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books tagged “twentieth century”
books tagged “twentieth century”
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The American Way of Deathby Jessica MitfordISBN 0671244159 (0-671-24415-9)
Softcover, Simon and Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The American Way of Death'Book summary:Before the turn of the century, the American funeral was simple "to the point of starkness," says Jessica Mitford, the acclaimed muckraking journalist who published this investigation of the country's funeral business in 1963. That the country went on to develop a tendency for gross overspending on funerals Mitford puts down to the greed and ingenuity of undertakers, whom she regards as salesmen guilty of pressuring families into agreeing to their excessive standards for burial. Mitford, who died recently, delivers facts and criticism in a forthright and humorous manner. She would certainly appreciate that her assessment of the American way of death endures after her own passing. [via]
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The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixonby Anthony Summers, Robbyn SwanISBN 0670871516 (0-670-87151-6)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon'Book summary:Anthony Summers is the past master of scandal, the man who brought you Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe and that unforgettable (alleged) eyewitness account of J. Edgar Hoover in a flouncy black dress. Greater experts than I must rule on Summers's exhaustively researched portrait of Richard Nixon, The Arrogance of Power, but it sure is one racy read. Summers depicts a Nixon stoned out of his mind on Seconal, single-malt Scotch, Dilantin, speed, and clinical paranoia, pummeling his wife, Pat (who was rumored to have once been rescued by the Secret Service from drunkenly drowning in a bathtub). Summers's Nixon apparently took Mickey Cohen Mob money to fund his anti-Semitic, salacious smear campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas to get his Senate start; framed Alger Hiss with a fake typewriter; traded gold for POWs with Vietcong; and issued orders to bomb Damascus and Jordan and nuke Vietnam and Korea (orders that were ignored until Nixon sobered up in the morning). His favorite limo was the SS100X that JFK died in. Nixon's shrink reportedly also treated Rita Hayworth, spoke like Dr. Strangelove, and used "Pavlovian technique" to "brainwash Nixon into becoming a better person." No luck.
Summers's Nixon favored the Greek generals who tortured pro-democracy types, and took a bribe from Göring's pal Nicolae Malaxa, who, thanks to Nixon, traded his Romanian mansion (in which thousands of Jews were tortured and killed) for a posh Manhattan apartment. Summers's most fascinating stuff concerns the Howard Hughes/Castro/Watergate connection. Did Nixon order CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro? Did Robert Maheu (said to have inspired Mission: Impossible) arrange "sex services" and "assassination planning" for the CIA, and spy on Jean Peters and Ava Gardner for Howard Hughes? Did Hughes give big money to Nixon under the guise of saving the fast-food "Nixonburger" franchise of Richard's brother Donald Nixon (whom Richard had the FBI spy on)? Did the Castro plot get JFK killed, as Haldeman suspected? Was the Watergate break-in (one of perhaps 100 Nixon break-ins) intended to seize information about Nixon's Hughes loans and Castro plots?
Summers tries to assess his massive data while he's presenting it, and he doesn't credit every wild tale equally. Still, without him, I would never have heard about Castro's alleged ex-girlfriend, "the Mata Hari of the Caribbean," hired by future Watergate burglars to re-seduce Castro and slip two poison pills in his coffee. But she hid the pills in her cold-cream jar, and when she took them out in their Havana Hilton bathroom, they'd melted. Besides, her close encounter with the leader left her "torn by feelings of love." The Arrogance of Power won't give you this feeling. --Tim Appelo [via]
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At War, at Seaby Ronald H. SpectorISBN 0670860859 (0-670-86085-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Bank Shotby Donald E. WestlakeISBN 0671211803 (0-671-21180-3)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Book of Common Prayerby Joan DidionISBN 0671224913 (0-671-22491-3)
Hardcover, Bookthrift Co
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The Brethren: Inside The Supreme Courtby Bob WoodwardISBN 0671241109 (0-671-24110-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Brethren: Inside The Supreme Court'Book summary:The Brethren is the first detailed behind-the-scenes account of the Supreme Court in action. Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong have pierced its secrecy to give us an unprecedented view of the Chief and Associate Justices -- maneuvering, arguing, politicking, compromising and making decisions that affect every major area of American life. [via]
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Bridget Jonesby Helen FieldingISBN 0670892963 (0-670-89296-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Bridget Jones'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]
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The Buddha of Suburbiaby Hanif KureishiISBN 0670833428 (0-670-83342-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Buddha of Suburbia'Book summary:There's quite a bit of activity in Buddha of Suburbia. A bureaucrat becomes a suburban guru who marries a follower with a son who's a punk rocker named Charlie Hero. Consequently, the guru's son is propelled from his bland life into a series of erotic experiences in London. All the while, Hanif Kureishi keeps the tone lively with wry wit. On the description of suburban life: "We were proud of never learning anything except the names of footballers, the personnel of rock groups and the lyrics to 'I Am the Walrus.'" He also bends cultures, classes and genders while blasting the racism of British life in this 1990 Whitbread Prize winner. [via]
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Capote: A Biographyby Gerald ClarkeISBN 0671228110 (0-671-22811-0)
Hardcover, Linden Pub
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Cherry : A Memoirby Mary KarrISBN 0670892742 (0-670-89274-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Cherry : A Memoir'Book summary:As a girl idling her way through long, toxically boring summer afternoons in Leechfield, Texas, Mary Karr dreamed up an unusual career for herself, "to write one-half poetry and one-half autobiography." She has since done both, and even when she's recounting a dirty joke, she can't help but employ a poet's precise and musical vision. Her first memoir, The Liar's Club, was as searing a chronicle of family life as can be imagined--tough, funny, and crackling with sorrow and wit. Against all odds, its sequel doesn't disappoint. Cherry finds the teenage Mary still marooned in a family whose behavior ranges from charmingly eccentric to dangerously crazy. (This, for instance, is the Karr version of a note from home: "Lecia Karr's leprosy kicked in, and I had to wrap her limbs in balm and hyssop. Please excuse her.") But here the focus has shifted to Mary herself, furiously engaged in pissing off authority at every turn: flouting the dress code, dropping acid, running from the cops, falling in love.
