Book search

Browse books

Rare books

Textbooks

Bookstores

Find books by keyword or ISBN: Find books by author: Find books by title:

Traces the life of Keats, examines the development of his poetry, and describes the factors which influenced Keats as a poet.

Norman Mailer's THE ARMIES OF THE NIGHT, which chronicles the historic 1967 protest march on the Pentagon in Washington D.C., won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize and is considered one of the definitive anti-war documents of the Vietnam era. Its first section, "History as a Novel," is as colorful and immediate as a work of fiction, presenting Mailer as a character in the drama. In visceral prose, he filters the events through his point of view--events that include the arrests of thousands of demonstrators, among them Mailer himself. The second half, "The Novel as History," employs a more sober and objective historical perspective on the march, the events that prompted it, the increasing anti-war sentiment in the country, and the government's determination--ultimately a futile one--to stamp it out. Mailer's ego-driven, iconoclastic, and fascinating narrative provides a wide-open window into a period of American history that has been endlessly recorded--but perhaps never so well.

In her memoir, American playwright Lillian Hellman shares her adventures in book publishing, and her journeys through Russia, Spain, and Germany. Additionally, Hellman provides entertaining anecdotes about her encounters within international literary art circles, including her conversations with Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her relationship with novelist Dashiell Hammett is illuminated.

The contradictions and paradoxes of Jean Cocteau, poet, novelist, playwright, and film-maker, can be called a deliberate scandal. The generosity and the egomania, the poise and the anguish of an opium-addicted homosexual, a man who knew everyone that mattered in the arts, and who climaxed an avant-garde life by entering, without seeming contradiction, the formidable conservative precincts of the Academie Francaise--all this is elegantly woven by Mr. Steegmuller into the tapestry of this award-winning and riveting biography.

A walk home from school takes on an extraordinary new dimension for a little girl walking alone for the first time as she views the world through the magical eyes of her imagination.

Explores the private life and public career of the American political writer who, from Bull Moose Progressivism to the trauma of Watergate, wielded significant power over public opinion both at home and abroad.

A full-length portrait of one of America's great writers brings to life Hawthorne's experiences and the age he lived in, detailing his courtship of Sophia Peabody and his relationships with Melville, Poe, Emerson, and others.

The author combines research and excerpts from Hyde Park papers to illuminate the forty-five-year marriage of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Explores the poet's inner and outer world and especially her relationships with others through an examination of the poems and personal correspondence.

This 1979 chronicle is seen by critics not only as the definitive life of Dr. Johnson, but as a model of well-researched, lucid, fair--but always affectionate--biography.

This portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and long-time Kennedy family confidante, traces the life of Robert F. Kennedy and includes his role as brother and advisor to President John F. Kennedy, his achievements as U.S. senator, and Kennedy's own personal quest as advocate for many liberal causes of the '60s. It also provides a thorough historical portrait of the '60s.

The first volume of Edmund Morris's biography of Theodore Roosevelt covers his life up to 1901, when he assumed the presidency following the assassination of President McKinley. Morris explores Roosevelt's origins and growth, and conveys the robust personality that charmed a nation.

Samuel Beckett has become the standard work on the enigmatic, controversial, and Nobel Prize-winning creator of such contributions to 20th-century theater as Waiting for Godot and Endgame. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs.

Noted historian McCullough examines the formative years of Theodore Roosevelt, providing a portrait of his family and a social history of a time period. Winner of the National Book Award for Biography.

The author of such books as "The Golem", "The Fools of Chelm", and "When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw" reflects on his childhood in Poland. Illustrated with b&w photographs.

This third book in the Earthsea epic fantasy series takes place several years after the previous novel, THE TOMBS OF ATUAN. A renegade sorcerer bent on immortality has shattered the line between life and death. As a result, the magic of Earthsea is suffering, and those who practice it are also suffering. The Archmage Ged, Earthsea's greatest wizard, and the young Prince Arren set out to find this sorcerer and seal the hole that he has made in the world.

In famine-stricken 18th century Japan, a 13-year-old boy named Jiro, the clumsy son of a poor puppet maker, becomes the apprentice to Yoshida, the master of the Hanza Puppet Theater. As Jiro works to learn the art of puppeteering, he must also strive to please the seldom-satisfied Yoshida. Jiro's work is disrupted, however, when he sets out to discover the true identity of Sabru, the mysterious thief who robs from the rich and gives to the poor--and who seems to have some sort of connection to the Hanza Theater. Will Jiro's investigation put his life, and the lives of the others at the Hanza Theater, in danger? This work of historical fiction includes detailed information about Japanese theater as well as about life and culture in 18th Japan.

Gilly Hopkins had been moved from so many foster homes that she no longer even tries to be nice. Brilliant, arrogant and angry, she is determined not to fit in to her new home--and, of course, she would never love anyone. After all, her mother is going to come for her one day, isn't she? But Gilly hadn't counted on Maime Trotter, her new guardian; Maime's ward, the wimpy seven-year-old William Ernest; old and wizened Mr. Randolph; and even her teacher, the cool Miss Harris, to worm their way into her wounded heart.

A year in the life of a 13-year-old girl in 19th-century New England. Catherine Cabot Hall begins her diary in 1830, a few years after the death of her mother. She relates her life on a the family farm where she lives with her father and her sister. As the year passes, Catherine encounters both happiness and sorrows as well as events that will change her life forever. Winner of the 1980 Newbery Medal.

The first entry in the Westmark trilogy which is completed by "The Kestrel" and "The Beggar Queen". Set in the medieval-like kingdom of Westmark, this is the story King Augustine and Queen Caroline, who are so distraught over the disappearance of their daughter that they have allowed their kingdom to fall into the hands of their evil chief minister, Cabbarus. Cabbarus, desperate to keep the people unaware of his evil acts, has required government approval for any printed material to be published in the kingdom. When an idealistic young printer named Theo agrees to do a print job without getting prior permission, he begins a lifetime's adventures.

Manuel Hernandez faces a time of many changes during the year leading up to anticipated initiation into a gang. Manny's alcoholic father calls him "el perico," or parrot, comparing him to the Mexican saying about a parrot that complains about how hot it is in the shade while all along he's sitting inside the oven and doesn't know it. Will Manny find a way to escape for the oven he's trapped himself in?

The story of Miracle McCloy, a teenager who as a baby was removed from the womb of her dying mother--which her clairvoyant grandmother is convinced makes her special. Raised by her grandmother and her novelist father in a household full of mystical rules and beliefs, Miracle has a hard time dealing with reality, a situation that turns desperately serious when she accidently sets herself on fire and is placed in a psychiatric hospital.

Following a miscarriage of justice, the ever-unlucky Stanley Yelnats is sentenced to imprisonment at a boys' juvenile detention center known as Camp Green Lake. There's just one thing about Camp Green Lake--there's no lake, just a dried-up lake bed in which, every day, each boy must dig a hole five feet deep and five feet across. The sadistic warden claims that digging the holes helps the boys build character, but that's nothing more than a lie--and it's up to Stanley and his fellow prisoners to dig up the truth about why the warden really wants them to perform this task. Recipient of the 1999 Newbery Medal.

