Salida Book Review

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire

2009-02-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

Osman's Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire, by Caroline Finkel. The dramatic history of an empire that shaped the modern world in the first authoritative account written for general readers. According to the Ottoman chronicles, the first sultan, Osman, had a dream in which a tree emerged fully formed from his navel "and its shade compassed the world"-symbolizing the vast empire he and his descendants were destined to forge. His vision was soon realized: At its height, the Ottoman realm extended from Hungary to the Persian Gulf, from North Africa to the Caucasus. The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and most influential empires in world history. For centuries, Europe watched with fear as the Ottomans steadily advanced their rule across the Balkans. Yet travelers and merchants were irresistibly drawn toward Ottoman lands by their fascination with the Orient and the lure of profit. Although it survived for over six centuries, the history of the Ottoman Empire is too often colored by the memory of its bloody final throes. In this magisterial work Caroline Finkel lucidly recounts the epic story of the Ottoman Empire from its origins in the thirteenth century through its destruction on the battlefields of World War I.

Resources For Writers

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America

2006-02-13T20:44:00.001-07:00

Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America, by Karenna Gore Schiff. In this highly readable, illuminating narrative that spans the twentieth century, Karenna Gore Schiff tells the remarkable stories of nine influential women who each in her own way tackled inequity and advocated a change. These women recognized our country wasn't living up to its promise and fought to alter it. The women she's selected are as varied as they are inspirational. Ida B. wells-Barnett, who was born a slave and fought against lynching; Mother Jones, an Irish immigrant who organized coal miners and campaigned against child labor; Alice Hamilton, who pushed for regulation of industrial toxins; Frances Perkins, who established our social secruity program; Virginia Durr, a high society Southern belle who fought the poll tax and segregation; Septima Clark, who helped to register black voters; Dolores Huerta, who organized farm workers; Dr. Helen Rodriguez-Trias, an activist for reproductive rights; and Gretchen Buchenholz, currently one of the nation's leading child advocates.

Karenna Gore Schiff delivers an intimate and accessible account of the nine trail-blazing women who deserve not only to be honored but to have their example serve as a guiding light for activists and leaders of tomorrow. Karenna Gore Schiff is the eldest daughter of Al and Tipper Gore. She is the director of community affairs for the Association to Benefit Children, a children's advocacy organization. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. This is her first book.

Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning

2006-02-13T20:33:00.001-07:00

Cass Turnbull's Guide to Pruning, by Cass Turnbull and Kate Allen. Nothing about pruning is obvious; in fact, most of it is downright counterintuitive, says expert Cass Turnbull. This second edition of her definitive illustrated guide adds 40 percent new material, with more coverage of different kinds of trees, shrubs, and ground covers and how to prune them for health and aesthetics. The book is organized around the most common types of plants found in Northwest gardens: evergreen and deciduous shrubs; bamboos and tea roses; rhododendrons, camellia and other tree-like shrubs; hedge plants like boxwood and heather; clematis, wisteria and all those vines; and detailed information on trees by species from dogwoods to weeping cherries. In her trademark witty style, Turnbull also addresses tools, landscape renovation, and design errors. Included too are her amusing Ten Commandments for gardeners, which feature such treasures as "Thou shalt not weed-whip the trunk of thy tree, nor bash it with thine mower, nor leave anything tied on thy tree or the branches of thy tree, as is done in the land of the philistines."

FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get theThings We Really Want

2006-02-07T20:01:00.001-07:00

FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell, and Get theThings We Really Want, by Daniel Nissanoff. Visionary Internet entrepreneur Daniel Nissanoff breaks the news that the eBay auction phenomenon is about to explode in a big new way, fundamentally revolutionizing the way all consumers--not just Internet mavens--do their shopping both online and offline. As huge as eBay has become--it is now the tenth largest retailer in America--it has only scratched the surface of the potential for online buying and selling: by 2004 only 5 percent of all eBayers had ever sold anything on the site. But that is about to change, dramatically, and the whole world of buying and selling will be transformed.

Nissanoff reveals that a massive growth of new online auction "facilitators," called drop shops, is under way--thousands have opened around the world just this year. As these shops become as pervasive as Starbucks, they will make buying and selling online so hassle free that the masses of consumers who have stayed away thus far will jump aboard. As we do so, a great deal of money will be made. As Nissanoff cites, the closets of the average American household are cluttered with thousands of dollars of value waiting to be found.

With resale so easy and lucrative, we will transform from an "accumulation nation" into an "auction culture" of temporary ownership, in which we buy the goods we most want, even at prices we haven't been able to afford, and then sell them for optimal resale value when we are ready to trade up to the next best thing. We will, in effect, be able to lease the good life.

Building a Straw Bale House: The Red Feather Construction Handbook

2006-02-07T19:55:00.001-07:00

Building a Straw Bale House: The Red Feather Construction Handbook, by Nathaniel Corum, foreward by Jane Goodall. "This book is a timely and important tool for the empowerment of communities facing housing deficits. The Red Feather project is extremely important; it is truly making a difference."—Jane Goodall For more than a decade the Red Feather Development Group, a volunteer-based organization, has built and repaired straw bale houses for Native Americans. Somewhere along the way—and this was certainly not the plan—they created an architectural phenomenon: This inexpensive, environmentally sound, easily constructed, and downright beautiful form of building has, for good reason, caught the public's imagination. Here, Red Feather provides a step-by-step, easy-to-follow manual for would-be strawbale builders—indeed, they supply everything you'll need but time, energy, and lots and lots of straw. Informative sections on safety, design, tools, and materials, and case studies picked from over thirty-five Red Feather projects give a comprehensive overview to straw-bale building. But this book is much more than a construction manual. It is also the inspiring story of Red Feather itself, a tale of community action and cooperation that suggests a can-do solution to the growing housing crisis on America's Native American reservations.

The Good Life

2006-02-07T19:49:00.001-07:00

The Good Life, by Jay McInerney. Hailed by Newsweek as “a superb and humane social critic” with, according to The Wall Street Journal, “all the true instincts of a major novelist,” Jay McInerney unveils a story of love, family, conflicting desires, and catastrophic loss in his most powerfully searing work thus far. Clinging to a semiprecarious existence in TriBeCa, Corrine and Russell Calloway have survived a separation and are thoroughly wonderstruck by young twins whose provenance is nothing less than miraculous, even as they contend with the faded promise of a marriage tinged with suspicion and deceit. Meanwhile, several miles uptown and perched near the top of the Upper East Side’s social register, Luke McGavock has postponed his accumulation of wealth in an attempt to recover the sense of purpose now lacking in a life that often gives him pause—especially with regard to his teenage daughter, whose wanton extravagance bears a horrifying resemblance to her mother’s. But on a September morning, brightness falls horribly from the sky, and people worlds apart suddenly find themselves working side by side at the devastated site, feeling lost anywhere else, yet battered still by memory and regret, by fresh disappointment and unimaginable shock. What happens, or should happen, when life stops us in our tracks, or our own choices do? What if both secrets and secret needs, long guarded steadfastly, are finally revealed? What is the good life?

Posed with astonishing understanding and compassion, these questions power a novel rich with characters and events, both comic and harrowing, revelatory about not only New York after the attacks but also the toll taken on those lucky enough to have survived them. Wise, surprising, and, ultimately, heart-stoppingly redemptive, The Good Life captures lives that allow us to see–through personal, social, and moral complexity–more clearly into the heart of things.

Paul McCartney

2006-02-04T10:36:00.001-07:00

Paul McCartney, by Christopher Sandford. Between 1963 and 1970, Paul McCartney sold 160 million albums throughout the world; co-authored with John Lennon twenty-five US and UK number one singles; recorded the first rock album with Rubber Soul and established the concept of rock-as-art with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As a member of the most important rock band ever, Paul McCartney compelled millions of kids to pick up electric guitars and others to burn vinyl. He helped usher in the Swinging Sixties, the Love Generation, rock n' roll's studio era, and left the world dumbfounded when the Fab Four called it quits in the early 70s. However, to this day McCartney remains one of the world's most beloved and respected musicians. McCartney is a tale of self-destruction and epic excess as well as creative genius and brilliant music. The Beatles' bloody in-fighting, the sex, the drugs, and McCartney's extraordinary marriages are revealed here in full. Yet, while the revelations will genuinely astound, this book remains a celebratory feast for millions of fans, capturing the glorious rush of the best songs and revealing the untold stories behind them. McCartney is the definitive biography, charting not only the pop legend, but the man and his era.

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

2006-02-04T10:33:00.001-07:00

Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut, by Mike Mullane. With a testosterone-fueled swagger and a keen eye for particulars, Mullane takes readers into the high-intensity, high-stress world of the shuttle astronaut in this rough-hewn yet charming yarn of low-rent antics, bureaucratic insanity and transcendent beauty. Mullane opens this tale face down on a doctor's table awaiting a colorectal exam that will determine his fitness for astronaut training. "I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses," he writes, setting the tone for the crude and often hilarious story that follows. Chosen as a trainee in 1978, Mullane, a Vietnam vet, quickly finds himself at odds with the buttoned-up post-Apollo NASA world of scientists, technocrats and civilian astronauts he describes as "tree-huggers, dolphin friendly fish eaters, vegetarians, and subscribers to the New York Times." He holds female astronauts in special disregard, though he later grudgingly acknowledges the achievement and heroism of both the civilians and women. The book hits its stride with Mullane's space adventures: a difficult takeoff, the shift into zero gravity, his first view of the Earth from space: "To say the view was overwhelmingly beautiful would be an insult to God." -Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

2006-02-04T10:30:00.001-07:00

Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, by Ayelet Waldman. With wry candor and tender humor, acclaimed novelist Ayelet Waldman has crafted a strikingly beautiful novel for our time, tackling the absurdities of modern life and reminding us why we love some people no matter what. For Emilia Greenleaf, life is by turns a comedy of errors and an emotional minefield. Yes, she’s a Harvard Law grad who married her soul mate. Yes, they live in elegant comfort on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But with her one-and-only, Jack, came a stepson—a know-it-all preschooler named William who has become her number one responsibility every Wednesday afternoon. With William, Emilia encounters a number of impossible pursuits—such as the pursuit of cab drivers who speed away when they see William’s industrial-strength car seat and the pursuit of lactose-free, strawberry-flavored, patisserie-quality cupcakes, despite the fact that William’s allergy is a figment of his over-protective mother’s imagination.

As much as Emilia wants to find common ground with William, she becomes completely preoccupied when she loses her newborn daughter. After this, the sight of any child brings her to tears, and Wednesdays with William are almost impossible. When his unceasing questions turn to the baby’s death, Emilia is at a total loss. Doesn’t anyone understand that self-pity is a full-time job? Ironically, it is only through her blundering attempts to bond with William that she finally heals herself and learns what family really means.

Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back

2006-01-28T14:02:00.001-07:00

Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back, by Norah Vincent. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me) and Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed), Norah Vincent absorbed a cultural experience and reported back on what she observed incognito. For more than a year and a half she ventured into the world as Ned, with an ever-present five o’clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rim glasses, and her own size 111/2 shoes—a perfect disguise that enabled her to observe the world of men as an insider. The result is a sympathetic, shrewd, and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism that’s destined to challenge preconceptions and attract enormous attention.

With her buddies on the bowling league she enjoyed the rough and rewarding embrace of male camaraderie undetectable to an outsider. A stint in a high-octane sales job taught her the gut- wrenching pressures endured by men who would do anything to succeed. She frequented sex clubs, dated women hungry for love but bitter about men, and infiltrated all-male communities as hermetically sealed as a men’s therapy group, and even a monastery. Narrated in her utterly captivating prose style and with exquisite insight, humor, empathy, nuance, and at great personal cost, Norah uses her intimate firsthand experience to explore the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as well as who men are apart from and in relation to women. Far from becoming bitter or outraged, Vincent ended her journey astounded—and exhausted—by the rigid codes and rituals of masculinity. Having gone where no woman (who wasn’t an aspiring or actual transsexual) has gone for any significant length of time, let alone eighteen months, Norah Vincent’s surprising account is an enthralling reading experience and a revelatory piece of anecdotally based gender analysis that is sure to spark fierce and fascinating conversation.

Rasputin's Daughter

2006-01-28T13:47:00.001-07:00

Rasputin's Daughter, by Robert Alexander. With the same riveting historical narrative that made The Kitchen Boy a national bestseller and a book-club favorite, Robert Alexander returns to revolutionary Russia for the harrowing tale of Rasputin’s final days as told by his youthful and bold daughter, Maria. Interrogated by the provisional government on the details of her father’s death, Maria vividly recounts a politically tumultuous Russia, where Rasputin’s powerful influence over the throne is unsettling to all levels of society and the threats to his life are no secret. With vast conspiracies mounting against her father, Maria must struggle with the discovery of Rasputin’s true nature—his unbridled carnal appetites, mysterious relationship with the empress, rumors of involvement in secret religious cults—to save her father from his murderers. Swept away in a plot much larger than the death of one man, Maria finds herself on the cusp of the Russian Revolution itself. With Rasputin’s Daughter, Robert Alexander once again delivers an imaginative and compelling story, fashioned from one of history’s most fascinating characters who, until now, has been virtually unexplored in fiction.

The Hunt Club

2006-01-28T13:41:00.001-07:00

The Hunt Club, by John Lescroart. A federal judge is murdered, found shot to death in his home—together with the body of his mistress. The crime grips San Francisco. To homicide inspector Devin Juhle, it looks at first like a simple case of a wife’s jealousy and rage. But Juhle’s investigation reveals that the judge had powerful enemies...some of whom may have been willing to kill to prevent him from meddling in their affairs. Meanwhile, private investigator Wyatt Hunt, Juhle’s best friend, finds himself smitten with the beautiful and enigmatic Andrea Parisi. A lawyer who recently has become a celebrity as a commentator on Trial TV, Andrea has star power in spades, and seems bound for a national anchor job in New York City. Until Juhle discovers that Andrea, too, had a connection to the judge, along with a client that had everything to gain from the judge’s death.

And then she suddenly disappears....

Cell: A Novel

2006-01-24T20:58:00.001-07:00

Cell: A Novel, by Stephen King. Civilization doesn't end with a bang or a whimper. It ends with a call on your cell phone. What happens on the afternoon of October 1 came to be known as the Pulse, a signal sent though every operating cell phone that turns its user into something...well, something less than human. Savage, murderous, unthinking-and on a wanton rampage. Terrorist act? Cyber prank gone haywire? It really doesn't matter, not to the people who avoided the technological attack. What matters to them is surviving the aftermath. Before long a band of them-"normies" is how they think of themselves-have gathered on the grounds of Gaiten Academy, where the headmaster and one remaining student have something awesome and terrifying to show them on the school's moonlit soccer field. Clearly there can be no escape. The only option is to take them on. CELL is classic Stephen King, a story of gory horror and white-knuckling suspense that makes the unimaginable entirely plausible and totally fascinating.