First love, you may say, heart sinking in chest: what more can possibly be said about such a subject? Actually, a great deal. To read Cherry is to realize how rare it is to find a teenage girl portrayed on her own terms. As a chronicle of female adolescence with all its longings, fantasies, cruelties, and fears, Karr's memoir goes darker and deeper than any book in which the protagonist doesn't end up dead. She turns a savage eye on her own hypocrisies and failings, and we like her all the more for them. We even end up fond of Leechfield, easily the toughest, smelliest, nastiest little burg ever to appear between the covers of a book--"a town too ugly not to love," her father called it in The Liar's Club. Growing up in such a place is necessarily about getting the hell out, but it's also about inventing a new identity with which to make your escape. That's the blessing Karr's wise friend Meredith bestows after a particularly harrowing (and harrowingly funny) acid trip: "I see big adventures for Mary. Big adventures, long roads, great oceans: same self." Cherry is the story of how Karr begins to acquire that self, however fumblingly--a big adventure for Mary, as it is for all of us, and one we never finish as long as we live. Perhaps that's the book's greatest pleasure of all: it hints there's more to come. --Mary Park [via]
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Chloe Plus Oliviaby Lillian FadermanISBN 0670846384 (0-670-84638-4)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chloe Plus Olivia'Book summary:This is a literary anthology with each piece set in an historical and literary context that seeks to redefine four centuries of lesbian writing. From the verse of Sappho in 600BC to Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" published in 1928, there is little women's writing that is recognised as "lesbian". A review of the shifting concept of "lesbian literature" is offered, followed by examples of six different genres - Romantic Friendship, Sexual Inversion, Exotic Inversion, Exotic and Evil Lesbians, Lesbian Encoding, Lesbian Feminism and Post-Lesbian Feminism. Works as diverse as Willa Cather's "My Antonia" and Virginia Woolf's "Orlando", poetry by Gertrude Stein and Amy Lowell, fiction by Carson McCullers, Helen Hulll and Alice Walker are examined here. In addition, writing by men who focused on women's relationship is included. This is Faderman's own personal search for a definition of lesbian literature. [via]
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Chocolatby Joanne HarrisISBN 0670881791 (0-670-88179-1)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Chocolat'Book summary:Vianne Rocher and her 6-year-old daughter, Anouk, arrive in the small village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes--"a blip on the fast road between Toulouse and Bourdeaux"--in February, during the carnival. Three days later, Vianne opens a luxuriant chocolate shop crammed with the most tempting of confections and offering a mouth-watering variety of hot chocolate drinks. It's Lent, the shop is opposite the church and open on Sundays, and Francis Reynaud, the austere parish priest, is livid.
One by one the locals succumb to Vianne's concoctions. Joanne Harris weaves their secrets and troubles, their loves and desires, into her third novel, with the lightest touch. There's sad, polite Guillame and his dying dog; thieving, beaten-up Joséphine Muscat; schoolchildren who declare it "hypercool" when Vianne says they can help eat the window display--a gingerbread house complete with witch. And there's Armande, still vigorous in her 80s, who can see Anouk's "imaginary" rabbit, Pantoufle, and recognizes Vianne for who she really is. However, certain villagers--including Armande's snobby daughter and Joséphine's violent husband--side with Reynaud. So when Vianne announces a Grand Festival of Chocolate commencing Easter Sunday, it's all-out war: war between church and chocolate, between good and evil, between love and dogma.
Reminiscent of Herman Hesse's short story "Augustus," Chocolat is an utterly delicious novel, coated in the gentlest of magic, which proves--indisputably and without preaching--that soft centers are best. --Lisa Gee, Amazon.co.uk [via]
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The Communist Manifestoby K. MarxISBN 0671443879 (0-671-44387-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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The Complete Just So Storiesby Rudyard Kipling, Neil Philip, Isabelle BrentISBN 0670851965 (0-670-85196-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Complete Just So Stories'Book summary:Presents twelve familiar stories--including the tale of the elephant child with the 'satiable curiosity who journeyed to the Limpopo river--along with two lesser-known pieces. [via]
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Confessions of a Crap Artistsby Philip DickISBN 0671442139 (0-671-44213-9)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Confessions of a Crap Artists'Book summary:Jack Isidore is a 'crap artist', a collector of crackpot ideas and worthless objects. His beliefs make him a man apparently unsuited for real life and so his sister, an edgy and aggressive woman, and his brother-in-law, a crass and foul-mouthed businessman, feel compelled to rescue him from it. But, observed through Jack's murderously innocent gaze, Fay and Charley Hume are seen to be just as obsessed as Jack. Their obsessions may be a little more acceptable than Jack's but they are uglier. And, in the end and thanks to Jack's intervention, theirs lead to tragedy . . . [via]
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Crime and Punishmentby Fyodor Dostoyevsky, David McDuffISBN 0670836400 (0-670-83640-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Crime and Punishment'Book summary:The novel tells how Raskolnikov, a former student, murders an old woman moneylender and her unfortunate sister. The story is a detective novel, a religious epic and a study in criminal psychology as well as being an indictment of urban social conditions in 19th-century Russia. [via]
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The Dark Halfby Stephen KingISBN 067082982X (0-670-82982-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Dark Half'Book summary:In 1985, 39-year-old Stephen King announced in public that his pseudonymous alter ego, Richard Bachman, was dead. (Never mind that he revived him years later to write The Regulators.) At the beginning of The Dark Half (1989), 39-year-old writer Thad Beaumont announces in public that his own pseudonym, George Stark, is dead.
Now, King didn't want to jettison the Bachman novel, titled Machine Dreams, that was he working on. So he incorporated it in The Dark Half as the crime oeuvre of George Stark, whose recurring hero/alter ego is an evil character named Alexis Machine.
Thad Beaumont's pseudonym is not so docile as Stephen King's, though, and George Stark bursts forth into reality. At that point, two stories kick into gear: a mystery-detective story about the crime spree of George Stark (or is it Alexis Machine?) and a horror story about Beaumont's struggle to catch up with his doppelganger and kill him dead.
