Us: books tagged “us” (15/119) @ BookFinder.com

ISBN 9780075536574 (0-07-553657-9, 0075536579)

by William Faulkner

ISBN 0075536579 (0-07-553657-9)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

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Book summary:

Read, read, read. Read everythingtrash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! Youll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, youll find out. If its not, throw it out the window. William Faulkner

Absalom, Absalom! is Faulkners epic tale of Thomas Sutpen, an enigmatic stranger who comes to Jefferson, Mississippi, in the early 1830s to wrest his mansion out of the muddy bottoms of the north Mississippi wilderness. He was a man, Faulkner said, who wanted sons and the sons destroyed him.

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Absalom, Absalom!: ISBN 0075536579 (0-07-553657-9)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

ISBN 9780140366761 (0-14-036676-8, 0140366768)

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain

ISBN 0140366768 (0-14-036676-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Of all the contenders for the title of The Great American Novel, none has a better claim than The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn . Intended at first as a simple story of a boy's adventures in the Mississippi Valley-a sequel to Tom Sawyer-the book grew and matured under Twain's hand into a work of immeasurable richness and complexity. More than a century after its publication, the critical debate over the symbolic significance of Huck's and Jim's voyage is still fresh, and it remains a major work that can be enjoyed at many levels: as an incomparable adventure story and as a classic of American humor. @declineofwesternsiv Seems like soon as a fella comes into a bit o' money, everyone comes out of the woodworks after'n it. These ladies wants to sivilize me? More like reverse gold-dig my fame and fortune. @FencinTom: Get me outta here! From Twitterature: The World's Greatest Books in Twenty Tweets or Less [via]

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ISBN 9780195114096 (0-19-511409-4, 0195114094)

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885

by Mark Twain, Shelley Fisher Fishkin

ISBN 0195114094 (0-19-511409-4)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Book summary:

A seminal work of American Literature that still commands deep praise and still elicits controversy, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding of the novel. The changes, deletions, and additions made in the first half of the manuscript indicate that Mark Twain frequently checked his impulse to write an even darker, more confrontational book than the one he finally published. [via]

More editions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885:

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 1885: ISBN 0195114094 (0-19-511409-4)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Centennial

by Twain

ISBN 0060467223 (0-06-046722-3)
Hardcover, Addison-Wesley

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Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Centennial: ISBN 0060467223 (0-06-046722-3)
Hardcover, Addison-Wesley

ISBN 9780060758608 (0-06-075860-0, 0060758600)

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

by Mark Twain

ISBN 0060758600 (0-06-075860-0)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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Book summary:

On the banks of the Mississippi River, Tom Sawyer and his friends seek out adventure at every turn. Then one fateful night in the graveyard they witness a murder. The boys make a blood oath never to reveal the secret, and they run away to be pirates in search of hidden treasure. But when Tom gets trapped in a cave with scary Injun Joe, can he escape unharmed? Tom Sawyer is sure to find trouble wherever the Mississippi leads him... [via]

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ISBN 9780195114058 (0-19-511405-1, 0195114051)

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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876

by Mark Twain, Shelley Fisher Fishkin

ISBN 0195114051 (0-19-511405-1)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Book summary:

Tom Sawyer: among America's undisputed contributions to the world's cast of unforgettable characters. [via]

More editions of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 1876: ISBN 0195114051 (0-19-511405-1)
Hardcover, Oxford Univ Pr

ISBN 9780140189704 (0-14-018970-X, 014018970X)

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The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton, Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Laura Dluzynski Quinn

ISBN 014018970X (0-14-018970-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Somewhere in this book, Wharton observes that clever liars always come up with good stories to back up their fabrications, but that really clever liars don't bother to explain anything at all. This is the kind of insight that makes The Age of Innocence so indispensable. Wharton's story of the upper classes of Old New York, and Newland Archer's impossible love for the disgraced Countess Olenska, is a perfectly wrought book about an era when upper-class culture in this country was still a mixture of American and European extracts, and when "society" had rules as rigid as any in history. [via]