Being Martha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and Her Amazing Life

2006-01-24T20:51:00.001-07:00

Being Martha: The Inside Story of Martha Stewart and Her Amazing Life, by Lloyd Allen. When Martha's longtime friend and former neighbor Lloyd Allen heard those negative stories, he hardly recognized the generous, fun-loving, and down-to-earth woman he's known and loved for years, and after she was indicted, he told Martha he was going to write this book. With Being Martha, Allen introduces you to the flesh-and-blood woman behind the glamorous public image. Drawing on hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Martha; her family, including her mother, her daughter, Alexis, her sister Laura, and her brother George; and many of her closest friends and colleagues over the years, the author at last shows us the real Martha: an enormously talented, passionate, determined, and hard-working woman who has achieved phenomenal success by inspiring and enriching the lives of millions.

Lloyd Allen weaves together fascinating, never-before-told stories and details from Martha's early years as a model, stockbroker, and caterer, telling the true story of how an always-busy Connecticut homemaker broke through big-time to become the world's most successful businesswoman at the helm of the company that bears her name, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. You'll meet Martha the mentoring teacher and benefactor through the eyes of the many people who view their time with her as the turning point in their careers, even their lives. You'll see Martha's carefree and wild side as she enjoys the simplest things with the excitement and wonder of a kid encountering them for the first time. Allen also describes what Martha really went through during her trial and prison term and how these experiences changed her—making her stronger, more grounded, and more determined than ever to help people learn to enjoy the good things in life. As Martha Stewart begins the next phase of her life, with multiple television shows and new venture after new venture in the works, Being Martha is a must-read for her legion of fans—and for anyone who wants to understand the real Martha Kostyra Stewart.

In the Company of Flowers

2006-01-24T20:48:00.001-07:00

In the Company of Flowers, by Ron Morgan and Keith Lewis. This beautiful book presents a detailed, step-by-step approach to creating unique and elegant table settings. Using a dramatic floral arrangement as the centerpiece, Ron Morgan shows how to maximize the overall effect through the creative use of props and everyday decorative items. Over 220 colorful photographs detail 70 table settings that are inexpensive to create yet have high visual and decorative impact. The book includes a wealth of practical advice, including when to cut flowers, how to make them last longer, choosing the right container, acceptable substitutions, finishing touches, and much more.

Dave Barry's Money Secrets

2006-01-18T09:22:00.001-07:00

Dave Barry's Money Secrets: Like: Why Is There a Giant Eyeball on the Dollar? by Dave Barry. Did you ever wish that you really understood money? Well, Dave Barry wishes that he did, too. But that hasn’t stopped him from writing this book. In it, Dave explores (as only he can) such topics as:

• How the U.S. economy works, including the often overlooked role of Adam Sandler
• Why it is not a good idea to use squirrels for money
• Strategies that will give you the confidence you need to try for a good job, even though you are—let’s be honest—a no-talent loser
• How corporate executives, simply by walking into their offices, immediately become much stupider
• An absolutely foolproof system for making money in the stock market, requiring only a little effort (and access to time travel)
• Surefire tips for buying and selling real estate, the key being: Never buy—or, for that matter, sell—real estate
• How to minimize your federal taxes, safely and legally, by cheating
• Why good colleges cost so much, and how to make sure your child does not get into one
• How to reduce the cost of your medical care by basically not getting any
• Estate planning, especially the financial benefits of an early death
• And many, many pictures of Suze Orman

But that’s only the beginning! Dave has also included in this book all of the important points from a book written by Donald Trump, so you don’t have to read it yourself. Plus he explains how to tip, how to negotiate for everything (including bridge tolls), how to argue with your spouse about money, and how much allowance to give your children (three dollars is plenty). He also presents, for the first time in print anywhere, the Car Dealership Code of Ethics (“Ethic Seven: The customer is an idiot”). Also, there are many gratuitous references to Angelina Jolie naked. You can’t afford not to buy this book! Probably you need several copies.

Leonardo's Swans: A Novel

2006-01-18T09:18:00.001-07:00

Leonardo's Swans: A Novel, by Karen Essex. Isabella d’Este, daughter of the Duke of Ferrara, born into privilege and the political and artistic turbulence of Renaissance Italy, is a stunning black-eyed blonde and a precocious lover and collector of art. Worldly and ambitious, she has never envied her less attractive sister, the spirited but naïve Beatrice, until, by a quirk of fate, Beatrice is betrothed to the future Duke of Milan. Although he is more than twice their age, openly lives with his mistress, and is reputedly trying to eliminate the current duke by nefarious means, Ludovico Sforza is Isabella’s match in intellect and passion for all things of beauty. Only he would allow her to fulfill her destiny: to reign over one of the world’s most powerful and enlightened realms and be immortalized in oil by the genius Leonardo da Vinci.

Though Isabella weds the Marquis of Mantua, a man she has loved since childhood, Beatrice’s fortunes rise effortlessly through her marriage to Ludovico. The two sisters compete for supremacy in the illustrious courts of Europe, and Isabella vows that she will not rest until she wrestles back her true fate and plays temptress to the sensuous Ludovico and muse to the great Leonardo. But when Ludovico’s grand plan to control Europe begins to crumble, immortality through art becomes a luxury, and the two sisters must choose between familial loyalty and survival in the treacherous political climate.

Leonardo’s Swans is an exceptionally vivid evocation of the artist during his years in the glittering court of Milan, re-creating the thrilling moments when he conceived The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. It portrays a genius ahead of his time who can rarely escape the demands of his noble patrons long enough to express his own artistic vision. A haunting novel of rivalry, love, and betrayal that transports readers back to Renaissance Italy, Leonardo’s Swans will have you dashing to the works of the great painter—not for clues to a mystery but to contemplate the secrets of the human heart.

The World to Come

2006-01-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

The World to Come, by Dara Horn. A million-dollar painting by Marc Chagall is stolen from a museum. The unlikely thief is Benjamin Ziskind, a thirty-year-old quiz-show writer. As Benjamin and his twin sister try to evade the police, they find themselves recalling their dead parents—the father who lost a leg in Vietnam, the mother who created children's books—and their stories about trust, loss, and betrayal. What is true, what is fake, what does it mean? Eighty years before the theft, these questions haunted Chagall and the enigmatic Yiddish fabulist Der Nister ("The Hidden One"), teachers at a school for Jewish orphans. Both the painting and the questions will travel through time to shape the Ziskinds' futures.

With astonishing grace and simplicity, Dara Horn interweaves a real art heist, history, biography, theology, and Yiddish literature. Richly satisfying, utterly unique, her novel opens the door to "the world to come"—not life after death, but the world we create through our actions right now. Dara Horn, born in 1977, is a doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Yiddish literature at Harvard University. Her first novel, In the Image, received three national awards including the National Jewish Book Award. She lives in New York City.

State of the World 2006

2006-01-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

State of the World 2006, by The Worldwatch Institute. In State of the World 2006, the Worldwatch Institute's award-winning research team provides concerned citizens and national leaders with comprehensive analysis of the global environmental problems we face, together with detailed descriptions of practical, innovative solutions, like the increased demand for meat production and consumption, growing awareness of corporate social responsibility, the booming industry of ecotourism, and the ethics and application of nanotechnology. Written in clear and concise language, with easy-to-read charts and tables, State of the World 2006 presents a view of our changing world that we, and our leaders, cannot afford to ignore. The Worldwatch Institute is a Washington, DC-based, nonprofit research and publishing organization dedicated to fostering the evolution of an environmentally sustainable society.

Purity of Blood

2006-01-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Purity of Blood, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. Arturo Perez-Reverte is one of the most beloved writers in the world. His bestselling novels, including The Club Dumas and The Queen of the South, have been published in fifty countries and translated into twenty-eight languages. Now, with The Adventures of Captain Alatriste, he delivers a magnificent series, already a million-copy bestseller in Spain, that chronicles the heroic adventures of a seventeenth-century swordsman. In Purity of Blood, the second novel in the series, the courageous Alatriste is considering rejoining his old regiment to fight in Breda-but his blade leads him to another adventure. A desperate father hires him to rescue his daughter from a convent where a powerful priest is said to be using the girl as his personal concubine. The father has been prevented from legal recourse because the priest has threatened to reveal that the man's family is "not of pure blood"-is, in fact, of Jewish descent -which will all but destroy the family name. Alatriste agrees to help, and several nights later, under the cloak of darkness, a rescue attempt is made.

But soon Alatriste discovers that he has become part of a religious and political conspiracy that leads all the way to the highest levels of the Inquisition. When a date is set to burn the man's daughter at the stake, Captain Alatriste springs into action -sword first-setting off a series of twists and turns that will keep readers riveted to the page. Translation by Margaret Sayers Peden. Arturo Perez-Reverte lives near Madrid. Originally a war journalist, he now writes fiction full-time. His novels have been published in fifty countries. In 2002, he was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy.

Gilead: A Novel

2006-01-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Gilead: A Novel, by Marilynne Robinson. Twenty-four years after her first novel, Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson returns with an intimate tale of three generations from the Civil War to the twentieth century: a story about fathers and sons and the spiritual battles that still rage at America's heart. Writing in the tradition of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, Marilynne Robinson's beautiful, spare, and spiritual prose allows "even the faithless reader to feel the possibility of transcendent order" (Slate). In the luminous and unforgettable voice of Congregationalist minister John Ames, Gilead reveals the human condition and the often unbearable beauty of an ordinary life.

Life in the Undergrowth

2006-01-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

Life in the Undergrowth, by David Attenborough. An insect disguises itself as a flower or leaf. A spider lassoes its prey. A beetle persuades a bee to care for its young. This beautifully illustrated book by veteran naturalist Sir David Attenborough offers a rare glimpse into the secret life of invertebrates, the world's tiniest--and most fascinating--creatures. Small by virtue of their lack of backbones, this group of living things plays a surprisingly large role in the evolutionary cycle. These diverse creatures (more than one million species are believed to exist) roamed the earth before us and will still be here when we have gone. They are the pollinators, cleaners, and recyclers of life on earth. Without them, we would not last long. Attenborough has studied and enjoyed these diminutive beings since he was a schoolboy in the Leicestershire countryside of England. Life in the Undergrowth, part of his innovative series on natural history topics, looks at invertebrates the world over: their arrival on land and mastery of every habitat, and their fantastic variety of hunting, mating, and highly organized social behaviors. Adults are prejudiced against insects--handicapped by their ignorance and fears and limited by their size and vision. Children, who are closer to insects in size, notice and enjoy the tiny creatures. In this companion book to the Animal Planet television program, Attenborough shares his childlike curiosity for invertebrates, taking us down wormholes and into insect homes for an up-close-and-personal look at their habitats. As the biblical book of Proverbs implores: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard: consider her ways and be wise." David Attenborough does go. It is worth going with him.

The Saddest Place on Earth: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia

2006-01-14T07:57:00.000-07:00

The Saddest Place on Earth: The Art of Camille Rose Garcia, by Camille Rose Garcia. These newest works by Camille Rose Garcia examine ideas of decadence, deception, and denial explored within the context of Empire. It serves as a looking glass into the everyday violence that supports the current power structure and prescribes a glitter coated pill to ease the swallowing. The effect of the pill, once digested, depends upon the viewer. The Saddest Place on Earth is beautiful, the ballroom of an Empire, a forest of aquamarine jewels, a place where cream layered cakes, crystal castles, and opiate abundance serve to sedate the masses. But as the telescope retracts, the glossy veneer of privilege falls away to reveal another reality. Machine guns and machetes decorate the landscape alongside exploding poppies. Deer and Princesses hang suspensefully in a cloud of malaise, and disbelief becomes the ether of the living. The Saddest Place on Earth is opulent wallpaper of destruction that decorates our lives. Its surface is seductive, its layers complex, and its future uncertain. Camille Rose Garcia draws inspiration for her creepy distopias from her upbringing in the generic suburbs of Orange County. Her disenchantment with society brought her into a world of subversive art and music. Garcia's work has appeared in Juxtapoz, Paper, Flaunt, and Blab and is shown at galleries throughout the United States.

The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music

2006-01-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music, by Ted Libbey. A jam-packed, 11-year undertaking of 928 pages, 1,500 entries, and over 1,000 recommended recordings, The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia is an everything-you-need-to-know bible for the classical music lover. Written with infectious enthusiasm by Ted Libbey, author of The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, with 174,000 copies in print, this is an encyclopedia with wit and verve, covering those terms, works, composers, and performers that NPR listeners and concertgoers are most likely to encounter. In addition, buyers of the book will receive a password that opens the door to an interactive Web site, created in a partnership with the classical music powerhouse, Naxos, that allows them to listen to 600 examples of works, techniques, and performers discussed and cross-referenced in the book. This is the first interactive encyclopedia of music! Libbey, a spirited, selective guide, writes “lyrically and lucidly about music and music makers” (Chicago Tribune) and knows how to ground abstract ideas in the real. How does it work? Look up barcarolle, and he not only defines the term vividly (“the melody is a gentle, rocking rhythm suggestive of the swaying of a boat”) but suggests three exemplary pieces of music to listen to—Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, and Chopin’s Barcarolle. Then go to the Web site and hear what he’s writing about.

What is the tonic? Why is there such a satisfying psychological impact at the end of a sonata? Who is Thomas Tallis? What is the idea behind Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, and was there ever an ill-tempered clavier? For the music lover, impossible to put down. Ted Libbey is one of America's most highly regarded music critics. A former music critic for The New York Times, he is known to millions of NPR listeners as curator of the Basic Radio Library on "Performance Today." Mr. Libbey is now Director of Media Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.

Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life

2006-01-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life, by Gail Sheehy. A seasoned woman is spicy. She has been marinated in life experience... She can be alternately sweet, tart, bubbly, mellow. She can be maternal and playful. Bossy and submissive. Strong and soft... The seasoned woman knows who she is. She could be any one of us, as long as she is committed to living fully and passionately in the second half of life. In her most groundbreaking work since Passages and The Silent Passage, bestselling author Gail Sheehy reveals a hidden cultural phenomenon–increased vitality in women’s sex and love lives after fifty. Sex and the Seasoned Woman is the story of an intimate revolution taking place under our very noses. Boomer generation women in midlife are open to sex, love, dating, new dreams, exploring spirituality, and revitalizing their marriages as never before. This is a new universe of passionate, liberated women–married and single–who are unwilling to settle for the stereotypical roles of middle age and are now realizing they don’t have to. As life spans grow longer and as societal constraints continue to loosen, older women–once free of the exhausting demands of young children, needy husbands, and demanding careers–find themselves ready to pursue the passionate life. They embrace their “second adulthood” as a period of reawakening.

Written in Sheehy’s singularly compelling style, combining interviews and research, this book gives voice to more than a hundred fascinating and colorful women. The inspiring stories tell of wives who reinvigorate their marriages after their children leave the nest as well as divorced, widowed, and long-single women who find new dreams and new loves. Sheehy delineates a crucial link between cultivating a new dream and reopening the pathway to intimacy and sexual pleasure. She also examines the latest medical breakthroughs addressing symptoms that have unnecessarily curtailed women’s sex lives. From women who find their sexuality reawakened by a younger lover, to couples whose marriages survive health crises and grow stronger, to women who finally find a soulmate in their sixties, to stories from seasoned sirens in their seventies, eighties, and even nineties, these portraits cover an enormous range of experience. In them, Sheehy locates the universal patterns that enable us all to recognize and understand our own lives.