Ever since her mother died, pre-teenager Retta has carried most of the responsibility of caring for her younger brothers Johnny and Roy. When Retta discovers that a nearby neighbor, who has a swimming pool, always goes to bed early, she thinks she has found the perfect way to entertain her brothers on the long nights when their musician father is out working. Retta thinks she has everything under control until Johnny takes up with a dubious friend, which distracts Retta from caring for Roy. Can Retta handle the pressure of being responsible for her entire family?

Shortly after her father's death, Victoria and her mother move to a small village outside of Boston where she meets a wealthy teenage boy who teaches her a valuable but painful lesson about life.

The history of chimney sweeps in the United State and Europe from the 15th century onward. Special attention is given to the fact that young boys were often hired to do this dangerous job. Illustrated with b&w photographs.

A house can mean a lot of different things to different people and animals. With lively rhymes, this book makes the reader think about houses in very interesting ways.

Fitzgerald's landmark history of the Vietnam War reveals the collison of cultures between the Americans and the Vietnamese.

On April 2, 1969 five-man squads of New York policemen, armed with shotguns and wearing bulletproof vests, pounded on a succession of apartment doors throughout New York City, rounding up members of the Black Panther party. Thirteen of twenty-one suspects were charged and tried for attempted arson, attempted murder, and conspiracies to blow up various police stations, school buildings, a railroad yard, and the Bronx Botanical Gardens. But the forces of "law and order" behaved in a decidedly less lawful manner than the defendants. The Briar Patch brilliantly examines the proceedings, from the police undercover operations that first implicated the Panthers, to their acquittal on all charges. It remains a seminal book - not just about the Panther 21, but about the quality of justice in America.

A record of the personal struggles and determination of a Black tenant farmer born in Alabama in 1885

Analyses of Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and other fairy tales reveal their value in educating, supporting, and liberating the emotions of children.

Curt is best friends, and best competitors, with his track teammate, Daryl. After Daryl has a heart attack and is forced to stop running, Curt finds himself the new star of the track team. Daryl's father, who had been coaching both boys, now ignores his own son and turns all of his attention towards Curt. Will Daryl's jealousy lead him to compete again...even though the results could be deadly?

Author Matthiessen documents his travels in Nepal with naturalist George Schaller, including his attempts to come to grips with his wife's death from cancer, and his general pondering of questions of life and death. The snow leopard becomes a symbol to Matthiessen of the elusive silence of the peace of Zen.

This tale of the Chicago underworld was a critical and commercial success upon its release in 1949. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM is the story of Frankie Machine, a five-card stud dealer with a morphine habit he picked up with his Purple Heart during the Second World War. Frankie's wife is an invalid thanks to her husband's drunk driving. To escape the recriminations of his wife, he passes time with Molly, a young prostitute. Frankie's troubles multiply when he accidentally kills his drug dealer. Soon thereafter he is nabbed during a robbery and spends some time in stir. On his release he returns to Molly and his old haunts, but the death of the drug dealer catches up with him.

The story of a soldier stationed on Oahu, in the years just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt is a member of the Standing Army, a bugler who played taps at Arlington. Essentially his own person, he must confront the Army's will to stamp out his individuality and turn him into someone he doesn't want to be.

Ellison's classic 1952 novel is about a black man from the South who travels to New York City in the 1930s. He becomes involved with the Communist Party, but is soon disillusioned: the Communists see him not as a person but as a symbol of oppressed humanity, as does the Black Nationalist Group he encounters. This inability of a blind and hostile society to value him for himself, rather than as a projection of the ideas of others, is the recurrent theme of the novel, which becomes more and more surreal as the nameless narrator continues his quest for identity. Ultimately, this is an existential statement, permeated with the author's ironic perceptions about the absurdity of human existence.

In Saul Bellow's exuberantly autobiographical novel, the larger-than-life Augie March begins as a poor Chicago boy growing up during the Great Depression. Drifting from job to job, he falls in love with Thea, an eagle trainer, and develops schemes--each more grandiose and unrealistic than the last--for making money and becoming famous. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH is often called one of the great American novels; it was, at any rate, the novel that marked Saul Bellow as a great American writer when it appeared in 1953.

The story of a lawyer who strives beyond his family's ambitions for him to become Pennsylvania's governor, and pays the penalty for his hubris.

THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLE takes place in St. Botolph's, Massachusetts, a fishing village in which a storm causes ferry pilot Leander Wapshot's boat to be damaged. His wife Sarah turns the ferry into a Floating Gift Shoppe, to Leander's discomfort, even though the shop pays for his sons' college educations. This novel is heavily based on Cheever's own upbringing in a northeastern town.

Malamud's first collection, set in New York City and in Italy, established him as an important writer. From its publication in 1958, THE MAGIC BARREL has been acclaimed as one of the definitive literary works about the immigrant experience.

Roth's debut book, a novella and short stories about Jews in contemporary America, won a National Book Award in 1959 and established him as an important writer. While his insight into the Jewish-American experience won him a large audience, his realistic characterizations alienated many American Jews, who considered him anti-Semitic--a description that outraged Roth, and that he has felt compelled to address periodically throughout his career.

This acclaimed novel is narrated by Binx Bolling, a businessman from a genteel Louisiana family. Binx finds peace by going to the movies, but he is haunted by what he calls "malaise," a combination of depression and despair. His search for meaning and authenticity in his life forms the action of this novel.

HERZOG, one of Saul Bellow's most celebrated novels, portrays (via the hero's sad, manic, ironic letters) the slow decline of Moses Herzog, a failed writer, teacher, husband, and father, as he charges through life unable to face the mistakes that have crippled him and wounded those around him. Introspective, witty, and sharp, the novel provides an astonishing insight into the soul of the modern intellectual. Herzog, whose wife--his third--is unfaithful to him, is a version of Bellow himself, and his rival is reportedly based on a good friend of his who was having an affair with Bellow's own wife at the time. HERZOG won a National Book Award in 1964.

The acclaimed stories from Texan, Katherine Anne Porter, many of which examine the intricacies of Southern life. Winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Malamud's novel is based on the case of a Jewish worker in Russia who is accused of murder, and his subsequent treatment at the hands of the law and the public.

Wilder's first work of fiction after 20 years, this novel is about a man who shoots and kills his friend, is sentenced to death, and becomes a fugitive from justice.

Based on the family story of one of Oates's own students at the University of Detroit, "Them" chronicles the troubled life of Maureen Wendall, who begins to turn tricks at 16. Beaten by her stepfather, she retreats into catatonia. When she emerges she attends college, seduces a professor, and breaks up his marriage. Meanwhile, her brother Jules obsesses over a girl named Nadine who shoots him in the chest and almost kills him. Oates portrays a violent and turbulent world to which the backdrop of race riots in the Detroit slums and the use of the author herself as a minor character add a realistic edge. The novel won the National Book Award in 1969.