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Americana

by Don Delillo

ISBN 0140119485 (0-14-011948-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Americana: ISBN 0140119485 (0-14-011948-5)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780146000126 (0-14-600012-9, 0146000129)

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Bartleby: Library Edition

by Herman Melville

ISBN 0146000129 (0-14-600012-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Herman Melville was an 18th century American novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer. He is best known for his works Moby Dick and Typee. During his lifetime he was considered a failure, but after his death his worth as a writer was recognized. Bartleby is a novella, which first appeared in Putnam's Magazine. The narrator is an elderly lawyer who helps his clients with mortgages, titles and bonds. The lawyer's office has two employees Nippers and Turkey. Turkey is a drunk and Nippers has indigestion. The office is able to function because Nippers indigestion is at a time when Turkey is sober and Turkey is hung over when Nippers is feeling better. Bartleby is hired in the hopes that his temperament will calm down the office. As the story progresses Melville brings a sense of the human condition as seen through the eyes of a lowly employee. [via]

More editions of Bartleby: Library Edition:

Bartleby: Library Edition: ISBN 0146000129 (0-14-600012-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780140430295 (0-14-043029-6, 0140430296)

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Billy Budd

by Herman Melville, Harold Beaver

ISBN 0140430296 (0-14-043029-6)
Softcover, Penguin USA

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Book summary:

Melville's short stories are masterpieces. The best are to be appreciated on more than one level and those presented here are rich with symbolism and spiritual depth. Set in 1797, Billy Budd, Foretopman exploits the tension of this period during the war between England and France to create a tale of satanic treachery, tragedy and great pathos that explores human relationships and the inherently ambiguous nature of man-made justice. Tales such as Bartleby, Benito Cereno, The Lightning Rod Man, The Tartarus of Maids or I and My Chimney, show the timeless poetic power of Melville's writing as he consciously uses the disguise of allegory in various ways and to various ends. [via]

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Billy Budd: ISBN 0140430296 (0-14-043029-6)
Softcover, Penguin USA

ISBN 9780140390537 (0-14-039053-7, 0140390537)

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Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories

by Herman Melville

ISBN 0140390537 (0-14-039053-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Stung by the difficult reception of Moby Dick, Herman Melville became obsessed with the difficulties of communicating his vision to readers. His sense of isolation lies at the heart of these later works. "Billy Budd, Sailor" is a classic confrontation between good and evil, and the story of an innocent young man unable to defend himself against a wrongful accusation. The other stories also illuminate the way fictions are created and shared by society. [via]

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Billy Budd, Sailor and Other Stories: ISBN 0140390537 (0-14-039053-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780142002421 (0-14-200242-9, 0142002429)

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The Broom of the System

by David Foster Wallace, Robert Boswell, Dale Peterson, Andrew Parker, Gerald Howard, Bonnie Nadell, William Kennick

ISBN 0142002429 (0-14-200242-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenores great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

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ISBN 9780156028356 (0-15-602835-2, 0156028352)

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The Color Purple

by Alice Walker

ISBN 0156028352 (0-15-602835-2)
Softcover, Harcourt

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Book summary:

Celie is a poor black woman whose letters tell the story of 20 years of her life, beginning at age 14 when she is being abused and raped by her father and attempting to protect her sister from the same fate, and continuing over the course of her marriage to "Mister," a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister's letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self. [via]

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ISBN 9780060572006 (0-06-057200-0, 0060572000)

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A Crack In The Edge Of The World: America And The Great California Earthquake Of 1906

by Simon Winchester

ISBN 0060572000 (0-06-057200-0)
Softcover, Perennial

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Book summary:

Geologically speaking, 1906 was a violent year: powerful, destructive earthquakes shook the ground from Taiwan to South America, while in Italy, Mount Vesuvius erupted. And in San Francisco, a large earthquake occurred just after five in the morning on April 18--and that was just the beginning. The quake caused a conflagration that raged for the next three days, destroying much of the American West's greatest city. The fire, along with water damage and other indirect acts, proved more destructive than the earthquake itself, but insurance companies tried hard to dispute this fact since few people carried earthquake insurance. It was also the world's first major natural disaster to have been extensively photographed and covered by the media, and as a result, it left "an indelible imprint on the mind of the entire nation."

