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La Bella Figura
by Beppe SevergniniJoin the bestselling author ofCiao, America!on a lively tour of modern Italy that takes you behind the seductive face it puts on for visitors—la bella figura—and highlights its maddening, paradoxical true self You won’t need luggage for this hypothetical and hilarious trip into the hearts and minds of Beppe Severgnini’s fellow Italians. In fact, Beppe would prefer if you left behind the baggage his crafty and elegant countrymen have smuggled into your subconscious. To get to hisItalia, you’ll need to forget about your idealized notions of Italy. AlthoughLa Bella Figurawill take you to legendary cities and scenic regions, your real destinations are the places where Italians are at their best, worst, and most authentic: The highway:in America, a red light has only one possible interpretation—Stop! An Italian red light doesn’t warn or order you as much as provide an invitation for reflection. The airport:where Italians prove that one of their virtues (an appreciation for beauty) is really a vice. Who cares if the beautiful girls hawking cell phones in airport kiosks stick you with an outdated model? That’s the price of gazing upon perfection. The small town:which demonstrates the Italian genius for pleasant living: “a congenial barber . . . a well-stocked newsstand . . . professionally made coffee and a proper pizza; bell towers we can recognize in the distance, and people with a kind word and a smile for everyone. ” The chaos of the roads, the anarchy of the office, the theatrical spirit of the hypermarkets, and garrulous train journeys; the sensory reassurance of a church and the importance of the beach; the solitude of the soccer stadium and the crowded Italian bedroom; the vertical fixations of the apartment building and the horizontal democracy of the eat-in kitchen. As you venture to these and many other locations rooted in the Italian psyche, you realize that Beppe has become your Dante and shown you a country that “has too much style to be hell” but is “too disorderly to be heaven. ” Ten days, thirty places. From north to south. From food to politics. From saintliness to sexuality. This ironic, methodical, and sentimental examination will help you understand why Italy—as Beppe says—“can have you fuming and then purring in the space of a hundred meters or ten minutes. ”
La Belle France
by Alistair HorneLa Belle Franceis a sweeping, grand narrative written with all the verve, erudition, and vividness that are the hallmarks of the acclaimed British historian Alistair Horne. It recounts the hugely absorbing story of the country that has contributed to the world so much talent, style, and political innovation. Beginning with Julius Caesar’s division of Gaul into three parts, Horne leads us through the ages from Charlemagne to Chirac, touring battlefields from the Hundred Years’ War to Indochina and Algeria, and giving us luminous portraits of the nation’s leaders, philosophers, writers, artists, and composers. This is a captivating, beautifully illustrated, and comprehensive yet concise history of France. From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Last Campaign
by Zachary KarabellIn the presidential campaign of 1948, Americans had a choice across the ideological spectrum, from the far Right to the far Left. This account tells the story of all four candidates' campaigns, and argues that this was the last time a presidential race was dominated by radio and print media, and the last time that progressive and Left points of view were debated and covered in the mainstream press. The author has taught at Harvard, the University of Massachusetts, and Dartmouth. His essays have appeared in newspapers and national publications. Annotation c. Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Life 2.0
by Rich Karlgaard“A delightful, and surprisingly moving, tale” -- Michael Lewis, bestselling author ofMoneyball “Karlgaard flies in with a companion concept to David Brooks’sOn Paradise Drive” -- Tom Wolfe “While counterintuitive to those on the conventional fast-track,Life 2. 0offers great promise to those who are open to personal innovation” -- Clayton Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School “This fascinating treatise will make you think deeply, and may just give you the impetus to uproot” -- Tom Peters “An original and exhilarating look at options many Americans don’t realize are now open to them. ” -- James Fallows, national correspondent,The Atlantic Monthly “Not only will it widen the horizons of your life, it could also renew your health and wealth. ” -- George Gilder Have You Found the Where of Your Happiness? One of the intriguing things about the United States is the idea of the second chance, that when you feel stuck there is always a frontier you can cross to reinvent yourself. InLife 2. 