The Judgment of Paris

2006-01-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

The Judgment of Paris, by Ross King. From the acclaimed author of the bestsellers Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo & the Pope’s Ceiling. While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris: The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amidst scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas, would at times resemble a battlefield; and, as Ross King reveals, it would reorder both history and culture, and resonate around the world.

The Judgment of Paris chronicles the dramatic decade between two famous exhibitions: the scandalous Salon des Refusés in 1863, and the first Impressionist showing in 1874, set against the rise and dramatic fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire, after the Franco-Prussian War. A tale of many artists, it revolves around the lives of two, described as "the two poles of art"—Ernest Meissonier, the most famous and successful painter of the 19th century, hailed for his precision and devotion to history; and Edouard Manet, reviled in his time, who nonetheless heralded the most radical change in the history of art since the Renaissance. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel lives, illuminated by their legendary supporters and critics—Zola, Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, Whistler, Monet, Hugo, Degas, and many more—Ross King shows that their contest was not just about Art, it was about how to see the world. With a novelist’s skill and the perception of an historian, King recalls a seminal period when artistic expression had the power to electrify and divide a nation.

The Year of Yes

2006-01-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Year of Yes, by Maria Dahvana Headley. Like many young people everywhere, playwright Maria Headley had had her fill of terrible dates. Discouraged and looking for love, she decided the time had come for her to eliminate her own (clearly not adequately discriminating) taste from the equation. Instead-as she vowed to her roommates one frustrated morning-she would date every person who asked her out for an entire year, regardless of circumstances. It would be her Year of Yes.Leaving her judgment and predispositions at the door, our heroine ventured into a world suddenly brimming with opportunity and found herself saying yes to: The Microsoft Millionaire who still lived with his mom. An actor she had previously sworn off as gay. And finally the significantly older man, divorced with kids, who she never would have looked at twice before the Year of Yes-and to whom she is now happily married.Hilariously funny and ultimately inspirational, The Year of Yes will appeal to every person who has turned down a date for the wrong reason.

Class Act: William Haines Legendary Hollywood Decorator

2006-01-10T21:33:00.000-07:00

Class Act: William Haines Legendary Hollywood Decorator, by Peter Schifando, Jean H. Mathison, Dan Shaw, Stafford Cliff (Creator), Anne Hellman (Editor). Whether you are a fan of Hollywood's golden era, interior design, furniture design, or just great photography, this book will not disappoint you. Authors Schifando and Mathison have lovingly crafted the authorative book on the man who gave up a promising career as an actor (he was the quintessential handsome matinee idol) in the name of love when the studios issued the ultimatinum of "give up your gay lifestyle or else". What the film world lost was a gain to the world of interior design --- Haines was among the most clever of designers and his impact on American interior design has been overshadowed by other, more household-name designers. But luckily for all of us, this gorgeous book rectifies all of that and now we can enjoy the labors of the authors time and time again. Even those not interested in interior design per se will find this book fascinating for its layout and pictorial flow. Kudos to publisher Pointed Leaf Press for making such books available. It will easily become one of your favorite books on Hollywood and interior design!

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68

2006-01-10T10:33:00.000-07:00

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, by Taylor Branch. At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history. In At Canaan's Edge, King and his movement stand at the zenith of America's defining story, one decade into an epic struggle for the promises of democracy. Branch opens with the authorities' violent suppression of a voting-rights march in Alabama on March 7, 1965. The quest to cross Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge engages the conscience of the world, strains the civil rights coalition, and embroils King in negotiations with all three branches of the U.S. government. The marches from Selma coincide with the first landing of large U.S. combat units in South Vietnam. The escalation of the war severs the cooperation of King and President Lyndon Johnson after a collaboration that culminated in the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. After Selma, young pilgrims led by Stokely Carmichael take the movement into adjacent Lowndes County, Alabama, where not a single member of the black majority has tried to vote in the twentieth century. Freedom workers are murdered, but sharecroppers learn to read, dare to vote, and build their own political party. Carmichael leaves in frustration to proclaim his famous black power doctrine, taking the local panther ballot symbol to become an icon of armed rebellion.

Also after Selma, King takes nonviolence into Northern urban ghettoes. Integrated marches through Chicago expose hatreds and fears no less virulent than the Mississippi Klan's, but King's 1966 settlement with Mayor Richard Daley does not gain the kind of national response that generated victories from Birmingham and Selma. We watch King overrule his advisers to bring all his eloquence into dissent from the Vietnam War. We watch King make an embattled decision to concentrate his next campaign on a positive compact to address poverty. We reach Memphis, the garbage workers' strike, and King's assassination. Parting the Waters provided an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness, beginning with the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and ending with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In Pillar of Fire, theologians and college students braved the dangerous Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 as Malcolm X raised a militant new voice for racial separatism. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation by race and mandated equal opportunity for women. From the pinnacle of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, King willed himself back to "the valley" of jail in his daunting Selma campaign. At Canaan's Edge portrays King at the height of his moral power even as his worldly power is waning. It shows why his fidelity to freedom and nonviolence makes him a defining figure long beyond his brilliant life and violent end.

The Accidental: A Novel

2006-01-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

The Accidental: A Novel, by Ali Smith. A finalist for the prestigious Man Booker Prize and the Whitbread Award, The Accidental is the virtuoso new novel by the singularly gifted Ali Smith. Jonathan Safran Foer has called her writing “thrilling.” Jeanette Winterson has praised her for her “style, ideas, and punch.” Here, in a novel at once profound, playful, and exhilaratingly inventive, she transfixes us with a portrait of a family unraveled by a mysterious visitor. Amber—thirtysomething and barefoot—shows up at the door of the Norfolk cottage that the Smarts are renting for the summer. She talks her way in. She tells nothing but lies. She stays for dinner. Eve Smart, the author of a best-selling series of biographical reconstructions, thinks Amber is a student with whom her husband, Michael, is sleeping. Michael, an English professor, knows only that her car broke down. Daughter Astrid, age twelve, thinks she’s her mother’s friend. Son Magnus, age seventeen, thinks she’s an angel.

As Amber insinuates herself into the family, the questions of who she is and how she’s come to be there drop away. Instead, dazzled by her seeming exoticism, the Smarts begin to examine the accidents of their lives through the searing lens of Amber’s perceptions. When Eve finally banishes her from the cottage, Amber disappears from their sight, but not—they discover when they return home to London—from their profoundly altered lives. Fearlessly intelligent and written with an irresistible blend of lyricism and whimsy, The Accidental is a tour de force of literary improvisation that explores the nature of truth, the role of chance, and the transformative power of storytelling.

Ali Smith is the author of six works of fiction, including the novel Hotel World, which was short–listed for both the Orange Prize and the Booker Prize in 2001 and won the Encore Award and the Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award in 2002. Her story collections include Free Love, which won the Saltire Society Scottish First Book Award and a Scottish Arts Council Award, and The Whole Story and Other Stories. Born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962, Smith now lives in Cambridge, England.

The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives

2006-01-10T10:28:00.000-07:00

The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives, by Ted Sargent. What if a doctor could stop cancer by targeting a single malignant cell before it multiplied? Imagine a paper-thin "power suit" that could keep you warm on a winter day. What about a computer that connects directly with a person’s thoughts? In this groundbreaking exploration of the future of nanotechnology, Ted Sargent reveals how all disciplines of science, from medicine to microchips, are converging to create materials using the tiniest scale possible—molecule by molecule. And instead of trying to overcome the natural world, nanotech takes its every move from the perfect, elegant structure of nature itself. Its potential is seemingly endless, with practical implications that will revolutionize the way we live, work, and play. In an age when science often evokes more fear than faith, when the potential for superviruses and diabolical cloning looms in our consciousness, Sargent enthusiastically illuminates nanotech’s positive possibilities. By working with the tiniest building blocks in nature, pioneering scientists will drastically improve the quality of life for all of us.

The United States of Appalachia

2006-01-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

The United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America, by Jeff Biggers. The word Appalachia is seldom uttered in the same sentence with the word enlightenment. More likely, images of the film Deliverance, corncob chomping grannies, or bonafide gun-toting hillbillies come to mind. However, in truth, Appalachia has been a cradle of US freedom, independence, and enlightenment, as well as a region of progressive social history, literature, and music. The United States of Appalachia reveals to us how so many of our nation’s basic freedoms and founding moments grew out of the Appalachias. From the first declaration of independence to the beginnings of folk music, literature, and poetry, Jeff Biggers illuminates with humor, intelligence, and clarity, the many reasons why we all need a lesson in Appalachian history.

Happiness: A History

2006-01-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

Happiness: A History, by Darrin M. McMahon. Darrin M. McMahon's sweeping new book, chronicling the evolution of happiness over two thousand years of Western culture and thought, argues that our modern belief in happiness — that happiness is a natural right — is a relatively recent development. It is a product of a dramatic revolution in human expectations carried out since the eighteenth century. Central to the development of Christianity, ideas of happiness assumed their modern form during the Enlightenment, when men and women were first introduced to the novel prospect that they could — in fact should — be happy in this life as opposed to the hereafter. Ultimately, the Enlightenment's recognition of happiness as a motivating ideal led to its consecration in the Declaration of Independence and France's Declaration of the Rights of Man. McMahon follows this great pursuit through to the present day, showing how our modern search for happiness continues to generate new forms of pleasure, but also, paradoxically, new forms of pain. In the tradition of works by Peter Gay and Simon Schama, Happiness draws on numerous sources, including art and architecture, poetry and scripture, music and theology, literature and myth to offer a sweeping intellectual history of man's most elusive yet coveted goal.

Up the Road: Cycling's Modern Era from LeMond to Armstrong

2006-01-08T16:33:00.000-07:00

Up the Road: Cycling's Modern Era from LeMond to Armstrong, by Samuel Abt and Graham Watson. Preeminent cycling journalist Samuel Abt's distinctive voice has told the stories of countless champions and decisive turning points in the most famous international races since the late 1970s. In this collection of articles originally published in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, Sam profiles three decades of cycling, culminating with the retirement of Lance Armstrong following the 2005 Tour de France. Featuring vivid color photos by Graham Watson, Up the Road immortalizes Lance Armstrong, Greg LeMond, Bobby Julich, Andy Hampsten, and a host of other luminaries.

Hermann Maier: The Race of My Life

2006-01-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

Hermann Maier: The Race of My Life, by Knut Okresek, Lance Armstrong, and Hermann Maier. Hermann "The Herminator" Maier, born in 1972, rose from humble beginnings as a scrawny mason to the heights of sports stardom, skiing to four world champion titles and two gold medals in super-G and giant slalom. All that changed in 2001, when a motorcycle accident threatened to end not only his career but his life. True to his reputation, Maier fought his way back to the slopes and further victories. This compelling biography, which includes insightful text selections by Maier himself, tells a riveting story of flirting with death and dodging it through sheer willpower, of painful recoveries and worldwide triumphs. The dramatic text and many color and black-and-white photographs cover Maier’s highs and lows, including his appearance at the 1998 Olympic Games at Nagano, where he stunned millions in what has become the most notorious downhill crash of all time. This best-selling biography profiles a man who is a superstar in every sense.

The Glass Castle: A Memoir

2006-01-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

The Glass Castle: A Memoir, by Jeannette Walls. The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing -- a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar, but loyal, family. Jeannette Walls has a story to tell, and tells it brilliantly, without an ounce of self-pity.

Eating Stella Style: Low-Carb Recipes for Healthy Living

2006-01-07T09:06:00.000-07:00

Eating Stella Style: Low-Carb Recipes for Healthy Living, by George Stella. George Stella lost more than 250 pounds on a low-carb eating plan and has turned thousands of fans on to Stella Style -- eating fresh, natural foods prepared with minimum effort for maximum taste. In Eating Stella Style, he shows readers how to tailor his recipes to fit any personalized weight-loss plan, whether it's low carb, low fat, or low calorie. He inspires even the most jaded dieters to begin a new eating lifestyle and shows them how to stay on track.

But Eating Stella Style is really about mouthwatering recipes: How does a Hot Ham and Cheese Egg Roll sound for breakfast? Or Strawberry and Mascarpone Cream Crêpes, Stella Style Baked Eggs Benedict, or Coconut Macaroon Muffins? For lunch or dinner, choose Grilled Portabella and Montrachet Salad, Wood-Grilled Oysters with Dill Butter, Kim's Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Lemony White Wine Sauce, Shaved Zucchini Parmesan Salad, or Spaghetti Squash with Clams Provençal Sauce. Satisfy your snack cravings with Better Cheddar Cheese Crisps, Devilish Deviled Eggs with Tuna, or Cheesy Pecan Cookies. And for dessert, try Pumpkin Pound Cake, Lemon Meringue Pie, Honeydew and Blackberry Granita, or Chocolate Pecan Truffles. Perfect for both devoted Stella Style fans and new converts, Eating Stella Style will tempt you with tasty, flexible recipes that satisfy everyone!

The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life

2006-01-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

The Number: A Completely Different Way to Think About the Rest of Your Life, by Lee Eisenberg. The often-avoided, anxiety-riddled discussion about financial planning for a secure and fulfilling future has been given a new starting point in The Number by Lee Eisenberg. The buzz of professionals and financial industry insiders everywhere, the Number represents the amount of money and resources people will need to enjoy the active life they desire, especially post-career. Backed by imaginative reporting and insights, Eisenberg urges people to assume control and responsibility for their standard of living, and take greater aim on their long-term aspirations. In 1999, Eisenberg was in the midst of downshifting from having served as the Editor-in-Chief of Esquire and other high profile positions. He was "half-in, half-out of the workplace" with an enviable consulting position at Time, Inc., and a family comfortably settled in the suburbs. That's when he received an unexpected offer from the Wisconsin-based Lands' End which, in the end, he couldn't resist. It meant uprooting his family and moving to the rural heartland, and taking on the challenges of an entirely new way of life. Before the move, he admits, "I was worried about the Number." Once in Wisconsin, Eisenberg confesses that the "Number was leading us around by our noses."

From Wall Street to Main Street USA, The Number means different things to different people. It is constantly fluctuating in people's minds and bank accounts. To some, the Number symbolizes freedom, validation of career success, the ticket to luxurious indulgences and spiritual exploration; to others, it represents the bewildering and nonsensical nightmare of an impoverished existence creeping up on them in their old age, a seemingly hopeless inevitability that they would rather simply ignore than confront. People are highly private and closed-mouthed when it comes to discussing their Numbers, or lack thereof, for fear they might either reveal too much or display ineptitude. In The Number, Eisenberg describes this secret anxiety as the "Last Taboo," a conundrum snared in confusing financial lingo. He sorts through the fancy jargon and translates the Number into commonsense advice that resonates just as easily with the aging gods and goddesses of corporate boardrooms as it does with ordinary people who are beginning to realize that retirement is now just a couple of decades away. Believing that the Number is as much about self-worth as it is net worth, Eisenberg strives to help readers better understand and more efficiently manage all aspects of their life, money, and pursuit of happiness.