This is not the first time that Stephen King has written a dark allegory about the fiction writer's situation. As the New York Times writes, "Misery (1987) is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his audience, which holds him prisoner and dictates what he writes, on pain of death. The Dark Half is a parable in chiller form of the popular writer's relation to his creative genius, the vampire within him, the part of him that only awakes to raise Cain when he writes, the fratricidal twin who occupies 'the womblike dungeon' of his imagination." --Fiona Webster [via]
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The Daughter of Timeby Josephine TeyISBN 0671413260 (0-671-41326-0)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Daughter of Time'Book summary:Josephine Tey is often referred to as the mystery writer for people who don't like mysteries. Her skills at character development and mood setting, and her tendency to focus on themes not usually touched upon by mystery writers, have earned her a vast and appreciative audience. In Daughter of Time, Tey focuses on the legend of Richard III, the evil hunchback of British history accused of murdering his young nephews. While at a London hospital recuperating from a fall, Inspector Alan Grant becomes fascinated by a portrait of King Richard. A student of human faces, Grant cannot believe that the man in the picture would kill his own nephews. With an American researcher's help, Grant delves into his country's history to discover just what kind of man Richard Plantagenet was and who really killed the little princes. [via]
Democracyby Joan DidionISBN 0671419773 (0-671-41977-3)
Hardcover, Bookthrift Co
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Disgraceby J. M. CoetzeeISBN 0670887315 (0-670-88731-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Disgrace'Book summary:David Lurie is hardly the hero of his own life, or anyone else's. At 52, the protagonist of Disgrace is at the end of his professional and romantic game, and seems to be deliberately courting disaster. Long a professor of modern languages at Cape Town University College, he has recently been relegated to adjunct professor of communications at the same institution, now pointedly renamed Cape Technical University:
Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: "Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other." His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.
Twice married and twice divorced, his magnetic looks on the wane, David rather cruelly seduces one of his students, and his conduct unbecoming is soon uncovered. In his eighth novel, J.M. Coetzee might have been content to write a searching academic satire. But in Disgrace he is intent on much more, and his art is as uncompromising as his main character, though infinitely more complex. Refusing to play the public-repentance game, David gets himself fired--a final gesture of contempt. Now, he thinks, he will write something on Byron's last years. Not empty, unread criticism, "prose measured by the yard," but a libretto. To do so, he heads for the Eastern Cape and his daughter's farm. In her mid-20s, Lucy has turned her back on city sophistications: with five hectares, she makes her living by growing flowers and produce and boarding dogs. "Nothing," David thinks, "could be more simple." But nothing, in fact, is more complicated--or, in the new South Africa, more dangerous. Far from being the refuge he has sought, little is safe in Salem. Just as David has settled into his temporary role as farmworker and unenthusiastic animal-shelter volunteer, he and Lucy are attacked by three black men. Unable to protect his daughter, David's disgrace is complete. Hers, however, is far worse.There is much more to be explored in Coetzee's painful novel, and few consolations. It would be easy to pick up on his title and view Disgrace as a complicated working-out of personal and political shame and responsibility. But the author is concerned with his country's history, brutalities, and betrayals. Coetzee is also intent on what measure of soul and rights we allow animals. After the attack, David takes his role at the shelter more seriously, at last achieving an unlikely home and some measure of love. In Coetzee's recent Princeton lectures, The Lives of Animals, an aging novelist tells her audience that the question that occupies all lab and zoo creatures is, "Where is home, and how do I get there?" David, though still all-powerful compared to those he helps dispose of, is equally trapped, equally lost.
Disgrace is almost willfully plain. Yet it possesses its own lean, heartbreaking lyricism, most of all in its descriptions of unwanted animals. At the start of the novel, David tells his student that poetry either speaks instantly to the reader--"a flash of revelation and a flash of response"--or not at all. Coetzee's book speaks differently, its layers and sadnesses endlessly unfolding. --Kerry Fried [via]
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Divided Highways : Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Lifeby Tom LewisISBN 067086627X (0-670-86627-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Divided Highways : Building the Interstate Highways, Transforming American Life'Book summary:Picture a field of dirt, piled knee high, that covers an area the size of Connecticut, or imagine a concrete sidewalk extending a million miles into space. You will have envisioned, Tom Lewis tells us, the amount of earth moved and the amount of concrete poured to make America's interstate highway system, a network of roads planned far back in the 19th century but completed only a few years ago. The public's view of the interstate system, Lewis writes, has been colored in recent decades by the grim realities of gridlock, smog, and road rage. In their early years, however, these highways seemed to promise the freedom of the open road, a gateway to faraway coasts. Lewis does a fine job of conveying the grandeur of the project, the largest work of civil construction ever undertaken by a democratic power.