Though the epicenter of this marvelously constructed book is San Francisco, Winchester covers much more than just the disaster. He discusses how this particular quake led to greater scientific study of quakes in an attempt to understand the movements of the earth. Trained at Oxford University as a geologist, Winchester is well qualified to discuss the subject, and he clearly explains plate tectonics theory (first introduced in 1968) and the creation of the San Andreas Fault, along with the geologic exploration of the American West in the late 19th century and the evolution of technology used to measure and predict earthquakes. He also covers the social and political shifts caused by the disaster, such as the way that Pentecostalists viewed the quake as "a message of divine approval" and used it to recruit new members into the church, and the rise in the local Chinese population. With many records destroyed in the fire, there was no way to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, and thus many more Chinese were granted citizenship than would have otherwise been. Filled with eyewitness accounts, vivid descriptions, crisp prose, and many delightful meanderings, A Crack in the Edge of the World is a thoroughly absorbing tale. --Shawn Carkonen [via]

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Europe Central: Library Edition

by William T. Vollmann

ISBN 0143036599 (0-14-303659-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Europe Central: Library Edition: ISBN 0143036599 (0-14-303659-9)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780070212572 (0-07-021257-0, 0070212570)

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Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

by Fannie Flagg

ISBN 0070212570 (0-07-021257-0)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill

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Book summary:

The day IdgieThreadgoode and Ruth Jamison opened the Whistle Stop Cafe, the town took a turn for the better. It was the Depression and that cafe was a home from home for many of us. You could get eggs, grits, bacon, ham, coffee and a smile for 25 cents. Ruth was just the sweetest girl you ever met. And Idgie, she was a character, all right. You never saw anyone so headstrong. But how anybody could have thought she murdered that man is beyond me. "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe" is a mouth-watering tale of love, laughter and mystery. It will lift your spirits and above all it'll remind you of the secret to life: friends and best friends. [via]

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ISBN 9780140188592 (0-14-018859-2, 0140188592)

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Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon

ISBN 0140188592 (0-14-018859-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then (as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. History has been a big trick: the plan is to switch from floods to obliterating fire from the sky.

Slothrop's father was an unwitting part of the cosmic doublecross. To provide for the boy's future Harvard education, he took cash from the mad German scientist Laszlo Jamf, who performed Pavlovian experiments on the infant Tyrone. Laszlo invented Imipolex G, a new plastic useful in rocket insulation, and conditioned Tyrone's privates to respond to its presence. Now the grown-up Tyrone helplessly senses the Imipolex G in incoming V-2s, and his military superiors are investigating him. Soon he is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany.

That's just the Imipolex G tip of the shrieking vehicle that is Pynchon's book. It's pretty much impossible to follow a standard plot; one must have faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blow up the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. You will enjoy Pynchon's cartoon inferno far more if you consult Steven Weisenburger's brief companion to the novel, which sorts out Pynchon's blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes. Rest easy: there really is a simple reason why Kekulé von Stradonitz's dream about a serpent biting its tail (which solved the structure of the benzene molecule) belongs in the same novel as the comic-book-hero Plastic Man.

Pynchon doesn't want you to rest easy with solved mysteries, though. Gravity's Rainbow uses beautiful prose to induce an altered state of consciousness, a buzz. It's a trip, and it will last. --Tim Appelo [via]

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ISBN 9780060917012 (0-06-091701-6, 0060917016)

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Homeland and Other Stories

by Barbara Kingsolver

ISBN 0060917016 (0-06-091701-6)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:

With the same wit and sensitivity that have come to characterize her highly praised and beloved novels Animal Dreams and The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver gives us a rich and emotionally resonant collection of twelve stories. Spreading her memorable characters over landscapes ranging from northern-California to the hills of eastern Kentucky and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, Kingsolver tells stories of hope, momentary joy, and powerful endurance. In every setting, Kingsolver's distinctive voice -- at times comic, but often heartrending -- rings true as she explores the twin themes of family ties and the life choices one must ultimately make alone. Homeland and Other Stories creates a world of love and possibility that readers will want to take as their own.