Alphabetica: An A-Z Creativity Guide for Collage and Book Artists

2006-01-05T21:36:00.000-07:00

Alphabetica: An A-Z Creativity Guide for Collage and Book Artists, by Lynne Perrella. Mixed media techniques have come to forefront again, with artists in every field combining materials and effects to create journals, altered art, collage pieces, memory art and more. With all the creative experiementation developing at such a fast pace, it is pertinent to know how various techniques and combinations work and whether they are right for your latest project. Alphabetica illuminates new techniques through detailed visuals and rich, explanatory text. From cover to cover, readers absorb the specialties of each contributing artist, such as Judi Riesch's use of vintage photographs, and Lesley Riley's sophisticated fabric transfers, and are able to get an "over the shoulder" glance at how these artists work. Lynne Perrella is on the editorial advisory board of Somerset Studio magazine, a bi-monthly paper arts magazine, and Legacy, a new quarterly publication that features articles about using family history and memorabilia to create unique works of art. Her work appears regularly in a variety of publications that feature collage, assemblage, and written features on the Arts. She is the author of Artists' Journals and Sketchbooks (Rockport, 2004) and True Colors (Stampington and Company, February 2003). She lives in Ancramdale, New York.

Second Act Trouble: Behind the Scenes at Broadway's Big Musical Bombs

2006-01-05T09:33:00.000-07:00

Second Act Trouble: Behind the Scenes at Broadway's Big Musical Bombs, by Steven Suskin. If Broadway's triumphant musical hits are exhilarating, the backstage tales of Broadway failures are tantalizing soap operas in miniature. Second Act Trouble puts you with the creators in the rehearsal halls, at out-of-town tryouts, in late-night, hotel-room production meetings, and at after-the-fact recriminatory gripe fests. Suskin has compiled and annotated long-forgotten, first-person accounts of 25 Broadway musicals that stubbornly went awry. Contributions come from such respected writers as Patricia Bosworth, Mel Gussow, Lehman Engel, William Gibson, Lewis H. Lapham, and John Gruen. No mere vanity productions, these; you can't have a big blockbuster of failure, it seems, without the participation of Broadway's biggest talents. Caught in the stranglehold of tryout turmoil are Richard Rodgers, Jule Styne, Jerry Herman, Cy Coleman, Charles Strouse, John Kander, Mel Brooks, and even Edward Albee. The infamous shows featured include Mack and Mabel; Breakfast at Tiffany's; The Act; Dude; Golden Boy; Hellzapoppin'; Nick and Nora; Seesaw; Kelly; and How Now, Dow Jones.

Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison

2006-01-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

Here Comes the Sun: The Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison, by Joshua M. Greene. In this intimate biography, Joshua M. Greene sheds new light on the most mysterious of the Beatles. Greene knew George Harrison and has remained in touch with people who were close to him, including many of his closest friends. Drawing on scores of previously unpublished transcripts of recorded conversations and first-hand accounts, Greene gives us an unprecedented close-up portrait, offering fresh insights into Harrison’s underrated contribution to the Beatles’ music, his spiritual awakening through Indian music and meditation, and his efforts to spread spirituality through his solo career. Here Comes the Sun also includes fresh new anecdotes about Harrison and other musical greats, including Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley. Written with a you-are-there immediacy and complete with 20 pages of rare photographs, Here Comes the Sun is an insightful, thought-provoking look at the inner life of one of history’s most beloved artists–sure to be a hit with Beatles fans and all those interested in an extraordinary spiritual journey.

Joshua M. Greene (Long Island, NY) is the author of two acclaimed biographies and the producer of numerous award-winning films. His articles have appeared in print media internationally, and his books on the Holocaust were adapted for broadcast on PBS and the Discovery channel.

Kafka on the Shore

2006-01-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami. With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle–yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own. Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world’s truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.

The Pale Horseman

2006-01-02T17:11:00.000-07:00

The Pale Horseman, by Bernard Cornwell. Uhtred is a Saxon, cheated of his inheritance and adrift in a world of fire, sword, and treachery. He has to make a choice: whether to fight for the Vikings, who raised him, or for King Alfred the Great of Wessex, who dislikes him. In the late ninth century, Wessex is the last English kingdom. The rest have fallen to the Danish Vikings, a story told in The Last Kingdom, the New York Times bestselling novel in which Uhtred's tale began. Now the Vikings want to finish England. They assemble the Great Army, whose one ambition is to conquer Wessex. A dispossessed young nobleman, married to a woman who hails from Wessex, Uhtred has little love for either, though for King Alfred he has none at all. Yet fate, as Uhtred learns, has its own imperatives, and when the Vikings attack out of a wintry darkness to shatter the last English kingdom, Uhtred finds himself at Alfred's side.

Bernard Cornwell's The Pale Horseman, like The Last Kingdom, is rooted in the real history of Anglo-Saxon England. It tells the astonishing and true story of how Alfred, forced to become a fugitive in a few square miles of swampland, fights his enemies against overwhelming odds. The king is a pious Christian, while Uhtred is a pagan. Alfred is a sickly scholar, while Uhtred is an arrogant warrior. Yet the two forge an uneasy alliance that will lead them out of the marshes to the stark hilltop where the last remaining Saxon army will fight for the very existence of England.

Enthralling as both a historical and personal story, The Pale Horseman is a novel of divided loyalties and desperate heroism, featuring a cast of fully realized characters, from a king in despair to a beguiling British sorceress. And always, beyond the spearmen and the swordsmen are the folk who suffer as the tides of war sweep over their farmlands. From Bernard Cornwell, the New York Times bestselling author whom the Washington Post calls "perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today," The Pale Horseman is yet another masterpiece of historical and battle fiction that gives life to one of the most important and exciting epochs in the history of the English people and culture.

The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster

2005-12-27T18:22:00.000-07:00

The Life All Around Me By Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons. This sequel to Gibbons's beloved classic Ellen Foster stands on its own as an unforgettable portrait of a redoubtable adolescent making herself up out of whole cloth. Now fifteen, Ellen is settled into a permanent home with a new mother. Strengthened by adversity and blessed with enough intelligence to design a salvation for herself, she still feels ill at ease in the world. Her sole surviving ritual-a visit to the county fair-takes on totemic importance. While she holds fast to the shreds of her childhood-humoring her best friend, Stuart, who is determined to marry her; and protecting her old neighbor, slow-witted Starletta-she negotiates her way into a larger world by selling her poetry to pay her way to a camp for gifted students. With a singular mix of perspicacity, naïveté, and compassion, Ellen draws us into her life and makes us fall in love with her all over again.

Nail Biter: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery

2005-12-27T18:11:00.000-07:00

Nail Biter: A Home Repair Is Homicide Mystery, by Sarah Graves. Jacobia “Jake” Tiptree took the dangerous plunge from Wall Street power broker–to homeowner! Now the do-it-yourself enthusiast is about to discover that her own dream house is built on a foundation of murder. Buying a beachfront fixer-upper to lease out to Eastport, Maine’s, burgeoning tourist crowd seems like a good idea to Jake Tiptree and her best friend, Ellie White. But working double-time as landladies to a coven of wannabe witches isn’t what they had in mind. And it only gets worse when Jake is called out one stormy night to make a repair–and stumbles on a dead body in the utility shed.

A small-time thief and street preacher with a particularly violent message, the deceased was no favorite of Jake’s–nor of anyone else in Eastport. But what’s he doing shot to death on Jake’s property? Jake’s bewitching tenants–including an ex-cop, a con man, and a mute teenage girl–claim to have been too busy conjuring spells to have heard or seen a thing. Then a member of the coven disappears without a trace and Jake doesn’t think it’s a case of witchcraft–but a kidnapping...or worse. Scandal, secrets, and a mysterious box buried deep in the foundation of her own home are just the beginning of a mystery that threatens to bring Jake’s house–and life–crashing down. Now she and Ellie are racing to find a missing girl who may be the key to it all...or lead them to a killer holding the final nails to their coffins.

The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia

2005-12-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

The Reindeer People: Living with Animals and Spirits in Siberia, by Piers Vitebsky. Since the last Ice Age, the reindeer's extraordinary adaptation to cold has sustained human life over vast tracts of the earth's surface, providing meat, fur, and transport. Images carved into rocks and tattooed on the skin of mummies hint at ancient ideas about the reindeer's magical ability to carry the human soul on flights to the sun. These images pose one of the great mysteries of prehistory: the "reindeer revolution," in which Siberian native peoples tamed and saddled a species they had previously hunted. Drawing on nearly twenty years of field work among the Eveny in northeast Siberia, Piers Vitebsky shows how Eveny social relations are formed through an intense partnership with these extraordinary animals as they migrate over the swamps, ice sheets, and mountain peaks of what in winter is the coldest inhabited region in the world. He reveals how indigenous ways of knowing involve a symbiotic ecology of mood between humans and reindeer, and he opens up an unprecedented understanding of nomadic movement, place, memory, habit, and innovation.

The Soviets' attempts to settle the nomads in villages undermined their self-reliance and mutual support. In an account both harrowing and funny, Vitebsky shows the Eveny's ambivalence toward productivity plans and medals and their subversion of political meetings designed to control them. The narrative gives a detailed and tender picture of how reindeer can act out or transform a person's destiny and of how prophetic dreaming about reindeer fills a gap left by the failed assurances of the state. Vitebsky explores the Eveny experience of the cruelty of history through the unfolding and intertwining of their personal lives. The interplay of domestic life and power politics is both intimate and epic, as the reader follows the diverging fate of three charismatic but very different herding families through dangerous political and economic reforms. The book's gallery of unforgettable personalities includes shamans, psychics, wolves, bears, dogs, Communist Party bosses, daredevil aviators, fire and river spirits, and buried ancestors. The Reindeer People is a vivid and moving testimony to a Siberian native people's endurance and humor at the ecological limits of human existence.

Piers Vitebsky is Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute in the University of Cambridge. His previous books include Shamanism and Dialogues with the Dead: The Discussion of Mortality Among the Sora of Eastern India.

Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder

2005-12-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder, by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey MD. Medication? Maybe. Marry the right person and find the right job? A must if you are an adult suffering from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). So say psychiatrists Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey, authors of the influential Driven to Distraction, published in 1994. In their new book, Delivered from Distraction, Hallowell and Ratey survey the current medical landscape concerning ADD, combining their own clinical observations with the latest research to paint a much more complex and, in many ways, positive picture of the condition than has generally been presented. Hallowell and Ratey embrace the idea that success in life comes more from playing to your strengths than overcoming your weaknesses. In the case of a person with ADD (child or adult), these strengths often include unusually high levels of creativity, charisma, intelligence, and energy. The authors insist that, while medication and other treatments can sometimes work wonders in reducing limitations, surrounding yourself with people who promote these positive traits, be they in your personal or professional life, is the single most important element to living well with ADD. As both Hallowell and Ratey are not only experts in the field, but "ADDers" themselves, the tips and stories they share for how to do so are fresh, funny, and far more helpful than tired arguments over drugs verse no drugs or whether there’s even such a thing as ADD at all.

SuperFoods HealthStyle: Proven Strategies for Lifelong Health

2005-12-26T08:38:00.000-07:00

SuperFoods HealthStyle: Proven Strategies for Lifelong Health, by Steven G. Pratt and Kathy Matthews. HealthStyle is the twenty-first-century program for promoting vigor, preventing disease, and extending your life span. If up until now you have relied on luck, genetics, and a few healthful practices to achieve this goal, SuperFoods HealthStyle will be your authoritative, engaging introduction to a new, better life. Like SuperFoods Rx, the authors’ bestselling book, HealthStyle takes the most recent, cutting-edge research on what lifestyle practices have actually been proven to achieve disease prevention and improve daily functioning -- both physically and mentally -- and translates this information into simple recommendations that you can use to improve your physical and mental health now and in the future. Evidence abounds that total health is achieved via a network of efforts. You might guess that diet and exercise are important. Did you know that other factors like sleep and stress management can have just as much impact on your daily health and functioning? In HealthStyle Dr. Steven Pratt, dubbed "the Food Dude" by Oprah Winfrey, has expanded on his original thirteen SuperFoods and broadened his focus to include all aspects of health promotion. HealthStyle is about extending the true quality of life. It’s about being as active at seventy as you are at thirty-five. It’s about helping to prevent osteoporosis, hypertension, and Alzheimer’s disease. It’s about ending the confusion about how people should exercise and how often. It is about making simple but significant changes to get the most out of life for the rest of your life.

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design

2005-12-26T08:33:00.000-07:00

The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design, by Leonard Susskind. Physicist Susskind is a founder of string theory, and his first popular work will be of utmost significance to science readers. They will be challenged throughout by Susskind's ideas, of which strings are but a part; his driving curiosity is to discover why the laws of physics are what they are and so finely poised to permit life. Susskind discusses how slight alterations of physical values would destroy atoms and, hence, life. Deeming unscientific any proposition of a supernatural agency in setting the physical dials so exactly, Susskind advances a radical concept he calls the "landscape." Valiantly explaining it to his lay audience, Susskind, after introducing the moving parts of his theory (general relativity, quantum mechanics, vacuum energy), compares our universe to a rolling ball on an undulating landscape. Its place of rest equates to our laws of physics. In this extraordinary work, Susskind ushers us to the mind-bending edge of a possible paradigm shift. Gilbert Taylor Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved.

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer

2005-12-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer, by David Leavitt. The story of the persecuted genius who helped create the modern computer. To solve one of the great mathematical problems of his day, Alan Turing proposed an imaginary programmable calculating machine. But the idea of actually producing a "Turing machine" did not crystallize until he and his brilliant Bletchley Park colleagues built devices to crack the Nazis' Enigma code, thus ensuring the Allies' victory in World War II. In so doing, Turing became a champion of artificial intelligence, formulating the famous (and still unbeaten) Turing Test that challenges our ideas of human consciousness. But Turing's postwar computer-building was cut short when, as an openly gay man in a time when homosexuality was officially illegal in England, he was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to a "treatment" that amounted to chemical castration, leading to his suicide. With a novelist's sensitivity, David Leavitt portrays Turing in all his humanity—his eccentricities, his brilliance, his fatal candor—while elegantly explaining his work and its implications. David Leavitt is the author of several novels, including most recently The Body of Jonah Boyd, and story collections. He teaches creative writing at the University of Florida, Gainesville, where he lives.

Seven Deadly Wonders

2005-12-22T08:44:00.000-07:00

Seven Deadly Wonders, by Matthew Reilly. Matthew Reilly, the New York Times bestselling author and "pedal-to-the-metal action novelist" (Publishers Weekly), is back in high gear on the greatest treasure hunt of all time -- a headlong race to find the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In ancient times, a Golden Capstone was placed atop the Great Pyramid at Giza during a rare solar event called the Tartarus Rotation. Once every 4,500 years, a superhot sunspot--the Tartarus Sunspot--aligned itself with Earth and caused immense worldwide flooding and sun-scorching. It is said that when the Capstone sat atop the Great Pyramid, no such flooding or solar damage occurred. And, according to legend, whosoever places the Capstone on the pyramid at the next Tartarus Rotation will gain absolute power over Earth for the next 1,000 years.