In Saul Bellow's 1970 more-bitter-than-sweet novel about alienation and moral decay, Artur Sammler, a 70-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, spends his days quietly and pointlessly in New York. An intellectual and academic, he lectures occasionally at Columbia University but spends most of his time drifting about the city, trying to make sense of an utterly foreign world--a world he despises and despairs of. On the eve of the moon landing in 1969, Sammler can envision the possibility of a new world but is unable to ascertain if it will be a better one--or the end of civilization as we know it....

Maquis rebels Chakotay, Torres, Seska, and Tuvok fight through a Cardassian blockade to reach the beleaguered planet of Helena in the demilitarized zone and find that both refugees and Cardassians have been struck down by a mysterious plague.

John Converse is sent on assignment to Vietnam by his father-in-law, who runs a tabloid paper. While there, he decides to smuggle in three kilos of heroin to the U.S. He gets his friend Hicks to do it. Once Hicks gets to the U.S., he contacts Marge, who sells tickets in a porn theater and is addicted to tranquilizers. Hicks is set upon by thugs, and he and Marge escape across Southern California, Converse in pursuit of them, and a posse of lawmen led by a man named Antheil in pursuit of the heroin itself. The three parties meet at a cult in the mountains near the Mexican border. This book won the National Book Award in 1975 and was filmed as WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN? in 1978.

J.R., an 11-year-old, becomes a wizard of Wall Street, and a writer named Jack Gibbs is trying to finish a book titled "Agape Agape". Gaddis's second novel won the National Book Award in 1975.

Joe Allston, the narrator of Stegner's earlier (1967) novel, ALL THE LITTLE LIVE THINGS, finds the journal he kept on a trip to Denmark 20 years earlier, which describes his attraction to a wealthy Danish woman. He reads the journal to his wife, and her response makes it clear how rich and vital their marriage has been. Winner of the National Book Award in 1976.

Diedre Griffin and Detective Mitch Greer, lovers and vampires, return to New York City to find a serial killer who is killing vampires as well as humans.

To read all of these stories in three or four sittings is to enter a world of lush lawns and swimming pools, martinis and backyard barbecues, the alienation of living in a big city, the anxiety of being surrounded by those whom you hope you resemble. Here Cheever captures the essence of urbanity and suburbanness, the angst of the station wagon, the paradox of loneliness inherent in being surrounded by people. Also included in this collection are Cheever's stories of Italy.

The Atkins family, of the Nebraska plains, is a family of women headed by Cora, who has learned to submit to the rhythms of nature and maintains a moral innocence. Her sister-in-law, Belle, dies in childbirth. Sharon Rose, Belle's daughter, is raised by Cora and eventually leaves Nebraska for the sophistication of the East Coast. Years later she returns to the plains and comes face-to-face with Cora's dignity, resourcefulness, and resolute character.

Updike's third novel (after RABBIT, RUN and RABBIT REDUX) about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom follows the Pennsylvania car salesman's passage into middle age in the turbulent 1970s. Rabbit has achieved success as a salesman at Springer Motors, but his life is not without problems, including the return of his recalcitrant son Nelson, the return of an old flame into his life, and the ever-volatile relationship with Janice, his wife. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1982.

Eudora Welty won the National Medal for Literature in 1979. A year later this award-winning volume of her short stories was published, and she was presented with the Medal of Freedom by President Jimmy Carter. This comprehensive collection, selected and introduced by Welty herself, solidifies her position as an important American writer, and one of the indispensable literary voices of the South. It includes stories from A CURTAIN OF GREEN (1941), THE ROBBER BRIDEGROOM (1941), THE WIDE NET (1943), THE GOLDEN APPLES (1949), and THE BRIDE OF THE INNISFALLEN (1955).

Winner of the 1984 American Book Award, Gilchrist's second collection of stories is set, like virtually all her novels, in a deeply eccentric pocket of the American south.

In this bleak American comedy, Jack and Babette are a typical middle-class suburban couple until an accident in a chemical plant changes their lives. Babette becomes addicted to a Prozac-like experimental drug called Dylar that removes her horror of death, and Jack sees the hollowness of consumer culture, the modern media, and his academic life (as a professor of Hitler Studies at a New England college). DeLillo's meditation on love and death and American culture was a National Book Award-winner in 1985.

Set in Manhattan and the Bronx in 1939, Doctorow's nostalgic novel is a slice of life seen through the eyes of a young boy who is distracted from the hardships of his own life by the dazzling promise of the World's Fair.

This novel focuses on Paco Sullivan, the lone survivor of a massacre in Vietnam, who travels back to the United States, becomes a dishwasher in a short-order restaurant, and is haunted by the ghosts of the men killed in battle.

A white man murders a 14-year-old black girl in a Southern town, an event that exposes the true souls of everyone involved: Paris Trout, the murderer; his abused wife, Hanna, who tries to escape him; his defense lawyer; and the idealistic young lawyer who handles Hanna's divorce.

Winner of the 1989 National Book Award, this novel is about a cynical, disaffected fisherman in Rhode Island, Dick Pierce, who is building a boat--"Spartina"--in his back yard. His life, values, and view of himself are tested by a devastating hurricane and an unexpected, redemptive love affair.

Rutherford Calhoun escapes marriage and debt by stowing away on the illegal slave ship, the "Republic." Discovered, he is then put in charge of the ship's log. Calhoun must confront his self-centered philosophies as he writes the log, adrift with a cargo of slaves and forty crew members in search of new lives. This novel won the 1990 National Book Award.

Two Americans--a thirtyish anthropologist in the pursuit of a man, and a late-forties utopian who has set up a modern-day Eden--search for love in 1980s Botswana, Africa, a land full of political turmoil and local color.

The first volume in McCarthy's Border Trilogy, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES begins with the death of John Grady Cole's grandfather. John Grady, age 16, has lived with his grandfather for much of his life, and when the old man dies and the family home--a ranch in Texas--is sold, John Grady and his old friend Lacey Rawlins take off for Mexico, looking for a place in a world that seems increasingly hostile. Almost immediately, they encounter trouble, and the trip is studded with death, loss, violence, stolen horses, and thwarted love. By the time John Grady returns home--alone--he is irrevocably changed.

This satire about plagiarism and the legal profession was the winner of the National Book Award (Gaddis's second) in 1994.

Mickey Sabbath, an aging, misanthropic puppeteer, embarks on a journey into his checkered past when his long-time mistress dies. His journey turns into succession of disasters. And while Sabbath wants to die, he still has too much life in him to succumb.

Science and love are the subjects of these short stories and a novella. Winner of the 1996 National Book Award.

Based on stories in the author's family, this novel is about a wounded Civil War soldier who walks away from the hospital and finds his arduous way home to his sweetheart--a cultured young woman who has been forced to learn the brutal ways of farm life. The stories of the two lovers are intertwined; when they converge, they find that their worlds have changed radically, and so have they. Winner of the 1997 National Book Award for fiction.