Lewis's narrative is peopled with largely unknown figures, among them the little-heralded but critically important engineer Harris MacDonald. MacDonald turned the federal Bureau of Public Roads into a powerful force of social as well as physical engineering and paved the way for the large-scale projects of the Roosevelt and Eisenhower administrations. Lewis, a well-traveled explorer on the byways of technological progress, extends his history well into the past. He describes the building of the first national and post roads, the great parkways that connected such far-flung cities as Winnipeg and Miami, the once rural roads that, over the decades, blossomed into multilane highways--a process that has always depended on what Lewis calls "Americans' faith in technocracy" and their will to shape the future, acre by acre. --Gregory McNamee [via]
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Divine Invasionby Philip K. DickISBN 0671443437 (0-671-44343-7)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Divine Invasion'Book summary:God is not dead: he has merely been exiled to an extraterrestrial planet. And it is on this planet that God meets Herb Asher and persuades him to help retake Earth from the demonic Belial. Featuring virtual reality, parallel worlds, and interstellar travel, The Divine Invasion blends philosophy and adventure in a way few authors can achieve. As the middle novel of Dicks VALIS trilogy, The Divine Invasion plays a pivotal role in answering the questions raised by the first novel, expanding that world while exploring just how much anyone can really know even God himself. [via]
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Door Wide Open : A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958by Jack Kerouac, Joyce JohnsonISBN 0670890405 (0-670-89040-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Door Wide Open : A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958'Book summary:They met in early 1957, eight months before the publication of On the Road made Jack Kerouac the most famous young writer in America. Some of the bitterest, saddest letters Kerouac wrote to his 21-year-old lover, Joyce Glassman, reveal the personal cost of the hysterical media attention that followed. Yet their early correspondence shows a side of Kerouac not always evident in his fiction: tender, spiritual, and supportive of Glassman's efforts to write her first novel. Now known as Joyce Johnson, she supplements the text of their epistles with commentary whose sensitive, rueful tone will be familiar to readers of her memoir, Minor Characters. The loving but independent air she assumed in her letters, Johnson notes, came from painful rewriting to eliminate all hints of hurt or need; as he wandered in and out of her life, Kerouac kept reminding her he didn't want to be tied down, even as he urged her to come visit whatever city he'd alighted in. Spiced with marvelously evocative period slang like dig and swing, and references to friends such as Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, this poignant epistolary record of a 22-month love affair also brings to life an exciting moment in American cultural history, when the Beat writers gave "powerful, irresistible voices to subversive longings." --Wendy Smith [via]
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Edith's Diaryby Patricia HighsmithISBN 067122686X (0-671-22686-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Enigma of Arrivalby V.S. NaipaulISBN 0670815764 (0-670-81576-4)
Hardcover, Viking
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Enigma of Arrival'Book summary:Taking its title from the strangely frozen picture by the surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico, The Enigma of Arrival tells the story of a young Indian from the Caribbean arriving in post-imperial England and consciously, over many years, finding himself as a writer. It is the story of a journey, from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another, and is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet alongside this he weaves a rich and complex web of invention and observation. Finding depth and pathos in the smallest moments -- the death of a cottager, the firing of an estate's gardener -- Naipaul also comprehends the bigger picture -- watching as the old world is lost to the gradual but permanent changes wrought on the English landscape by the march of 'progress'. This is a moving and beautiful novel told with great dignity, compassion and candour. 'Written with the expected beauty of style ...Instead of diminishing life, Naipaul ennobles it' Anthony Burgess, Observer 'The conclusion is both heart-breaking and bracing: the only antidote to destruction -- of dreams, of reality -- is remembering. As eloquently as anyone now writing, Naipaul remembers.' Time [via]
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Europe in Our Time: A History, 1945-1992by Walter LaqueurISBN 0670835072 (0-670-83507-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Europe in Our Time: A History, 1945-1992'Book summary:This book traces the whole of Europe from the end of World War II to 1992 and the scheduled reunification of Western Europe. The book examines, in greater context, the East European revolution of 1989 and the changes in the Soviet Union, as well as assessing the aftermath of the Cold War, the post-war period that most commentators feel has come to an end. The unification of Western Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Empire, the author argues, don't mark the end of history, as some claim, but the beginning of another era - of a new Europe - one quite unlike, yet in some ways parallel, to the Europe that presided over the world at the end of the previous century. [via]
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Foeby J. M. CoetzeeISBN 0670813982 (0-670-81398-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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The Garlic Ballads: A Novelby Yan Mo, Howard GoldblattISBN 0670854018 (0-670-85401-8)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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The Ghost Roadby Pat BarkerISBN 0670854891 (0-670-85489-1)
Hardcover, Viking
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ghost Road'Book summary:Based on a mix of real and imagined characters and events, this book concentrates on Sarah, a young woman working in a munitions factory, and on Wilfred Owen. The position of women has been a sub-theme throughout the books and here it moves to the forefront. The 1995 Booker Prize winner. [via]
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Good Earthby Pearl S. BuckISBN 0671035770 (0-671-03577-0)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Good Earth'Book summary:Pearl S. Buck's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of a China that was -- now in a Contemporary Classics edition.
Though more than sixty years have passed since this remarkable novel won the Pulitzer Prize, it has retained its popularity and become one of the great modern classics. "I can only write what I know, and I know nothing but China, having always lived there," wrote Pearl Buck. In "The Good Earth" she presents a graphic view of a China when the last emperor reigned and the vast political and social upheavals of the twentieth century were but distant rumblings for the ordinary people. This moving, classic story of the honest farmer Wang Lung and his selfless wife O-lan is must reading for those who would fully appreciate the sweeping changes that have occurred in the lives of the Chinese people during this century.
Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck traces the whole cycle of life: its terrors, its passions, its ambitions and rewards. Her brilliant novel -- beloved by millions of readers -- is a universal tale of the destiny of man. [via]
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The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in Historyby John M. BarryISBN 0670894737 (0-670-89473-7)
Hardcover, Viking Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History'Book summary:No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918. Presumed to have begun when sick farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas, spreading and mutating into a lethal strain as troops carried it to Europe, it exploded across the world with unequaled ferocity and speed. It killed more people in twenty weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty years; it killed more people in a year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. Victims bled from the ears and nose, turned blue from lack of oxygen, suffered aches that felt like bones being broken, and died. In the United States, where bodies were stacked without coffins on trucks, nearly seven times as many people died of influenza as in the First World War.
In his powerful new book, award-winning historian John M. Barry unfolds a tale that is magisterial in its breadth and in the depth of its research, and spellbinding as he weaves multiple narrative strands together. In this first great collision between science and epidemic disease, even as society approached collapse, a handful of heroic researchers stepped forward, risking their lives to confront this strange disease. Titans like William Welch at the newly formed Johns Hopkins Medical School and colleagues at Rockefeller University and others from around the country revolutionized American science and public health, and their work in this crisis led to crucial discoveries that we are still using and learning from today.