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ISBN 9780099282198 (0-09-928219-4, 0099282194)

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The Human Stain

by Philip Roth

ISBN 0099282194 (0-09-928219-4)
Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd

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Book summary:

Athena College was snoozing complacently in the Berkshires until Coleman Silk--formerly "Silky Silk," undefeated welterweight pro boxer--strode in and shook the place awake. This faculty dean sacked the deadwood, made lots of hot new hires, including Yale-spawned literary-theory wunderkind Delphine Roux, and pissed off so many people for so many decades that now, in 1998, they've all turned on him. Silk's character assassination is partly owing to what the novel's narrator, Nathan Zuckerman, calls "the Devil of the Little Place--the gossip, the jealousy, the acrimony, the boredom, the lies."

But shocking, intensely dramatized events precipitate Silk's crisis. He remarks of two students who never showed up for class, "Do they exist or are they spooks?" They turn out to be black, and lodge a bogus charge of racism exploited by his enemies. Then, at 71, Viagra catapults Silk into "the perpetual state of emergency that is sexual intoxication," and he ignites an affair with an illiterate janitor, Faunia Farley, 34. She's got a sharp sensibility, "the laugh of a barmaid who keeps a baseball bat at her feet in case of trouble," and a melancholy voluptuousness. "I'm back in the tornado," Silk exults. His campus persecutors burn him for it--and his main betrayer is Delphine Roux.

In a short space, it's tough to convey the gale-force quality of Silk's rants, or the odd effect of Zuckerman's narration, alternately retrospective and torrentially in the moment. The flashbacks to Silk's youth in New Jersey are just as important as his turbulent forced retirement, because it turns out that for his entire adult life, Silk has been covering up the fact that he is a black man. (If this seems implausible, consider that the famous New York Times book critic Anatole Broyard did the same thing.) Young Silk rejects both the racism that bars him from Woolworth's counter and the Negro solidarity of Howard University. "Neither the they of Woolworth's nor the we of Howard" is for Coleman Silk. "Instead the raw I with all its agility. Self-discovery--that was the punch to the labonz.... Self-knowledge but concealed. What is as powerful as that?"

Silk's contradictions power a great Philip Roth novel, but he's not the only character who packs a punch. Faunia, brutally abused by her Vietnam vet husband (a sketchy guy who seems to have wandered in from a lesser Russell Banks novel), scarred by the death of her kids, is one of Roth's best female characters ever. The self-serving Delphine Roux is intriguingly (and convincingly) nutty, and any number of minor characters pop in, mouth off, kick ass, and vanish, leaving a vivid sense of human passion and perversity behind. You might call it a stain. --Tim Appelo [via]

More editions of The Human Stain:

The Human Stain: ISBN 0099282194 (0-09-928219-4)
Softcover, Random House Uk Ltd

ISBN 9780140097054 (0-14-009705-8, 0140097058)

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In the Country of Last Things

by Paul Auster

ISBN 0140097058 (0-14-009705-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

In a distant and unsettling future, Anna Blume is on a mission in an unnamed city of chaos and disaster. Its destitute inhabitants scavenge garbage for food and shelter, no industry exists, and an elusive government provides nothing but corruption. Anna wades through the filth to find her long-lost brother, a one-time journalist who may or may not be alive.

New York Times-bestselling author Paul Auster (The New York Trilogy) shows us a disturbing Hobbesian society in this dystopian, post-apocalyptic novel.

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In the Country of Last Things: ISBN 0140097058 (0-14-009705-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780020412403 (0-02-041240-1, 0020412401)

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Little Women

by Louisa May Alcott, Kevin McIntyre

ISBN 0020412401 (0-02-041240-1)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Book summary:

The girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's; and to both parents ... they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death.

Pretty Meg, tomboy Jo, shy Beth, and vain Amy, the four March sisters, are as different as sisters can be, but more devoted and loyal sisters you'll never find. For though the March girls fight, tease, nag, and scold as all sisters do, they do so with the knowledge that nothing is as precious as a sister's love. Discover the magic of family in the first part of this classic novel cherished by young girls everywhere.