Billy Lynch is an alcoholic. At his death, his large Irish Catholic family in Queens tells stories about him--his loyalty, his wacky side, his sad past--trying to understand the roots of his destructive drinking. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

This multi-award-winning novel about a romance between Dr. Lin Kong, an unhappily married Chinese physician, and Manna Wu, the nurse he falls in love with, is a chronicle of Kong's attempt to get a divorce from his wife over the course of 17 years. The victim of an arranged marriage, Kong longs for an end--but each time they go to court, his very traditional wife, at the last minute, refuses. Kong is hoping to profit from a Chinese law that permits an automatic divorce after 18 years of separation--and his long, patient devotion and endless frustration can be seen as an allegory of life in a repressive society. In addition to being a passionate love story, WAITING is also an insightful and fascinating look at contemporary provincial China.

A Polish actress in America is the focus of Susan Sontag's fourth novel. Based on a true-life story, the novel traces the career of Maryna Dembowska who, gives up her career on the Polish stage to participate in the founding of a utopian community in California in 1876. When the experiment fails, Maryna carries on, making a new life for herself in America and returning to acting, finally teaming up with the famous actor Edwin Booth, who falls in love with her. The story is advanced by means of several unusual points of view, including a stage speech written by Maryna to Booth, and the diary kept by one of her husbands. A New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000.

The Lambert family isn't doing well. Alfred has Parkinson's disease and a bad case of alienation from his wife, Enid. Gary is a banker with a heart of steel. Chip is in New York City trying to find himself, but losing the battle. And Denise is stuck in a destructive affair with someone very unsuitable. Enid is hoping to steal away with Alfred for a long-postponed cruise, but as things start to spiral out of control, the Lamberts must examine where they are, where they have been, and what exactly it means to be a family in the latter half of the 20th century. THE CORRECTIONS was a bestseller and a New York Times "Editor's Choice" for 2001.

In Scotland, during the course of three summers in the 1980s and '90s, Paul MacLeod, his son Fenno, and a woman named Fern work out a complex chain of relationships. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Soon after the end of World War II, a disillusioned veteran and U.S. Army major named Aldred Leith travels to a Japanese island, hoping to understand the impact of the war on the place. Meanwhile, his friend Peter Exley is investigating war crimes. And two young children, the daughter and son of a general, play their part in a novel about victims of various kinds and their rescuers. A New York Times Notable Book for 2003.

Ella Lynch is a gorgeous Irishwoman living in Paris when the Paraguayan prince regent, Franco, takes one look at her, falls instantly in love, takes her home, and sets her up in luxury as his mistress. Lily Tuck tells Ella's rich and colorful story by weaving together the tales of many others who come into her orbit, as Franco succeeds to power and eventually leads the country into a disastrous war. THE NEWS FROM PARAGUAY won the National Book Award in fiction in 2004.

William T. Vollmann turns his attention to Central Europe, setting this 800-page novel in 1941, when the German army was moving into Russia, where it would soon meet major defeats. Vollmann incorporates not only actual events but real people (they include Käthe Kollwitz, Shostakovich, and the German general Paulus), along with figures from German mythology, into a narrative that aims to find equivalences between Nazism and Stalinism and to show exactly what "just following orders" meant to the actual people who were involved. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Fiction.

After crashing his truck and falling into a 14-day coma, Mark Schluter wakes up with Capgras Syndrome, and believes that his sister Karin has been replaced by an imposter. Devastated, Karin calls in a renowned neurologist to help. Meanwhile Schluter follows his sole lead, an anonymous note, in the hopes it will reveal the mystery of his condition and his inexplicable accident. Capgras Syndrome is a division of a person's intellectual and emotional understanding, but in his ninth novel Richard Powers once again proves he is equally adept at both sides of the equation: THE ECHO MAKER is full of rich ideas and powerful humanity. It is captivating and sorrowful.

Denis Johnson's long-awaited Vietnam novel is as labyrinthine and mysterious as the tunnels of Cu Chi. Johnson follows dozens of characters, including the wayward Houston brothers (who appeared as would-be bank robbers in Johnson's nearly perfect first novel, ANGELS), a cadre of PsyOp (Psychological Operations) CIA agents led by the legendary Colonel Sands, an NLF double agent, a German assassin, a loyal South Vietnamese helicopter pilot, a theologically troubled Christian human-rights advocate, plus the countless grunts, Lurps, spies, whores, and crazies who provide the background to a world turned upside down with the madness of war. Ostensibly, the plot involves the Colonel's unauthorized plan to convince Hanoi that a rogue CIA agent with a nuclear bomb is loose in Vietnam. But Johnson has always been a writer more interested in the transcendent moment than in the over-arching narrative, and one reads TREE OF SMOKE for the piercing details, the troubled souls, the spiritual gloom and grandeur, the sudden and unexpected glimpses of exhilaration and transcendence, and the equally sudden plunges back into confusion and insanity. If the book feels fractured, it is because one of the novel's repeated themes is drawn from Corinthians: "And there are differences of administration, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operation, but it is the same God which worketh all in all." For Johnson, Vietnam is a constantly shifting reality, a land without set rules, without logic, a place that is always both heaven and hell. TREE OF SMOKE won the 2007 National Book Award.

For over 20 years, Peter Mathiessen (THE SNOW LEOPARD) toiled on his late-career masterpiece, the trilogy of novels recounting the legendary, notorious, glorious, and nasty life of Florida outlaw, murderer, and sugar cane plantation owner Edgar J. Watson. The books--KILLING MISTER WATSON, LOST MAN'S RIVER, and BONE BY BONE--serve as an epic and brilliant investigation of the lawlessness, ambition, ecological plunder, and the racial tensions of Florida's--and American--history. But Matthiessen wasn't done: in 2008 he published SHADOW COUNTRY, a painstakingly edited and refined version of the trilogy, now fused into a single 900 page tome. The first "book" in SHADOW COUNTRY uses a dozen narrators to relate the arc of Watson's life, from celebrated outlaw, to loathed murderer, to his own bloody demise at the hands of a crowd. In its blend of fact, fiction, myth, and surmise, the section explores the nature of reality with the same lush multiplicity of Faulkner's ABSALOM, ABSALOM! In the second "book," two of Watson's sons strive to understand their father's dark legacy. Finally, in the last "book" Watson himself addresses his own life, and many of the mysteries of his youth become revealed. A remarkable work of American fiction and the apotheosis of a lauded literary career, SHADOW COUNTRY was nominated for the National Book Award in 2008.

Birdy, fascinated with birds since early childhood, concentrates all his energies on his passion for flight, becoming an obsessed teen-age Leonardo, building models, exercising to strengthen his "wing" muscles, and, in his dreams, falling in love with one of his birds.

A collection of six stories interconnected to form a novel about the women who live in the community of Brewster Place, a poor neighborhood on a dead-end street.

