--if you haven't already fallen off of it laughing. --Alix Wilber [via]
More editions of Bridget Jones:
- Bridget Jones: ISBN 014303443X (0-14-303443-X)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
- Bridget Jones: ISBN 0140298479 (0-14-029847-9)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer, Geraldine McCaughrean

ISBN 0140380531 (0-14-038053-1)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
One of the greatest and most ambitious works in English literature, The Canterbury Tales depicts a storytelling competition between pilgrims drawn from all ranks of society.

The tales are as various as the pilgrims themselves, encompassing comedy, pathos, tragedy, and cynicism. The Miller and the Reeve express their mutual antagonism in a pair of comic stories combining sex and trickery; in The Shipmans Tale, a wife sells her favors to a monk. Others draw on courtly romance and fantasy: the Knight tells of rivals competing for the love of the same woman, and the Squire describes a princess who can speak to birds. In these twenty-four tales, Chaucer displays a dazzling range of literary styles and conjures up a wonderfully vivid picture of medieval life.

Freshly established Middle English text with standardized spelling and punctuation and on-page glossing

Features an introduction, a chronology of Chaucer's life and works, detailed explanatory notes, suggestions for further reading, a full glossary, and a bibliography

Companion to the Penguin Classics original-spelling edition of Troilus and Criseyde

@AprilFools Oh and the Wyfe of Bathe. Talk about a woman who likes to be perced to the roote.

From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
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The Canterbury Tales
by Geraldine McCaughrean, Victor G. Ambrus

ISBN 019278109X (0-19-278109-X)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Book summary:
Interest age: 9+ [via]
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- The Canterbury Tales: ISBN 019278109X (0-19-278109-X)
  Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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Clergyman's Daughter
by George Orwell

ISBN 0156180650 (0-15-618065-0)
Softcover, Harvest Books

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Book summary:
At the distance of a half-century, this satiric social fiction is both a treasure and a disappointment. Orwell's wit is priceless--and ruthless--as he describes rural Church of England parish life; the transitory culture of the hops harvest; a brothel's soiled linen; not to mention when his heroine hobnobs with the Trafalgar Square homeless of a bitter winter's night or bullies bored students in a fourth-rate private school: "Last term the girls had behaved badly, because she had started by treating them as human beings, and later on, when the lessons that interested them were discontinued, they had rebelled like human beings. But if you are obliged to teach children rubbish, you must not treat them as human beings.... Before all else, you must teach them it is more painful to rebel than to obey."
Orwell's compassion for Dorothy Hare, ensnared by faith, birth, and gender to toil thanklessly as her minister father's unpaid curate, is admirable, and his evocation, early in the novel, of a woman's consciousness totally subsumed by the mostly trivial demands of others stands shoulder to shoulder with the best feminist fiction. The dialogues between Dorothy and her dissolute middle-aged suitor, Mr. Warburton, concerning human nature, faith, and morality, are smart and fun to read. The problem (and here Orwell commits the sort of sin he denounces in Dickens) is that the novel's plot--Dorothy's picaresque amnesiac travels through the seamy side of English life--feels manufactured for the author's satiric purposes. Orwell never relinquishes his cleverness, or his maleness, to become his heroine, with the result that the reader never surrenders wholly to the fiction. Thus A Clergyman's Daughter, while a pleasure to pick up, is not quite a book one can't put down. --Joyce Thompson [via]
More editions of Clergyman's Daughter:
- Clergyman's Daughter: ISBN 0156180650 (0-15-618065-0)
  Softcover, Harvest Books
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A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court
by Mark Twain, Justin Kaplan