0, Rich Karlgaard used his own personal and professional midlife crises to look at the state of the American dream—the belief in continuous personal upward mobility—and where it stands in the twenty-first century. At the ripe old age of forty-five, Karlgaard fell in love with flying and mastered the art of lifting up and bringing down a “2,500-pound aluminum box kite”—a four-seat single-engine airplane. As the publisher of Forbes he felt that he was doing too much armchair theorizing and didn’t really understand how Americans were responding to the changes that had started taking place so swiftly over the past few years. So he put together his new flying skills and reportorial mission and flew around America to places like Green Bay, Wisconsin; Bozeman, Montana; Fargo, North Dakota; Des Moines, Iowa; and Lake Placid, New York, to gain some insight into how ordinary Americans are untangling the knotty problems of constant stress, crushing expense, and bewildering hassle that often characterize life in the nation’s urban centers. He discovered their simple solution: they moved. What Karlgaard found on the road are fascinating and inspiring stories about people— those with a nose for entrepreneurship, a faith in technology, and the willingness to take a chance—who are finding the new American dream in places as far from New York City and Silicon Valley as you can imagine. Some of those people include: • A burned-out insurance exec who fled his overworked East Coast life and settled in tranquil (yet dynamic) Des Moines • A tool broker who traded his brick-and-mortar business in sunny California for a life in the Pennsylvania hills, where he relaunched his business on the Internet • A road-warrior democracy specialist who conducts her worldly affairs from the low-key outpost of Bismarck, North Dakota • A self-made millionaire who paid for his financial success with his first marriage and who did things differently the second time around by moving to smaller cities and focusing on family as well as work Adroitly combining analysis of the economic and social trends challenging middle-class people with perceptive advice on how to escape the rat race of the coasts, Karlgaard explores the eye-opening possibilities of that huge tract of land often carelessly dubbed “flyover country. ” Filled with stories of personal reinvention and triumph, Life 2. 0 is the story of those who are living larger lives in smaller places. From the Hardcover edition.
The Life of David
by Robert PinskyPoet, warrior, and king, David has loomed large in myth and legend through the centuries, and he continues to haunt our collective imagination, his flaws and inconsistencies making him the most approachable of biblical heroes. Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate of the United States, plumbs the depths of David’s life: his triumphs and his failures, his charm and his cruelty, his divine destiny and his human humiliations. Drawing on the biblical chronicle of David’s life as well as on the later commentaries and the Psalms——traditionally considered to be David’s own words——Pinsky teases apart the many strands of David’s story and reweaves them into a glorious narrative. Under the clarifying and captivating light of Pinsky’s erudition and imagination, and his mastery of image and expression, King David——both the man and the idea of the man——is brought brilliantly to life. From the Hardcover edition.
Lifeguarding
by Catherine MccallIn her sharply observed and ultimately redemptive memoir, Catherine McCall paints a vivid and sometimes heartbreaking portrait of growing up in a complicated Southern family, whose perfect façade hides crippling imperfections. There are two parents, three children, and five ghosts in the McCall family. With their preppie clothes and country-club smiles, the McCalls look like all the other East End Louisville families. No one knows there are problems, that an internal gash the size of the Ohio river is flooding the family. All Cathy and her siblings can do is promise to stick together no matter what—and swim. But even though they are fast, the McCall kids can’t outdistance their father’s destructive habits and their mother’s worry. As her family reaches a breaking point and an unexpected love blooms, thirteen-year-old Cathy finds she must keep secrets of her own. Though the love in this family is strong, Cathy must discover if it’s tenacious enough to withstand the truth. Candid, captivating, and infused with compassion,Lifeguardingaffirms the flexible strength of love itself; how family bonds must often bend to the point of breaking . . . and beyond. From the Hardcover edition.
Lili
by Annie WangLike so many of her young compatriots, Lili Lin lives on the margins of society-she has been jailed for "having a corrupt lifestyle and hooliganism," and at 24 she is unemployable because she doesn't have connections and unmarriageable because she isn't a virgin. Estranged from her parents, restless and cynical, she drifts from day to day. Then she meets an American journalist infatuated with China, who gradually opens her eyes to what is happening. Together they embark on a journey that will profoundly change Lili's view of her country and of herself.