Richard and Sara Everton, a middle-aged couple devoted to each other and, perhaps, foolhardy, move from California to a small village in Mexico to reopen an abandoned copper mine. As foreigners in an alien environment, they must learn to cope with the villagers' exaggerated respect, their own disorientation, the things they discover about each other--and the terminal cancer with which Richard is diagnosed soon after they arrive.

A calypso bandleader, Lord Short Shoe, schemes with a sexy black singer to bilk an American out of his pride and his companion monkey. Two poor islanders stumble in a violent encounter that might just escalate into revolution. And an entire island bureaucracy casually confounds the attempts of a hotel owner to get his dead mother out of the freezer. Infused with the rhythms and the beat of the Caribbean, these vivid tales of paradise sought and paradise lost are as lush, steamy, and invigorating as the islands themselves. * Winner of the National Book Award

Kingston, in this sequel to WOMAN WARRIOR, writes about the building of the transcontinental railroad and the Chinese men who worked on the project, including her father and various male ancestors.

The story behind the 1950s Hollywood blacklist and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which issued subpoenas to members of the Hollywood filmmaking community--writers, directors, actors--demanding their testimony about membership in the Communist Party. Those subpoenaed faced wrenching moral dilemmas, as well as the possible loss of their careers, as they were ordered to testify against friends and colleagues. Some chose to testify--naming names--while others dissented, and many lives were ruined. Navasky draws on the experiences of Elia Kazan, Ring Lardner, and others.

The remarkable Civil War letters of a Georgia plantation family, now available in a compact, illustrated volume for new readers and for all those who so greatly admired the original monumental edition. The letters vividly recreate a period of American history unparalleled for its drama and poignancy.

The life of the Massachusetts governor accused of accepting and promoting British for controls provides a loyalist perspective on the events that precipitated the American Revolution.

Brion Davis displayed his mastery not only of a vast source of material, but also of the highly complex, frequently contradictory factors that influenced opinion on slavery. He has now followed this up with a study of equal quality....No one has written a book about the abolition of slavery that carries the conviction of Professor Davis's book.

Popular historian David McCullough tells the story of the building of the Panama Canal, which connected the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. He relates the engineering, the politics, and the human drama. THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS won a National Book Award in history.

Covering his first four years as National Security Adviser, Kissinger discusses his part in formulating the Nixon Doctrine, discloses his views on the Vietnam War, and offers important insights into his relationship with Nixon.

John Boswell's highly acclaimed study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, bishops, and even canonized saints. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history.

Focuses on the middle-class elite of Europe and the generational consciousness that united them in a time when the nineteenth-century world of reason was rapidly disintegrating.

The study of two demagogues, whose vast popularity explains much about Depression-era America.

This expansive survey of world history--completed in 1962--challenges the Oswald Spengler-Arnold Toynbee view of history as a series of separate cultures that evolved separately. McNeill proposes that as individual civilizations developed, they most likely influenced and resembled one another. He draws from numerous literary and non-literary sources, and the book contains a number of illustrations and maps. Slightly Eurocentric in its approach, this is nevertheless considered a classic of Western literature.

This prizewinning study of President Kennedy and and his administration was written by perhaps his closest aide and friend, and sets a high standard for insider accounts that aspire to the level of history.

A discussion of white racial attitudes from the time immediately preceding the arrival of the first Africans in America to the present.

A detailed biography of the red-neck politician who became a national demagogue in the twenties and thirties and almost reached the White House.

In his 18th appearance ladykiller Travis McGee, finally loses his heart to a lovely lady named Gretel. But just as he begins to bear his soul, his confidant is gone. Killed by a mysterious illness, they say, but McGee doesn't believe it. Many women have come and gone from his houseboat, "The Busted Flush," but Gretel was special, and McGee won't give up until he learns the truth about her death.

Parallels the life and literary development of the nineteenth-century author who blends romanticism and realism to portray the fury in men and the seas.

The story of the earth's ocean from its gray beginnings to today with emphasis on ocean life past and present.

This National Book Award-winning account of North American exploration from Balboa to Lewis and Clark reveals how these expeditions defined and gave shape to a new American nation.

Life of the famous English politician, Sir Edward Coke, who served the courts of Queen Elizabeth and King James I.

Before the Nazies could destroy the files, famed foreign correspondent and historian William L. Shirer sifted through the massive self-documentation of the Third Reich, to create a monumental study that has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of one of the most frightening chapters in the history of mankind--now in a special 30th anniversary edition."One of the most important works of history of our time."THE NEW YORK TIMES

A warmly sympathetic biography of Henry James--"the Master"--that emphasizes his devotion to his art, analyzes the pains of his childhood, and acknowledges his intense desire for privacy.

An introduction to the physical characteristics, habits, and natural environment of the Adelie penguins of Antarctica.

The racial turmoil of late 1960s and early '70s Boston is expertly conjured in J. Anthony Lukas's COMMON GROUND, which explores the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in Memphis in 1968. The book chronicles the attempts to bring the black and white communities together, both through simple experiments in social engineering--like televising a James Brown concert to prevent further rioting--and the more problematic method of busing black students into white schools, a practice that caused even more strife. But COMMON GROUND also delves into the complex mechanics of trying to carve out a life in a modern city. Lukas focuses on the efforts of three families--the black Twymons, the working-class Irish McGoffs, and the white, patrician Divers--to enhance, improve, and preserve their way of life against a background of huge social upheaval. He shows how well-meaning political decisions can become embroiled in corruption, how middle-class ambitions can destroy the delicate balance of a neighborhood, and how defending a way of life can swiftly degenerate into violence and brutality. Along the way, Lukas also lays bare the intricate societal relationships that make up a community, sensitively presenting the motivations of a dizzying array of characters from every social level. In addition to being a valuable history lesson, COMMON GROUND is an essential aid to understanding the convoluted interaction of political forces at work in any modern movement for social change.

Considered Lopez's finest book, this is part adventure tale and part meditation on the nature of exploration. Lopez writes about the aurora borealis, polar bears, killer whales, icebergs, and the nobility of the indigenous people of the Arctic. Winner of the American Book Award.

Traces the development of the atomic bomb from Leo Szilard's concept through the drama of the race to build a workable device to the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima.

Through a portrait of military advisor John Paul Vann, a journalist traces the arc of Americans' disillusionment and ambivalence about the War in Vietnam.

The story of the Morgan family, which became rich and powerful through its banking interests in London and New York. The Morgan fortune, it is said, saved America from bankruptcy more than once before the establishment of the national bank. This biography focuses on the business side, rather than on the personal.

Patterson links the birth of freedom in primitive societies with the institution of slavery and traces the evolution of three forms of freedom: personal, civic, and sovereign or organic (exercising power over others).

Both a coming-of-age and a coming-out story, this memoir by Paul Monette (1945-1995) tells about what he considered his "wasted years"--the years before he met the man who would become his long-term lover, and before he came out as a homosexual. The author discusses the pain of being a closeted homosexual, and of AIDS, which claimed the lives of many of his friends. Though the story follows the usual autobiography format, describing his early life, family, education, and later life, the writing is infused with a sense of the political, and the author's anger clearly comes through.