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ISBN 9780143111979 (0-14-311197-3, 0143111973)

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Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War

by Nathaniel Philbrick

ISBN 0143111973 (0-14-311197-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

Nathaniel Philbrick became an internationally renowned author with his National Book Award? winning In the Heart of the Sea , hailed as ?spellbinding? by Time magazine. In Mayflower , Philbrick casts his spell once again, giving us a fresh and extraordinarily vivid account of our most sacred national myth: the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of Plymouth Colony. From the Mayflower ?s arduous Atlantic crossing to the eruption of King Philip?s War between colonists and natives decades later, Philbrick reveals in this electrifying history of the Pilgrims a fifty-five-year epic, at once tragic and heroic, that still resonates with us today. [via]

More editions of Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War:

Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War: ISBN 0143111973 (0-14-311197-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780140280463 (0-14-028046-4, 0140280464)

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My Year of Meats

by Ruth L. Ozeki

ISBN 0140280464 (0-14-028046-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:

At first glance, a novel that promises to expose the unethical practices of the American meat industry may not be at the top of your reading list, but Ruth Ozeki's debut, My Year of Meats is well worth a second look. Like the author, the novel's protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, is a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker; like Ozeki, who was once commissioned by a beef lobbying group to make television shows for the Japanese market, Jane is invited to work on a Japanese television show meant to encourage beef consumption via the not-so-subliminal suggestion that prime rib equals a perfect family:

TO: AMERICAN RESEARCH STAFF
FROM: Tokyo Office
DATE: January 5, 1991
RE: My American Wife!...

Here is list of IMPORTANT THINGS for My American Wife!

DESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Attractiveness, wholesomeness, warm personality
2. Delicious meat recipe (NOTE: Pork and other meats is second class meats, so please remember this easy motto: "Pork is Possible, but Beef is Best!")
3. Attractive, docile husband
4. Attractive, obedient children
5. Attractive, wholesome lifestyle
6. Attractive, clean house...

UNDESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Physical imperfections
2. Obesity
3. Squalor
4. Second class peoples

The series, My American Wife!, initally seems like a dream come true for Jane as she criss-crosses the United States filming a different American family each week for her Japanese audience. Naturally, the emphasis is on meat, and Ozeki has fun with out-there recipes such as rump roast in coke and beef fudge; but as Jane becomes more familiar with her subject, she becomes increasingly aware of the beef industry's widespread practice of using synthetic estrogens on their cattle and determines to sabotage the program.

Cut to Tokyo where Akiko Ueno struggles through the dull misery of life with her brutish husband, who happens to be in charge of the show's advertising. After seeing one of Jane's subversive episodes about a vegetarian lesbian couple, Akiko gets in touch and the two women plot to expose the meat industry's hazardous practices. Romance, humor, intrigue, and even a message--My Year of Meats has it all. This is a book that even a vegetarian would love. [via]

More editions of My Year of Meats:

My Year of Meats: ISBN 0140280464 (0-14-028046-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

ISBN 9780030554544 (0-03-055454-3, 0030554543)

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass

ISBN 0030554543 (0-03-055454-3)
Hardcover, Holt Rinehart & Winston

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Book summary:

The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Slaves; Abolitionists; African American abolitionists; Slaves - United States; Abolitionists - United States; Douglass, Frederick; History / United States / General; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies; Biography [via]

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: ISBN 0030554543 (0-03-055454-3)
Hardcover, Holt Rinehart & Winston

Douglass, Frederick: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas: An American Slave

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

by Frederick Douglass

ISBN 0131166158 (0-13-116615-8)
Softcover, Pearson Prentice Hall

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Book summary:

Published in 1845, this autobiography powerfully details the life of the internationally famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass from his birth into slavery in 1818 to his escape to the North in 1838 - how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In his introduction, Houston A. Baker, Jr., discusses the slave narrative as a distinct American literary genre and points out its social, political, historical, and literary significance, past and present. [via]

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ISBN 9780300088311 (0-300-08831-0, 0300088310)