ISBN 0140430644 (0-14-043064-4)
Softcover, Puffin

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Book summary:
When Connecticut mechanic and foreman Hank Morgan is knocked unconscious, he wakes not to the familiar scenes of nineteenth-century America but to the bewildering sights and sounds of sixth-century Camelot. Although confused at first and quickly imprisoned, he soon realises that his knowledge of the future can transform his fate. Correctly predicting a solar eclipse from inside his prison cell, Morgan terrifies the people of England into releasing him and swiftly establishes himself as the most powerful magician in the land, stronger than Merlin and greatly admired by Arthur himself. But the Connecticut Yankee wishes for more than simply a place at the Round Table. Soon, he begins a far greater struggle: to bring American democratic ideals to Old England. Complex and fascinating, "A Connecticut Yankee" is a darkly comic consideration of the nature of human nature and society. [via]
More editions of A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court:
- A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court: ISBN 0140430644 (0-14-043064-4)
  Softcover, Puffin
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Count of Monte Cristo
by Alexandre Dumas, Robin Waterfield

ISBN 0140373535 (0-14-037353-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Set in 19th century Paris, Marseilles and Rome, this is the story of Edmond Dantes, a man betrayed and incarcerated. It tells of his search for Abbe Faria's hidden treasure and his reappearance as the fabulously rich, brooding, Byronic and vengeful Count of Monte Cristo. [via]
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Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Constance Black Garnett, Ernest Joseph Simmons

ISBN 0075535742 (0-07-553574-2)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

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Book summary:
Raskolnikov, a destitute and desperate former student, wanders through the slums of St Petersburg and commits a random murder without remorse or regret. He imagines himself to be a great man, a Napoleon: acting for a higher purpose beyond conventional moral law. But as he embarks on a dangerous game of cat and mouse with a suspicious police investigator, Raskolnikov is pursued by the growing voice of his conscience and finds the noose of his own guilt tightening around his neck. Only Sonya, a downtrodden prostitute, can offer the chance of redemption.
This vivid translation by David McDuff has been acclaimed as the most accessible version of Dostoyevskys great novel, rendering its dialogue with a unique force and naturalism. This edition also includes a new chronology of Dostoyevskys life and work.

@RobPeterPayPaul Its hard being a poor student lots of work, crappy room, and I have the ugliest hat this side of the Urals.

It is a bit of a rut being so miserably impoverished. I need something to lighten up my life, something exciting&

Ive got it. Rather than accept financial aid from my friend, Ill murder an elderly money-lender in cold blood. Why? Im not telling.

However, if youd like to guess at my psychological and ideological motivations for the next couple of hundred years, be my guest.

From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less
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Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts With Epilogue
by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Richard Pevear

ISBN 0099981904 (0-09-998190-4)
Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd

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Book summary:
A troubled young man commits the perfect crime: the murder of a vile pawnbroker whom no one will miss. Raskolnikov is desperate for money, but he convinces himself that his motive for the murder is to benefit mankind. So begins a tragic novel that illuminates the eternal struggle between human emotions and desire, and the harsh laws of ethics and justice. Part thriller and part philosophical meditation, this is a penetrating look at the core of human nature.
[via]
More editions of Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts With Epilogue:
- Crime and Punishment: A Novel in Six Parts With Epilogue: ISBN 0099981904 (0-09-998190-4)
  Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd
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The Crimson Petal and the White
by Michel Faber

