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books tagged “society”
books tagged “society”
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Anne Frankby Doubleday StaffISBN 038542695X (0-385-42695-X)
Softcover, Doubleday Canada, Limited
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Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girlby Anne Frank, B. M. Mooyaart, Eleanor RooseveltISBN 0385040199 (0-385-04019-9)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl'Book summary:Anne Frank's diaries have always been among the most moving and eloquent documents of the Holocaust. This new edition restores diary entries omitted from the original edition, revealing a new depth to Anne's dreams, irritations, hardships, and passions. Anne emerges as more real, more human, and more vital than ever. If you've never read this remarkable autobiography, do so. If you have read it, you owe it to yourself to read it again. [via]
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The Architecture of Happinessby Alain De BottonISBN 0375424431 (0-375-42443-1)
Hardcover, Pantheon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Architecture of Happiness'Book summary:One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings and streets that surround us.
And yet a concern for architecture and design is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. The Architecture of Happiness starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and it argues that it is architectures task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential.
Whereas many architects are wary of openly discussing the word beauty, this book has at its center the large and naïve question: What is a beautiful building? It is a tour through the philosophy and psychology of architecture that aims to change the way we think about our homes, our streets and ourselves. [via]More editions of The Architecture of Happiness:
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The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Wordsby Deborah TannenISBN 0345407512 (0-345-40751-2)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words'Book summary:Do Americans argue too much? Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand and That's Not What I Meant!, is an expert on miscommunication. In The Argument Culture she posits that misunderstanding is endemic in our culture because we tend to believe that the best way to a common goal is by thrashing out all our differences as loudly as possible along the way. Thus we are treated to a whole array of confrontational public forums, from congressional partisan politics to media circuses à la Jerry Springer and Jenny Jones, all based on a metaphor of war. What gets lost in all the shouting, Tannen says, is thoughtful debate and real understanding. Perhaps it's time to consider other methods of communication, she suggests. In addition to outlining what she considers the worst excesses of our argument culture, Tannen revisits some of the territory covered in You Just Don't Understand as she discusses the different ways in which young boys and girls express disagreement or aggression. Finally, she offers a survey of other, mostly non-Western ways of dealing with conflict, including the use of intermediaries and rituals. After reading The Argument Culture you might never again look at the evening news in the same way. [via]
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The Bell Jarby Sylvia Plath, Diane W. MiddlebrookISBN 0375404635 (0-375-40463-5)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bell Jar'Book summary:Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity. [via]
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Beyond Fear : Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain Worldby Bruce SchneierISBN 0387026207 (0-387-02620-7)
Hardcover, Springer
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Beyond Fear : Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World'Book summary:Many of us, especially since 9/11, have become personally concerned about issues of security, and this is no surprise. Security is near the top of government and corporate agendas around the globe. Security-related stories appear on the front page everyday. How well though, do any of us truly understand what achieving real security involves? In Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion. With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. He also believes, for instance, that national ID cards are an exceptionally bad idea: technically unsound, and even destructive of security. And, contrary to a lot of current nay-sayers, he thinks online shopping is fundamentally safe, and that many of the new airline security measure (though by no means all) are actually quite effective. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits. Schneier helps the reader to understand the issues at stake, and how to best come to one's own conclusions, including the vast infrastructure we already have in place, and the vaster systems--some useful, others useless or worse--that we're being asked to submit to and pay for. Bruce Schneier is the author of seven books, including Applied Cryptography (which Wired called "the one book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published") and Secrets and Lies (described in Fortune as "startlingly lively...¦[a] jewel box of little surprises you can actually use."). He is also Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Inc., and publishes Crypto-Gram, one of the most widely read newsletters in the field of online security. [via]
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Bleak Houseby Charles DickensISBN 0375760059 (0-375-76005-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bleak House'Book summary:Bleak House is a satirical look at the Byzantine legal system in London as it consumes the minds and talents of the greedy and nearly destroys the lives of innocents--a contemporary tale indeed. Dickens's tale takes us from the foggy dank streets of London and the maze of the Inns of Court to the peaceful countryside of England. Likewise, the characters run from murderous villains to virtuous girls, from a devoted lover to a "fallen woman," all of whom are affected by a legal suit in which there will, of course, be no winner. The first-person narrative related by the orphan Esther is particularly sweet. The articulate reading by the acclaimed British actor Paul Scofield, whose distinctive broad English accent lends just the right degree of sonority and humor to the text, brings out the color in this classic social commentary disguised as a Victorian drama. However, to abridge Dickens is, well, a Dickensian task, the results of which make for a story in which the author's convoluted plot lines and twists of fate play out in what seems to be a fast-forward format. Listeners must pay close attention in order to keep up with the multiple narratives and cast of curious characters, including the memorable Inspector Bucket and Mr. Guppy. Fortunately, the publisher provides a partial list of characters on the inside jacket. (Running time: 3 hours; 2 cassettes) [via]
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Bleak House: An Authoritative and Annotated Text, Illustrations, a Note on the Text, Genesis and Composition, Backgrounds, Criticismby Charles Dickens, Sylvere Monod, George Harry FordISBN 0393093328 (0-393-09332-8)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bleak House: An Authoritative and Annotated Text, Illustrations, a Note on the Text, Genesis and Composition, Backgrounds, Criticism'Book summary:Bleak House is a satirical look at the Byzantine legal system in London as it consumes the minds and talents of the greedy and nearly destroys the lives of innocents--a contemporary tale indeed. Dickens's tale takes us from the foggy dank streets of London and the maze of the Inns of Court to the peaceful countryside of England. Likewise, the characters run from murderous villains to virtuous girls, from a devoted lover to a "fallen woman," all of whom are affected by a legal suit in which there will, of course, be no winner. The first-person narrative related by the orphan Esther is particularly sweet. The articulate reading by the acclaimed British actor Paul Scofield, whose distinctive broad English accent lends just the right degree of sonority and humor to the text, brings out the color in this classic social commentary disguised as a Victorian drama. However, to abridge Dickens is, well, a Dickensian task, the results of which make for a story in which the author's convoluted plot lines and twists of fate play out in what seems to be a fast-forward format. Listeners must pay close attention in order to keep up with the multiple narratives and cast of curious characters, including the memorable Inspector Bucket and Mr. Guppy. Fortunately, the publisher provides a partial list of characters on the inside jacket. (Running time: 3 hours; 2 cassettes) [via]
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The Bonfire of the Vanitiesby Tom WolfeISBN 0374115346 (0-374-11534-6)
Hardcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Bonfire of the Vanities'Book summary:After Tom Wolfe defined the '60s in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers and the cultural U-turn at the turn of the '80s in The Right Stuff, nobody thought he could ever top himself again. In 1987, when The Bonfire of the Vanities arrived, the literati called Wolfe an "aging enfant terrible."