The Lost Dinosaurs of Egypt
by William Nothdurft Josh Smith Matt Lamanna Ken Lacovara Jason Poole Jen SmithGerman paleontologist Ernst Frieherr Stromer von Reichenbach first sighted them in 1911, identified four new species, collected fossils, and deposited them in a Munich museum where they were destroyed by bombing during World War II. US graduate student Josh Smith (now paleontology, Washington U. ) led a team back to Egypt in 2000 to continue the work. Science writer tells the story in a companion to a television documentary. Annotation c. Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Love, Greg & Lauren
by Greg ManningEarly on the morning of September 11, 2001, Lauren Manning-a wife, the mother of a ten-month-old son, and a senior vice president and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald-came to work, as always, at One World Trade Center. As she stepped into the lobby, a fireball exploded from the elevator shaft, and in that split second her life was changed forever. Lauren was burned over 82. 5 percent of her body. As he watched his wife lie in a drug-induced coma in the ICU of the Burn Center at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Greg Manning began writing a daily journal. In the form of e-mails to family, friends, and colleagues, he recorded Lauren’s harrowing struggle-and his own tormented efforts to make sense of an act that defies all understanding. This book is that e-mail diary: detailed, intimate, inspiring messages that end, always, as if a prayer for a happy outcome: LOVE, GREG & LAUREN We share this story day by astonishing day. Greg writes of the intricate surgeries, the painful therapies, and the constant risk of infection Lauren endured. Through his eyes we come to know the doctors, nurses, aides, and therapists who cared for her around the clock with untiring devotion and sensitivity. We also come to know the families with whom he shared wrenching hospital vigils for their own loved ones who were waging a battle that some would not win. It was, most of all, Greg’s belief that Lauren would win her brave fight for life that kept him writing. Through his eyes we see what she could not-their toddler’s first steps, the video of his first birthday party, the compassionate messages of hope from around the world. And we are there as Lauren gradually emerges into awareness, signaling first with her eyes, then with smiles, her understanding of the words Greg speaks to her, the poems he recites, the songs he plays. Most miraculously, we are there when Lauren walks out of the Burn Center. The world knows all too well both the nightmare and the heroism that have marked this terrible time in history. But no account of September 11 matches the astonishing personal story Greg Manning records in these spontaneous and heartfelt pages. It is a story that invites us to share, e-mail after e-mail, the perilous course of a mortally wounded woman who by sheer will and courage emerges from near death because she is determined to live for her husband and her son. And it is equally the story of a man who, as he stays by her side through these long weeks and months, discovers anew the depth of his love and admiration for the woman who becomes his hero.
Lunar Park (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Bret Easton EllisImagine becoming a best-selling novelist, and almost immediately famous and wealthy, while still in college, and before long seeing your insufferable father reduced to a bag of ashes in a safety-deposit box, while afterAmerican Psychoyour celebrity drowns in a sea of vilification, booze, and drugs. Then imagine having a second chance ten years later, as the Bret Easton Ellis of this remarkable novel is given, with a wife, children, and suburban sobriety—only to watch this new life shatter beyond recognition in a matter of days. At a fateful Halloween party he glimpses a disturbing (fictional) character driving a car identical to his late father’s, his stepdaughter’s doll violently “malfunctions,” and their house undergoes bizarre transformations both within and without. Connecting these aberrations to graver events—a series of grotesque murders that no longer seem random and the epidemic disappearance of boys his son’s age—Ellis struggles to defend his family against this escalating menace even as his wife, their therapists, and the police insist that his apprehensions are rooted instead in substance abuse and egomania. Lunar Parkconfounds one expectation after another, passing through comedy and mounting horror, both psychological and supernatural, toward an astonishing resolution—about love and loss, fathers and sons—in what is surely the most powerfully original and deeply moving novel of an extraordinary career.