In 2006, the Tartarus Rotation will come again, but the Capstone is nowhere to be found. With the fate of global dominance hanging in the balance, nearly every world power sends forth its troops to locate the Capstone. Among them are the United States, the European Union, Israel, ruthless terrorists, and one other unusual force: a coalition of seven smaller nations that have decided that the Capstone is too powerful for any one country to hold.

So they band together against all odds and send an eight-man team to take on all the great forces in the chase. Led by an Australian super-soldier named Jack West Jr., the team includes a Canadian professor, two crack Irish commandos (one of whom is female), a Spanish paratrooper, a Jamaican soldier, an Arab commando, and a daredevil New Zealand pilot. And with them always is a little girl named Lily, the ten-year-old daughter of the Oracle of Siwa -- one of only two people in the world who can decode an ancient text that leads to the Capstone.

This stalwart group embarks on a global journey filled with booby-trapped mines, stupendous ancient wonders, gigantic evil forces, and adventure beyond imagination. From the Colossus of Rhodes to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, from the Lighthouse at Alexandria to the Great Pyramid itself, fasten your seatbelts and hang on as the author of Ice Station and Scarecrow takes you on the adventure of your life!

Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response

2005-12-22T08:33:00.000-07:00

Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel's Deadly Response, by Aaron J. Klein. The first full account, based on access to key players who have never before spoken, of the Munich Massacre and the Israeli response–a lethal, top secret, thirty-year-long antiterrorism campaign to track down the killers. 1972. The Munich Olympics. Palestinian members of the Black September group murder eleven Israeli athletes. Nine hundred million people watch the crisis unfold on television, witnessing a tragedy that inaugurates the modern age of terror and remains a scar on the collective conscience of the world. Back in Israel, Prime Minister Golda Meir vows to track down those responsible and, in Menachem Begin’s words, “run these criminals and murderers off the face of the earth.” A secret Mossad unit, code named Caesarea, is mobilized, a list of targets drawn up. Thus begins the Israeli response–a mission that unfolds not over months but over decades. The Mossad has never spoken about this operation. No one has known the real story. Until now. Award-winning journalist Aaron Klein’s incisive and riveting account tells for the first time the full story of Munich and the Israeli counterterrorism operation it spawned. With unprecedented access to Mossad agents and an unparalleled knowledge of Israeli intelligence, Klein peels back the layers of myth and misinformation that have permeated previous books, films, and magazine articles about the “shadow war” against Black September and other terrorist groups.

Spycraft, secret diplomacy, and fierce detective work abound in a story with more drama than any fictional thriller. Burning questions are at last answered, including who was killed and who was not, how it was done, which targets were hit and which were missed. Truths are revealed: the degree to which the Mossad targeted nonaffiliated Black September terrorists for assassination, the length and full scope of the operation (far greater than previously suspected), retributive acts against Israel, and much more. Finally, Klein shows that the Israeli response to Munich was not simply about revenge, as is popularly believed. By illuminating the tactical and strategic purposes of the Israeli operation, Striking Back allows us to draw profoundly relevant lessons from one of the most important counterterrorism campaigns in history.

Winter House

2005-12-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

Winter House, by Charlotte Moss. Lavishly illustrated and endlessly inspiring, Winter House is the ultimate guide to creating a place—and a frame of mind—that will bring you joy throughout the years. A winter house is a place to recharge your body and your spirit. Whether you spend the season on the slopes or in a cozy apartment in a snowy city, you can capture that feeling of warmth and welcome in your own home. In Winter House, acclaimed interior designer Charlotte Moss shows how to transform your home into a beautiful and inviting retreat. Using her own quintessential winter house as an example, Moss demonstrates how rich, patterned fabrics, gorgeous tableware, and other unique design details combine in a warm and sumptuous environment. Within Winter House are spaces for every purpose, from inviting areas designed to accommodate festive gatherings of family and friends to calming escapes for private relaxation and reflection. As she moves through each room, Moss shares her techniques and tips, including her favorite “Little Luxuries,” which are simple concepts adaptable to any environment, such as a bed tray for enjoying breakfast under the covers. And because, as Moss says, “A winter house is too good not to share,” there is a host of innovative ideas for entertaining guests and for holiday decorating. Winter House is the perfect reference for creating your own winter sanctuary. Charlotte Moss is an interior designer with licensed furniture, fabric, and decorative accessories, and her own home fragrance line. She has appeared internationally in numerous home magazines and on television shows and is a frequent lecturer on lifestyle and the home.

Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah

2005-12-14T08:38:00.000-07:00

Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah, by Colm A. Kelleher and George Knapp. For more than fifty years, the bizarre events at a remote Utah ranch have ranged from the perplexing to the wholly terrifying. Vanishing and mutilated cattle. Unidentified Flying Objects. The appearance of huge, otherworldly creatures. Invisible objects emitting magnetic fields with the power to spark a cattle stampede. Flying orbs of light with dazzling maneuverability and lethal consequences. For one family, life on the Skinwalker Ranch had become a life under siege by an unknown enemy or enemies. Nothing else could explain the horrors that surrounded them -- perhaps science could. Leading a first-class team of research scientists on a disturbing odyssey into the unknown, Colm Kelleher spent hundreds of days and nights on the Skinwalker property and experienced firsthand many of its haunting mysteries. With investigative reporter George Knapp -- the only journalist allowed to witness and document the team's work -- Kelleher chronicles in superb detail the spectacular happenings the team observed personally, and the theories of modern physics behind the phenomena. Far from the coldly detached findings one might expect, their conclusions are utterly hair-raising in their implications. Opening a door to the unseen world around us, Hunt for the Skinwalker is a clarion call to expand our vision far beyond what we know.

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

2005-12-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan. The dust storms that terrorized America's High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since, and the stories of the people that held on have never been fully told. Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones. Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and survived—those who, now in their eighties and nineties, will soon carry their memories to the grave—Egan tells a story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of the Great Depression. As only great history can, Egan's book captures the very voice of the times: its grit, pathos, and abiding courage. Combining the human drama of Isaac's Storm with the sweep of The American People in the Great Depression, The Worst Hard Time is a lasting and important work of American history. Timothy Egan is a national enterprise reporter for the New York Times. He is the author of four books and the recipient of several awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Love Always, Petra

2005-12-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

Love Always, Petra, by Petra Nemcova and Jane Scovell. A true tale of courage, tragedy, and love.At the age of twenty-five, Petra Nemcova was leading a charmed life, complete with a busy modeling career (including a Sports Illustrated¨ cover), a handsome and loving photographer boyfriend, and a jetsetting lifestyle. This was a far cry from her childhood, which she spent under the specter of communism in the former Czechoslovakia. But her world changed forever on December 26, 2004 when a powerful tsunami hit the resort of Khaolak, Thailand, where she was vacationing with her boyfriend, Simon Atlee. As he was swept away by the fierce waves, Petra managed to cling to a tree for nearly eight hours, even as her pelvis was shattered by the ocean's ferocious power and her legs lost all feeling. Petra's remarkable grace under pressure and the brave rescue by heroic Thai natives and tourists has been reported around the world. But now, for the first time, she will tell her entire story and share her amazing journey back: from her agonizing physical rehabilitation to confronting the pain of losing the love of her life to her tireless efforts to help with Thailand relief efforts. Petra will also reflect on her struggle through a poor childhood, and how, at eighteen, this shy young woman managed to launch a modeling career in the fashion capitals of the world-a glitzy and glamorous time in her life. But most of all, Love, Petra is the story of her love for Simon Atlee; a love that has not been extinguished by his untimely death. A heartbreaking, touching, and finally uplifting account, Love, Petra will share an inspirational message of hope, faith, and love to readers everywhere.

Time: Hurricane Katrina: The Storm That Changed America

2005-12-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

Time: Hurricane Katrina: The Storm That Changed America, by Editors of Time Magazine. On Sept. 2, 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued a "desperate S.O.S." His city, one of America’s most historic and gracious urban centers, had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Now 80% of it lay underwater, while some citizens huddled on rooftops waiting for rescue, and others turned the flooded streets into canals of anarchy. In the first decade of the 21st century, despair, disease and death had transformed a great American city into a scene of third-world privation, even as heroic rescue workers battled to save lives, restore order and aid the suffering. Now Time chronicles the story of the greatest natural disaster in U.S. history in Hurricane Katrina, An American Tragedy. Here, in stunning pictures and gripping first-hand accounts, is the terrible tale of Katrina’s deadly wrath and savage aftermath. Here is America’s Gulf Coast — from New Orleans to Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi — in ruins. Here are the struggling survivors and their valiant rescuers, the looters and the police who fought to control them, the homeless refugees who poured across the southeast and the resourceful agencies that took them in.

It is an epic tale, told as only Time can tell it. Award-winning pictures reveal the scope of the disaster. Oral histories offer unforgettable accounts of nature’s power and man’s resourcefulness. Illuminating graphics show how hurricanes form — and why New Orleans flooded. Powerful reporting puts readers on the scene, while insightful analysis explores the questions left in Katrina’s wake: could the tragedy have been prevented, and why was aid so late to arrive? Moving and informative, sweeping in scope and ringing with the voices of those who were there, Hurricane Katrina, An American Tragedy is the definitive account of a disaster that will haunt Americans for decades to come.

The Google Story

2005-12-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

The Google Story, by David Vise and Mark Malseed. Here is the story behind one of the most remarkable Internet successes of our time. Based on scrupulous research and extraordinary access to Google, the book takes you inside the creation and growth of a company whose name is a favorite brand and a standard verb recognized around the world. Its stock is worth more than General Motors’ and Ford’s combined, its staff eats for free in a dining room that used to be run by the Grateful Dead’s former chef, and its employees traverse the firm’s colorful Silicon Valley campus on scooters and inline skates. The Google Story is the definitive account of the populist media company powered by the world’s most advanced technology that in a few short years has revolutionized access to information about everything for everybody everywhere. In 1998, Moscow-born Sergey Brin and Midwest-born Larry Page dropped out of graduate school at Stanford University to, in their own words, “change the world” through a search engine that would organize every bit of information on the Web for free. While the company has done exactly that in more than one hundred languages, Google’s quest continues as it seeks to add millions of library books, television broadcasts, and more to its searchable database. Readers will learn about the amazing business acumen and computer wizardry that started the company on its astonishing course; the secret network of computers delivering lightning-fast search results; the unorthodox approach that has enabled it to challenge Microsoft’s dominance and shake up Wall Street. Even as it rides high, Google wrestles with difficult choices that will enable it to continue expanding while sustaining the guiding vision of its founders’ mantra: DO NO EVIL."

The Map Book

2005-12-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Map Book, by Peter Barber. From the earliest of times, maps have fired our imaginations and helped us make sense of our world, from the global to the very local. Head of Map Collections at the British Library, Peter Barber has here compiled an historic and lavish atlas, charting the progress of civilization as our knowledge of the world expanded. Simply organized as a progression through time, The Map Book collects some 175 maps that span four millennia - from the famed prehistoric Bedolina (Italy) incision in rock from around 1500 B.C. to the most modern, digitally enhanced rendering. Many of the maos are beautiful works of art in their own right. From Europe to the Americas, Africa to Asia, north to south, there are maps of oceans and continents charted by heroic adventurers sailing into the unknown, as accounts spread of new discoveries, shadowy continents begin to appear n the margins of the world, often labeled 'unknown lands.' Other maps had a more practical use: some demarcated national boundaries or individual plots of land; military plans depicted enemy positions; propaganda treatises showed one country or faction at an advantage over others.

So much history resides in each map--cultural, mythological, navigational--expressing the unlimited extent of human imagination. This is captured in the accompanying texts--mini essays by leading map historians--that are as vivid and insightful as the maps themselves. They make The Map Book as much a volume to be read as to be visually admired. Peter Barber trained as a diplomatic historian. He has published extensively on medieval world maps, and on map use and the relationship between mapping and government in the early modern period. In addition to being Head of Map Collections at the British Library, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Geographical Society, and an honorary editorial board member of Mapforum.

National Geographic Complete Birds of North America

2005-12-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

National Geographic Complete Birds of North America, by Jonathan Alderfer. Essential, comprehensive, and easy to use, National Geographic Complete Book of Birds is an astonishing resource that covers every bird species in North America, as well as all the migrants that fly through. The entries are organized by family groups-an incredible 82 are included-according to the American Ornithological Union guidelines. Within a family, each separate bird entry has dozens of tips and illustrations on species' genders, age groups, behavior, habitats, nesting and feeding habits, and migration routes. Readers will also find unique features, such as:A quick-find index for the most common bird groups and a full glossaryStraightforward, accessible text by numerous birding experts, including National Geographic's resident birding consultant Jonathan AlderferHundreds of range and migration maps from renowned ornithologist Paul Lehman with National Geographic cartographersState-of-the-art, updated bird illustrations by expert artists, including Jonathan AlderferNew and original photographs from well-known bird photographers Kevin Karlson and Brian Small. Perfect for novice or experienced birders alike, National Geographic Complete Book of Birds is a definitive, must-have resource. Quite simply, there is no other volume like it. Jonathan Alderfer, a widely published author and field guide illustrator, is well known in the birding community for his expertise as a field ornithologist and his knowledge of North American birds. He has served as General Consultant and Art Consultant for the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America and is the Associate Editor of Birding, the magazine of the American Birding Association.

Michael Smith Elements of Style

2005-12-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

Michael Smith Elements of Style, by Michael Smith and Diane Dorrans Saeks. Acclaimed designer Michael Smith has earned a reputation as the thinking celebrity's decorator, with a client list that includes Cindy Crawford, Kate Capshaw, Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Pairing lush interiors with dynamic insider advice, Michael Smith's Elements of Style beautifully captures the essential building blocks of good interior design. Smith covers in depth the most common decorating decisions everyone faces: working with color, selecting the right paint, choosing window treatments and floor coverings, creating a luxurious bed, and building a furniture collection over time. Illustrated with stunning color photography, including a dozen homes presented in depth to demonstrate how rooms work alone and together, the book also includes practical sidebars on learning how to buy antiques and attend auctions, how to ready your home for sale, and how to create a house that can evolve over time. This invaluable, idea-filled resource is about polished, fresh design that is both aspirational and attainable. Michael Smith is one of Architectural Digest's 100 Top Designers and winner of Elle Décor's Designer of the Year award in 2003. His work is regularly featured in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Town & Country, W, and House Beautiful, among others.Diane Dorrans Saeks is the bestselling author of fifteen books, including Hollywood Style, and was a founding editor of Metropolitan Home and Garden Design magazines. She is currently Interior Design editor for Paper City and a correspondent for W and WWD. She lives in San Francisco.

What the Bleep Do We Know!?™: Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality

2005-11-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

What the Bleep Do We Know!?™: Discovering the Endless Possibilities for Altering Your Everyday Reality , by William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente, and Jack Forem. Hundreds of years ago, science and religion split apart; they became antagonists in the great game of explanation and discovery. But science and religion are two sides of the same coin. They both help explain the universe, our place in the great plan and the meaning of our lives. In fact, they can only begin to do that adequately when they work together. What the Bleep Do We Know?!TM is a book of amazing science. With the help of more than a dozen research and theoretical scientists, it takes you through the looking glass of quantum physics into a universe that is more bizarre and alive than ever imagined. Then it takes you beyond, into the outer-inner edges of our scientific knowledge of consciousness, perception, body chemistry and brain structure. What is a thought made of? What is reality made of? And most importantly, how does a thought change the nature of reality?