He wasn't aging; he was growing up. Bonfire's pyrotechnic satire of 1980s New York wasn't just Wolfe's best book, it was the best bestselling fiction debut of the decade, a miraculously realistic study of an unbelievably status-mad society, from the fiery combatants of the South Bronx to the bubbling scum at the top of Wall Street. Sherman McCoy, a farcically arrogant investment banker (dubbed a "Master of the Universe," Wolfe's brilliant metaphorical co-opting of a then-important toy for boys), hits a black guy in the Bronx with his Mercedes and runs--right into a nightmare peopled by vicious mistresses, thin wives like "social x-rays," slime-bag politicos, tabloid hacks, and Dantesque denizens of the "justice" system. If the Coen and Marx brothers together dramatized The Great Gatsby, Wolfe's Bonfire would probably be funnier. Many think his second novel, A Man in Full, is deeper, but Bonfire will never die down.
You might find it interesting to compare the film The Bonfire of the Vanities, a fascinating calamity perpetrated by the geniuses Brian De Palma and Tom Hanks, with The Right Stuff, one of the very best films of the '80s. --Tim Appelo [via]
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The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold Warby Robert D. KaplanISBN 037570759X (0-375-70759-X)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War'Book summary:Robert Kaplan warns of a "bifurcated world divided between societies like ours, producing goods and services that the rest of the world wants, and those mired in various forms of chaos." This is a familiar theme for previous Kaplan readers (Balkan Ghosts, The Ends of the Earth). For those unacquainted with Kaplan, however, The Coming Anarchy is a fine introduction to one of the most important voices on the future of society and international relations. Kaplan mixes the intense reportage of a travel writer with the sharp wisdom of a foreign-policy expert to deliver what he calls "an unrelenting record of uncomfortable truths, of the kind that many of us implicitly acknowledge but will not publicly accept." The Coming Anarchy is also a disturbing book: Kaplan's vision of the future is a bleak one, full of ethnic conflict as the world falls away from a cold war that at least provided a kind of stability in even the shakiest of countries. That's gone now, of course, and Kaplan's descriptions of life and politics in Sierra Leone, Russia, India, and elsewhere are keenly troubling. Much of the book--but not all of it--has already seen print, mainly on the pages of The Atlantic Monthly and The Wall Street Journal. It is brief in length but not in importance. --John J. Miller [via]
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Crime and Punishmentby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, George Gibian, Jessie Senior CoulsonISBN 0393092925 (0-393-09292-5)
Softcover, Norton
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crime and Punishment'Book summary:A Norton Critical Edition with the novel, letters from Dostoevsky and a collection of critical essays. [via]
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Crowds and Powerby Elias Canetti, Carol StewartISBN 0374518203 (0-374-51820-3)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crowds and Power'Book summary:Elias Canetti's 1981 Nobel Prize was awarded mainly on the basis of this, his masterwork of philosophical anthropology about la condition humaine on an overpopulated planet.
Ranging from soccer crowds and political rallies to Bushmen and the pilgrimage to Mecca, Canetti exhaustively reviews the way crowds form, develop, and dissolve, using this taxonomy of mass movement as a key to the dynamics of social life. The style is abstract, erudite, and anecdotal, which makes Crowds and Power the sort of work that awes some readers with its profundity while irritating others with its elusiveness. Canetti loves to say something brilliant but counterintuitive, and then leave the reader to figure out both why he said it and whether it's really true. --Richard Farr [via]
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Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectationsby Christopher LaschISBN 0393307387 (0-393-30738-7)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations'Book summary:When The Culture of Narcissism was first published, it was clear that Christopher Lasch had identified something important: what was happening to American society in the wake of the decline of the family over the last century.
The book quickly became a bestseller. This edition includes a new afterword, "The Culture of Narcissism Revisited." [via]More editions of Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations:
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The Death and Life of Great American Citiesby Jane JacobsISBN 0375508732 (0-375-50873-2)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities'Book summary:This book is an attack on current methods of city planning and re-building. It is also an explanation of new principles and an argument for different methods from those now in use. It is the first real alternative to conventional city planning that we have had in this century. Its author, herself a city dweller and an editor of Architectural Forum, is direct and practical in her approach. What, she asks, makes cities work? Why are some neighborhoods full of things to do and see and why are others dull? Why does the crime rate soar in our public housing developments and why are some of our older neighborhoods, despite their evident pov-erty, so much more safe, stable and congenial? Why do some neighborhoods attract interested and responsible populations and why do others degenerate? Why are Boston's North End and the eastern and western extremes of Greenwich Village good neighborhoods and why do orthodox city planners consider them slums? What alternatives are there to current city planning and rebuilding?
Conventional city planning holds that cities decline because they are blighted by too many people, by mixtures of commercial, industrial and residential uses, by old buildings and narrow streets and by small landholders who stand in the way of large-scale development. Such neighborhoods, they insist, breed apathy and crime, discourage investment and contaminate the areas around them. The response of con-ventional city planning is to tear them down, scatter their inhabitants, lay out super-blocks, and rebuild the area accord-ing to an integrated plan, with the result, as often as not, that the crime rate rises still higher, the new neighborhood is more lifeless than the old one, and the surrounding areas deteriorate even more, until the life of the whole city is threatened.
But Mrs. Jacobs observes that in any number of cases these very conditions--mixed uses, dense population, old buildings, small blocks, decentralized ownership--create the very opposite of slums, neighborhoods that regenerate themselves spontaneously, that are full of variety and diversity, that attract large numbers of casual visitors and responsible new residents, that encourage investment and revitalize the areas around them. Boston's North End (condemned as a slum by or-thodox planners) is such a neighborhood, and so is Greenwich Village. Rittenhouse Square and Telegraph Hill are others. Nearly every large city can produce still other examples.
Why then do some city neighborhoods die and why do others flourish? And what can city planners do to avoid the death and encourage the life of our great American cities? The solutions proposed by Mrs. Jacobs in this book represent a sharp break with conventional thinking on the subject and they carry with them the ring of simple truth which marks this book as an inevitable classic of social thought.
This edition is set from the first American edition of 1961 and commemorates the seventy-fifth anniversary of Random House. [via]More editions of The Death and Life of Great American Cities:
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The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Editionby Anne Frank, Mirjam Pressler, Otto H. FrankISBN 0385473788 (0-385-47378-8)
Hardcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition'Book summary:Anne Frank's diaries have always been among the most moving and eloquent documents of the Holocaust. This new edition restores diary entries omitted from the original edition, revealing a new depth to Anne's dreams, irritations, hardships, and passions. Anne emerges as more real, more human, and more vital than ever. If you've never read this remarkable autobiography, do so. If you have read it, you owe it to yourself to read it again. [via]
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Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Editonby Anne Frank, Mirjam Pressler, Otto H. Frank, Susan MassottyISBN 0385480334 (0-385-48033-4)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Editon'Book summary:The basis for and official tie-in edition to the PBS Masterpiece Classic movie titled The Diary of Anne Frank , directed by Jon Jones from a screenplay by Deborah Moggach. First airing April 11, 2010. More than fifty years after its first publication, Doubleday's definitive edition of Anne Frank's famous diary generated an extraordinary amount of excitement when it was published in early 1995. Enthusiastically received by critics and readers alike, it reigned for nine weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and will remain for all time the version that millions of readers will cherish.In a handsome package with flaps, rough front, and printed endpapers, this Anchor trade paperback will be the perfect gift for anyone who seeks insight into the indestructible nature of the human spirit. [via]
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The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Editionby Anne Frank, David Barnouw, Gerrold van der Stroom, H. J. J. Hardy, Gerrold Van Der Stroom, Barnouw. David, Arnold J. Pomerans, Susan Massotty, B. M. Mooyaart-DoubledayISBN 0385508476 (0-385-50847-6)
Hardcover, Doubleday
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition'Book summary:A comparison of the three versions of Anne Frank's diary; Anne's original entries, including never-before-published material; the diary as she herself edited it while in hiding; and the best-known version, edited by her father.