Magic Street
by Orson Scott CardOrson Scott Card has the distinction of having swept both the Hugo and Nebula awards in two consecutive years with his amazing novels Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. For a body of work that ranges from science fiction to nonfiction to plays, Card has been recognized as an author who provides vivid, colorful glimpses between the world we know and worlds we can only imagine. In a peaceful, prosperous African American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Mack Street is a mystery child who has somehow found a home. Discovered abandoned in an overgrown park, raised by a blunt-speaking single woman, Mack comes and goes from family to family–a boy who is at once surrounded by boisterous characters and deeply alone. But while Mack senses that he is different from most, and knows that he has strange powers, he cannot possibly understand how unusual he is until the day he sees, in a thin slice of space, a narrow house. Beyond it is a backyard–and an entryway into an extraordinary world stretching off into an exotic distance of geography, history, and magic. Passing through the skinny house that no one else can see, Mack is plunged into a realm where time and reality are skewed, a place where what Mack does and sees seem to have strange affects in the “real world” of concrete, cars, commerce, and conflict. Growing into a tall, powerful young man, pursuing a forbidden relationship, and using Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream as a guide into the vast, timeless fantasy world, Mack becomes a player in an epic drama. Understanding this drama is Mack’s challenge. His reward, if he can survive the trip, is discovering not only who he really is . . . but why he exists. Both a novel of constantly surprising entertainment and a tale of breathtaking literary power, Magic Street is a masterwork from a supremely gifted, utterly original American writer–a novel that uses realism and fantasy to delight, challenge, and satisfy on the most profound levels. From the Hardcover edition.
The Making of a Writer
by Gail GodwinGail Godwin was twenty-four years old when she wrote: “I want to be everybody who is great; I want to create everything that has ever been created. ” It is a declaration that only a wildly ambitious young writer would make in the privacy of her journal. Now, inThe Making of a Writer, Godwin has distilled her early journals, which run from 1961 to 1963, to their brilliant and charming essence. She conveys the feverish period following the breakup of her first marriage; the fateful decision to move to Europe and the shock of her first encounters with Danish customs (and Danish men); the pleasures of soaking in the human drama on long rambles through the London streets and the torment of lonely Sundays spent wrestling these impressions into prose; and the determination to create despite rejection and a growing stack of debts. “I do not feel like a failure,” Godwin insists. “I will keep writing, harder than ever. ” Brimming with urgency and wit, Godwin’s inspiring tome opens a shining window into the life and craft of a great writer just coming into her own. “A generous gift from a much-loved author to her readers. ” –Chicago Sun-Times “Full of lively, entertaining observations on the literary life . . . [captures] the spirit of a young writer’s adventure into foreign lands and foreign realms of thought and creative endeavor. ” –The Atlanta Journal-Constitution “As cities and continents and men change, the entries are borne along by . . . the young Godwin’s fierce conviction that she is meant to write fiction and her desire to distract herself from this mission with any man who catches her eye. ” –The New York Times Book Review “[Godwin] describes a high-wire act of love and work. . . . She espouses fierce, uncompromising ideas about fiction. ” –Los Angeles Times “[Gail Godwin’s journals] are a gold mine. ” –The Boston Globe
Malraux: A Life
by Olivier ToddWriter, publisher, war hero, French government minister, André Malraux was renowned as a Renaissance man of the twentieth century. Now, Olivier Todd–author of the acclaimed biographyAlbert Camus–gives us this life, in which fact competes dramatically with his subject’s previously little-known mythomania. We see the adventurous young Malraux move from 1920s literary Paris to colonial Cambodia, Cochin China, and Spain in its civil war. Todd charts the thrilling exploits that would inspire such novels asMan’s Fate,but, just as fascinating, he also traces Malraux’s lifelong pattern of lies: claiming friendship with Mao, he was called to tutor Nixon, despite having met the Great Helmsman only once; a minor injury becomes in recollections a near-mortal battlefield wound; stories of heroism in the French Resistance omit to mention that Malraux joined up just a few weeks before the Allied landings. With meticulous research, Todd separates myth from reality to throw light on a brilliant con man who would become a national hero, but he also lets us see Malraux’s genuine achievements as both writer and man of action. His real life and the one he embroidered come together in this superb biography to reveal how Malraux, the protean genius, became his own greatest character. From the Hardcover edition.