Rosenberg examines the complex aftermath of the breakup of Communist dictatorships of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989. She dissects the lives of the people from Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia as they struggle with the psychological crises that accompanied this immense change. Among those she describes are dissidents accused of collaborating with the secret police, people aware that their loved ones have informed on them, and East German border guards on trial for following orders to shoot defectors.

James Carroll's memoir of his father, an Air Force general who helped plan the bombings in Vietnam. Carroll, a young priest at the time, preached against the war in the presence of his father and other Pentagon officials. His father never forgave him. This memoir is Carroll's attempt to come to terms with the conflicts that disrupted many families at that time, and with his own personal battles with his father.

A biography of Thomas Jefferson, written by a professor of history at Mount Holyoke.

A personal history of slavery in the South, written by a descendant of South Carolina slaveowners who traced the histories of the slave families owned by his ancestors and searched out their descendants. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

This study of an 1820 whaling-ship disaster, chronicles the surviving crew's three-month journey across open sea following the ramming and destruction of their vessel, the Essex. It includes much whaling lore and a vivid evocation of life in 19th-century Nantucket.

Andrew Solomon covers geographical and historical distance in this atlas of depression. In it, he discusses the crushing and pervasive effects of depression on people, the social policy and prescription drugs for controlling it, and its demographic profile around the world. In addition, Solomon uses case studies and his own harrowing personal perspective to illustrate the finer points. A National Book Award nominee and New York Times Notable Book for 2001.

Master of the Senate carries Lyndon Johnson's story through one of its most remarkable periods: his 12 years, from 1949 to 1960, in the United States Senate. Once the most august and revered body in politics, by the time Johnson arrived the Senate had become a parody of itself and an obstacle that for decades had blocked desperately needed liberal legislation. Caro shows how Johnson's brilliance, charm, and ruthlessness enabled him to become the youngest and most powerful Majority Leader in history and how he used his incomparable legislative genius, cajoling and threatening both Northern liberals and Southern conservatives, to pass the first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction. Brilliantly weaving rich detail into a gripping narrative, Caro gives us both a galvanizing portrait of Johnson himself and a definitive and revelatory study of the workings of legislative power.

A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel. Carlos Eire's father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life, and classmates were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. Then in 1959, the world changed. This is Carlos's biography.

This investigative report looks into the events around the 1925 murder trial of an African-American doctor who had bought a home in what was considered a whites-only neighborhood of Detroit. A mob attacked his home, shots were fired, a man lay dead, and Dr. Ossian Sweet, homeowner, was charged with the killing. This account explores Dr. Sweet's personal story, the event's historical context, and the dramatic trial, which included Clarence Darrow for the defense. ARC OF JUSTICE won the 2004 National Book Award in Nonfiction. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.

In THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion writes an account of her life since the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion's grief was profound and debilitating; she and Dunne had been married for nearly 40 years, during which they were hardly ever apart. But in the course of her mourning period, she also gained crucial insights into herself, her marriage, death, and loss. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Nonfiction and named one of the 10 Best Books of 2005 by the New York Times.

Many Americans know about "the Dust Bowl" from the songs of Woody Guthrie (who experienced it) or from the famous book and film of Steinbeck's THE GRAPES OF WRATH. In THE WORST HARD TIME, Timothy Egan reminds us that, while many left the Dust Bowl to start a new life out West, others chose to remain and live as best as they could. Many died; others made it through, and Egan's account of 12 families who did is based on interviews with survivors, many in their nineties, who tell firsthand what it was like. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2006. Winner of the 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

This comprehensive history of the Central Intelligence Agency, from the Cold War through the War on Terror, is written by a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, who interviewed hundreds of former CIA employees (including several directors), and who pored through "the Company's" archives. Tim Weiner tells how the CIA grew out of the OSS under the legendary spymaster "Wild Bill" Donovan and how the fortunes of the agency, for better or worse, most often lay with whoever served as its director. The great revelations in Weiner's book are the accounts of how CIA resources were diverted towards politically motivated ends, including domestic surveillance of Americans. These forays, under presidents from both parties, were in direct violation of the agency's charter and, in Weiner's view, they undermined the role of the agency, diverting it from its main mission: to obtain the best intelligence abroad on America's enemies. Weiner's well-told if somewhat critical account includes many fascinating stories within a coherent history, and makes fascinating reading. Winner of the 2007 National Book Award in Nonfiction.

Historian Annette Gordon-Reed continues the meticulous and eye-opening investigation of the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave Sally Hemings she began in her previous book (THOMAS JEFFERSON AND SALLY HEMINGS) by tracking the lives of the Hemings family in a variety of locations, both in the United States and Europe, and showing the fate of the Jefferson and Hemings children. In doing so, Gordon-Reed vividly demonstrates the incredibly complicated choices and diverse lives lived in the early days of the United States, and her careful explication of issues of race, sex, power, and family should be a revelation to most readers. THE HEMINGSES OF MONTICELLO was one of the most critically acclaimed books released in 2008, winning both a National Book Award for nonfiction and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for history.

The hidden world of Eastern European Jews during the 1940s turns into a world of wonders in an American Book Award-winning fantasy tale that transcends the Holocaust with magical optimism. Originally in paperback.

A Western psychoanalyst and historian presents a detailed examination of the philosophies accepted by Gandhi and his attempts to convert the British through nonviolence.

Written in 1974 as a response to John Rawls THEORY OF JUSTICE, Nozick's exploration of social and political freedoms champions individual rights and reveals a libertarian bent.

Williams's five-volume saga, which takes as its subject the supremely ordinary industrial city of Peterson, New Jersey, expresses the poet's complex--and not always optimistic--view of American life in the mid-20th century.

Robert Hayden was one of the most important African American poets of the twentieth century, and a celebrant of the black experience.

Stevens's perennial concern was the role of the artist in the society in which he lives: What is the connection between the imagination and the real world? His conclusion, that the creation of art and the appreciation of beauty provide the source of meaning and order, is also an answer to his other major preoccupation, which is the quest for meaning in a world without God. Stevens's work is private, cerebral, and full of fine discriminations of feeling; it is also characterized by the vast resources of his vocabulary. Many of his poems take the form of theme and variations--most notably his famous work, "13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."

Adam Crane's long-ago lover, Randi, has come back to town--and his marriage to noble and long-suffering Margaret is over. This is Margaret's story of survival, and triumph.

With Roethke's sudden, tragic death in 1963, a great poetic career was brought to an untimely end. "The Far Field" presents the most rewarding of his many volumes of poetry, both in brilliance of style and inner meaning. All of the poems have appeared previously in periodicals such as "The Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Ladies' Home Journal, The New Yorker", and "The Partisan Review". Lightning Print on Demand Title

More than two hundred poems, including Buckdancer's Choice, The Eagle's Mile, and previously unpublished "apprentice" works, document the development of a major literary figure who has greatly influenced a younger generation of poets.