The Washington Posts Jonathan Yardley said Barrys last book can "change the way we think." The Great Influenza may also change the way we see the world. [via]
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The Heather Blazingby Colm ToibinISBN 0670847895 (0-670-84789-5)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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The Hot Rockby Donald E. WestlakeISBN 0671205412 (0-671-20541-2)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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How to Win Friends & Influence Peopleby Arthur R. Pell, Dale Carnegie, Dorothy CarnegieISBN 0671027034 (0-671-02703-4)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Win Friends & Influence People'Book summary:This grandfather of all people-skills books was first published in 1937. It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies. How to Win Friends and Influence People is just as useful today as it was when it was first published, because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." He teaches these skills through underlying principles of dealing with people so that they feel important and appreciated. He also emphasizes fundamental techniques for handling people without making them feel manipulated. Carnegie says you can make someone want to do what you want them to by seeing the situation from the other person's point of view and "arousing in the other person an eager want." You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment. For instance, "let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers," and "talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person." Carnegie illustrates his points with anecdotes of historical figures, leaders of the business world, and everyday folks. --Joan Price [via]
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How to Win Friends and Influence Peopleby Dale Carnegie, Dorothy CarnegieISBN 067142517X (0-671-42517-X)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'Book summary:This grandfather of all people-skills books was first published in 1937. It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies. How to Win Friends and Influence People is just as useful today as it was when it was first published, because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people." He teaches these skills through underlying principles of dealing with people so that they feel important and appreciated. He also emphasizes fundamental techniques for handling people without making them feel manipulated. Carnegie says you can make someone want to do what you want them to by seeing the situation from the other person's point of view and "arousing in the other person an eager want." You learn how to make people like you, win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment. For instance, "let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers," and "talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person." Carnegie illustrates his points with anecdotes of historical figures, leaders of the business world, and everyday folks. --Joan Price [via]
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Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991by Salman RushdieISBN 0670839523 (0-670-83952-3)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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India, from Midnight to the Millenniumby Shashi TharoorISBN 067087826X (0-670-87826-X)
Hardcover, Viking
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› Find signed collectible books: 'India, from Midnight to the Millennium'Book summary:Author Shashi Tharoor has spent half of his life outside of India, yet his position as a "NRI" (Non-resident Indian) has given him the distance and perspective necessary to produce India: From Midnight to the Millennium, an in-depth critique of the country's first fifty years of independence. Tharoor, currently executive assistant to the secretary general of the United Nations, is known for both his fiction (The Great Indian Novel, Show Business) and his journalism; in this effort, he blends fine prose with a reporter's talent for analysis, resulting in a skillful examination of some of the greatest challenges India has faced over the past five decades, as well as what lies ahead for the nation.
In chapters devoted to such diverse topics as caste, the free-for-all nature of Indian democracy, the troubled legacy of Indira Gandhi, and the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, Tharoor both explicates the history of India since independence and attempts to define what makes India one country and Indians of various ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds one nationality. He is forthright in his discussion of the sectarian violence that has ripped through the country, the corruption that is rife throughout the ranks of the Indian civil service, and the difficulties that face a nation in which 48 percent of the population remains illiterate. Yet Shashi Tharoor writes of these problems with a sense of optimism about the future, confident in the ability of his countrymen to find solutions within a democratic political system. [via]
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Inversionsby Iain M. BanksISBN 0671036688 (0-671-03668-8)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Inversions'Book summary:Iain M. Banks, the international bestselling author of "The Player of Games" and "Consider Phlebas," is a true original, a literary visionary whose brilliant speculative fiction has transported us into worlds of unbounded imagination. Now, in his acclaimed new novel, Banks presents an engrossing portrait of an alien world, and of two very different people bound by a startling and mysterious secret.
On a backward world with six moons, an alert spy reports on the doings of one Dr. Vosill, who has mysteriously become the personal physician to the king despite being a foreigner and, even more unthinkably, a woman. Vosill has more enemies than she first realizes. But then she also has more remedies in hand than those who wish her ill can ever guess.
Elsewhere, in another palace across the mountains, a man named DeWar serves as chief bodyguard to the Protector General of Tassasen, a profession he describes as the business of "assassinating assassins." DeWar, too, has his enemies, but his foes strike more swiftly, and his means of combating them are more direct.
No one trusts the doctor, and the bodyguard trusts no one, but is there a hidden commonality linking their disparate histories? Spiraling around a central core of mystery, deceit, love, and betrayal. "Inversions" is a dazzling work of science fiction from a versatile and imaginative author writing at the height of his remarkable powers. [via]
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James Joyce: A Penguin Lifeby Edna O'BrienISBN 0670882305 (0-670-88230-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Jeeves and the Tie That Bindsby Pelham Grenville WodehouseISBN 0671210386 (0-671-21038-6)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Jeeves and the Tie That Binds'Book summary:A Bertie and Jeeves classic, featuring the Junior Ganymede, a Market Snodsbury election, and the Observer crossword puzzle.
Jeeves, who has saved Bertie Wooster so often in the past, may finally prove to be the unwitting cause of this young master's undoing in Jeeves and the Tie that Binds. The Junior Ganymede, a club for butlers in London's fashionable West End, requires every member to provide details about the fellow he is working for. When information is inadvertently revealed to a dangerous source, it falls to Jeeves to undo the damage. [via]
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Ladies and Not So Gentle Women : Elisabeth Marbury, Anne Morgan, Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Vanderbilt and Their Timesby Alfred A. LewisISBN 0670858102 (0-670-85810-2)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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Lady Oracleby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0671223399 (0-671-22339-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lady Oracle'Book summary:Joan Foster is the bored wife of a myopic ban-the-bomber. She takes off overnight as Canada's new superpoet, pens lurid gothics on the sly, attracts a blackmailing reporter, skids cheerfully in and out of menacing plots, hair-raising traps, and passionate trysts, and lands dead and well in Terremoto, Italy. In this remarkable, poetic, and magical novel, Margaret Atwood proves yet again why she is considered to be one of the most important and accomplished writers of our time. [via]
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The Liar's Clubby Mary KarrISBN 0670850535 (0-670-85053-5)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Liar's Club'Book summary:In this funny, razor-edged memoir, Mary Karr, a prize-winning poet and critic, looks back at her upbringing in a swampy East Texas refinery town with a volatile, defiantly loving family. She recalls her painter mother, seven times married, whose outlaw spirit could tip into psychosis; a fist swinging father who spun tales with his cronies - dubbed the Liars' Club; and a neighborhood rape when she was eight. An inheritance was squandered, endless bottles emptied, and guns leveled at the deserving and undeserving. With a row authenticity stripped of self pity,and a poet's eye for the lyrical detail, Karr shows us a "terrific family of liars and drunks...redeemed by a slow unearthing of truth." [via]
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Life Before Manby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0671251155 (0-671-25115-5)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Life Before Man'Book summary:Imprisoned by walls of their own construction, here are three people, each in midlife, in midcrisis, forced to make choices--after the rules have changed. Elizabeth, with her controlled sensuality, her suppressed rage, is married to the wrong man. She has just lost her latest lover to suicide. Nate, her gentle, indecisive husband, is planning to leave her for Lesje, a perennial innocent who prefers dinosaurs to men. Hanging over them all is the ghost of Elizabeth's dead lover...and the dizzying threat of three lives careening inevitably toward the same climax. [via]
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Lilian's Storyby Kate GrenvilleISBN 0670809292 (0-670-80929-2)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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A Little Princessby Frances Hodgson Burnett, Janet Allison Brown, Graham RustISBN 0670899135 (0-670-89913-5)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Little Princess'Book summary:Sara Crewe, a pupil at Miss Minchin's London school, is left in poverty when her father dies but is later rescued by a mysterious benefactor. [via]
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The Master of Petersburgby J. M. CoetzeeISBN 0670855871 (0-670-85587-1)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Monarch Notes on Graham Greene's Major Novelsby Gregor RoyISBN 0671008382 (0-671-00838-2)
Hardcover, Pearson Education, Limited
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Monarch Notes on Graham Greene's Major Novels'Book summary:A critical guide providing complete understanding of the great works and ideas. [via]
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Monarch Notes on Of Mice and Menby John SteinbeckISBN 0671006932 (0-671-00693-2)
Hardcover, Pearson Education, Limited
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More Pleaseby Barry HumphriesISBN 0670840084 (0-670-84008-4)
Hardcover, Viking
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Mornings on Horsebackby David G. McCulloughISBN 0671447548 (0-671-44754-8)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Mornings on Horseback'Book summary:FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF JOHN ADAMS
Winner of the 1982 National Book Award for Biography, Mornings on Horseback is the brilliant biography of the young Theodore Roosevelt. Hailed as a masterpiece by Newsday, it is the story of a remarkable little boy -- seriously handicapped by recurrent and nearly fatal attacks of asthma -- and his struggle to manhood.