ISBN 0156028778 (0-15-602877-8)
Softcover, Harcourt

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Book summary:
Although it's billed as "the first great 19th-century novel of the 21st century," The Crimson Petal and the White is anything but Victorian. The story of a well-read London prostitute named Sugar, who spends her free hours composing a violent, pornographic screed against men, Michel Faber's dazzling second novel dares to go where George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss and the works of Charles Dickens could not. We learn about the positions and orifices that Sugar and her clients favor, about her lingering skin condition, and about the suspect ingredients of her prophylactic douches. Still, Sugar believes she can make a better life for herself. When she is taken up by a wealthy man, the perfumer William Rackham, her wings are clipped, and she must balance financial security against the obvious servitude of her position. The physical risks and hardships of Sugar's life (and the even harder "honest" life she would have led as a factory worker) contrast--yet not entirely--with the medical mistreatment of her benefactor's wife, Agnes, and beautifully underscore Faber's emphasis on class and sexual politics. In theme and treatment, this is a novel that Virginia Woolf might have written, had she been born 70 years later. The language, however, is Faber's own--brisk and elastic--and, after an awkward opening, the plethora of detail he offers (costume, food, manners, cheap stage performances, the London streets) slides effortlessly into his forward-moving sentences. When Agnes goes mad, for instance, "she sings on and on, while the house is discreetly dusted all around her and, in the concealed and subterranean kitchen, a naked duck, limp and faintly steaming, spreads its pimpled legs on a draining board." Despite its 800-plus pages, The Crimson Petal and the White turns out to be a quick read, since it is truly impossible to put down. --Regina Marler [via]
More editions of The Crimson Petal and the White:
- The Crimson Petal and the White: ISBN 015100692X (0-15-100692-X)
  Hardcover, Harcourt
- The Crimson Petal and the White: ISBN 0156028778 (0-15-602877-8)
  Softcover, Harcourt
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Democracy in America
by Alexis De Tocqueville, J. P. Mayer, George Lawrence

ISBN 0061127922 (0-06-112792-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Edited, with an Introduction, by Thomas Bender [via]
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Democracy in America
by J. P. Mayer, Alexis De Tocqueville

ISBN 0060956666 (0-06-095666-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Tocqueville's monumental book is as relevant today as when it was first published in the mid-nineteenth century, and it remains the most comprehensive, penetrating, and astute picture of American life, politics, and morals ever written -- whether by an American or, as in this case, a foreign visitor. This special edition contains the entire two volumes of Democracy in America, based on the second revised and corrected text of the 1961 French edition, meticulously edited by the distinguished Tocqueville scholar J.P. Mayer. [via]
More editions of Democracy in America:
- Democracy in America: ISBN 0060956666 (0-06-095666-6)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Dispossessed
by Ursula K. Le Guin

ISBN 0061054887 (0-06-105488-7)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. he will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life. Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Anarres, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
[via]
More editions of The Dispossessed:
- The Dispossessed: ISBN 0061054887 (0-06-105488-7)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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Equal Rites
by Terry Pratchett

ISBN 0060855908 (0-06-085590-8)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Terry Pratchett's profoundly irreverent novels, consistent number one bestsellers in England, have garnered him a revered position in the halls of parody along with Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, and Carl Hiaasen.
In Equal Rites, a dying wizard tries to pass on his powers to an eighth son of an eighth son, who is just at that moment being born. The fact that the son is actually a daughter is discovered just a little too late...
[via]
More editions of Equal Rites:
- Equal Rites: ISBN 0061020699 (0-06-102069-9)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
- Equal Rites: ISBN 0060855908 (0-06-085590-8)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

ISBN 0140441476 (0-14-044147-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
A specially commissioned new translation of Turgenev's novel, which, with its controversial portrayal of Buzarov, the "nihilist" or "new man", aroused shock throughout Russian society when it was first published in 1862. The translator gained access to Turgenev's working manuscript. [via]
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Flatland
by Edwin Abbott Abbott

ISBN 0064635732 (0-06-463573-2)
Softcover, Barnes & Noble

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Book summary:
"Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it & and you will have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen."
Narrated by A. Square, Flatland is Edwin A. Abbott's delightful mathematical fantasy about life in a two-dimensional world. All existence is limited to length and breadth in Flatland, its inhabitants unable even to imagine a third dimension. Abbott's amiable narrator provides an overview of this fantastic world-its physics and metaphysics, its history, customs, and religious beliefs. But when a strange visitor mysteriously appears and transports the incredulous Flatlander to the Land of Three Dimensions, his worldview is forever shattered.
Written more than a century ago, Flatland conceals within its brilliant parody of Victorian society speculations about the universe that resonate in Einstein's theory of relativity as well as the current "string-theory" of nature.
[via]
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Flatland: A Journey of Many Dimensions
by Edwin A. Abbott, Dionys Burger