Award-winning poetry focuses on politics, the Vietnam War, and the events in the America of the late 60's.

The first complete collection of Frank O'Hara's poems, with an introduction by his fellow New York School poet, John Ashbery.

This volume of poems was co-winner of the National Book Award for Poetry when it appeared in 1973.

John Ashberry won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for 'Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror'. Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been.

A capstone to Nemerov's career of nearly thirty years, showing the expansion and increasing richness of his voice and vision and the sharpening of his perception and craft.

Tells the story of the Sconce family, a prominent Pasadena clan who ran a chain of mortuaries that allegedly sold the body parts, the gold dental fixtures, and the vital organs of the bodies in their keeping. Original.

Collects Bronk's complete poems, which deal with the themes of the nature of perception and the human need to reshape the world, among others.

This book--about work and what it means--won the National Book Award in 1991.

This book-length poem, which won the National Book Award in 1993, began when the author passed an actual garbage heap off the interstate in Florida, but it weaves together philosophical considerations of the ways diverse things come together as one and how their nature changes when they do. Like many of Ammons' poems, this one was written on adding-machine tape in casual, heavily enjambed couplets.

James Tate won the 1994 National Book Award with this volume of poetry.

The ninth collection from the 1995 winner of the National Book Award.

Poems culled from Meredith's 50 year career make up this volume, which shows the poet's lasting dedication to plain speech, formal simplicity, and civic engagement. EFFORT AT SPEECH won the 1997 National Book Award for poetry.

New and selected poems by Gerald Stern, the award-winning American poet. This volume was a winner of the National Book Award in 1998.

Nineteen new poems are included in this volume of selected poems by Lucille Clifton which draws on her books written during the last 12 years of the 20th century. Clifton's themes meld the private with the public, as her meditations on race and history are informed by her identity as an African-American woman. A survivor of breast cancer and kidney failure, there is tragedy and hope in these poems.

Dugan has written six collections since his groundbreaking 1961 debut as a Yale Younger Poets selection, singing the ugly truths of postwar America with wit. All six volumes are collected here, along with 35 poems penned in the 1990s. This title received the 2001 National Book Award, Dugan's second time winning the honor. A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

A previous National Book Critics Circle Award-winning poet presents precise, subtle meditations on domesticity and its accompanying mysteries. IN THE NEXT GALAXY was awarded the National Book Award for Poetry in 2002.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Repair presents a new collection of poetry that considers such topics as the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, childhood memories, current events, his self image, and contemporary life during wartime.

A new collection of works by a Whiting Writer's Award-winning poet is divided into three sections including "Braid," "Fray," and "Nub" and features two ongoing serial poems that have evolved throughout more than twenty years, such as a West African spirit song and an exploration of a lost "we" tribe. Original.

The title of Robert Hass's Pulitzer-Prize winning collection evokes carpentry and craft, and his poetry leaves little doubt about his masterful skills as a handler and shaper of language. He has always excelled at making ideas tangible with words, though he has usually restricted his arena to the personal, extending his private perceptions into our realm of vision with his verse. With TIME AND MATERIALS, he moves into the universal, by addressing the atrocity of war, the hegemony of economics, and the ubiquitous, inexorable creep of cynicism that taints so much of modern culture. But Hass's lines and letters, chosen and assembled with such care and candor that they often appear spontaneous, demonstrate the possibility of defeating pessimism with exposure and bright-eyed examination. He both reveals and heals the wounds of the world with his words.

Mark Doty's FIRE TO FIRE is the definitive text from one of the preeminent poets of the latter half of the 20th century. It combines Doty's personal selection of the best of his previous 20 years of work, along with a stunning collection of new poems. The work here showcases his characteristic flair for finding poetry and light in the darkest, dustiest corner. He reminds us that if the world refuses to shine, we can always close our eyes and gaze at our own internal glow. Too often when poets include recent work in a "greatest hits" compilation of this type, the later entries seem rather stale in comparison to the shimmering verses written at the "peak" of a career. In Doty's case, if anything, the opposite is true--the new poems demonstrate how his voice has advanced and perfected itself over time, as he has become a master of his craft. The book was justly awarded the 2008 National Book Critics' Circle award for best book of poetry.

Pagels, a noted authority of religion, examines what impact Gnosticism could have had on Christianity had it not been labelled heretical by the early church fathers. THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS offers up insights from this obscure branch of Christianity, offering synopses of these documents that purport to reveal new insights into Jesus's life, his relationship with Mary Magdalene, and what might have really happened at the time of the resurrection.

'Predators are the best wildlife managers, ' writes George Schaller. They weed out the sick and old and keep herds healthy and alert. Yet the large predators of the world have been and are still being exterminated because they are thought to harm wildlife. Schaller's award-winning work, based on three years of study in the Serengeti National Park, describes the impact of the lion and other predators on the vast herds of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle for which the area is famous.

A leading authority on schizophrenia draws upon his years of studying and treating the disease to illuminate the psychodynamics, symptoms, psychosomatic aspects, psychotherapy, and physical therapies of schizophrenia.

First published in 1979, this is a genuine interdisciplinary work of nonfiction, with dozens of historical references and subtexts. Critics and reviewers have summed up its meaning in varying ways, yet consistently with praise. A mixture of art, philosophy, music, math, technology, and cognitive science, the book's title only reflects one aspect of its subject matter; namely, the connection between the work of mathematician Kurt Gödel, the artist M. C. Escher, and the composer J. S. Bach. In the preface to the 20th-anniversary edition, the author calls his book "a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter." A 1980 Pulitzer Prize winner.

Continuing the exploration of humanity and its world he began in The Lives of a Cell, the acclaimed scientist examines disease and natural death, cloning, making mistakes, and other timely topics with his trademark wonder and wit. Reprint.

Provides an intimate, personal portrait of the eminent physicist and traces the origins, development, and impact of his revolutionary scientific theories.

Wangerin's allegorical fable chronicles the struggle between good and evil exemplified by Chaunticleer the Rooster, and the horrific Wyrm who threatens his kingdom.

The new and rapidly growing field of communication sciences owes as much to Norbert Wiener as to any one man. He coined the word for it--cybernetics. In God & Golem, Inc., the author concerned himself with major points in cybernetics which are relevant to religious issues. The first point he considers is that of the machine which learns. While learning is a property almost exclusively ascribed to the self-conscious living system, a computer now exists which not only can be programmed to play a game of checkers, but one which can "learn" from its past experience and improve on its own game. For a time, the machine was able to beat its inventor at checkers. "It did win," writes the author, "and it did learn to win; and the method of its learning was no different in principle from that of the human being who learns to play checkers. A second point concerns machines which have the capacity to reproduce themselves. It is our commonly held belief that God made man in his own image. The propagation of the race may also be interpreted as a function in which one living being makes another in its own image. But the author demonstrates that man has made machines which are "very well able to make other machines in their own image," and these machine images are not merely pictorial representations but operative images. Can we then say: God is to Golem as man is to Machines? in Jewish legend, golem is an embryo Adam, shapeless and not fully created, hence a monster, an automation. The third point considered is that of the relation between man and machine. The concern here is ethical. "render unto man the things which are man's and unto the computer the things which are the computer's," warns the author. In this section of the book, Dr. Wiener considers systems involving elements of man and machine. The book is written for the intellectually alert public and does not involve any highly technical knowledge. It is based on lectures given at Yale, at the Société Philosophique de Royaumont, and elsewhere.