His father -- the first Theodore Roosevelt, "Greatheart," -- is a figure of unbounded energy, enormously attractive and selfless, a god in the eyes of his small, frail namesake. His mother -- Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt -- is a Southerner and celebrated beauty.
Mornings on Horseback spans seventeen years -- from 1869 when little "Teedie" is ten, to 1886 when he returns from the West a "real life cowboy" to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and begin anew, a grown man, whole in body and spirit.
This is a tale about family love and family loyalty...about courtship, childbirth and death, fathers and sons...about gutter politics and the tumultuous Republican Convention of 1884...about grizzly bears, grief and courage, and "blessed" mornings on horseback at Oyster Bay or beneath the limitless skies of the Badlands. [via]
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Nice Workby David LodgeISBN 0670828068 (0-670-82806-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Pearl Buck's the Good Earthby Pearl S. BuckISBN 0671006576 (0-671-00657-6)
Softcover, Monarch Notes
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The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Storiesby Margaret ReynoldsISBN 0670854255 (0-670-85425-5)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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Perks of Being a Wallflowerby Stephen ChboskyISBN 0671027344 (0-671-02734-4)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Perks of Being a Wallflower'Book summary:What is most notable about this funny, touching, memorable first novel from Stephen Chbosky is the resounding accuracy with which the author captures the voice of a boy teetering on the brink of adulthood. Charlie is a freshman. And while's he's not the biggest geek in the school, he is by no means popular. He's a wallflower--shy and introspective, and intelligent beyond his years, if not very savvy in the social arts. We learn about Charlie through the letters he writes to someone of undisclosed name, age, and gender, a stylistic technique that adds to the heart-wrenching earnestness saturating this teen's story. Charlie encounters the same struggles that many kids face in high school--how to make friends, the intensity of a crush, family tensions, a first relationship, exploring sexuality, experimenting with drugs--but he must also deal with his best friend's recent suicide. Charlie's letters take on the intimate feel of a journal as he shares his day-to-day thoughts and feelings:
I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.
With the help of a teacher who recognizes his wisdom and intuition, and his two friends, seniors Samantha and Patrick, Charlie mostly manages to avoid the depression he feels creeping up like kudzu. When it all becomes too much, after a shocking realization about his beloved late Aunt Helen, Charlie retreats from reality for awhile. But he makes it back in due time, ready to face his sophomore year and all that it may bring. Charlie, sincerely searching for that feeling of "being infinite," is a kindred spirit to the generation that's been slapped with the label X. --Brangien Davis [via]More editions of Perks of Being a Wallflower:
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Peter Panby Edmund Caswell, Scott GustafsonISBN 0670841803 (0-670-84180-3)
Hardcover, Viking Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Peter Pan'Book summary:"All children, except one, grow up." Thus begins a great classic of children's literature that we all remember as magical. What we tend to forget, because the tale of Peter Pan and Neverland has been so relentlessly boiled down, hashed up, and coated in saccharine, is that J.M. Barrie's original version is also witty, sophisticated, and delightfully odd. The Darling children, Wendy, John, and Michael, live a very proper middle-class life in Edwardian London, but they also happen to have a Newfoundland for a nurse. The text is full of such throwaway gems as "Mrs. Darling first heard of Peter Pan when she was tidying up her children's minds," and is peppered with deliberately obscure vocabulary including "embonpoint," "quietus," and "pluperfect." Lest we forget, it was written in 1904, a relatively innocent age in which a plot about abducted children must have seemed more safely fanciful. Also, perhaps, it was an age that expected more of its children's books, for Peter Pan has a suppleness, lightness, and intelligence that are "literary" in the best sense. In a typical exchange with the dastardly Captain Hook, Peter Pan describes himself as "youth... joy... a little bird that has broken out of the egg," and the author interjects: "This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form." A book for adult readers-aloud to revel in--and it just might teach young listeners to fly. (Ages 5 and older) --Richard Farr [via]
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Peter Panby J. M. Barrie, Jan OrmerodISBN 0670808628 (0-670-80862-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Peter Pan/Changing Picture and Lift-The-Flap Bookby J. M. Barrie, Edmund CaswellISBN 0670836087 (0-670-83608-7)
Hardcover, Viking Pr
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Peter Pan/Changing Picture and Lift-The-Flap Book'Book summary:Four changing picture wheels, lift-the-flap illustrations, and an abridged version of Barrie's classic fantasy follow the adventures of Peter Pan, Wendy, the Lost Boys, and Captain Hook in Neverland. [via]
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The Picture of Dorian Grayby Oscar Wilde, Tony RossISBN 067089494X (0-670-89494-X)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'Book summary:A lush, cautionary tale of a life of vileness and deception or a loving portrait of the aesthetic impulse run rampant? Why not both? After Basil Hallward paints a beautiful, young man's portrait, his subject's frivolous wish that the picture change and he remain the same comes true. Dorian Gray's picture grows aged and corrupt while he continues to appear fresh and innocent. After he kills a young woman, "as surely as if I had cut her little throat with a knife," Dorian Gray is surprised to find no difference in his vision or surroundings. "The roses are not less lovely for all that. The birds sing just as happily in my garden."