ISBN 0062732765 (0-06-273276-5)
Softcover, Harper Resource

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Book summary:
Unless you're a mathematician, the chances of you reading any novels about geometry are probably slender. But if you read only two in your life, these are the ones. Taken together, they form a couple of accessible and charming explanations of geometry and physics for the curious non-mathematician. Flatland, which is also available under separate cover, was published in 1880 and imagines a two-dimensional world inhabited by sentient geometric shapes who think their planar world is all there is. But one Flatlander, a Square, discovers the existence of a third dimension and the limits of his world's assumptions about reality and comes to understand the confusing problem of higher dimensions. The book is also quite a funny satire on society and class distinctions of Victorian England. The further mathematical fantasy, Sphereland, published 60 years later, revisits the world of Flatland in time to explore the mind-bending theories created by Albert Einstein, whose work so completely altered the scientific understanding of space, time, and matter. Among Einstein's many challenges to common sense were the ideas of curved space, an expanding universe and the fact that light does not travel in a straight line. Without use of the mathematical formulae that bar most non-scientists from an understanding of Einstein's theories, Sphereland gives lay readers ways to start comprehending these confusing but fundamental questions of our reality. [via]
More editions of Flatland: A Journey of Many Dimensions:
- Flatland: A Journey of Many Dimensions: ISBN 0062732765 (0-06-273276-5)
  Softcover, Harper Resource
Galapagos: Key Environments
by Roger Perry

ISBN 0080279961 (0-08-027996-1)
Hardcover, Elsevier Science Ltd

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More editions of Galapagos: Key Environments:
- Galapagos: Key Environments: ISBN 0080279961 (0-08-027996-1)
  Hardcover, Elsevier Science Ltd
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The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck, Peter Lisca, Kevin Hearle

ISBN 0140247750 (0-14-024775-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
When The Grapes of Wrath was published in 1939, America, still recovering from the Great Depression, came face to face with itself in a startling, lyrical way. John Steinbeck gathered the country's recent shames and devastations--the Hoovervilles, the desperate, dirty children, the dissolution of kin, the oppressive labor conditions--in the Joad family. Then he set them down on a westward-running road, local dialect and all, for the world to acknowledge. For this marvel of observation and perception, he won the Pulitzer in 1940.
The prize must have come, at least in part, because alongside the poverty and dispossession, Steinbeck chronicled the Joads' refusal, even inability, to let go of their faltering but unmistakable hold on human dignity. Witnessing their degeneration from Oklahoma farmers to a diminished band of migrant workers is nothing short of crushing. The Joads lose family members to death and cowardice as they go, and are challenged by everything from weather to the authorities to the California locals themselves. As Tom Joad puts it: "They're a-workin' away at our spirits. They're a tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're workin' on our decency."
The point, though, is that decency remains intact, if somewhat battle-scarred, and this, as much as the depression and the plight of the "Okies," is a part of American history. When the California of their dreams proves to be less than edenic, Ma tells Tom: "You got to have patience. Why, Tom--us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people--we go on." It's almost as if she's talking about the very novel she inhabits, for Steinbeck's characters, more than most literary creations, do go on. They continue, now as much as ever, to illuminate and humanize an era for generations of readers who, thankfully, have no experiential point of reference for understanding the depression. The book's final, haunting image of Rose of Sharon--Rosasharn, as they call her--the eldest Joad daughter, forcing the milk intended for her stillborn baby onto a starving stranger, is a lesson on the grandest scale. "'You got to,'" she says, simply. And so do we all. --Melanie Rehak [via]
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The Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad, R. G. Hampson

ISBN 0140186522 (0-14-018652-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
A masterpiece of twentieth-century writing, Heart of Darkness exposes the tenuous fabric that holds "civilization" together and the brutal horror at the center of European colonialism. Conrad's crowning achievement recounts Marlow's physical and psychological journey deep into the heart of the Belgian Congo in search of the mysterious trader Kurtz.

@JungleFever Heading down to Africa on a boat. Too hot! I get the creeping sense this job isnt going to be as cushy as they made it sound.