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave : Written by Himself

by John W. Blassingame, John R. McKivigan, Peter P. Hinks, Frederick Douglass

ISBN 0300088310 (0-300-08831-0)
Hardcover, Yale University Press

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Book summary:

In 1845, just seven years after his escape from slavery, the young Frederick Douglass published this powerful account of his life in bondage and his triumph over oppression. The book, which marked the beginning of Douglass's career as an impassioned writer, journalist, and orator for the abolitionist cause, reveals the terrors he faced as a slave, the brutalities of his owners and overseers, and his harrowing escape to the North. It has become a classic of American autobiography. This edition of the book, based on the authoritative text that appears in Yale University Press's multivolume edition of the Frederick Douglass Papers, is the only edition of Douglass's Narrative designated, as an Approved Text by the Modern Language Association's Committee on Scholarly Editions. It includes a chronology of Douglass's life, a thorough introduction by the eminent Douglass scholar John Blassingame, historical notes, and reader responses to the first edition of 1845. [via]

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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave : Written by Himself: ISBN 0300088310 (0-300-08831-0)
Hardcover, Yale University Press

ISBN 9780143035398 (0-14-303539-8, 0143035398)

The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America

by Adrian Wooldridge, John Micklethwait

ISBN 0143035398 (0-14-303539-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America: ISBN 0143035398 (0-14-303539-8)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry

by Lary May

ISBN 0226511731 (0-226-51173-1)
Softcover, Univ of Chicago Pr

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The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

by Ernest Hemingway

ISBN 0020518609 (0-02-051860-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: ISBN 0020518609 (0-02-051860-9)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

ISBN 9780224618014 (0-224-61801-6, 0224618016)

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Slaughter House Five

by Kurt Vonnegut

ISBN 0224618016 (0-224-61801-6)
Hardcover, Cape

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Kurt Vonnegut's absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore. In a plot-scrambling display of virtuosity, we follow Pilgrim simultaneously through all phases of his life, concentrating on his (and Vonnegut's) shattering experience as an American prisoner of war who witnesses the firebombing of Dresden.

Don't let the ease of reading fool you--Vonnegut's isn't a conventional, or simple, novel. He writes, "There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick, and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters..." Slaughterhouse-Five (taken from the name of the building where the POWs were held) is not only Vonnegut's most powerful book, it is as important as any written since 1945. Like Catch- 22, it fashions the author's experiences in the Second World War into an eloquent and deeply funny plea against butchery in the service of authority. Slaughterhouse-Five boasts the same imagination, humanity, and gleeful appreciation of the absurd found in Vonnegut's other works, but the book's basis in rock-hard, tragic fact gives it a unique poignancy--and humor. [via]

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Slaughter House Five: ISBN 0224618016 (0-224-61801-6)
Hardcover, Cape

ISBN 9780075536666 (0-07-553666-8, 0075536668)

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The Sound and the Fury

by William Faulkner

ISBN 0075536668 (0-07-553666-8)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

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The ostensible subject of The Sound and the Fury is the dissolution of the Compsons, one of those august old Mississippi families that fell on hard times and wild eccentricity after the Civil War. But in fact what William Faulkner is really after in his legendary novel is the kaleidoscope of consciousness--the overwrought mind caught in the act of thought. His rich, dark, scandal-ridden story of squandered fortune, incest (in thought if not in deed), madness, congenital brain damage, theft, illegitimacy, and stoic endurance is told in the interior voices of three Compson brothers: first Benjy, the "idiot" man-child who blurs together three decades of inchoate sensations as he stalks the fringes of the family's former pasture; next Quentin, torturing himself brilliantly, obsessively over Caddy's lost virginity and his own failure to recover the family's honor as he wanders around the seedy fringes of Boston; and finally Jason, heartless, shrewd, sneaking, nursing a perpetual sense of injury and outrage against his outrageous family.

If Benjy's section is the most daringly experimental, Jason's is the most harrowing. "Once a bitch always a bitch, what I say," he begins, lacing into Caddy's illegitimate daughter, and then proceeds to hurl mud at blacks, Jews, his sacred Compson ancestors, his glamorous, promiscuous sister, his doomed brother Quentin, his ailing mother, and the long-suffering black servant Dilsey who holds the family together by sheer force of character.