As Hallward tries to make sense of his creation, his epigram-happy friend Lord Henry Wotton encourages Dorian in his sensual quest with any number of Wildean paradoxes, including the delightful "When we are happy we are always good, but when we are good we are not always happy." But despite its many languorous pleasures, The Picture of Dorian Gray is an imperfect work. Compared to the two (voyeuristic) older men, Dorian is a bore, and his search for ever new sensations far less fun than the novel's drawing-room discussions. Even more oddly, the moral message of the novel contradicts many of Wilde's supposed aims, not least "no artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." Nonetheless, the glamour boy gets his just deserts. And Wilde, defending Dorian Gray, had it both ways: "All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment." [via]
Play It as It Lays, a Novelby Joan DidionISBN 0671248464 (0-671-24846-4)
Hardcover, Simon and Schuster
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The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.by George SteinerISBN 0671445715 (0-671-44571-5)
Hardcover, Simon and Schuster
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Power and the Gloryby Graham GreeneISBN 0670835366 (0-670-83536-6)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Power and the Glory'Book summary:How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.
On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"
As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland [via]
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Puffballby Fay WeldonISBN 0671448099 (0-671-44809-9)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Red Sorghumby Mo YanISBN 0670844020 (0-670-84402-0)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Red Sorghum'Book summary:A novel of family, myth, and memory set during the fratricidal barbarity of 1930s China follows the Chinese as they battle the Japanese and each other. 10,000 first printing. [via]
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Regenerationby Pat BarkerISBN 0670828769 (0-670-82876-9)
Hardcover, Viking
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Regeneration'Book summary:Regeneration, one in Pat Barker's series of novels confronting the psychological effects of World War I, focuses on treatment methods during the war and the story of a decorated English officer sent to a military hospital after publicly declaring he will no longer fight. Yet the novel is much more. Written in sparse prose that is shockingly clear -- the descriptions of electronic treatments are particularly harrowing -- it combines real-life characters and events with fictional ones in a work that examines the insanity of war like no other. Barker also weaves in issues of class and politics in this compactly powerful book. Other books in the series include The Eye in the Door and the Booker Award winner The Ghost Road. [via]
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Remembranceby Jude DeverauxISBN 0671023578 (0-671-02357-8)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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Sacred Gamesby Vikram ChandraISBN 0670999229 (0-670-99922-9)
Hardcover, Penguin, Viking
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Separate Peaceby Christopher R. ReaskeISBN 0671008897 (0-671-00889-7)
Hardcover, Pearson Education, Limited
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Several Strangers: Writing from Three Decadesby Claire TomalinISBN 0670885673 (0-670-88567-3)
Hardcover, Viking
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The Silence in the Gardenby William TrevorISBN 0670824046 (0-670-82404-6)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Solidarity, Poland in the Season of Its Passionby Lawrence WeschlerISBN 0671449656 (0-671-44965-6)
Softcover, Simon and Schuster
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Some of the Dharmaby Jack KerouacISBN 0670848778 (0-670-84877-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Some of the Dharma'Book summary:Written during a critical period of his life, "Some of the Dharma" is a key volume in Jack Kerouac's vast autobiographical canon. He began writing it in 1953 as reading notes on Buddhism intended for his friend, poet Allen Ginsberg. As Kerouac's Buddhist study and meditation practice intensified, what had begun as notes evolved into a vast and all-encompassing work of nonfiction into which he poured his life, incorporating poems, haiku, prayers, journal entries, meditations, fragments of letters, ideas about writing, overheard conversations, sketches, blues, and more. The final manuscript, completed in 1956, was as visually complex as the writing: each page was unique, typed in patterns and interlocking shapes. The elaborate form which Kerouac so painstakingly gave the book on his manual typewriter is re-created in this typeset facsimile. [via]
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The Songlinesby Bruce ChatwinISBN 0670806056 (0-670-80605-6)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Songlines'Book summary:The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included In Patagonia, a fabulist travel narrative, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and The Songlines, his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made The Songlines one of his last books. [via]
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Stranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986-1999by J. M. CoetzeeISBN 0670899828 (0-670-89982-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Stranger Shores: Literary Essays, 1986-1999'Book summary:The only author ever to win the Booker Prize twice, J. M. Coetzee is, without question, one of the world's greatest novelists. Now his many admirers will have the pleasure of reading his significant body of literary criticism. This volume gathers together for the first time in book form, twenty-six pieces on books and writing, all but one previously published. Stranger Shores opens with "What is a Classic?" in which Coetzee explores the answer to his own question-"What does it mean in living terms to say that the classic is what survives?"-by way of T. S. Eliot, Johann Sebastian Bach and Zbigniew Herbert. His subjects range from the great eighteenth and nineteenth century writers Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Ivan Turgenev, to the great German modernists Rilke, Kafka, and Musil, to the giants of late twentieth century literature, among them Harry Mulisch, Joseph Brodsky, Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie, Amos Oz, Naguib Mahfouz, Nadine Gordimer, and Doris Lessing. [via]
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Surfacingby Margaret AtwoodISBN 0671214500 (0-671-21450-0)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Surfacing'Book summary:First published in 1972, Surfacing was Margaret Atwood's second novel, following the critically acclaimed The Edible Woman. Atwood had already made her mark as a one of the most exciting new voices in Canadian poetry, winning the Governor General's Award in 1966 for The Circle Game, while her groundbreaking book of criticism, Survival, had started the process of redefining the meaning of Canadian literature.