Mary After All
by Bill GordonIn the tradition of Roddy Doyle'sThe Woman Who Walked Into Doorscomes a brilliant feat of literary ventriloquism, a debut novel by a male author introducing a one-of-a-kind female narrator. Meet Mary Nolan (née Marelli), a tough-talking Jersey City native who comes of age during the turbulent 1970s. Adored by the small-time mafia types in her extended Italian American family–formidable but doting figures like her grandpa Louie, Tony the Horse, and Charlie Cuppacoffee–Mary grew up believing she could always count on men to protect her. But after marrying young to escape her parents, Mary finds herself sidelined by life with a philandering husband and two needy young sons, her dreams as shattered as the city around her. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, Mary tells of her unusual route to independence, and about the lives she touches–and is touched by–along the way. From Aunt Dot and Aunt Loretta, who get her started in "business," to the ex-nuns who listen to her troubles even as they ask her for relationship advice, to the nosy neighborhood housewives determined to befriend her, Mary finds allies in the unlikeliest of places. How she learns to stand on her own "legitimately"–triumphantly–is the heart of Bill Gordon's remarkable first novel. From the Hardcover edition.
MBA in a Box: Practical Ideas from the Best Brains in Business
by Joel Kurtzman Victoria Griffith Glenn RifkindThe best minds in business--at your serviceMBA in a Box brings together some of the best brains in business who show how the core curriculum of an MBA program works in the real world. People like Michael Porter, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Adrian J. Slywotzky, Warren Bennis, and Bill George give you a box full of ideas and tools that can boost your career and help you add value to your organization. For example: * Why finance is not just about manipulating numbers but of immense importance in sustaining growth, building widespread wealth, and creating jobs. * The profit zone and how to tell if a business is in one. * The skill of turning an idea or invention into a product that solves a problem for a market. * Merging the need of business to produce and grow with the environment so they are both sustained. * The latest thinking in marketing about branding, pricing, reversing a product's life cycle, and turning what has become a commodity into a specialty.* And much more.From the Hardcover edition.
Meditations from a Simple Path
by Mother Teresa Mother Teresa"Works of love are always works of joy.""Do we look at the poor with compassion? They are hungry not only for food, they are hungry to be recognized as human beings.""There is only one God and He is God to all; therefore it is important that everyone is seen as equal before God."These rich words of wisdom and conviction are among the pearls of thought found in Meditations from A Simple Path. Comprised of luminous selections culled from the New York Times bestseller, this warm and very loving volume is a joyful celebration of prayer, faith, love, service, and peace.Profound and uplifting, this elegant book will provide a tremendous source of inspiration for you or someone you love. It is brimming with timeless messages for us all.From the Hardcover edition.
Milkweed
by Jerry SpinelliHe's a boy called Jew. Gypsy. Stopthief. Runt. Happy. Fast. Filthy son of Abraham. He's a boy who lives in the streets of Warsaw. He's a boy who steals food for himself and the other orphans. He's a boy who believes in bread, and mothers, and angels. He's a boy who wants to be a Nazi some day, with tall shiny jackboots and a gleaming Eagle hat of his own. Until the day that suddenly makes him change his mind. And when the trains come to empty the Jews from the ghetto of the damned, he's a boy who realizes it's safest of all to be nobody. Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli takes us to one of the most devastating settings imaginable-- Nazi-occupied Warsaw of World War II-- and tells a tale of heartbreak, hope, and survival through the bright eyes of a young orphan. "From the Hardcover edition. "
Motion to Suppress
by Perri O'ShaughnessyReturning from her late shift as a barmaid at a casino in Lake Tahoe, Misty Patterson struck her violently jealous husband in self-defense. She admits that--but did she kill him? She says she can't remember. Like so many times before, Misty blacked out and the rest of the evening is a blank. Now her husband has disappeared, leaving behind a trail of blood, and she's the number-one murder suspect with no one to turn to for help. San Francisco attorney Nina Reilly is also on the run--from a bad marriage and a worse career setback. Relocated to Lake Tahoe, Nina is resolved to recover her spirit, give her young son a secure home, and build up a small solo practice. But, when Misty Patterson walks in the door, a blond Barbie doll of a cocktail waitress accused of murder, it triggers a harrowing series of events that will change both women's lives forever. Common sense says Misty is lying. To win this case Nina will have to trust her own instincts, diving headlong into the dark convolutions of the human mind. This murder case--teeming with sinister secrets, unspoken betrayals, and jolting revelations--is going to change everything Nina Reilly believes about the law. It's going to rock everything Misty believes about herself. And if they can learn to trust each other, it's going to give both women their one and only chance to reclaim their shattered lives. In a spellbinding novel that doesn't let go from the first page until the shocking unforgettable conclusion, Perri O'Shaughnessy delivers an electrifying legal thriller about two women risking all they have for the truth that could cost them their lives--or set them both free.From the Paperback edition.