Notoriously "difficult," The Sound and the Fury is actually one of Faulkner's more accessible works once you get past the abrupt, unannounced time shifts--and certainly the most powerful emotionally. Everything is here: the complex equilibrium of pre-civil rights race relations; the conflict between Yankee capitalism and Southern agrarian values; a meditation on time, consciousness, and Western philosophy. And all of it is rendered in prose so gorgeous it can take your breath away. Here, for instance, Quentin recalls an autumnal encounter back home with the old black possum hunter Uncle Louis:

And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless October, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dogs and to the echo of Louis' voice dying away. He never raised it, yet on a still night we have heard it from our front porch. When he called the dogs in he sounded just like the horn he carried slung on his shoulder and never used, but clearer, mellower, as though his voice were a part of darkness and silence, coiling out of it, coiling into it again. WhoOoooo. WhoOoooo. WhoOooooooooooooooo.

What Faulkner has created is a modernist epic in which characters assume the stature of gods and the primal family events resonate like myths. It is The Sound and the Fury that secures his place in what Edmund Wilson called "the full-dressed post-Flaubert group of Conrad, Joyce, and Proust." --David Laskin [via]

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The Sound and the Fury: ISBN 0075536668 (0-07-553666-8)
Softcover, McGraw-Hill College

V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II

by John Morton Blum

ISBN 0156936283 (0-15-693628-3)
Softcover, Harcourt

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Book summary:

A distinguished historian examines the nations involvement in a war that most americans thought necessary and righteous. He focuses on the home front: how our culture and politics affected the course of the war and how the war in turn affected us. Index.

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ISBN 9780060955724 (0-06-095572-4, 0060955724)

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Walden

by Henry David Thoreau

ISBN 0060955724 (0-06-095572-4)
Softcover, HarperCollins Canada, Limited

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Walden is Thoreau's classic autobiographical account of his experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth, and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him. This new edition traces the sources of Thoreau's reading and thinking and considers the author in the context of his birthplace and sense of history--social, economic, and natural. An ecological appendix provides modern identifications of the myriad plants and animals to which he gave close attention as he became acclimated to his life in the woods by Walden Pond. [via]

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ISBN 9780300110081 (0-300-11008-1, 0300110081)

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Walden

by Henry D. Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer, Denis Donoghue

ISBN 0300110081 (0-300-11008-1)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr

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Book summary:

This handsome, affordable paperback edition of Walden is the most authoritative version of Henry David Thoreaus classic American literarymasterpiece to date. Jeffrey Cramers newly edited text is based on the original 1854 edition of Walden, with emendations taken from Thoreaus draft manuscripts, his own markings on page proofs, and notes in his personal copy of the book. An elegantly produced paperback, it has been priced especially with the student market in mind. An introduction by Denis Donoghue places Thoreaus life and achievement in context. Also included here are notes on the text, an afterword by the editor, and a helpful selected bibliography.

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Walden: ISBN 0300110081 (0-300-11008-1)
Softcover, Yale Univ Pr

ISBN 9780140390445 (0-14-039044-8, 0140390448)

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Walden and Civil Disobedience

by Henry David Thoreau, Michael Meyer

ISBN 0140390448 (0-14-039044-8)
Softcover, Penguin USA

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Book summary:

'If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.' Disdainful of America's growing commercialism and industrialism, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 to live in solitude in the woods by Walden Pond. Walden, the classic account of his stay there, conveys at once a naturalist's wonder at the commonplace and a Transcendentalist's yearning for spiritual truth and self-reliance. But even as Thoreau disentangled himself from worldly matters, his solitary musings were often disturbed by his social conscience. 'Civil Disobedience', expressing his antislavery and antiwar sentiments, has influenced nonviolent resistance movements worldwide. Michael Meyer's introduction points out that Walden is not so much an autobiographical study as a 'shining example' of Transcendental individualism. So, too, 'Civil Disobedience' is less a call to political activism than a statement of Thoreau's insistence on living a life of principle. [via]