B & W photographs throughout [via]More editions of The Diary of Anne Frank: The Revised Critical Edition:
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The Elementary Particlesby Michel HouellebecqISBN 0375727019 (0-375-72701-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Elementary Particles'Book summary:Bruno and Michel are half-brothers, born to a hippie mother who believed in following her bliss. As boys they live in ignorance of each other--at one point attending the same school without knowing of their blood connection. As grown men they're not truly close, but they occasionally phone each other late at night. Bruno's a hopeless sexual obsessive, often drunk or on his way there, and Michel's a molecular biologist, distant and inaccessible.
Michel Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles follows these brothers through the latter half of the 20th century. Bruno and Michel are buffeted by history, vessels of disappointment and desire rocked by the ocean of time. Shuttled away to a boarding school where he's sexually abused by other boys, Bruno grows up full of twisted sexual longings and a contempt for aging women so palpable that at times it's stomach-churning. At a commune in the country, Bruno takes stock:
The women were intolerable at breakfast, but by cocktail hour the mystical tarts were hopelessly vying with younger women once again. Death is the great leveler. On Wednesday afternoon he met Catherine, a fifty-year-old who had been a feminist of the old school. She was tanned, with dark curly hair; she must have been very attractive when she was twenty. Her breasts were still in good shape, he thought when he saw her by the pool, but she had a fat ass.
Michel doesn't hate women; he doesn't even notice them. Instead of leering at bodies by the pool, he stares at particles in microscopes. He wins prizes for his experiments, but never experiences the rush of life. For both men, the damage has been done by history, by mother, before the story begins. What interests Houellebecq are the permutations and recapitulations of damage--the way the particles of the self can never be completely reconstituted. --Emily White [via]More editions of The Elementary Particles:
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The End of Natureby Bill McKibbenISBN 0385416040 (0-385-41604-0)
Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of Nature'Book summary:Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth.
This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement.
More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike. [via]More editions of The End of Nature:
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Evelinaby Fanny BurneyISBN 0393002942 (0-393-00294-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Evelina'Book summary:A novel that explores the causes and consequences of a power, disguise, subterfuge and performance, Evelina traces a young woman's growth into womanhood.
Fanny Burney's Evelina was written in secret and published anonymously in 1778. The story of a young woman entering a society that is seemingly designed to threaten her success, Evelina is an example of the epistolary genre popular in the 18th Century. [via]More editions of Evelina:
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Evelina : Or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the Worldby Fanny Burney, Elizabeth Kowaleski WallaceISBN 0375758054 (0-375-75805-4)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Evelina : Or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World'Book summary:A work by turns hilarious and grim, Evelina tells the story of a young womans education in the ways of the world, vividly rendering life in eighteenth-century England. Raised by a pastor after her mother died and her father abandoned her, Evelina leaves the seclusion of the country for her first season out, encounters all manner of peoplefrom prospective husbands to rakes to vulgar relativesand endures all manner of trials before she achieves her final triumph.
Before Evelina, W. D. Howells proclaimed, the heart of girlhood had never been so fully opened in literature. Samuel Johnson called Burney a real wonder and Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote, We owe to [Burney], not only Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla, but also Mansfield Park and The Absentee. [via]More editions of Evelina : Or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World:
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The Female Eunuchby Germaine Greer, Jennifer BaumgardnerISBN 0374527628 (0-374-52762-8)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Female Eunuch'Book summary:The clarion call to change that galvanized a generation.[via]
When Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch was first published it created a shock wave of recognition in women, one that could be felt around the world. It went on to become an international bestseller, translated into more than twelve languages, and a landmark in the history of the women's movement. Positing that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation, Greer looks at the inherent and unalterable biological differences between men and women as well as at the profound psychological differences that result from social conditioning. Drawing on history, literature, biology, and popular culture, Greer's searing examination of women's oppression is a vital, passionately argued social commentary that is both an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.More editions of The Female Eunuch:
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Foundationby Isaac AsimovISBN 0345336275 (0-345-33627-5)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Foundation'Book summary:Foundation marks the first of a series of tales set so far in the future that Earth is all but forgotten by humans who live throughout the galaxy. Yet all is not well with the Galactic Empire. Its vast size is crippling to it. In particular, the administrative planet, honeycombed and tunneled with offices and staff, is vulnerable to attack or breakdown. The only person willing to confront this imminent catastrophe is Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian and mathematician. Seldon can scientifically predict the future, and it doesn't look pretty: a new Dark Age is scheduled to send humanity into barbarism in 500 years. He concocts a scheme to save the knowledge of the race in an Encyclopedia Galactica. But this project will take generations to complete, and who will take up the torch after him? The first Foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation) won a Hugo Award in 1965 for "Best All-Time Series." It's science fiction on the grand scale; one of the classics of the field. --Brooks Peck [via]
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The Foundation Trilogyby Isaac AsimovISBN 0385188307 (0-385-18830-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Foundation Trilogy'Book summary:The Foundation Series is a science fiction series by Isaac Asimov. The series is best known for the Foundation Trilogy, which comprises the books Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. In 1965, the Foundation Trilogy beat several other science fiction and fantasy series (including The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien) to receive a special Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series." It is still the only series so honored. Asimov himself wrote that he assumed the one-time award had been created to honor The Lord of the Rings, and he was amazed when his work won.
A saga of enormous scope and boundless imagination, Isaac Asimov's Hugo-winning Foundation Trilogy is one of the great masterworks of science fiction. Set 50,000 years in the future, it tells of the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire and the history of a universal ruling organization created to reduce the duration of the coming Dark Age.
Foundation introduces mathematician Hari Seldon, whose science of psychohistory can predict the future on a colossal scale. But what Hari foresees is an empire's collapse and an age of barbarism lasting 30,000 years. Gathering the finest minds in the galaxy, he devises a Plan to preserve the collective knowledge of the human race...only to find that the Foundation itself is under seige.
In Foundation and Empire, the Foundation has attained power, but can it prevail against an ambitious young general determined to restore the Empire to its former glory, or a mutant intelligence whose mysterious power to bend minds to his will not even Hari Seldon could have predicted?In Second Foundation, the mutant sets out to find the last threat to his power: a secretly evolved Second Foundation, whose colony of telepaths the First Foundation also wants destroyed. [via]More editions of The Foundation Trilogy:
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Future of an Illusionby Sigmund Freud, James StracheyISBN 0393008312 (0-393-00831-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Future of an Illusion'Book summary:Of the various English translations of Freud's major works to appear in his lifetime, only one was authorized by Freud himself: The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud under the general editorship of James Strachey.