The natives seem unhappy. Some are even violent! Why dont they appreciate how much weve done for them? Ungrateful welfare leeches, I say!

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Heart of Darkness and Other Tales
by Joseph Conrad, Cedric Watts

ISBN 0192801724 (0-19-280172-4)
Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Book summary:
Set in an atmosphere of mystery, this novel tells of Marlow's journey up the Congo River to meet the remarkable Mr Kurtz. The other three tales also appraise the glamour and rapacity of imperial adventure and display insights into human nature and the bases of civilization. [via]
More editions of Heart of Darkness and Other Tales:
- Heart of Darkness and Other Tales: ISBN 0192826514 (0-19-282651-4)
  Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
- Heart of Darkness and Other Tales: ISBN 0192801724 (0-19-280172-4)
  Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr
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How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York
by Jacob A. Riis, Luc Sante

ISBN 0140436790 (0-14-043679-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
First published in 1890, Jacob Riis's remarkable study of the horrendous living conditions of the poor in New York City had an immediate and extraordinary impact on society, inspiring reforms that affected the lives of millions of people.
[via]
More editions of How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York:
- How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York: ISBN 0140436790 (0-14-043679-0)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Howards End
by E. M. Forster, David Lodge

ISBN 014118213X (0-14-118213-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Margaret Schlegel, engaged to the much older, widowed Henry Wilcox, meets her intended the morning after accepting his proposal and realizes that he is a man who has lived without introspection or true self-knowledge. As she contemplates the state of Wilcox's soul, her remedy for what ails him has become one of the most oft-quoted passages in literature:
Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
Like all of Forster's work, Howards End concerns itself with class, nationality, economic status, and how each of these affects personal relationships. It follows the intertwined fortunes of the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and the Wilcox family over the course of several years. The Schlegels are intellectuals, devotees of art and literature. The Wilcoxes, on the other hand, can't be bothered with the life of the mind or the heart, leading, instead, outer lives of "telegrams and anger" that foster "such virtues as neatness, decision, and obedience, virtues of the second rank, no doubt, but they have formed our civilization." Helen, after a brief flirtation with one of the Wilcox sons, has developed an antipathy for the family; Margaret, however, forms a brief but intense friendship with Mrs. Wilcox, which is cut short by the older woman's death. When her family discovers a scrap of paper requesting that Henry give their home, Howards End, to Margaret, it precipitates a spiritual crisis among them that will take years to resolve.
Forster's 1910 novel begins as a collection of seemingly unrelated events--Helen's impulsive engagement to Paul Wilcox; a chance meeting between the Schlegel sisters and an impoverished clerk named Leonard Bast at a concert; a casual conversation between the sisters and Henry Wilcox in London one night. But as it moves along, these disparate threads gradually knit into a tightly woven fabric of tragic misunderstandings, impulsive actions, and irreparable consequences, and, eventually, connection. Though set in the early years of the 20th century, Howards End seems even more suited to our own fragmented era of e-mails and anger. For readers living in such an age, the exhortation to "only connect" resonates ever more profoundly. --Alix Wilber [via]
More editions of Howards End:
- Howards End: ISBN 014118213X (0-14-118213-X)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath
by Frank Galati

ISBN 0140482326 (0-14-048232-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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- John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath: ISBN 0140482326 (0-14-048232-6)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Less Than Zero
by Bret Easton Ellis