This science leads not just to the material world, but deep into the realm of spirituality. If observation affects the outcome, we aren’t merely part of the universe, but participants in it. If thoughts are more than random neural firings, than consciousness is more than an anatomical accident. A higher power exists, but is it truly out there? Where is the dividing line between out there and in here? This is not a book of definitive answers. This is a book of mind stretching questions. It is a book that shows you not the path, but the endless possibilities. Do you think you have to go to the same job every day, do the same errands, think the same thoughts, feel the same way? Well, think again.

Forever Odd

2005-11-26T10:17:00.000-07:00

Forever Odd, by Dean Koontz. Every so often a character so captures the hearts and imaginations of readers that he seems to take on a life of his own long after the final page is turned. For such a character, one book is not enough–readers must know what happens next. Now Dean Koontz returns with the novel his fans have been demanding. With the emotional power and sheer storytelling artistry that are his trademarks, Koontz takes up once more the story of a unique young hero and an eccentric little town in a tale that is equal parts suspense and terror, adventure and mystery–and altogether irresistibly odd. We’re all a little odd beneath the surface. He’s the most unlikely hero you’ll ever meet–an ordinary guy with a modest job you might never look at twice. But there’s so much more to any of us than meets the eye–and that goes triple for Odd Thomas. For Odd lives always between two worlds in the small desert town of Pico Mundo, where the heroic and the harrowing are everyday events. Odd never asked to communicate with the dead–it’s something that just happened. But as the unofficial goodwill ambassador between our world and theirs, he’s got a duty to do the right thing. That’s the way Odd sees it and that’s why he’s won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death.

A childhood friend of Odd’s has disappeared. The worst is feared. But as Odd applies his unique talents to the task of finding the missing person, he discovers something worse than a dead body, encounters an enemy of exceptional cunning, and spirals into a vortex of terror. Once again Odd will stand against our worst fears. Around him will gather new allies and old, some living and some not. For in the battle to come, there can be no innocent bystanders, and every sacrifice can tip the balance between despair and hope. Whether you’re meeting Odd Thomas for the first time or he’s already an old friend, you’ll be led on an unforgettable journey through a world of terror, wonder and delight–to a revelation that can change your life. And you can have no better guide than Odd Thomas.

National Geographic Visual History of the World

2005-11-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

National Geographic Visual History of the World, by Douglas Brinkley (Introduction). The world history book to define all others, National Geographic Visual History of the World is a classic in the making. No other volume offers such a comprehensive and richly illustrated chronicle of world events, from the construction of the Pyramids to the overthrow of the Taliban. Readers see how momentous happenings, personalities, catastrophes, discoveries, and inventions unfold in a visually stimulating layout. Four eight-page gatefolds bring to life major events of world history and thousands of paintings, photographs and illustrations depict subjects ranging from the Roman Empire to the Reformation, World War II, to the war in Afghanistan. A timeline at the bottom of every page highlights the most important events, names, and dates of the era, and color-coded cross-referencing helps point readers to other applicable sections. Ideal for people who prefer to flip through books at random, this highly accessible resource contains sidebars on the great religions, influential ideologies, and other topics, as well as biographies of world leaders and notable personalities in the arts and humanities. National Geographic Visual History of the World is an indispensable, impressive, and extravagantly illustrated reference of social, cultural, and military history in one volume. It is a must-have for all families, armchair historians, and serious scholars alike.

Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

2005-11-15T12:22:00.000-07:00

Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating, by Jane Goodall, Gary McAvoy, and Gail Hudson. Renowned scientist and bestselling author Jane Goodall delivers an eye-opening and empowering book that explores the social and personal significance of what we eat.In Harvest For Hope, Jane Goodall presents an empowering and far-reaching vision for social and environmental transformation through the way we produce and consume the foods we eat. In clear, well-organized chapters that include; The Organic Boom and Thinking Globally, Eating Locally, readers will discover the dangers behind many of today's foods, along with the extraordinary individual and worldwide benefits of eating locally grown, organic produce. For anyone who has ever wanted to know how they can take a stand for a more sustainable world, Harvest For Hope reveals the healthy choices that will support the greater good.

Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character

2005-11-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character, by Ralph Leighton, Freeman Dyson (Editor). Richard Feynman (1918-1988) thrived on outrageous adventures. In the phenomenal national bestsellers "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" the Nobel Prize-winning physicist recounted in an inimitable voice his adventures trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek, painting a naked female toreador, accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums, solving the mystery of the Challenger disaster, and much else of an eyebrow-raising, hugely entertaining, and astounding nature. One of the most influential and creative minds of recent history, Feynman also possessed an unparalleled ability as a storyteller, a delightful coincidence celebrated in this special omnibus edition of his classic stories. Now packaged with an hour-long audio CD of the 1978 "Los Alamos from Below" lecture, Classic Feynman offers readers a chance to finally hear a great tale in the orator's own voice.

Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

2005-11-15T12:11:00.000-07:00

Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus, by Margaret Atwood. "Homer’s Odyssey is not the only version of the story. Mythic material was originally oral, and also local -- a myth would be told one way in one place and quite differently in another. I have drawn on material other than the Odyssey, especially for the details of Penelope’s parentage, her early life and marriage, and the scandalous rumors circulating about her. I’ve chosen to give the telling of the story to Penelope and to the twelve hanged maids. The maids form a chanting and singing Chorus, which focuses on two questions that must pose themselves after any close reading of the Odyssey: What led to the hanging of the maids, and what was Penelope really up to? The story as told in the Odyssey doesn’t hold water: there are too many inconsistencies. I’ve always been haunted by the hanged maids and, in The Penelopiad, so is Penelope herself." -- from Margaret Atwood’s Foreword to The Penelopiad

The Truth About Diamonds: A Novel

2005-11-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

The Truth About Diamonds: A Novel, by Nicole Ritchie. In her electrifying first novel, Nicole Richie tells the sensational story of Chloe Parker, a rock royalty princess and a card-carrying member of Hollywood's inner circle. At the age of seven, Chloe was adopted by a music superstar and his wife, transforming her life from rags to riches. What followed was a wild childhood distinguished by parties with movie stars and rock idols, run-ins with the press and the police, and a subsequent stint in rehab. Suddenly Chloe shoots to instant fame as a spokesmodel for a national ad campaign. When her long-lost birth father appears out of nowhere and her best friend betrays her, she must struggle to keep it all together -- her sobriety, her friendships, and her integrity despite the betrayals of those around her. Ultimately, Chloe comes spectacularly into her own, achieving stardom in her own right and finding true love. Through the eyes of the captivating Chloe and the talented voice of Nicole Richie, we are given a no-holds-barred look at Hollywood's new elite, behind the velvet ropes, inside star-studded premieres and parties. Whether they're doing the "circuit" (begin with shopping at Barneys New York, Marni, and Fred Segal, then end with the grilled vegetable salad at the Ivy), or ending up on the front page of your favorite weekly magazine, Chloe Parker and her fellow A-listers never fail to dazzle, their larger-than-life dramas more riveting than any reality show.

The Sea

2005-11-13T15:00:00.000-07:00

The Sea, by John Banville. Incandescent prose. Beautifully textured characterisation. Transparent narratives. The adjectives to describe the writing of John Banville are all affirmative, and The Sea is a ringing affirmation of all his best qualities. His publishers are claiming that this novel by the Booker-shortlisted author is his finest yet, and while that claim may have an element of hyperbole, there is no denying that this perfectly balanced book is among the writer’s most accomplished work. Max Morden has reached a crossroads in his life, and is trying hard to deal with several disturbing things. A recent loss is still taking its toll on him, and a trauma in his past is similarly proving hard to deal with. He decides that he will return to a town on the coast at which he spent a memorable holiday when a boy. His memory of that time devolves on the charismatic Grace family, particularly the seductive twins Myles and Chloe. In a very short time, Max found himself drawn into a strange relationship with them, and pursuant events left their mark on him for the rest of his life. But will he be able to exorcise those memories of the past?

The fashion in which John Banville draws the reader into this hypnotic and disturbing world is non pareil, and the very complex relationships between his brilliantly delineated cast of characters are orchestrated with a master’s skill. As in such books as Shroud and The Book of Evidence, the author eschews the obvious at all times, and the narrative is delivered with subtlety and understatement. The genuine moments of drama, when they do occur, are commensurately more powerful. -Barry Forshaw

Mexican Everyday

2005-11-13T14:48:00.000-07:00

Mexican Everyday, by Rick Bayless and Deann Groen Bayless. At last, a cookbook that brings Mexican food within easy reach, companion to the all-new PBS series. In his previous books, Rick Bayless transformed America's understanding of Mexican cuisine, introducing authentic dishes and cooking methods as he walked readers through Mexican markets and street stalls. As much as Rick loves the bold flavors of Mexican foods, he understands that preparing many Mexican specialties requires more time than most of us have. Mexican Everyday is written with the time sensitivities of modern life in mind. It is a collection of 90 full-flavored recipes—like Green Chile Chicken Tacos, Shrimp Ceviche Salad, Chipotle Steak with Black Beans—that meet three criteria for "everyday" food: 1) most need less than 30 minutes' involvement; 2) they have the fresh, clean taste of simple, authentic preparations; and 3) they are nutritionally balanced, full-featured meals—no elaborate side dishes required. Companion to a thirteen-part public television series, this book provides dishes you can eat with family and friends, day in and day out. Color throughout.

Fra Angelico

2005-11-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

Fra Angelico, by Laurence Kanter, Pia Palladino, et al. This beautiful book, published in conjunction with the first major exhibition of Fra Angelico’s work since the cinquecentenary exhibition of 1955 in Florence, will feature more than seventy paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations covering all periods of the artist’s career, from round 1410 to 1455. Also ncluded will be fifty selected orks by his assistants and losest followers. Fra Angelico (“the angelic friar”; ca. 1390/95–1455) was one of Renaissance Florence’s leading painters. In addition to his celebrated altarpieces and frescos in Florence, Fiesole, Cortona, Perugia, and Rome, Fra Angelico also completed many masterpieces on a small scale. His predella panels, the small narrative scenes included beneath large altarpieces, are among the most innovative creations in fifteenthcentury Florence, while his images of the Virgin and Child still retain the inspirational immediacy and presence that first secured the artist’s reputation as the premier painter of his age. Research undertaken in the last fifty years now allows scholars to reconstruct a more historically reliable biography of Fra Angelico that goes beyond the legends and traditions to establish his position not only as one of the greatest masters of the fifteenth century, but also as one of the most intellectually accomplished painters who ever lived.

The Little Book That Beats the Market

2005-11-10T20:55:00.000-07:00

The Little Book That Beats the Market, by Joel Greenblatt. Can you spare two hours to learn how to beat the market? As unlikely as it may seem, hedge fund manager and professor, Joel Greenblatt, whose investment firm has averaged 40% annual returns for over twenty years, can teach you how. You can achieve investment returns that beat the pants off even the best investment professionals and the top academics. In fact, you can learn how it's possible to more than double the annual returns of the stock market averages. But there's more. You can do it all by yourself. You can do it with low risk. You can do it without making any predictions, and you can do it by following, step by step, a "magic formula" that uses only common sense and two simple concepts. Best of all, once you are convinced that it really works you can choose to do it for the rest of your life. In The Little Book That Beats the Market, Greenblatt shows how successful investing can be made easy for investors of any age. Through entertaining anecdotes and practical pearls of wisdom, the book explores the basic principles of successful stock market investing and then reveals a "magic formula" that makes buying good companies at bargain prices automatic.

The formula has been tested over hundreds of different periods and thousands of stock picks and has been proven extremely profitable for those who are willing to "stick with it." Greenblatt guides you down the path of investment success and explains why his approach will continue to work—even after everyone "knows" it. It's never too early or too late to start investing, and by following the simple steps and magic formula that are clearly outlined and explained, you can achieve extraordinary long-term investment results with a very low level of risk. With The Little Book That Beats the Market as your guide, you'll know exactly where to go and what to do—and it won't even take much time, just a little effort every few months.

Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

2005-11-10T20:35:00.000-07:00

Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, by Martha Stewart. Every new book from Martha Stewart is cause for celebration, and with Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook, she returns to bring the pleasures of baking to readers at every level, from beginner to expert and beyond. A culinary compendium packed with more than 200 foolproof recipes for the best baked goods, Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook takes readers by the hand and guides them through the process of creating an irresistible variety of cakes, cookies, pies, tarts, breads, and much more. This essential addition to every cook’s library is rich with tips, techniques, and the mouthwatering and stunning recipes for which Martha Stewart is so well known. Covering a delectable array of topics from simple to sophisticated, including biscuits, muffins, scones, cookies, layer cakes, specialty cakes, sweet and savory pies and tarts, and pastries and breads, she provides a dazzlingly delicious yet crystal-clear, vividly illustrated repertoire of recipes. There are cakes that are elegant enough for formal occasions, such as showers, weddings, and dinner parties, and basic favorites meant to be enjoyed every day and then passed down through the generations. Every chapter includes indispensable visual equipment glossaries and features vital make-ahead information and storage techniques. Organized for maximum clarity and practicality, the handbook also offers step-by-step how-to photographs that demystify even the most complex and nuanced techniques. These culinary building blocks will turn good bakers into great bakers, and make great bakers even better.

Filled with time-honored classics, such as Marble Cake with White-Chocolate Glaze, Apple Pie, Challah, Baba au Rhum, and Croissants, as well as lots of new surprises, Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook will be reached for again and again, no matter the season or occasion.

Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers--and How You Can Too

2005-11-07T08:44:00.000-07:00

Top of the Class: How Asian Parents Raise High Achievers--and How You Can Too, by Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Y. Kim. Asians and Asian-Americans make up 4% of the U.S. population...and 20% of the Ivy League. Now find out how they do it. The numbers speak for themselves: 18% of Harvard's population; 25% of Columbia's; 42% of Berkeley's; 24% of Stanford's; 25% of Cornell's... What are Asian parents doing to start their kids on the road to academic excellence at an early age? What can all parents do to help their children ace tests, strive to achieve, and reach educational goals? In this book, two sisters-a doctor and a lawyer whose parents came from South Korea to the U.S. with two hundred dollars in their pockets-reveal the practices that lead Asian-Americans to academic, professional, and personal success.

The World in a Phrase: A History of Aphorisms

2005-11-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

The World in a Phrase: A History of Aphorisms, by James Geary. For lovers of words and seekers of wisdom, a lively history of aphorisms—the shortest and oldest written art form—and the intriguing people who have penned them, from the Buddha to Emily Dickinson. Starting with the ancient Chinese and ending with contemporary Europeans and Americans, The World in a Phrase tells the story of the aphorism through spirited and amusing biographies of some of its greatest practitioners: Americans like Ambrose Bierce, Emily Dickinson, and Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker; great French aphorists like Montaigne, La Rochefoucauld, and Chamfort; philosophers like Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein; as well as prophets and sages like the Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Jesus. Though it’s an ancient art form, the aphorism is as spritely and as apposite as ever. Challenging and subversive, aphorisms deliver the short, sharp shocks of old forgotten truths. They are literature’s hand luggage: they’re light and compact, you can take them anywhere, and they contain everything you need to get through a rough day at the office or a dark night of the soul. But more than just a literary history, The World in a Phrase is a personal memoir of how aphorisms changed Geary’s life—and how, if not for an aphorism by W.H. Auden, he might never have met his wife. In our modern age of drive-through culture, pre-digested soundbites, and manufactured sentiment, The World in a Phrase explores how aphorisms still retain the power to instigate and inspire, enlighten and enrage, entertain and edify.