Freud approved the overall editorial plan, specific renderings of key words and phrases, and the addition of valuable notes, from bibliographical and explanatory. Many of the translations were done by Strachey himself; the rest were prepared under his supervision. The result was to place the Standard Edition in a position of unquestioned supremacy over all other existing versions. Newly designed in a uniform format, each new paperback in the Standard Edition opens with a biographical essay on Freud's life and work along with a note on the individual volumeby Peter Gay, Sterling Professor of History at Yale. [via]More editions of Future of an Illusion:
The Future of Successby Robert B. ReichISBN 0375411127 (0-375-41112-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Future of Success'More editions of The Future of Success:
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The Future of Success: Working and Living in the New Economyby Robert B. ReichISBN 0375725121 (0-375-72512-1)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Future of Success: Working and Living in the New Economy'Book summary:If you think it's getting harder to both make a living and make a life, economist and former secretary of labor Robert Reich agrees with you. Americans may be earning more than ever before, but we're paying a steep price: we're working longer, seeing our families less, and our communities are fragmenting. With the clarity and insight that are his hallmarks, Reich delineates what success has come to mean in our time. He demonstrates that although we have more choices as consumers, and investors, the choices themselves are undermining the rest of our lives. It is getting harder for people to be confident of what they will be earning next year, or even next month. At the same time, our society is splitting into socially stratified enclaves--the wealthier walled off and gated, the poorer isolated and ignored. Although the trends he discusses are powerful, they are not irreversible, and Reich makes provocative suggestions for how we might create a more balanced society and more satisfying lives. Some of his ideas may surprise you; all should spark a healthy-and essential-national debate. [via]
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The Hand Of Ethelbertaby Thomas HardyISBN 0333177614 (0-333-17761-4)
Hardcover, Macmillan
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A Handful of Dustby Evelyn WaughISBN 0375414207 (0-375-41420-7)
Hardcover, Everymans Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Handful of Dust'Book summary:"All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent."
Few writers have walked the line between farce and tragedy as nimbly as Evelyn Waugh, who employed the conventions of the comic novel to chip away at the already crumbling English class system. His 1934 novel, A Handful of Dust, is a sublime example of his bleak satirical style: a mordantly funny exposé of aristocratic decadence and ennui in England between the wars.
Tony Last is an aristocrat whose attachment to an ideal feudal past is so profound that he is blind to his wife Brenda's boredom with the stately rhythms of country life. While he earnestly plays the lord of the manor in his ghastly Victorian Gothic pile, she sets herself up in a London flat and pursues an affair with the social-climbing idler John Beaver. In the first half of the novel Waugh fearlessly anatomizes the lifestyles of the rich and shameless. Everyone moves through an endless cycle of parties and country-house weekends, being scrupulously polite in public and utterly horrid in private. Sex is something one does to relieve the boredom, and Brenda's affair provides a welcome subject for conversation:
It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone.
Tony's indifference and Brenda's selfishness give their relationship a sort of equilibrium until tragedy forces them to face facts. The collapse of their relationship accelerates, and in the famous final section of the book Tony seeks solace in a foolhardy search for El Dorado, throwing himself on the mercy of a jungle only slightly more savage than the one he leaves behind in England. For all its biting wit, A Handful of Dust paints a bleak picture of the English upper classes, reaching beyond satire toward a very modern sense of despair. In Waugh's world, culture, breeding, and the trappings of civilization only provide more subtle means of destruction. --Simon Leake [via]More editions of A Handful of Dust:
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The Heart of Darknessby Joseph Conrad, Paul B. ArmstrongISBN 0393926362 (0-393-92636-2)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Heart of Darkness'Book summary:The Fourth Edition is again based on Robert Kimbroughs meticulously re-edited text.
Missing words have been restored and the entire novel has been repunctuated in accordance with Conrads style. The result is the first published version of Heart of Darkness that allows readers to hear Marlows voice as Conrad heard it when he wrote the story. "Backgrounds and Contexts" provides readers with a generous collection of maps and photographs that bring the Belgian Congo to life. Textual materials, topically arranged, address nineteenth-century views of imperialism and racism and include autobiographical writings by Conrad on his life in the Congo. New to the Fourth Edition is an excerpt from Adam Hochschilds recent book, King Leopolds Ghost, as well as writings on race by Hegel, Darwin, and Galton. "Criticism" includes a wealth of new materials, including nine contemporary reviews and assessments of Conrad and Heart of Darkness and twelve recent essays by Chinua Achebe, Peter Brooks, Daphne Erdinast-Vulcan, Edward Said, and Paul B. Armstrong, among others. Also new to this edition is a section of writings on the connections between Heart of Darkness and the film Apocalypse Now by Louis K. Greiff, Margot Norris, and Lynda J. Dryden. A Chronology and Selected Bibliography are also included. [via]More editions of The Heart of Darkness:
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Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diaryby Joseph Conrad, Caryl PhillipsISBN 037575377X (0-375-75377-X)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Heart of Darkness & Selections from the Congo Diary'Book summary:Introduction by Caryl PhillipsCommentary by H. L. Mencken, E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chinua Achebe, and Philip GourevitchOriginally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring works of fiction. Written several years after Joseph Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890-the first notes, in effect, for the novel, which was composed at the end of that decade. Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad: "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . . He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life." [via]
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The Hidden Connections: A Science of Sustainable Livingby Fritjof CapraISBN 0385494726 (0-385-49472-6)
Softcover, Anchor Books
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The Hidden Connections : Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainabilityby Fritjof CapraISBN 0385494718 (0-385-49471-8)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Hidden Connections : Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability'Book summary:The author of the bestselling The Tao of Physics and The Web of Life explores the profound social implications of emerging scientific principles and provides an innovative framework for using them to understand and solve some of the most important issues of our time.
For most of history, scientific investigation was based on linear thinking. But the 1980's brought a revolutionary change. With the advent of improved computer power, scientists could apply complexity theory--nonlinear thinking--to scientific processes far more easily than ever before. Physicist Fritjof Capra was at the forefront of the revolution, and in The Web of Life he extended its scope by showing the impact of complexity theory on living organisms. In The Hidden Connections he breaks through another frontier, this time applying the principles of complexity theory to an analysis of the broad sphere of all human interactions.
Capra posits that in order to sustain life in the future, the principles underlying our social institutions must be consistent with the organization that nature has evolved to sustain the "web of life." In a lucid and convincing argument, Capra explains how the theoretical ideas of science can be applied to the practical concerns of our time. Covering every aspect of human nature and society, he discusses such vital matters as the management of human organizations, the challenges and dangers of economic globalization, and the nature and the problems of biotechnology. He concludes with an authoritative, often provocative plan for designing ecologically sustainable communities and technologies as alternatives to the current economic globalization.