ISBN 0140088946 (0-14-008894-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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Book summary:
Clay comes home to L.A. for Christmas vacation and re-enters a landscape of limitless privilege and moral entropy, where everyone drives Porsches, dines at Spago, and snorts mountains of cocaine. He tries to renew feelings for his girlfriend, Blair, and for his best friend from high school, Julian, who is careering into hustling and heroin. Clay's holiday turns into a dizzying spiral of desperation that takes him through the relentless parties in glitzy mansions, seedy bars, and underground rock clubs. Morally barren, ethically bereft and tinged with implicit violence, "Less Than Zero" is a shocking coming-of-age novel about the casual nihilism that comes with youth and money. "An extraordinarily accomplished first novel." - "New Yorker." "One of the most disturbing novels I've read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality." - Michiko Kakutani, "New York Times." "The Catcher in the Rye for the MTV generation." - "USA Today." "Remarkable. A killer - sexy, sassy, sad." - "Village Voice." [via]
More editions of Less Than Zero:
- Less Than Zero: ISBN 0140088946 (0-14-008894-6)
  Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)
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Looking Backward, 2000-1887
by Edward Bellamy, Cecelia Tichi

ISBN 0140390189 (0-14-039018-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
It is the year 2000 - and full employment, material abundance and social harmony can be found everywhere. This is the America to which Julian West, a young Bostonian, awakens after more than a century of sleep. West's initial sense of wonder, his gradual acceptance of the new order and a new love, and Bellamy's wonderful prophetic inventions - electric lighting, shopping malls, credit cards, electronic broadcasting - ensured the mass popularity of this 1888 novel. But, however rich in fantasy and romance, "Looking Backward" is a passionate attach on the social ills of nineteenth-century industrialism and a plea for social reform and moral renewal. In her introduction, Cecelia Tichi discusses how the novel echoes the anguish and hopes of its own age while it embodies a sustaining myth of the American literary tradition - that man's perfectibility is attainable in the New World. [via]
More editions of Looking Backward, 2000-1887:
- Looking Backward, 2000-1887: ISBN 0140390189 (0-14-039018-9)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
The Merry Heart: Reflections on Reading, Writing, and the World of Books
by Robertson Davies

ISBN 014027586X (0-14-027586-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group (Canada)

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Moving Pictures
by Terry Pratchett

ISBN 006102063X (0-06-102063-X)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Discworld's pesky alchemists are up to their old tricks again. This time, they've discovered how to get gold from silver -- the silver screen that is. Hearing the siren call of Holy Wood is one Victor Tugelbend, a would-be wizard turned extra. He can't sing, he can't dance, but he can handle a sword (sort of), and now he wants to be a star. So does Theda Withel, an ambitious ingénue from a little town (where else?) you've probably never heard of.
But the click click of moving pictures isn't just stirring up dreams inside Discworld. Holy Wood's magic is drifting out into the boundaries of the universes, where raw realities, the could-have-beens, the might-bes, the never-weres, the wild ideas are beginning to ferment into a really stinky brew. It's up to Victor and Gaspode the Wonder Dog (a star if ever one was born!) to rein in the chaos and bring order back to a starstruck Discworld. And they're definitely not ready for their close-up!
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More editions of Moving Pictures:
- Moving Pictures: ISBN 006102063X (0-06-102063-X)
  Softcover, Harpercollins
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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan

ISBN 0143038583 (0-14-303858-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals [Paperback] [via]
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- The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals: ISBN 0143038583 (0-14-303858-3)
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On Beauty
by Zadie Smith

ISBN 0143037749 (0-14-303774-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Winner of the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction and from the celebrated author of White Teeth comes another bestselling masterwork Having hit bestseller lists from the New York Times to the San Francisco Chronicle , this wise, hilarious novel reminds us why Zadie Smith has rocketed to literary stardom. On Beauty is the story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic-serve to skewer everything from family life to political correctness to the combustive collision between the personal and the political. Full of dead-on wit and relentlessly funny, this tour de force confirms Zadie Smith's reputation as a major literary talent. Named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Time , and Publishers Weekly A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Denver Post , and Publishers Weekly bestseller A Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Atlantic Monthly, Newsday, Christian Science Monitor , and Minneapolis Star Tribune Best Book of the Year Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize BACKCOVER: Praise for On Beauty : "A thoroughly original tale . . . wonderfully engaging, wonderfully observed . . . That rare thing: a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane." -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "A thing of beauty. Oh happy day when a writer as gifted as Zadie Smith fulfills her early promise with a novel as accomplished, substantive and penetrating as On Beauty ." - Los Angeles Times "Smith's specialty is her ability to render the new world, in its vibrant multiculturalism, with a kind of dancing, daring joy. . . . Her plots and people sing with life. . . . One of the best of the year, a splendid treat. [via]
More editions of On Beauty:
- On Beauty: ISBN 0143037749 (0-14-303774-9)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Persuasion
by Jane Austen, Gillian Beer