The Mountain of Silence
by Kyriacos C. MarkidesAn acclaimed expert in Christian mysticism travels to a monastery high in the Trodos Mountains of Cyprus and offers a fascinating look at the Greek Orthodox approach to spirituality that will appeal to readers of Carlos Castaneda. In an engaging combination of dialogues, reflections, conversations, history, and travel information, Kyriacos C. Markides continues the exploration of a spiritual tradition and practice little known in the West he began in Riding with the Lion. His earlier book took readers to the isolated peninsula of Mount Athos in northern Greece and into the group of ancient monasteries. There, in what might be called a "Christian Tibet," two thousand monks and hermits practice the spiritual arts to attain a oneness with God. In his new book, Markides follows Father Maximos, one of Mount Athos's monks, to the troubled island of Cyprus. As Father Maximos establishes churches, convents, and monasteries in this deeply divided land, Markides is awakened anew to the magnificent spirituality of the Greek Orthodox Church. Images of the land and the people of Cyprus and details of its tragic history enrich the Mountain of Silence. Like the writings of Castaneda, the book brilliantly evokes the confluence of an inner and outer journey. The depth and richness of its spiritual message echo the thoughts and writings of Saint Francis of Assisi and other great saints of the Church as well. The result is a remarkable work-a moving, profoundly human examination of the role and the power of spirituality in a complex and confusing world.
Mrs. Sartoris
by Elke SchmitterAn international sensation, Elke Schmitter's explosive debut novel presents a modern-day twist on Madame Bovary. "" Margarethe can remember very clearly the last time she was happy: she was eighteen, prized for her beauty, and swept off her feet by her wealthy, dashing boyfriend. Then he left her. For the last twenty years she has lived in a provincial German town with her dependable husband, her self-directed daughter, and her adoring mother-in-law. Her life has been one of numbing predictability-until she meets Michael, a married man who stirs her from her resignation, delivering her to heights of rapture only to ignite far more destructive passions. An erotic, psychologically charged thriller narrated with chilling dispassion, Mrs. Sartoris" "opens a bracing portal onto obsession and the crucible of love.
My Dad and Me
by Larry KingYogi Berra’s dad, an immigrant from northern Italy, didn’t see the point of American sports, but taught Yogi to keep his word and always be on time. Mario Cuomo’s father seemed diminutive (“Maybe he was five foot six if his heels were not worn”), but he once led Mario and his brother in a herculean, nearly impossible effort to hoist and replant a downed 40-foot-tall blue spruce. C. Everett Koop’s dad imparted to his son the crucial difference between buying something and affording something. And from her famous father, Danny, Marlo Thomas learned the wisdom of forgiveness when he told her, “I do not hunch my back with yesterday. ” ForMy Dad and Me, Larry King asked more than 120 celebrated and successful people about their favorite memories of their fathers. Their recollections are rich with life lessons, large and small: Some are truly insightful and wise, some are hilarious, some are pragmatic, but each is a genuine reflection of the priceless gift of fatherhood. It’s one thing, after all, to be told about such virtues as honesty and integrity, hard work and perseverance, gentleness and strength. It’s quite another to see them living, or even sometimes faltering, within someone you love. As warm and funny, reassuring and surprising as dads themselves,My Dad and Menot only celebrates fatherhood but also offers some candid glimpses behind the public images of well-known men and women from Donald Trump and President George H. W. Bush to Patricia Heaton and Bill Gates. Larry King presents a moving and revealing collection of inspirational stories about fathers—and the life lessons they teach—from a host of famous men and women, including: Chinua Achebe, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Helen Gurley Brown, President George H. W. Bush, Bob Costas, Alan Dershowitz, Phyllis Diller, Hugh Downs, Bill Gates, Ira Glass, Derek Jeter, Randy Johnson, Don Mattingly, Kevin Nealon, Kurt Russell, Bob Saget, Ryan Seacrest, Marlo Thomas, Alex Trebek, Donald Trump, Al Yankovic, And many more . . . From the Hardcover edition.