A brilliant, incisive examination of the relationship between science and our social systems, The Hidden Connections will spark enormous debate in the scientific community and inspire us to think about the future of humanity in a new way. [via]More editions of The Hidden Connections : Integrating the Biological, Cognitive, and Social Dimensions of Life into a Science of Sustainability:
High Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarianby Clifford StollISBN 0385489765 (0-385-48976-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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High-Tech Heretic : Why Computers Don't Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarianby Clifford StollISBN 0385489757 (0-385-48975-7)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequencesby Truman CapoteISBN 0375507906 (0-375-50790-6)
Hardcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences'Book summary:"Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans--in fact, few Kansans--had ever heard of Holcomb. Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there." If all Truman Capote did was invent a new genre--journalism written with the language and structure of literature--this "nonfiction novel" about the brutal slaying of the Clutter family by two would-be robbers would be remembered as a trail-blazing experiment that has influenced countless writers. But Capote achieved more than that. He wrote a true masterpiece of creative nonfiction. The images of this tale continue to resonate in our minds: 16-year-old Nancy Clutter teaching a friend how to bake a cherry pie, Dick Hickock's black '49 Chevrolet sedan, Perry Smith's Gibson guitar and his dreams of gold in a tropical paradise--the blood on the walls and the final "thud-snap" of the rope-broken necks. [via]
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Jane Eyreby Charlotte Brontë, Diane JohnsonISBN 0375757600 (0-375-75760-0)
Softcover, Random House Publishing Group
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jane Eyre'Book summary:In conjunction with the New York Public Library, Doubleday is proud to introduce a very special collector's series of literary masterpieces. Lavishly illustrated with rare archival material from the library's extensive resources, including the renowned Berg collection, these editions will bring the classics to life for a new generation of readers. In addition to original artwork, each volume contains a fascinating selection of unique materials such as handwritten diaries, letters, manuscripts, and notebooks. Simply put, this series presents the work of our most beloved authors in what may well be their most beautiful editions, perfect to own or to give. Published on the occasion of Doubleday's 100th birthday, the New York Public Library Collector's Editions are sure to become an essential part of the modern book lover's private library.
Our edition of Madame Bovary, which Vladimir Nabokov called "one of the most perfect pieces of poetical fiction known", features etchings from a rare 1905 French edition and a sampling of Nabokov's handwritten commentary on Flaubert's work. These rare materials from the archives of the New York Public Library will make our edition stand out from all other available versions. [via] -
Jennifer Government : A Novelby Max BarryISBN 0385507593 (0-385-50759-3)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jennifer Government : A Novel'Book summary:In the horrifying, satirical near future of Max Barry's Jennifer Government, American corporations literally rule the world. Everyone takes his employer's name as his last name; once-autonomous nations as far-flung as Australia belong to the USA; and the National Rifle Association is not just a worldwide corporation, it's a hot, publicly traded stock. Hack Nike, a hapless employee seeking advancement, signs a multipage contract and then reads it. He discovers he's agreed to assassinate kids purchasing Nike's new line of athletic shoes, a stealth marketing maneuver designed to increase sales. And the dreaded government agent Jennifer Government is after him.
Like Steve Aylett, Alexander Besher, Douglas Coupland, Paul Di Filippo, Jim Munroe, Jeff Noon, and Chuck Palahniuk, Max Barry is an author of smartass, punky satire for the late capitalist era. It's a hip and happening field; before publication, Jennifer Government (Barry's second novel) was optioned by Stephen Soderbergh and George Clooney's Section 8 Films for a major motion picture. However, the level of literary accomplishment varies wildly among practitioners, from brilliant (Di Filippo and Palahniuk) to amateurish (Besher). This field is so hot, its writers needn't be nearly as accomplished as they'd have to become to break into any other form of fiction.
That said, like many of his fellow turn-of-the-millennium satirists, Barry is uneven. He has a lively imagination and a sharp eye for the absurdities and offenses of hypercorporate capitalism. But, with its sketchy characters and slow dialogue, Jennifer Government will disappoint anyone who believes the cover copy's grandiose claim that this is "a Catch-22 for the New World Order." --Cynthia Ward [via]
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Jihad Vs. McWorldby Benjamin R. Barber, Andrea SchulzISBN 0345383044 (0-345-38304-4)
Softcover, Ballantine Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jihad Vs. McWorld'Book summary:Jihad vs. McWorld is a groundbreaking work, an elegant and illuminating analysis of the central conflict of our times: consumerist capitalism versus religious and tribal fundamentalism. These diametrically opposed but strangely intertwined forces are tearing apart--and bringing together--the world as we know it, undermining democracy and the nation-state on which it depends. On the one hand, consumer capitalism on the global level is rapidly dissolving the social and economic barriers between nations, transforming the world's diverse populations into a blandly uniform market. On the other hand, ethnic, religious, and racial hatreds are fragmenting the political landscape into smaller and smaller tribal units. Jihad vs. McWorld is the term that distinguished writer and political scientist Benjamin R. Barber has coined to describe the powerful and paradoxical interdependence of these forces. In this important new book, he explores the alarming repercussions of this potent dialectic for democracy.A work of persuasive originality and penetrating insight, Jihad vs. McWorld holds up a sharp, clear lens to the dangerous chaos of the post-Cold War world. Critics and political leaders have already heralded Benjamin R. Barber's work for its bold vision and moral courage. Jihad vs. McWorld is an essential text for anyone who wants to understand our troubled present and the crisis threatening our future. [via]
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Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridgeby Thomas Hardy, Ian GregorISBN 0330344684 (0-330-34468-4)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge'Book summary:Michael Henchard is the respected mayor of Casterbridge, a thriving industrial town--but years ago, under the influence of alcohol, he sold his wife Susan to a sailor at a country fair. Although repentant and sober for 21 years, Henchard cannot escape his destiny when Susan and her daughter return to Casterbridge. [via]
More editions of Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge:
- Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0333168828 (0-333-16882-8)
Hardcover, Macmillan - Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0333168925 (0-333-16892-5)
Hardcover, Trafalgar Square - Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0330344684 (0-330-34468-4)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
- Life and Death of the Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0333168828 (0-333-16882-8)
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Little Womenby Louisa May Alcott, Susan CheeverISBN 0375756728 (0-375-75672-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Little Women'Book summary:It is no surprise that Little Women, the adored classic of four sisters and their enduring devotion to and protection of one another, was loosely based on Louisa May Alcott's own life. Alcott drew from her own personality to create a unique protagonist: Jo, willful, headstrong, and undoubtedly the backbone of the March family, is a heroine unlike any seen before. Follow the sisters from innocent adolescence to sage adulthood, with all the joy and sorrow of life in between, and fall in love with them and this endearing story.