ISBN 0141439688 (0-14-143968-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Persuasion celebrates romantic constancy in an era of turbulent change. Written as the Napoleonic Wars were ending, the novel examines how a woman can at once remain faithful to her past and still move forward into the future. Anne Elliot seems to have given up on present happiness and has resigned herself to living off her memories. More than seven years earlier she complied with duty: persuaded to view the match as imprudent and improper, she broke off her engagement to a naval captain with neither fortune, ancestry, nor prospects. However, when peacetime arrives and brings the Navy home, and Anne encounters Captain Wentworth once more, she starts to believe in second chances. Jane Austen's last completed novel features a heroine much older and wiser than her predecessors in earlier books, and presents a more intimate and sober tale of a love found long after such happiness had been deemed hopeless. This edition includes an appendix giving the original ending of Persuasion . [via]
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Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell

ISBN 0156767503 (0-15-676750-3)
Softcover, Harvest Books

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Although George Orwell grew up in the relative comfort of the English middle class, his socialist convictions and general sense of fairness led him to hate his country's deeply ingrained class structure. That perspective permeates this book, but the most striking elements are the quotidian details of life that Orwell observes in his first-person account of the lives of coal miners and others in the poor north of England. Wigan Pier is almost too realistic at times, as Orwell brings his unparalleled powers of observation to portray the wretched conditions of the working class. That Orwell may have slanted his reporting to make things look worse than they were is a question that does not lessen the book's interest. [via]
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- Road to Wigan Pier: ISBN 0156767503 (0-15-676750-3)
  Softcover, Harvest Books
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The Sleeper Awakes
by H. G. Wells, Andy Sawyer, Patrick Parrinder

ISBN 0141441062 (0-14-144106-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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In The Sleeper Awakes, an insomniac falls into a sleep-like trance for more than two hundred years, and awakes in a society in which the oppressed masses cling desperately to one dreamthat the sleeper will awake and lead them all to freedom.

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The Social Contract
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maurice Cranston

ISBN 0140442014 (0-14-044201-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.

Rousseau's explosive cry for human liberty helped to spark the French Revolution and has haunted our discussions of how we should rule one another ever sinceseen as both a blueprint for political terror and as a fundamental statement of democracy.

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More editions of The Social Contract:
- The Social Contract: ISBN 0143037498 (0-14-303749-8)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
- The Social Contract: ISBN 0140442014 (0-14-044201-4)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Souls of Black Folk
by W. E. B. Du Bois, Monica M. Elbert, Donald B. Gibson

ISBN 014018998X (0-14-018998-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]
More editions of The Souls of Black Folk:
- The Souls of Black Folk: ISBN 014039074X (0-14-039074-X)
  Softcover, Penguin USA
- The Souls of Black Folk: ISBN 014018998X (0-14-018998-X)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

ISBN 0060933275 (0-06-093327-5)
Softcover, Perennial

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"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber [via]
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The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
by Eric Hoffer

ISBN 0060916125 (0-06-091612-5)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
A highly provocative, bestselling analysis of the fanatic -- the individual compelled to join a cause, any cause -- and a penetrating study of mass movements from early Christianity to modern nationalism and Communism.Reporting on the true believer, Air Hoffer examines with Machiavellian detachment mass movements, from Christianity in its infancy to the national uprisings of our own day. His analysis of the psychology of mass movements is a brilliant and frightening study of the mind of the fanatic, the individual whose, personal failings lead him to join a cause, any cause, even at peril to life -- or yours. [via]
More editions of The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements:
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  Softcover, Harpercollins
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Uncle Tom's Cabin
by Harriet Beecher Stowe