Conversations With Tom Petty

2005-11-07T08:26:00.000-07:00

Conversations With Tom Petty, by Paul Zollo. Tom Petty has long been seen as one of the great songwriters of American rock ‘n’ roll, as well as one of the key standard bearers of integrity in the music business. Conversations With Tom Petty is the first authorized book to focus solely on the life and work of the man responsible for some of the most memorable rock anthems of our generation. American Girl Breakdown Refugee The Waiting Don’t Come Around Here No More I Won’t Back Down Free Fallin’ Runnin’ Down a Dream You Don’t Know How It Feels Mary Jane’s Last Dance The Last DJ. He and his band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. His work with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, as well as his solo albums and those with the Traveling Wilburys, has been critically acclaimed the world over. Tom and the band have have sold more than 50-million albums and earned numerous Platinum-status awards from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as Grammys, MTV Awards, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and many other honors. Author Paul Zollo conducted a series of in-depth discussions with Tom about his career, with special focus on his songwriting. The conversations are reprinted here in Tom’s own words.

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis

2005-11-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis, by Jimmy Carter. President Carter has written importantly about his spiritual life and faith. In Living Faith, a huge bestseller, he recounted the values and experiences that shaped his personal and political life. In his companion book Sources of Strength, also a bestseller, he meditated on fifty-two of the favorite Bible lessons he has taught. In Our Endangered Values, Carter offers a personal consideration of "moral values" as they relate to the important issues of the day. He puts forward a passionate defense of separation of church and state, and a strong warning of where the country is heading as the lines between politics and rigid religious fundamentalism are blurred. Now, he describes his own involvement and reactions to some disturbing societal trends that have taken place during the last few years. These changes involve both the religious and the political worlds as they have increasingly become intertwined, and include some of the most crucial and controversial issues of the day -- frequently encapsulated under "moral values."

Many of these matters are under fierce debate. They include preemptive war, women's rights, terrorism, civil liberties, homosexuality, abortion, the death penalty, science and religion, environmental degradation, nuclear arsenals, America's global image, fundamentalism, and the melding of religion and politics. Sustained by his lifelong faith, Jimmy Carter assesses these issues in a forceful and unequivocal but balanced and courageous way. Our Endangered Values is a book that his millions of readers have eagerly awaited.

The Works: Anatomy of a City

2005-11-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

The Works: Anatomy of a City, by Kate Ascher. How much do you really know about the systems that keep a city alive? The Works: Anatomy of a City contains everything you ever wanted to know about what makes New York City run. When you flick on your light switch the light goes on--how? When you put out your garbage, where does it go? When you flush your toilet, what happens to the waste? How does water get from a reservoir in the mountains to your city faucet? How do flowers get to your corner store from Holland, or bananas get there from Ecuador? Who is operating the traffic lights all over the city? And what in the world is that steam coming out from underneath the potholes on the street? Across the city lies a series of extraordinarily complex and interconnected systems. Often invisible, and wholly taken for granted, these are the systems that make urban life possible. The Works: Anatomy of a City offers a cross section of this hidden infrastructure, using beautiful, innovative graphic images combined with short, clear text explanations to answer all the questions about the way things work in a modern city. It describes the technologies that keep the city functioning, as well as the people who support them-the pilots that bring the ships in over the Narrows sandbar, the sandhogs who are currently digging the third water tunnel under Manhattan, the television engineer who scales the Empire State Building's antenna for routine maintenance, the electrical wizards who maintain the century-old system that delivers power to subways.

Did you know that the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is so long, and its towers are so high, that the builders had to take the curvature of the earth's surface into account when designing it? Did you know that the George Washington Bridge takes in approximately $1 million per day in tolls? Did you know that retired subway cars travel by barge to the mid-Atlantic, where they are dumped overboard to form natural reefs for fish? Or that if the telecom cables under New York were strung end to end, they would reach from the earth to the sun? While the book uses New York as its example, it has relevance well beyond that city's boundaries as the systems that make New York a functioning metropolis are similar to those that keep the bright lights burning in big cities everywhere. The Works is for anyone who has ever stopped midcrosswalk, looked at the rapidly moving metropolis around them, and wondered, how does this all work?

In the Company of Crows and Ravens

2005-11-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

In the Company of Crows and Ravens, by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell. “Crows and people share similar traits and social strategies. To a surprising extent, to know the crow is to know ourselves.”—from the preface. From the cave walls at Lascaux to the last painting by Van Gogh, from the works of Shakespeare to those of Mark Twain, there is clear evidence that crows and ravens influence human culture. Yet this influence is not unidirectional, say the authors of this fascinating book: people profoundly influence crow culture, ecology, and evolution as well. John Marzluff and Tony Angell examine the often surprising ways that crows and humans interact. The authors contend that those interactions reflect a process of “cultural coevolution.” They offer a challenging new view of the human-crow dynamic—a view that may change our thinking not only about crows but also about ourselves. Featuring more than 100 original drawings, the book takes a close look at the influences people have had on the lives of crows throughout history and at the significant ways crows have altered human lives. In the Company of Crows and Ravens illuminates the entwined histories of crows and people and concludes with an intriguing discussion of the crow-human relationship and how our attitudes toward crows may affect our cultural trajectory. JOHN M. MARZLUFF is Denman Professor of Sustainable Resource Sciences and professor of wildlife science, College of Forest Resources, University of Washington. TONY ANGELL is a freelance artist and writer in Lopez Island, Washington. Together the authors combine more than 60 years of scientific and artistic fascination with crows and their bird relatives.

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

2005-11-01T18:45:00.000-07:00

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the Republican National Convention in Chicago. When Lincoln emerged as the victor, his rivals were dismayed and angry. Throughout the turbulent 1850s, each had energetically sought the presidency as the conflict over slavery was leading inexorably to secession and civil war. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

We view the long, horrifying struggle from the vantage of the White House as Lincoln copes with incompetent generals, hostile congressmen, and his raucous cabinet. He overcomes these obstacles by winning the respect of his former competitors, and in the case of Seward, finds a loyal and crucial friend to see him through. This brilliant multiple biography is centered on Lincoln's mastery of men and how it shaped the most significant presidency in the nation's history.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores

2005-11-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

Memories of My Melancholy Whores, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, (Edith Grossman - Translator). Memories of My Melancholy Whores is Gabriel García Márquez’s first work of fiction in ten years, written at the height of his powers, the Spanish edition of which Ilan Stavans called, “Masterful. Erotic. As hypnotizing as it is disturbing” (Los Angeles Times). On the eve of his ninetieth birthday, our unnamed protagonist–an undistinguished journalist and lifelong bachelor–decides to give himself “the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.” The virgin, whom an old madam procures for him, is splendidly young, with the silent power of a sleeping beauty. The night of love blossoms into a transforming year. It is a year in which he relives, in a rush of memories, his lifetime of (paid-for) sexual adventures and experiences a revelation that brings him to the edge of dying–not of old age, but, at long last, of uncorrupted love. Memories of My Melancholy Whores is a brilliant gem by the master storyteller. Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1927 near Aracataca, Colombia. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

2005-11-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, by Anne Rice. Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice gives us now her most ambitious and courageous book, a novel about the early years of CHRIST THE LORD, based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship. The book’s power derives from the passion its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the voice, the presence, the words of Jesus who tells the story. Anne Rice is the author of twenty-six books. She lives in La Jolla, California.

Saving Fish from Drowning

2005-10-30T15:44:00.000-07:00

Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan. A provocative new novel from the bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter's Daughter. On an ill-fated art expedition into the southern Shan state of Burma, eleven Americans leave their Floating Island Resort for a Christmas-morning tour-and disappear. Through twists of fate, curses, and just plain human error, they find themselves deep in the jungle, where they encounter a tribe awaiting the return of the leader and the mythical book of wisdom that will protect them from the ravages and destruction of the Myanmar military regime. Saving Fish from Drowning seduces the reader with a fagade of Buddhist illusions, magician's tricks, and light comedy, even as the absurd and picaresque spiral into a gripping morality tale about the consequences of intentions-both good and bad-and about the shared responsibility that individuals must accept for the actions of others.

A pious man explained to his followers: "It is evil to take lives and noble to save them. Each day I pledge to save a hundred lives. I drop my net in the lake and scoop out a hundred fishes. I place the fishes on the bank, where they flop and twirl. 'Don't be scared,' I tell those fishes. 'I am saving you from drowning.' Soon enough, the fishes grow calm and lie still. Yet, sad to say, I am always too late. The fishes expire. And because it is evil to waste anything, I take those dead fishes to market and I sell them for a good price. With the money I receive, I buy more nets so I can save more fishes."

700 Sundays

2005-10-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

700 Sundays, by Billy Crystal. Hailed as a triumph by everyone from the New York Times to Sports Illustrated¨, Billy Crystal's 700 SUNDAYS is the crowning achievement of an amazing career. A poignant, hilarious, and personal portrayal of his youth, Crystal's play broke Broadway box office records and failed to leave a dry eye in the house.To support his family, Billy Crystal's father, Jack, worked two jobs and long hours and could only spare Sundays to spend with his loved ones. These formative and favorite days were in limited supply, however, as Crystal's father was stopped short by a heart attack when his son was 15. 700 SUNDAYS refers to a sadly precise measurement of time shared by an adoring father and a devoted son. This delightful, autobiographical journey is sure to elicit tears and laughter from readers everywhere.

Fantasy Encyclopedia

2005-10-30T15:06:00.000-07:00

Fantasy Encyclopedia, by Judy Allen, Richard Hook, John Howe (Illustrator), Patricia Ludlow (Illustrator), Nicki Palin (Illustrator). With a foreword by the award-winning fantasy author Jonathan Stroud, and illustration by some of the world"s best illustrators including John Howe, the Fantasy Encyclopedia is a spectacular one-stop guide to the creatures and people of folklore and fantasy. From goblins and fairies to dragons and Dracula, this encyclopedia covers them all with sparkling, readable text and stunning illustrations. Discover how the magic of stories throughout the centuries has kept these creatures alive in traditions and cultures around the world. Using a highly visual approach, featuring more than 400 photographs and illustrations, this book will introduce readers to each fantasy character within its habitat and genre. Cross-reference boxes direct readers to popular books and movies starring these fantastical creatures. This is a must-have for any fantasy enthusiast!

Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being

2005-10-23T14:16:00.000-06:00

Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being, by Andrew Weil, M.D. Spontaneous Healing . . . Eight Weeks to Optimum Health . . . Eating Well for Optimum Health . . . The Healthy Kitchen–in each of his widely acclaimed, best-selling books, Dr. Andrew Weil has been an authoritative and companionable guide through a uniquely effective combination of traditional and nontraditional approaches to health and healthy living. Now he gives us a book about aging that is unlike any other in the breadth and depth of its information and understanding. Hugely informative, practical, and uplifting, it is infused with the engaging candor and common sense that have been the hallmarks of all his books. At the heart of Healthy Aging is Dr. Weil’s belief that although aging is an irreversible process, there are myriad things we can do to keep our minds and bodies in good working order through all phases of life. To that end, he draws on the new science of biogerentology (the biology of aging) as well as on the secrets of healthy longevity– diet, activity, and attitude–that he has gathered firsthand from cultures around the world.

In Part One–“The Science and Philosophy of Healthy Aging”–he explains how the body ages, and he explores the impact of gender, genes, environment, and lifestyle on an individual’s experience and perception of the process of aging. He describes the various would-be elixirs of life extension–herbs, hormones, and antiaging “medicines”–separating myth from fact and clearly delineating the difference between the spurious notions of preventing or reversing the process of aging and the real possibilities of inhibiting or delaying the onset of diseases that become more likely as we age. He writes movingly about the ways in which an acceptance of aging can be a significant part of doing it well, and of recognizing and appreciating the great rewards of growing older: depth and richness of experience, complexity of being, serenity, wisdom, and its own kind of power and grace.

In Part Two–“How to Age Gracefully”–Weil details an easy-to-implement Anti-inflammatory Diet that will protect the immune system and aid your body in resisting and adapting to the changes that time brings. And he provides extensive practical advice on exercise; preventive health care; stress management; physical, mental, and emotional flexibility; and spiritual enhancement–all of which can help you achieve and maintain the best health throughout the lifelong process of aging.

Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals

2005-10-23T13:46:00.000-06:00

Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals, by Sara Moulton. Heeding the pleas of modern multitasking home cooks, Television Food Network’s Sara Moulton returns with 200 delicious and quick main dishes, sides, and desserts for busy workweek dinners. As the host of Cooking Live and Sara’s Secrets, the food editor of Good Morning America, and the bestselling author of Sara Moulton Cooks at Home, Sara Moulton is one of this country’s most popular and accessible celebrity chefs. It was while touring the U.S. promoting her first book, in fact, that Sara's fans begged her for fast, tasty, and wholesome weeknight entrees. She realized that she, too, had a need for those kinds of dishes, which was all her busy schedule would allow. In writing this book, Sara rethought dinner itself, so that mealtimes no longer featured the same predictable recipes. Instead she offers “breakfast for dinner” or hearty soups or sandwiches. The result is a cookbook filled with easy and popular ethnic dishes to spice up the repertoire, her own versions of American classics, dishes to whip up from pantry staples as well as supermarket salad bar and deli items, and slow-cooking recipes for leisurely weekends.

With recipes that will satisfy taste buds as well as time constraints, Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals covers the spectrum from entree salads (Thai-style Steak Salad with Spicy Mint Dressing), substantial sandwiches (Scampi Heroes), hearty soups for supper (Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Chorizo and Greens), breakfast foods for dinner (Potato Pancakes with Smoked Salmon and Fried Eggs), pasta (Quick Asparagus Lasagna), seafood (Steamed Mussels in Curried Coconut Broth), vegetable plates (Exotic Mushroom Pot Pie), meat dishes (Meatloaf Burgers), double-duty dishes (leftover rice in Cheatin' Jambalaya), weekend dishes to cook ahead (Slow-cooked Chinese Spareribs), recipes that either can be put together in no time with prepared supermarket ingredients (Crispy Polenta Slices with Gorgonzola and Leeks) or from a well-stocked pantry (Linguine with White Bean, Sun-dried Tomato, and Olive Sauce), to delectable desserts (Chocolate Bread Pudding, Gingerbread Pancakes with Butterscotch Apples, Nectarine and Plum Upside-down Cake).

Recipes include hands-on cooking time and total cooking time as well as suggestions for side-dish pairings. Twenty-four beautiful color photos, warm and friendly headnotes, and lots of Sara's tips and shortcuts (including advice on stocking a pantry, basic recipes, simple sides, quick sauces, and mail-order sources) make this another cookbook for Sara’s fans to cherish.

Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL

2005-10-23T13:44:00.000-06:00

Next Man Up: A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL, by John Feinstein. Despite-or perhaps because of-its immense popularity, the NFL remains one of the most secretive sports in America. John Feinstein goes behind the scenes of this closed sport as he takes his readers through an NFL season-all the ups and downs, the procession from 100 degree heat in training camp to frigid cold in January, and the week-to-week pressures faced by the coaches and players-in an incredibly illuminating and entertaining look at the most lucrative sport in America. NEXT MAN UP highlights the Baltimore Ravens, one of the most watched and dramatic NFL teams in recent years. Like many teams, the Ravens have faced extreme obstacles-in their case, players in prison, under indictment, and injured-but they+ve still managed to play at an extremely high level, winning their first Super Bowl in 2001 against the New York Giants. From the first strategy sessions of a new season to the last down of the final game, John Feinstein reveals the intensity, spirituality, and near life-or-death drama of professional football as it's never been revealed before.

Hawks from Every Angle: How to Identify Raptors In Flight

2005-10-17T18:33:00.000-06:00

Hawks from Every Angle: How to Identify Raptors In Flight, by Jerry Liguori. Identifying hawks in flight is a tricky business. Across North America, tens of thousands of people gather every spring and fall at more than one thousand known hawk migration sites--from New Jersey's Cape May to California's Golden Gate. Yet, as many discover, a standard field guide, with its emphasis on plumage, is often of little help in identifying those raptors soaring, gliding, or flapping far, far away. Hawks from Every Angle takes hawk identification to new heights. It offers a fresh approach that literally looks at the birds from every angle, compares and contrasts deceptively similar species, and provides the pictures (and words) needed for identification in the field. Jerry Liguori pinpoints innovative, field-tested identification traits for each species from the various angles that they are seen.

Featuring 339 striking color photos on 68 color plates and 32 black & white photos, Hawks from Every Angle is unique in presenting a host of meticulously crafted pictures for each of the 19 species it covers in detail--the species most common to migration sites throughout the United States and Canada. All aspects of raptor identification are discussed, including plumage, shape, and flight style traits. For all birders who follow hawk migration and have found themselves wondering if the raptor in the sky matches the one in the guide, Hawks from Every Angle--distilling an expert's years of experience for the first time into a comprehensive array of truly useful photos and other pointers for each species--is quite simply a must.

Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race

2005-10-17T18:22:00.000-06:00

Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race, by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. Who will be president in 2008? Many believe that the White House is Hillary Clinton's to lose. As long-time strategists Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal in Condi vs. Hillary, however, Hillary's plans for higher office are vulnerable to a challenge from a most unexpected quarter: the Bush administration's secretary of state and former national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice. Rice is the only figure on the national scene who has the credentials, the credibility, and the charisma to lead the GOP in 2008. And, as this first book on the subject demonstrates, a race between these two commanding, but very different, women is a very real possibility -- and would inevitably prove one of the most fascinating and important races in American history.

Blending insider insight and political foresight, Condi vs. Hillary surveys the strengths and weaknesses of the two candidates, finding persuasive clues about what we might expect from each of them as a chief executive. It traces their very different childhoods -- Hillary Rodham's in unchallenging suburban comfort, Condi Rice's in Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights era -- and finds in each the roots of their latter-day selves. It explores their career in public life -- Hillary's as an ambitious liberal who attached herself to a governor on the rise, Condi's as a woman of broad and deep talents who has earned her own way. It turns a discerning eye on how each has spent her time in government, contrasting Condi's growth and maturation in office with Hillary's record of underachievement as both first lady and senator from New York. And it reveals how a draft-Condi movement could sweep the secretary of state into the presidency even as she forgoes campaigning to address her responsibilities as secretary of state.

America, in short, may be on the verge of a perfect storm of twenty-first-century politics, pitting two of America's most popular -- and controversial -- women against each other, and offering Americans a choice between fulfilling the ambitions of one of our most polarizing figures . . . or changing history by electing not just the first woman, but also the first African American woman, to lead the free world into the future.

The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business

2005-10-17T18:09:00.000-06:00

The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business, by Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart is an undeniable force in the business world. One of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, she turned her personal passion into Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a billion dollar business. This Fall she’s breaking new ground with two television shows from NBC—her reality show The Apprentice: Martha Stewart and her daytime syndicated show Martha—as well as a radio program on Sirius satellite radio which will provide daily round-the-clock how-to content. What’s her secret for success?

Now, for the first time, Martha Stewart shares her business knowledge and advice in this handbook for success. Tapping into her years of experience in building a thriving business, Martha will help readers identify their own entrepreneurial voice and channel their skills and passions into a successful business venture. Her advice and insight is applicable to anyone who is about to start or expand a venture of any size, whether it is a business or philanthropic endeavor, but also to individuals who want to apply the entrepreneurial spirit to a job or corporation to increase innovation and maintain a competitive edge. Featuring Martha’s top principles for success, as well as stories and anecdotes from her own experiences, Martha’s Rules is sure to appeal to business readers, fans, and anyone who admires her for her style, taste, and great advice—and who have great business ideas of their own!

A Wedding in December

2005-10-10T15:33:00.000-06:00

A Wedding in December, by Anita Shreve. Massachusetts, seven former schoolmates gather for a wedding. Nora, the owner of the inn, has recently had to reinvent her life following the death of her husband. Avery, who still hears echoes from a horrific event at Kidd Academy twenty-six years ago, has made a life for himself in Toronto with his wife and two sons. Agnes, now a history teacher at Kidd is a still-single woman who longs to tell a secret she cannot reveal to the others, a secret that would stun them all. Bridget, the mother of a 15-year-old boy, has agreed to marry Bill, an old high school lover whom she has recently re-met, despite uncertainties about her health and future. Indeed, it is Bill who passionately wants this wedding and who has brought everyone together for an astonishing weekend of revelation and recrimination, forgiveness and redemption. This is Anita Shreve's most ambitious and moving novel to date, probing into human motivation with the grace and skill that have made her one of the finest novelists of her time.

The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq

2005-10-10T15:11:00.000-06:00

The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, by George Packer. The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq recounts how the United States set about changing the history of the Middle East and became ensnared in a guerrilla war in Iraq. It tells the story of the people and ideas that created the Bush administration's war policy and led America to the Assassin's Gate--the main point of entry into the American zone in Baghdad. The consequences of that policy are shown in the author's vivid reporting on the ground in Iraq, where he made several tours on assignment for The New Yorker. We see up close the struggles of individual American soldiers and civilians and Iraqis from all backgrounds, including returning exiles, thrown together by a war that followed none of the preconceived scripts.

The Assassin's Gate also describes the effect of the Iraq war on American life, including the ordeal of a fallen soldier's family and the shortcomings of a political culture too impoverished in its knowledge of the world and too bitterly polarized to debate complex moral and strategic questions. George Packer's intimate first-person narrative navigates this journey through the landscapes of America and Iraq while tracing the author's own evolving views, bringing to the page the full range of ideas and emotions stirred up by our most controversial foreign-policy venture since Vietnam.

Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time, Book 11)

2005-10-10T14:53:00.000-06:00

Knife of Dreams (The Wheel of Time, Book 11), by Robert Jordan. The Wheel of Time turns, and Robert Jordan gives us the eleventh volume of his extraordinary masterwork of fantasy. The dead are walking, men die impossible deaths, and it seems as though reality itself has become unstable: All are signs of the imminence of Tarmon Gai’don, the Last Battle, when Rand al’Thor, the Dragon Reborn, must confront the Dark One as humanity’s only hope. But Rand dares not fight until he possesses all the surviving seals on the Dark One’s prison and has dealt with the Seanchan, who threaten to overrun all nations this side of the Aryth Ocean and increasingly seem too entrenched to be fought off. But his attempt to make a truce with the Seanchan is shadowed by treachery that may cost him everything. Whatever the price, though, he must have that truce. And he faces other dangers. There are those among the Forsaken who will go to any length to see him dead--and the Black Ajah is at his side. Unbeknownst to Rand, Perrin has made his own truce with the Seanchan. It is a deal made with the Dark One, in his eyes, but he will do whatever is needed to rescue his wife, Faile, and destroy the Shaido who captured her. Among the Shaido, Faile works to free herself while hiding a secret that might give her her freedom or cause her destruction. And at a town called Malden, the Two Rivers longbow will be matched against Shaido spears.

Fleeing Ebou Dar through Seanchan-controlled Altara with the kidnapped Daughter of the Nine Moons, Mat attempts to court the woman to whom he is half-married, knowing that she will complete that ceremony eventually. But Tuon coolly leads him on a merry chase as he learns that even a gift can have deep significance among the Seanchan Blood and what he thinks he knows of women is not enough to save him. For reasons of her own, which she will not reveal until a time of her choosing, she has pledged not to escape, but Mat still sweats whenever there are Seanchan soldiers near. Then he learns that Tuon herself is in deadly danger from those very soldiers. To get her to safety, he must do what he hates worse than work. In Caemlyn, Elayne fights to gain the Lion Throne while trying to avert what seems a certain civil war should she win the crown. In the White Tower, Egwene struggles to undermine the sisters loyal to Elaida from within. The winds of time have become a storm, and things that everyone believes are fixed in place forever are changing before their eyes. Even the White Tower itself is no longer a place of safety. Now Rand, Perrin and Mat, Egwene and Elayne, Nynaeve and Lan, and even Loial, must ride those storm winds, or the Dark One will triumph.

A Breath of Snow and Ashes

2005-10-04T23:16:00.000-06:00

A Breath of Snow and Ashes, by Diana Gabaldon. Eagerly anticipated by her legions of fans, this sixth novel in Diana Gabaldon’s bestselling Outlander saga is a masterpiece of historical fiction from one of the most popular authors of our time. Since the initial publication of Outlander fifteen years ago, Diana Gabaldon’s New York Times bestselling saga has won the hearts of readers the world over — and sold more than twelve million books. Now, A Breath of Snow and Ashes continues the extraordinary story of 18th-century Scotsman Jamie Fraser and his 20th-century wife, Claire.

The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit. Men lie dead in the streets of Boston, and in the backwoods of North Carolina, isolated cabins burn in the forest. With chaos brewing, the governor calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.

The City of Falling Angels

2005-10-04T23:09:00.000-06:00

The City of Falling Angels, by John Berendt. The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns after more than a decade to give us an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants. It was seven years ago that Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil achieved a record-breaking four-year run on The New York Times bestseller list. John Berendt's inimitable brand of nonfiction brought the dark mystique of Savannah so startlingly to life for millions of people that tourism to Savannah increased by 46 percent. It is Berendt and only Berendt who can capture Venice-a city of masks, a city of riddles, where the narrow, meandering passageways form a giant maze, confounding all who have not grown up wandering into its depths. Venice, a city steeped in a thousand years of history, art and architecture, teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay. Its architectural treasures crumble--foundations shift, marble ornaments fall--even as efforts to preserve them are underway. The City of Falling Angels opens on the evening of January 29, 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Venice opera house. The loss of the Fenice, where five of Verdi's operas premiered, is a catastrophe for Venetians. Arriving in Venice three days after the fire, Berendt becomes a kind of detective-inquiring into the nature of life in this remarkable museum-city-while gradually revealing the truth about the fire. In the course of his investigations, Berendt introduces us to a rich cast of characters: a prominent Venetian poet whose shocking "suicide" prompts his skeptical friends to pursue a murder suspect on their own; the first family of American expatriates that loses possession of the family palace after four generations of ownership; an organization of high-society, partygoing Americans who raise money to preserve the art and architecture of Venice, while quarreling in public among themselves, questioning one another's motives and drawing startled Venetians into the fray; a contemporary Venetian surrealist painter and outrageous provocateur; the master glassblower of Venice; and numerous others-stool pigeons, scapegoats, hustlers, sleepwalkers, believers in Martians, the Plant Man, the Rat Man, and Henry James.

The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel

2005-10-04T22:55:00.000-06:00

The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel, by Michael Connelly. Mickey Haller has spent all his professional life afraid that he wouldn+t recognize innocence if it stood right in front of him. But what he should have been on the watch for was evil.Haller is a Lincoln Lawyer, a criminal defense pro who operates out of the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, to defend the clients at the bottom of the legal food chain. It+s no wonder that he is despised by cops, prosecutors, and even some of his own clients.From bikers to con artists to drunk drivers and drug dealers, they+re all on Mickey Haller+s client list. But when a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. It+s a franchise case and he+s sure it will be a slam dunk in the courtroom. For once, he may be defending a client who is actually innocent. But an investigator is murdered for getting too close to the truth and Haller quickly discovers that his search for innocence has taken him face-to-face with a kind of evil as pure as a flame. To escape without being burned, Haller must use all of his skills to manipulate a system in which he no longer believes.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned

2005-10-02T12:55:00.000-06:00

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned, by Alan Alda. He’s one of America’s most recognizable and acclaimed actors–a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H. Now Alan Alda has written a memoir as elegant, funny, and affecting as his greatest performances. “My mother didn’t try to stab my father until I was six,” begins Alda’s irresistible story. The son of a popular actor and a loving but mentally ill mother, he spent his early childhood backstage in the erotic and comic world of burlesque and went on, after early struggles, to achieve extraordinary success in his profession.

Yet Never Have Your Dog Stuffed is not a memoir of show-business ups and downs. It is a moving and funny story of a boy growing into a man who then realizes he has only just begun to grow. It is the story of turning points in Alda’s life, events that would make him what he is–if only he could survive them. From the moment as a boy when his dead dog is returned from the taxidermist’s shop with a hideous expression on his face, and he learns that death can’t be undone, to the decades-long effort to find compassion for the mother he lived with but never knew, to his acceptance of his father, both personally and professionally, Alda learns the hard way that change, uncertainty, and transformation are what life is made of, and true happiness is found in embracing them. Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, filled with curiosity about nature, good humor, and honesty, is the crowning achievement of an actor, author, and director, but surprisingly, it is the story of a life more filled with turbulence and laughter than any Alda has ever played on the stage or screen.

Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini

2005-10-02T12:44:00.000-06:00

Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini, by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg. Is There a Doctor in the House? Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor... Why do men have nipples? How do people in wheelchairs have sex? Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast? Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever? Why does asparagus make my pee smell? Why do old people grow hair on their ears? Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, bestselling author and well-known satirist, Why Do Men Have Nipples? offers real factual and really funny answers to some of the big questions about the oddities of our bodies.

Outlaw Tales of Colorado: True Stories of Colorado's Notorious Robbers, Rustlers, and Bandits

2005-10-02T12:33:00.000-06:00

Outlaw Tales of Colorado: True Stories of Colorado's Notorious Robbers, Rustlers, and Bandits, by Jan Elizabeth Murphy. This book includes lively true stories about colorful characters who committed crimes throughout the state during its early immigration and settlement years (1850-1920). Among these outlaws are a mountain man, murderess, gunslinger, con man, train robber, rustler, cannibal, and underworld hoodlum. Twelve fun-spirited, true tales vividly portray young lawless Colorado.