Praised by Madeleine Stern as "a book on the American home, and hence universal in its appeal," Little Women has been an avidly read, and reread, tale for generations. This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition includes newly written notes that offer more description and insight than those of previous editions. [via]More editions of Little Women:
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A Man in Full Pt. 1: A Novelby Tom WolfeISBN 0374270325 (0-374-27032-5)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Man in Full Pt. 1: A Novel'Book summary:Man in Full, A: A Novel, by Wolfe, Tom [via]
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Man's Rise to Civilization, As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial Stateby Peter FarbISBN 0380014092 (0-380-01409-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Man's Rise to Civilization, As Shown by the Indians of North America from Primeval Times to the Coming of the Industrial State'Book summary:The publication of this book in 1968 marked the first comprehensive examination of the history and culture of native Americans. Today this work continues to stand as one of the major summaries of the indigenous societies of North America with its explication of such universal subjects as monotheism, war, capitalism, and sex. [via]
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The Mayor of Casterbridgeby Thomas Hardy, J.I.M. StewartISBN 0375760067 (0-375-76006-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'Book summary:Michael Henchard is the respected mayor of Casterbridge, a thriving industrial town--but years ago, under the influence of alcohol, he sold his wife Susan to a sailor at a country fair. Although repentant and sober for 21 years, Henchard cannot escape his destiny when Susan and her daughter return to Casterbridge. [via]
More editions of The Mayor of Casterbridge:
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0393091740 (0-393-09174-0)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - The Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0333172663 (0-333-17266-3)
Hardcover, Macmillan - The Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0393044599 (0-393-04459-9)
Hardcover, Norton - The Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0375760067 (0-375-76006-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- The Mayor of Casterbridge: ISBN 0393091740 (0-393-09174-0)
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The Men Who Stare At Goatsby Jon RonsonISBN 0330375474 (0-330-37547-4)
Hardcover, Picador
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Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generationby William Strauss, Neil HoweISBN 0375707190 (0-375-70719-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation'Book summary:Building on the concepts they first developed in Generations and 13th Gen, Neil Howe and William Strauss now take on Generation Y, or, as they call them, the Millennials. Unlike their rather distressing portrait of the more reactive Generation X (the 13th Gen), or the negative stereotypes that abound about today's kids, this is all good news. According to Howe and Strauss, this group is poised to become the next great generation, one that will provide a more positive, group-oriented, can-do ethos. Huge in size as well as future impact, they're making a sharp break from Gen-X trends and a direct reversal of boomer youth behavior. Why? Because, as a nation, we've devoted more concern and attention their way than to any generation in, well, generations.
Using their trademark paradigm, which places each generation as part of a larger historical cycle with four generations to a cycle, the authors not only describe these kids as they are now (as the first year sets off for college, the last yet to be born) but launch into projections for the future. A sampling of their potential influence in this decade: pop music will become more melodic and singable and sitcoms more melodramatic and wholesome; there will be a new emphasis on manners, modesty, and old-fashioned gender courtesies; and they'll resolve the long-standing debates about substance abuse. "They will rebel against the culture by cleaning it up, rebel against political cynicism by touting trust, rebel against individualism by stressing teamwork, rebel against adult pessimism by being upbeat, and rebel against social ennui by actually going out and getting a few things done." Scanning the future further, this hero generation will have to confront some major crises. But, for a group that has never known war or famine, will it be an opportunity or a calamity? Much of Millennials Rising is familiar territory rehashed, and the profiles and prophecies just too general. But it's hard to resist this hopeful vision for our children and the future. --Lesley Reed [via]
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The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Wayby Bill BrysonISBN 0380715430 (0-380-71543-0)
Softcover, Avon Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way'Book summary:Who would have thought that a book about English would be so entertaining? Certainly not this grammar-allergic reviewer, but The Mother Tongue pulls it off admirably. Bill Bryson--a zealot--is the right man for the job. Who else could rhapsodize about "the colorless murmur of the schwa" with a straight face? It is his unflagging enthusiasm, seeping from between every sentence, that carries the book.
Bryson displays an encyclopedic knowledge of his topic, and this inevitably encourages a light tone; the more you know about a subject, the more absurd it becomes. No jokes are necessary, the facts do well enough by themselves, and Bryson supplies tens per page. As well as tossing off gems of fractured English (from a Japanese eraser: "This product will self-destruct in Mother Earth."), Bryson frequently takes time to compare the idiosyncratic tongue with other languages. Not only does this give a laugh (one word: Welsh), and always shed considerable light, it also makes the reader feel fortunate to speak English. [via]
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The New Gilded Ageby David RemnickISBN 0375757155 (0-375-75715-5)
Softcover, Modern Library
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The New Gilded Age'Book summary:The New Yorker caters to America's upper classes; it's the kind of magazine meant to be accompanied by a glass of pricey Merlot. Over the years its elitism has waxed and waned. Ex-editor Tina Brown worked valiantly to inject a dose of pop-cultural crassness into its ivory-tower sensibilities: profiling celebrities and publishing fashion issues where models stared out from every page, looking chilly. When David Remnick took over in the late '90s, the magazine shifted, grew quieter and more circumspect, and the old guard breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The New Gilded Age collects essays and profiles from 1999 and 2000 and reveals Remnick's New Yorker to be obsessed with money and business--arguably less interesting than celebrity, but also deeper ways of looking at America and power. The title refers to the period of technological revolution symbolized by the rise of Microsoft, the booming of Silicon Valley, and the end of the belief that an Ivy League education will get you anywhere.
What's admirable about this New Yorker is its timeliness; the way, without seeming like a panicked "edge" magazine, it managed to document and acknowledge the shifting sands of the millennial moment. Standouts in this regard: William Finnegan on the protesters behind the 1999 WTO riots in Seattle; Ken Auletta following Bill Gates through various meltdowns as he comes to terms with the federal government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. These are painstakingly reported pieces in which style is submerged. The more audacious writers tend to be women. In "Everywoman.com," Joan Didion describes Martha Stewart in a flood of rapt lyricism:
This is not a story about a woman who made the best of traditional skills. This is a story about a woman who did her own I.P.O. This is the "woman's pluck" story, the dust-bowl story, the burying-your-child-on-the-trail story, the I-will-never-go-hungry-again story, the Mildred Pierce story, the story about how the sheer nerve of even professionally unskilled women can prevail, show the men; the story that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men.