In Surfacing, poetry and prose brilliantly come together in a heart-wrenching novel that focuses on a woman's desperate attempt to put the ghosts of her past to rest. With three friends, she's returned to the remote cabin in Northern Quebec where she spent her childhood. She's overwhelmed, almost to the point of emotional paralysis, by memories of her father and his death by drowning, her failed marriage and painful divorce, and an abortion that haunts her waking dreams. While she appears to be ambivalent about the landscape, it is the landscape that in fact will provide her with the means of healing herself and her broken spirit. Like Atwood's poetry of this period, Surfacing is a deeply psychological novel. Atwood uses the recurring image of surfacing from beneath the waves of an icy northern lake as a symbol of this woman's struggle to regain control of her life, to refuse to be a victim of her past. Surfacing is a poignant novel filled with the power of the Canadian wilderness to cleanse the soul, an image of the wilderness that has remained a preoccupation for Atwood throughout her writing career. --Jeffrey Canton [via]
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T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedralby T. S. EliotISBN 0671007823 (0-671-00782-3)
Softcover, Monarch Notes
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Therapyby David LodgeISBN 0670863580 (0-670-86358-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Thinksby David LodgeISBN 0670899844 (0-670-89984-4)
Hardcover, Penguin USA
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The Transmigration of Timothy Archerby Philip K. DickISBN 0671440667 (0-671-44066-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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Trumanby David Willis McCulloughISBN 0671456547 (0-671-45654-7)
Hardcover, Simon & Schuster
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Truman'Book summary:This warm biography of Harry Truman is both an historical evaluation of his presidency and a paean to the man's rock-solid American values. Truman was a compromise candidate for vice president, almost an accidental president after Roosevelt's death 12 weeks into his second term. Truman's stunning come-from-behind victory in the 1948 election showed how his personal qualities of integrity and straightforwardness were appreciated by ordinary Americans, perhaps, as McCullough notes, because he was one himself. His presidency was dominated by enormously controversial issues: he dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, established anti-Communism as the bedrock of American foreign policy, and sent U.S. troops into the Korean War. In this winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize, McCullough argues that history has validated most of Truman's war-time and Cold War decisions. [via]
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The Vote: How It Was Won and How It Was Underminedby Paul FootISBN 067091536X (0-670-91536-X)
Hardcover, Viking
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The Way I Found Herby Rose TremainISBN 0671035703 (0-671-03570-3)
Softcover, Pocket Books
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What a Carve Up!by Jonathan CoeISBN 0670853631 (0-670-85363-1)
Softcover, Viking
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White Fangby Jack London, Philippe MunchISBN 0670884804 (0-670-88480-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'White Fang'Book summary:Another outstanding title in the acclaimed series described as "a CD-ROM between covers."
White Fang was written as the companion book to Jack London's classic 1903 runaway bestseller The Call of the Wild. Seen through the eyes of White Fang--who is half dog, half wolf--the story follows the creature as he is forced to endure a series of harsh environments that turn him from his youthful innocence to mad-dog cruelty. That is, until a young man comes along and offers kindness and friendship. But friendship is something that White Fang doesn't understand...yet. White Fang is more than great storytelling. It is a careful study of the effects of our environments in forming who we are. With fascinating details of the Klondike gold rush and North American Indian life, it is also a remarkable snapshot of its time. With striking illustrations and extended captions unique to the Whole Story series, this striking edition provides background information modern readers could otherwise access only through a broad range of supplemental research. This distinctive approach places White Fang--first published in 1906--within the context of its era, bringing it vividly to life. [via]More editions of White Fang:
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The Whole Story : White Fangby Jack LondonISBN 0670884790 (0-670-88479-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Whole Story : White Fang'Book summary:Another outstanding title in the acclaimed series described as "a CD-ROM between covers."
White Fang was written as the companion book to Jack London's classic 1903 runaway bestseller The Call of the Wild. Seen through the eyes of White Fang--who is half dog, half wolf--the story follows the creature as he is forced to endure a series of harsh environments that turn him from his youthful innocence to mad-dog cruelty. That is, until a young man comes along and offers kindness and friendship. But friendship is something that White Fang doesn't understand...yet. White Fang is more than great storytelling. It is a careful study of the effects of our environments in forming who we are. With fascinating details of the Klondike gold rush and North American Indian life, it is also a remarkable snapshot of its time. With striking illustrations and extended captions unique to the Whole Story series, this striking edition provides background information modern readers could otherwise access only through a broad range of supplemental research. This distinctive approach places White Fang--first published in 1906--within the context of its era, bringing it vividly to life. [via]More editions of The Whole Story : White Fang:
The Witch of Exmoorby Margaret DrabbleISBN 0670872407 (0-670-87240-7)
Hardcover, Viking
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The Wizard of Ozby L. Frank BaumISBN 0671083171 (0-671-08317-1)
Hardcover, Bookthrift Co
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Women in Loveby D. H. LawrenceISBN 0670825859 (0-670-82585-9)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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Woodrow Wilsonby Louis AuchinclossISBN 0670889040 (0-670-88904-0)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed Americaby Ruth RosenISBN 0670814628 (0-670-81462-8)
Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America'Book summary:For anyone who wants a thorough introduction to the modern American women's movement, this is it: a rousing story of the revolution by a history professor who participated in its struggles. Ruth Rosen introduces her book by reminding readers of discriminatory practices that were common in pre-1960s America: "Harvard's Lamont Library was off-limits to women for fear they would distract male students. Newspaper ads separated jobs by sex; bars often refused to serve women; some states even excluded women from jury duty; no women ran big corporations or universities, worked as firefighters or police officers." She then proceeds to delineate the changes that make such discrimination seem unthinkable today. Her research takes in popular books, magazines, newspaper articles and television, the details of politics and law, and the individual liberation stories of not only famous feminists and thinkers but many lesser-known women as well.
By the end of the 1970s, there are not only legal abortions, Title IX, and more women than men at American universities but letters like the following submitted to Ms. magazine: "One day last week, I pulled up to a four-way stop in my taxi," writes Jill Wood. "At one of the stop signs sat a police officer in a cruiser, and at the third, a telephone installer in a van. What made the occasion memorable was the fact that all three of us were women. We celebrated with much joyful laughter." Yet, says Rosen, this is only the beginning of the struggle for human rights. The World Split Open should serve to galvanize the energies of a new generation of women and men. --Maria Dolan [via]
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