ISBN 0060806184 (0-06-080618-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
Product Details Paperback Publisher: Penguin Books; Later Printing edition (1986) Language: English ISBN-10: 0140390030 ISBN-13: 978-0140390032 ASIN: B000KIVCLI Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.3 inches Shipping Weight: 1 pounds [via]
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Wicked
by Gregory Maguire, Douglas Smith

ISBN 0060987103 (0-06-098710-3)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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This is the book that started it all! The basis for the smash hit Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, Gregory Maguire's breathtaking New York Times bestseller Wicked views the land of Oz, its inhabitants, its Wizard, and the Emerald City, through a darker and greener (not rosier) lens. Brilliantly inventive, Wicked offers us a radical new evaluation of one of the most feared and hated characters in all of literature: the much maligned Wicked Witch of the West who, as Maguire tells us, wasn't nearly as Wicked as we imagined. [via]
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Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea
by Charles Seife, Matt Zimet

ISBN 0140296476 (0-14-029647-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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The seemingly impossible Zen task--writing a book about nothing--has a loophole: people have been chatting, learning, and even fighting about nothing for millennia. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by noted science writer Charles Seife, starts with the story of a modern battleship stopped dead in the water by a loose zero, then rewinds back to several hundred years BCE. Some empty-headed genius improved the traditional Eastern counting methods immeasurably by adding zero as a placeholder, which allowed the genesis of our still-used decimal system. It's all been uphill from there, but Seife is enthusiastic about his subject; his synthesis of math, history, and anthropology seduces the reader into a new fascination with the most troubling number.
Why did the Church reject the use of zero? How did mystics of all stripes get bent out of shape over it? Is it true that science as we know it depends on this mysterious round digit? Zero opens up these questions and lets us explore the answers and their ramifications for our oh-so-modern lives. Seife has fun with his format, too, starting with chapter 0 and finishing with an appendix titled "Make Your Own Wormhole Time Machine." (Warning: don't get your hopes up too much.) There are enough graphs and equations to scare off serious numerophobes, but the real story is in the interactions between artists, scientists, mathematicians, religious and political leaders, and the rest of us--it seems we really do have nothing in common. --Rob Lightner [via]
More editions of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea:
- Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea: ISBN 0140296476 (0-14-029647-6)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Las Uvas De LA Ira
by John Steinbeck, Maria Coy

ISBN 0142002534 (0-14-200253-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Las uvas de la ira es un hito en la literatura norteamericana que explora el conflicto entre ricos y pobres, analiza la reacción feroz de un hombre contra la injusticia y el estoicismo de una mujer igualmente heróica, y refleja los horrores de la Gran Depresión. Aunque sigue la migración de miles personas del Dust Bowl, Las uvas de la ira se enfoca en la historia de una familia de Oklahoma, los Joads, echados de su hogar y forzados a viajar rumbo a esa Tierra Prometida que era por ese entoncesy que de algun modo sigue siendoCalifornia. De sus desventurasen un país dividido surge un drama sobre la dignidad humana, a un tiempo trágico y majestuoso en su grandeza su valentía moral.

Publicada por primera vez en 1939, la novela reflejó su época como Uncle Tom's Cabin reflejó los años antes de la Guerra Civil norteamericana. John Steinbeck, un escritor que simpatizaba con la crítica fascista y comunista, insistió en que la versión integral del "Himno de batalla de la República" fuese impresa en la primera edición del libro, que adopta en su título unas palabras del primer verso: "Está pisoteando la vendimia donde se conservan las uvas de la ira." La crónica de Steinbeck sobre el avergonzante maltrato de las clases sociales de los años treinta es tal vez el más "americano" de todos los clásicos norteamericanos.

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More editions of Las Uvas De LA Ira:
- Las Uvas De LA Ira: ISBN 0142002534 (0-14-200253-4)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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