In "Landing from the Sky," Adrian Nicole LeBlanc creates a portrait of a young Puerto Rican woman with too many kids and too much trouble. The writing here is exquisite and passionate: "Jessica created an aura of intimacy wherever she went. You could be talking to her in the middle of Tremont and feel as if a confidence were being exchanged beneath a tent of sheets."Jessica's story seems far from the world of The New Yorker's target audience. When in "My Misspent Youth" Meghan Daum laments her poverty and credit card debt, then reveals she lives alone in a $1,500-a-month apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, you have to wonder: Did the poor thing ever hear of roommates? As both a document and celebration of such rarefied and privileged attitudes, The New Gilded Age is a rich, informative glimpse into America at the turn of the millennium--before the NASDAQ crashed and the dot-com kids went home to count their losses. --Emily White [via]
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One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracyby Thomas FrankISBN 0385495048 (0-385-49504-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy'Book summary:After nearly a decade of bull markets, Americans have come to equate free markets with democracy. Never one for mincing words, social critic Thomas Frank, editor of The Baffler and author of The Conquest of Cool, challenges this myth. With his acerbic wit and contempt for sophistry, he declares the New Economy a fraud. Frank scours business literature, management theory, and marketing and advertising to expose the elaborate fantasies that have inoculated business against opposition. This public relations campaign joins an almost mystical belief in markets, a contempt for government in any form, and an "ecstatic" confusion of markets with democracy. Frank traces the roots of this movement from the 1920s, and sees its culmination in market populism as a fusion of the rebellious '60s with the greedy '80s. The overarching irony is the swapping of roles--suddenly Wall Street is no longer full of stodgy moneygrubbers, but cool entrepreneurs "leaping on their trampolines, typing out a few last lines on the laptop before paragliding, riding their bicycles to work, listening to Steppenwolf while they traded." Meanwhile, "Americans traded their long tradition of electoral democracy for the democracy of the supermarket, where all brands are created equal and endowed by their creators with all sorts of extremeness and diversity." Frank's close reading of the salesmen of market populism nails such financial gurus as George Gilder, Joseph Nocera, Kevin Kelly, and Thomas Friedman. Their writings, he contends, have served to make "the world safe for billionaires" by winning the cultural and political battle--legitimizing the corporate culture and its demands for privatization, deregulation, and non-interference. Frank's incisive prose verges on brilliant at times, though his yen for repetition can be exasperating. In either case, his boisterous reminder that markets are fundamentally not democracies is worth repeating as the level of wealth polarization in America reaches heights not seen since the 1920s. --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy:
- One Market under God : Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy: ISBN 038549503X (0-385-49503-X)
Hardcover, Doubleday Publishing - One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy: ISBN 0385495048 (0-385-49504-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc
- One Market under God : Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy: ISBN 038549503X (0-385-49503-X)
Our Mutual Friendby Charles Dickens, Jennifer Mooney, Richard T. GaughanISBN 0375761144 (0-375-76114-4)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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Silicon Snake Oilby Clifford StollISBN 0385419945 (0-385-41994-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Silicon Snake Oil'Book summary:In Silicon Snake Oil, Clifford Stoll, the best-selling author of The Cuckoo's Egg and one of the pioneers of the Internet, turns his attention to the much-heralded information highway, revealing that it is not all it's cracked up to be. Yes, the Internet provides access to plenty of services, but useful information is virtually impossible to find and difficult to access. Is being on-line truly useful? "Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. A cautionary tale about today's media darling, Silicon Snake Oil has sparked intense debate across the country about the merits--and foibles--of what's been touted as the entranceway to our future. From the Trade Paperback edition. [via]
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Culturesby Anne FadimanISBN 0374525641 (0-374-52564-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures'Book summary:Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants, and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: "What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance." The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty--and their nobility." [via]
More editions of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures:
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374975809 (0-374-97580-9)
Softcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374267812 (0-374-26781-2)
Hardcover, Farrar, Straus & Giroux - The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374525641 (0-374-52564-1)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
- The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures: ISBN 0374975809 (0-374-97580-9)
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Stargirlby Jerry SpinelliISBN 037582233X (0-375-82233-X)
Softcover, Random House Childrens Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stargirl'Book summary:"She was homeschooling gone amok." "She was an alien." "Her parents were circus acrobats." These are only a few of the theories concocted to explain Stargirl Caraway, a new 10th grader at Arizona's Mica Area High School who wears pioneer dresses and kimonos to school, strums a ukulele in the cafeteria, laughs when there are no jokes, and dances when there is no music. The whole school, not exactly a "hotbed of nonconformity," is stunned by her, including our 16-year-old narrator Leo Borlock: "She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl."
In time, incredulity gives way to out-and-out adoration as the student body finds itself helpless to resist Stargirl's wide-eyed charm, pure-spirited friendliness, and penchant for celebrating the achievements of others. In the ultimate high school symbol of acceptance, she is even recruited as a cheerleader. Popularity, of course, is a fragile and fleeting state, and bit by bit, Mica sours on their new idol. Why is Stargirl showing up at the funerals of strangers? Worse, why does she cheer for the opposing basketball teams? The growing hostility comes to a head when she is verbally flogged by resentful students on Leo's televised Hot Seat show in an episode that is too terrible to air. While the playful, chin-held-high Stargirl seems impervious to the shunning that ensues, Leo, who is in the throes of first love (and therefore scornfully deemed "Starboy"), is not made of such strong stuff: "I became angry. I resented having to choose. I refused to choose. I imagined my life without her and without them, and I didn't like it either way."
Jerry Spinelli, author of Newbery Medalist Maniac Magee, Newbery Honor Book Wringer, and many other excellent books for teens, elegantly and accurately captures the collective, not-always-pretty emotions of a high school microcosm in which individuality is pitted against conformity. Spinelli's Stargirl is a supernatural teen character--absolutely egoless, altruistic, in touch with life's primitive rhythms, meditative, untouched by popular culture, and supremely self-confident. It is the sensitive Leo whom readers will relate to as he grapples with who she is, who he is, who they are together as Stargirl and Starboy, and indeed, what it means to be a human being on a planet that is rich with wonders. (Ages 10 to 14) --Karin Snelson [via]
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Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Thomas HardyISBN 0330344706 (0-330-34470-6)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles'Book summary:Etched against the background of a dying rural society, Tess of the d'Urbervilles was Thomas Hardy's 'bestseller,' and Tess Durbeyfield remains his most striking and tragic heroine. Of all the characters he created, she meant the most to him. Hopelessly torn between two menAlec d'Urberville, a wealthy, dissolute young man who seduces her in a lonely wood, and Angel Clare, her provincial, moralistic, and unforgiving husbandTess escapes from her vise of passion through a horrible, desperate act.
'Like the greatest characters in literature, Tess lives beyond the final pages of the book as a permanent citizen of the imagination,' said Irving Howe. 'In Tess he stakes everything on his sensuous apprehension of a young woman's life, a girl who is at once a simple milkmaid and an archetype of feminine strength. . . . Tess is that rare creature in literature: goodness made interesting.'
Now Tess of the d'Urbervilles has been brought to television in a magnificent new co-production from A&E Network and London Weekend Television. Justine Waddell (Anna Karenina) stars as the tragic heroine, Tess; Oliver Milburn (Chandler & Co.) is Angel Clare; and Jason Flemyng is Alec d'Urberville. The cast also includes John McEnery (Black Beauty) as Jack Durbeyfield and Lesley Dunlop (The Elephant Man) as Joan Durbeyfield. Tess of the d'Urbervilles is directed by Ian Sharp and produced by Sarah Wilson, with a screenplay by Ted Whitehead; it was filmed in Hardy country, the beautiful English countryside in Dorset where Thomas Hardy set his novels.
From the eBook edition. [via]More editions of Tess of the D'Urbervilles:
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0375756795 (0-375-75679-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 037575234X (0-375-75234-X)
Softcover, Random House Inc - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0333168852 (0-333-16885-2)
Hardcover, Macmillan - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0333168968 (0-333-16896-8)
Hardcover, Pan Macmillan - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0333179099 (0-333-17909-9)
Hardcover, Macmillan - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0393045072 (0-393-04507-2)
Hardcover, W W Norton & Co Inc - Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0330344706 (0-330-34470-6)
Softcover, Macmillan Pub Ltd
- Tess of the D'Urbervilles: ISBN 0375756795 (0-375-75679-5)
Tess of the D'Urbervillesby Terence WrightISBN 0391034510 (0-391-03451-0)
Softcover, Humanities Press International
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There Are No Children Hereby Alex KotlowitzISBN 0385265565 (0-385-26556-5)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'There Are No Children Here'Book summary:There Are No Children Here, the true story of brothers Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers, ages 11 and 9 at the start, brings home the horror of trying to make it in a violence-ridden public housing project. The boys live in a gang-plagued war zone on Chicago's West Side, literally learning how to dodge bullets the way kids in the suburbs learn to chase baseballs. "If I grow up, I'd like to be a bus driver," says Lafeyette at one point. That's if, not when--spoken with the complete innocence of a child. The book's title comes from a comment made by the brothers' mother as she and author Alex Kotlowitz contemplate the challenges of living in such a hostile environment: "There are no children here," she says. "They've seen too much to be children." This book humanizes the problem of inner-city pathology, makes readers care about Lafeyette and Pharoah more than they may expect to, and offers a sliver of hope buried deep within a world of chaos. [via]
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Time Regainedby D.J. Enright, Marcel Proust, Andreas Mayor, Joanna Kilmartin, Terence KilmartinISBN 0375753125 (0-375-75312-5)
Softcover, Modern Library
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Totem and Taboo; Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics.by Sigmund FreudISBN 0393001431 (0-393-00143-1)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Totem and Taboo; Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics.'Book summary:Totem and Taboo (1913), first published as a series of four articles between 1912 and 1913, is among Freud's most dazzling speculative texts.