My Einstein
by John BrockmanIn this fascinating volume, today’s foremost scientists discuss their own versions and visions of Einstein: how he has influenced their worldviews, their ideas, their science, and their professional and personal lives. These twenty-four essays are a testament to the power of scientific legacy and are essential reading for scientist and layperson alike. Contributors include: • Roger Highfield on the Einstein myth • John Archibald Wheeler on his meetings with Einstein • Gino C. Segrè, Lee Smolin, and Anton Zeilinger on Einstein’s difficulties with quantum theory • Leon M. Lederman on the special theory of relativity • Frank J. Tipler on why Einstein should be seen as a scientific reactionary rather than a scientific revolutionary
My Life in France
by Julia Child Alex Prud'hommeNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Julia's story of her transformative years in France in her own words is "captivating ... her marvelously distinctive voice is present on every page.&” (San Francisco Chronicle). Although she would later singlehandedly create a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, Julia Child was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia&’s unforgettable story—struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took the Childs across the globe—unfolds with the spirit so key to Julia&’s success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of America&’s most endearing personalities.
New Impressions of Africa
by Raymond RousselPoet, novelist, playwright, and chess enthusiast, Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) was one of the French belle #xE9;poque's most compelling literary figures. During his lifetime, Roussel's work was vociferously championed by the surrealists, but never achieved the widespread acclaim for which he yearned. New Impressions of Africais undoubtedly Roussel's most extraordinary work. Since its publication in 1932, this weird and wonderful poem has slowly gained cult status, and its admirers have included Salvador Dal#xEC;--who dubbed it the most "ungraspably poetic" work of the era--Andr#xE9; Breton, Jean Cocteau, Marcel Duchamp, Michel Foucault, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery. Roussel began writingNew Impressions of Africain 1915 while serving in the French Army during the First World War and it took him seventeen years to complete. "It is hard to believe the immense amount of time composition of this kind of verse requires," he later commented. Mysterious, unnerving, hilarious, haunting, both rigorously logical and dizzyingly sublime, it is truly one of the hidden masterpieces of twentieth-century modernism. This bilingual edition ofNew Impressions of Africapresents the original French text and the English poet Mark Ford's lucid, idiomatic translation on facing pages. It also includes an introduction outlining the poem's peculiar structure and evolution, notes explaining its literary and historical references, and the fifty-nine illustrations anonymously commissioned by Roussel, via a detective agency, from Henri-A. Zo.
The Nine Commandments
by David Noel Freedman Jeffrey C. Geoghegan Michael M. HomanIn a book certain to be as controversial as Harold Bloom's The Book of J and Elaine Pagels's The Gnostic Gospels, David Noel Freedman delves into the Old Testament and reveals a pattern of defiance of the Covenant with God that inexorably led to the downfall of the nation of Israel, the destruction of the Temple, and the banishment of survivors from the Promised Land. Book by book, from Exodus to Kings, Freedman charts the violation of the first nine Commandments one by one-from the sin of apostasy (the worship of the golden calf, Exodus 32) to murder (the death of a concubine, Judges, 19:25-26) to false testimony (Jezebel's charges against her neighbor, Naboth, I Kings 21). Because covetousness, Freedman shows, lies behind all the crimes committed, each act implicitly breaks the Tenth Commandment as well. In a powerful and persuasive argument, Freedman asserts that this hidden trail of sins betrays the hand of a master editor, who skillfully wove into Israel's history a message to a community in their Babylonian exile that their fate is not the result of God's abandoning them, but a consequence of their abandonment of God. With wit and insight, The Nine Commandments boldly challenges previous scholarship and conventional beliefs. David Noel Freedman has been General Editor and a contributing coauthor of the Anchor Bible series since its inception in 1956. He is a professor in Hebrew Bible at the University of California, San Diego, and lives in La Jolla, California.