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Walden and Civil Disobedience: ISBN 0140390448 (0-14-039044-8)
Softcover, Penguin USA

ISBN 9780020547204 (0-02-054720-X, 002054720X)

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Walden, or Life in the Woods, and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience

by Henry David Thoreau, Charles R. Anderson

ISBN 002054720X (0-02-054720-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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Walden, or Life in the Woods, and on the Duty of Civil Disobedience: ISBN 002054720X (0-02-054720-X)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

ISBN 9780192835185 (0-19-283518-1, 0192835181)

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Washington Square

by Henry James

ISBN 0192835181 (0-19-283518-1)
Softcover, Oxford Univ Pr

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Washington Square (1881), by Henry James, tells the story of Catherine Sloper, the plain, obedient daughter of the widowed, well-to-do Dr. August Sloper of Washington Square. When a handsome, feckless man-about-town proposes to Catherine, her father forbids the marriage because he believes the man to be after Catherine's fortune and future inheritance. The conflict between father, daughter, and suitor provokes consequences in the lives of all three that make this story one of James's most piercingly memorable. [via]

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ISBN 9780140077025 (0-14-007702-2, 0140077022)

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White Noise

by Don Delillo

ISBN 0140077022 (0-14-007702-2)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Winner of the National Book Award in 1985, White Noise is the story of Jack and Babette and their children from their six or so various marriages. They live in a college town where Jack is Professor of Hitler Studies (and conceals the fact that he does not speak a word of German), and Babette teaches posture and volunteers by reading from the tabloids to a group of elderly shut-ins. They are happy enough until a deadly toxic accident and Babette's addiction to an experimental drug make Jake question everything. White Noise is considered a postmodern classic and its unfolding of themes of consumerism, family and divorce, and technology as a deadly threat have attracted the attention of literary scholars since its publication. This Viking Critical Library edition, prepared by scholar Mark Osteen, is the only edition of White Noise that contains the entire text along with an extensive critical apparatus, including a critical introduction, selected essays on the author, the work and its themes, reviews, a chronology of DeLillo's life and work, a list of discussion topics, and a selected bibliography.

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ISBN 9780060589462 (0-06-058946-9, 0060589469)

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Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

by Robert M. Pirsig

ISBN 0060589469 (0-06-058946-9)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:

In his now classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig brings us a literary chautauqua, a novel that is meant to both entertain and edify. It scores high on both counts.

Phaedrus, our narrator, takes a present-tense cross-country motorcycle trip with his son during which the maintenance of the motorcycle becomes an illustration of how we can unify the cold, rational realm of technology with the warm, imaginative realm of artistry. As in Zen, the trick is to become one with the activity, to engage in it fully, to see and appreciate all details--be it hiking in the woods, penning an essay, or tightening the chain on a motorcycle.

In his autobiographical first novel, Pirsig wrestles both with the ghost of his past and with the most important philosophical questions of the 20th century--why has technology alienated us from our world? what are the limits of rational analysis? if we can't define the good, how can we live it? Unfortunately, while exploring the defects of our philosophical heritage from Socrates and the Sophists to Hume and Kant, Pirsig inexplicably stops at the middle of the 19th century. With the exception of Poincaré, he ignores the more recent philosophers who have tackled his most urgent questions, thinkers such as Peirce, Nietzsche (to whom Phaedrus bears a passing resemblance), Heidegger, Whitehead, Dewey, Sartre, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn. In the end, the narrator's claims to originality turn out to be overstated, his reasoning questionable, and his understanding of the history of Western thought sketchy. His solution to a synthesis of the rational and creative by elevating Quality to a metaphysical level simply repeats the mistakes of the premodern philosophers. But in contrast to most other philosophers, Pirsig writes a compelling story. And he is a true innovator in his attempt to popularize a reconciliation of Eastern mindfulness and nonrationalism with Western subject/object dualism. The magic of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance turns out to lie not in the answers it gives, but in the questions it raises and the way it raises them. Like a cross between The Razor's Edge and Sophie's World, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance takes us into "the high country of the mind" and opens our eyes to vistas of possibility. --Brian Bruya [via]

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