Adducing evidence from "primitive" tribes, neurotic women, child patients traversing the oedipal phase, and speculations by Charles Darwin, James G. Frazer, and other modern scholars, Freud attempts to trap the moment that civilized life began. It stands as his most imaginative venture into the psychoanalysis of culture. [via]More editions of Totem and Taboo; Some Points of Agreement Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics.:
True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Criticsby Christopher LaschISBN 0393307956 (0-393-30795-6)
Softcover, W W Norton & Co Inc
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Twentieth-Century France: Politics and Society 1898-1991by James F. McMillanISBN 0340522399 (0-340-52239-9)
Softcover, Hodder Arnold
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Undergroundby Alfred Birnbaum, Haruki Murakami, J. Philip Gabriel, Philip GabrielISBN 0375725806 (0-375-72580-6)
Softcover, Random House Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Underground'Book summary:From Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Norwegian Wood, a work of literary journalism that is as fascinating as it is necessary, as provocative as it is profound.
In March of 1995, agents of a Japanese religious cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with sarin, a gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. Attempting to discover why, Murakami conducted hundreds of interviews with the people involved, from the survivors to the perpetrators to the relatives of those who died, and Underground is their story in their own voices. Concerned with the fundamental issues that led to the attack as well as these personal accounts, Underground is a document of what happened in Tokyo as well as a warning of what could happen anywhere. This is an enthralling and unique work of nonfiction that is timely and vital and as wonderfully executed as Murakamis brilliant novels. [via]More editions of Underground:
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United States Essays 1952-1992by Gore VidalISBN 0349105243 (0-349-10524-3)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square
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› Find signed collectible books: 'United States Essays 1952-1992'Book summary:Gore Vidal's reputation as America's finest essayist is an enduring one. This collection, chosen by the author from 40 years of work, contains about two-thirds of what he published in various magazines and journals. He has divided the essays into three categories, or states. State of the art covers literature, including novelists and critics, bestsellers, pieces on Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Suetonius, Nabakov and Montaigne (a previosly uncollected essay from 1992). State of the union deals with politics and public life: sex, drugs, money, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, The Holy Family (his essay on the Kennedys), Nixon, and finally Monotheism and its Discontents , a scathing critique of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. In state of being, we are given personal responses to people and events: recollections of his childhood, E. Nesbit, Tarzan, Tennessee Williams and Anais Nin. [via]
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Walden; Or, Life in the Woodsby Henry David ThoreauISBN 0385095031 (0-385-09503-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group
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Warrior Politics : Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethosby Robert D. KaplanISBN 0375505636 (0-375-50563-6)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Requires a Pagan Ethosby Robert D. KaplanISBN 0375726276 (0-375-72627-6)
Softcover, Vintage Books
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Weby Yvegeny Zamyatin, Mirra GinsburgISBN 0380633132 (0-380-63313-2)
Softcover, Harpercollins
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› Find signed collectible books: 'We'Book summary:Before Brave New World...
Before 1984...There was...WE
In the One State of the great Benefactor, there are no individuals, only numbers. Life is an ongoing process of mathematical precision, a perfectly balanced equation. Primitive passions and instincts have been subdued. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall. But one frontier remains: outer space. Now, with the creation of the spaceship Integral, that frontier -- and whatever alien species are to be found there -- will be subjugated to the beneficent yoke of reason.
One number, D-503, chief architect of the Integral, decides to record his thoughts in the final days before the launch for the benefit of less advanced societies. But a chance meeting with the beautiful 1-330 results in an unexpected discovery that threatens everything D-503 believes about himself and the One State. The discovery -- or rediscovery -- of inner space...and that disease the ancients called the soul.
A page-turning SF adventure, a masterpiece of wit and black humor that accurately predicted the horrors of Stalinism, We is the classic dystopian novel. Its message of hope and warning is as timely at the end of the twentieth century as it was at the beginning.
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The White Albumby Joan DidionISBN 0374522219 (0-374-52221-9)
Softcover, Farrar Straus & Giroux
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The White Album'Book summary:First published in 1979, The White Album is a mosaic of the late sixties and seventies. It includes, among other bizarre artifacts and personalities, the dark journeys and impulses of the Manson family, a Balck Panther Party press conference, the story of John Paul Getty's museum, the romance of water in an arid landscape, and the swirl and confusion of the sixties. With commanding sureness of mood and language, Joan Didion exposes the realities and dreams of that age of self-discovery whose spiritual center was California.[via]More editions of The White Album:
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White Teeth: A Novelby Zadie SmithISBN 0375703861 (0-375-70386-1)
Softcover, Alfred a Knopf Inc
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› Find signed collectible books: 'White Teeth: Reader's Companion'Book summary:On New Year's morning, 1975, Archie Jones sits in his car on a London road and waits for the exhaust fumes to fill his Cavalier Musketeer station wagon. Archie--working-class, ordinary, a failed marriage under his belt--is calling it quits, the deciding factor being the flip of a 20-pence coin. When the owner of a nearby halal butcher shop (annoyed that Archie's car is blocking his delivery area) comes out and bangs on the window, he gives Archie another chance at life and sets in motion this richly imagined, uproariously funny novel. Epic and intimate, hilarious and poignant, White Teeth is the story of two North London families--one headed by Archie, the other by Archie's best friend, a Muslim Bengali named Samad Iqbal. Pals since they served together in World War II, Archie and Samad are a decidedly unlikely pair. Plodding Archie is typical in every way until he marries Clara, a beautiful, toothless Jamaican woman half his age, and the couple have a daughter named Irie (the Jamaican word for "no problem"). Samad--devoutly Muslim, hopelessly "foreign"--weds the feisty and always suspicious Alsana in a prearranged union. They have twin sons named Millat and Magid, one a pot-smoking punk-cum-militant Muslim and the other an insufferable science nerd. The riotous and tortured histories of the Joneses and the Iqbals are fundamentally intertwined, capturing an empire's worth of cultural identity, history, and hope.Zadie Smith's dazzling first novel plays out its bounding, vibrant course in a Jamaican hair salon in North London, an Indian restaurant in Leicester Square, an Irish poolroom turned immigrant café, a liberal public school, a sleek science institute. A winning debut in every respect, White Teeth marks the arrival of a wondrously talented writer who takes on the big themes--faith, race, gender, history, and culture--and triumphs. [via]
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