Sixteen members of a poor Puerto Rican family contribute to a tape-recorded story of their daily lives.

Based on his experiences teaching in the '60s, Jonathan Kozol's classic text on Boston's public schools heralded a career spent reporting on the lives of the disenfranchised. In Roxbury he found racism and neglect, and his expose won the the 1968 National Book Award.

Cortazar's postmodern masterpiece is about Horacio Oliveira's search for La Maga, a group of bohemians and artists in Paris.

In this unusual and engaging collection, Calvino personifies scientific ideas, particularly from astronomy and the way the universe evolved, turning them into characters with stories of their own.

Virgil's Homeric epic was not quite completed when he died suddenly in 19 B.C. However, against Virgil's expressed wishes, the emperor Augustus decreed that it be published. It traces the journey of Aeneas to Italy after the Trojan War, where (according to Homer) he was instrumental in the founding of Rome. His voyage is a sequence of reversals and triumphs: great storms, the meeting with Dido, the visit to the underworld. Virgil celebrates the people and places of the Mediterranean, as well as the emperor Augustus and the empire. Written in hexameters, "The Aeneid" is a synthesis of tales and legends from Homer, Greek tragedy, and various Latin poets into a patriotic epic that remains stirring today for its humanity and strong feeling.

This volume of Flaubert's incomparable letters takes the writer to the age of 36.

Bendigo Shafter and his followers build a town in the heart of Wyoming Indian country, where the crack-shot leader falls in love with two women, the dignified Widow Macken and the beautiful Ninon.

Zachary Beaver, known as the fattest boy in the world, moves to Antler, Texas, where life is just plain ordinary. He meets Cal, a boy who has a brother fighting in Vietnam, and another kid named Toby, whose mother abandoned him and his father to make it in show business. The three of them become fast friends and learn lessons that will change their lives forever.

In this novel set in contemporary India, 13-year-old Koly takes part in an arranged marriage. However, her new husband is sickly and quickly dies, leaving Koly a widow with no place in society after she is deprived of her inheritance and abandoned by her mother-in-law. Now on her own for the first time in her life, Koly must decide how to proceed.

What's new in LaVaughn's life is Jody, a boy she knew as a child who's come back to the housing project where she lives. Jody is like a miracle: he smells like chlorine; he calls her "little buddy;" he goes with her to the dance. It's just as if he's in love with her. Except not quite.

As LaVaughn puzzles over Jody, as her best friends struggle with belief and acceptance, and as Jody wrestles with questions about his own identity, Virginia Euwer Wolff rises to the occasion with this astonishing and powerfully moving novel, the second in the Make Lemonade trilogy.

Shy, quiet 13-year-old Ratchet Clark, used to life with her neurotic mother, spends an unusual summer in rural Maine with her elderly, eccentric twin great-aunts Tilly and Penpen. Though the aunts are "as different as chalk and cheese," they share an obsession with death, curse like sailors, and enjoy whiskey. In an enormous, old Victorian on cliffs above the sea, they garden, care for a cow, and can blueberries come August. A fountain of incredible stories, Tilly fills Rachet in on their often hilarious life histories, while Penpen adds occasional commentary. As the summer progresses, Rachet learns to love the woods, milking the cow, gardening, and everything that goes on in that big, crazy house. 2003 National Book Award recipient for Young People's Literature.

Teenager Jason Bock, a self-proclaimed "agnostic-going-on-atheist," turns his back on his parents' Catholicism and creates his own religion: Chutengodianism, whose god is the town's water tower. At first his fellow worshippers are few, just his friends Dan, Magda, and Shin (who as the First Keeper of the Sacred Text is responsible for writing Chutengodianism's bible). However, as more disciples join his faith, Jason begins to lose control of Chutengodianism, and he realizes that, although it may have been easy to create his own religion, it will be very hard indeed for him to control what it becomes. Winner of the 2004 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

In this middle-grade novel, a summer of exciting new experiences awaits the lively Penderwick sisters at a summer rental cottage on the large Berkshire estate of Mrs. Tifton, a snobby heiress. With a spacey but loving botanist father, 12-year-old Rosalind is often in charge. Her younger sister, Jane, age 11, is a writer with a dramatic flair. Skye, 10, is fond of exploration. And Batty, the littlest at four, favors Halloween-colored butterfly wings at all times. Along with the owner's musically talented son, Jeffrey, and their trusty dog, Hound, the girls undertake all manner of adventures. Winner of the 2005 National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Set on the eve of the Revolutionary war, this sophisticated, terrifying, and most unusual young-adult novel--written by the author of National Book Award finalist FEED--follows the tragic fortunes of a boy named Octavian as his life goes from supposed privilege to wretched suffering. Residing in Boston, at the Novanglian College of Lucidity with his beautiful mother, Cassiopeia, Octavian lives a cloistered life filled with music, education, and the school's obsessive observation of his every function. But when the little boy ventures into a forbidden room, he finds out the bitter truth about his situation. Embroidered with fascinating Revolutionary War-era history, this novel pushes the boundaries of morality, scientific inquiry, and questions that are still relevant in the 21st century. Both the 2006 National Book Award winner in the Young People's Literature category and a 2007 Printz Honor choice, as well as a 2006 New York Times Notable Book.

Fantastically written, humorous, and deeply moving, Sherman Alexie's autobiographical first foray into the young adult fiction world follows Junior, a 14-year-old Indian whose vast physical problems and grinding poverty are outweighed by his incredible talent and refreshing, honest views on just about everything. Born and raised on the Spokane Indian Reservation, Junior loves to draw cartoons and is the smartest kid in his rotten reservation school. But when he's presented with an opportunity that promises to blow the lid off his life, Junior sees a hopeful future for the first time. With excellent, perfectly pitched B&W illustrations by cartoonist Ellen Forney, this is the winner of the 2007 National Book Award in the Young People's Literature category.

It is 1947 when 15-year-old Evie, her mother, and her new stepfather (a World War II veteran named Joe) move to Florida to seek their fortune. While there, Evie meets, and soon develops a crush on, Peter, a war buddy of Joe's. However, when tragedy strikes Evie is forced to make some difficult choices that ultimately change her life forever. A 2008 National Book Award winner in the Young People's Literature category.

My shopping cart

Help & Customer Service

• 30 Day Return Guarantee
• Find Help & Faq
• Our Story
• Press & Media Information
• Purchase Gift Certificates
• Libraries & Institutions
• Contact us

Community & Resources

• Book forum
• for.theloveofbooks.com (Our blog)
• Recently added book reviews
• Free software for bookstores