 |
Tree of Smoke
by Denis Johnson
This is the story of Skip Sands—spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong—and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympathetic portraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature. Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson's first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. |
 |
 |
Exit Ghost
by Philip Roth
The last ordeal of Nathan Zuckerman, the indomitable literary adventurer of Roth's nine Zuckerman books, like Rip Van Winkle returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Alone on his New England mountain, Zuckerman has been nothing but a writer: no voices, no media, no terrorist threats, no women, no news, no tasks other than his work and the enduring of old age. Walking the streets like a revenant, he quickly makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. One is with a young couple with whom, in a rash moment, he offers to swap homes. They will flee post-9/11 Manhattan for his country refuge, and he will return to city life. But from the time he meets them, Zuckerman also wants to swap his solitude for the erotic challenge of the young woman, Jamie, whose allure draws him back to all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, the vibrant play of heart and body. The second connection is with a figure from Zuckerman's youth, Amy Bellette, companion and muse to Zuckerman's first literary hero, E. I. Lonoff. The once irresistible Amy is now an old woman depleted by illness, guarding the memory of that grandly austere American writer who showed Nathan the solitary path to a writing vocation. The third connection is with Lonoff's would-be biographer, a young literary hound who will do and say nearly anything to get to Lonoff's "great secret." Suddenly involved, as he never wanted or intended to be involved again, with love, mourning, desire, and animosity, Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities. Haunted by Roth's earlier work The Ghost Writer, Exit Ghost is an amazing leap into yet another phase in this great writer's insatiable commitment to fiction. |
|
 |
Turning Back the Clock
by Umberto Eco
The time: 2000 to 2005, the years of neoconservatism, terrorism, the twenty-four-hour news cycle, the ascension of Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Umberto Eco's response is a provocative, passionate, and witty series of essays—which originally appeared in the Italian newspapers La Repubblica and L'Espresso—that leaves no slogan unexamined, no innovation unexposed. What led us into this age of hot wars and media populism, and how was it sold to us as progress? Eco discusses such topics as racism, mythology, the European Union, rhetoric, the Middle East, technology, September 11, medieval Latin, television ads, globalization, Harry Potter, anti-Semitism, logic, the Tower of Babel, intelligent design, Italian street demonstrations, fundamentalism, The Da Vinci Code, and magic and magical thinking. The famous author and respected scholar shows his practical, engaged side: an intellectual involved in events both local and global, a man concerned about taste, politics, education, ethics, and where our troubled world is headed. |
|
 |
Diary of a Bad Year
by J.M. Coetzee
Diary of a Bad Year is an utterly contemporary work of fiction from one of our greatest writers and deepest thinkers. It addresses the profound unease of countless people in democracies across the world. Diary of a Bad Year is an utterly contemporary work of fiction from one of our greatest writers and deepest thinkers. It addresses the profound unease of countless people in democracies across the world. An eminent, seventy-two-year-old Australian writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled Strong Opinions. It is a chance to air some urgent concerns. He writes short essays on the origins of the state, on Machiavelli, on anarchism, on al Qaida, on intelligent design, on music. What, he asks, is the origin of the state and the nature of the relationship between citizen and state? How should the citizen of a modern democracy react to the state's willingness to set aside moral considerations and civil liberties in its war on terror, a war that includes the use of torture? He is troubled by Australia's complicity with America and Britain in their wars in the Middle East; an obscure sense of dishonour clings to him. In the laundry-room of his apartment block he encounters an alluring young woman. When he discovers she is 'between jobs' he claims failing eyesight and offers her work typing up his manuscript. J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting For The Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood: Scenes From Provincial Life, Youth, Disgrace, Elizabeth Costello and, most recently, Slow Man. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. |
|
 |
Letters of Ted Hughes
by Ted Hughes
At the outset of his career Ted Hughes described letter writing as 'excellent training for conversation with the world', and he was to become a prolific master of this art which combines writing and talking. This selection begins when Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of a life at once resolutely private but intensely attuned to other lives (including a readership comprising both adults and children): a life pared down to essentials and yet eventful, peripatetic, at times publicly controversial. |
|
 |
Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
'You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.' It is Bougainville in 1991 - a small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific. Eighty-six days have passed since Matilda's last day of school as, quietly, war is encroaching from the other end of the island. When the villagers' safe, predictable lives come to a halt, Bougainville's children are surprised to find the island's only white man, a recluse, re-opening the school. Pop Eye, aka Mr Watts, explains he will introduce the children to Mr Dickens. Matilda and the others think a foreigner is coming to the island and prepare a list of much needed items. They are shocked to discover their acquaintance with Mr Dickens will be through Mr Watts' inspiring reading of Great Expectations. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. Imagination and beliefs are challenged by guns. Mister Pip is an unforgettable tale of survival by story; a dazzling piece of writing that lives long in the mind after the last page is finished. |
|
 |
After the Reich
by Giles Macdonogh
Presents a history of the occupation and subsequent division of Germany after the defeat of Hitler, a period in which over two million Germans lost their lives through starvation and the violent revenge killings and imprisonments inflicted upon them by the victors. |
|
 |
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
by Bjorn Lomborg
Global warming has become one of the permanent concerns of our time, with ever stronger calls to combat it via drastic programs, like the Kyoto Protocol. In this highly controversial book, Bjorn Lomborg (author of the bestselling The Skeptical Environmentalist) claims that the arguments for such action are little more than scare mongering and exposes this wide range of disinformation. Global warming is happening. It's a serious and important problem and we need to deal with it in a responsible way. But in order to do so effectively, Lomborg argues we need to look at the cost and benefits of the proposed measures against global warming. He demonstrates that drastic, here-and-now measures is the worst way to spend our money. Climate change is a 100-year problem - we should not try to fix it in 10 years. This important book explodes myths and places the global warming debate into a broader view. |
|
 |
The Whisperers
by Orlando Figes
Drawing on a huge range of sources - letters, memoirs, conversations - Orlando Figes tells the story of how Russians tried to endure life under Stalin, brilliantly conveying the reality of their terrible choices. Soviet history has generally been seen either as a story of a political system or the story of its victims. The Whisperers is about Russians from across the whole range of experience under Stalin. Those who shaped the political system became, very frequently, its victims. Those who were its victims were frequently quite blameless. The Whisperers recreates the sort of maze in which Russians found themselves, where an unwitting wrong turn could either destroy a family or, perversely, later save it; a society in which everyone spoke in whispers: whether to protect themselves, their families, neighbours or friends - or to inform on them. This is Figes' masterpiece. It is both a gripping and emotional account of lives lived in impossible times and a remarkable example of the power and value of writing history. |
|
 |
The Conscience of a Liberal
by Paul Krugman
Surveys eighty years of American history to illuminate how efforts to balance economic inequality have been set back since the 1970s, in an analysis that cites the challenges being faced by the middle class and calls for new perspectives on American social policy. |
|
Hardcover Book Archives
September 2007
July 2007
May 2007
March 2007
January 2007
December 2006
|
|
Special Orders
|
| Even with 18,000 titles regularly in stock, we realize that you may want a book that we don't usually carry. We are happy to take special orders. Timing varies with publishers and distributors but on average books are delivered within 5 to 10 working days. Books can be ordered by mail or email (including French books) and mailed all over the world. Click here for ordering instructions. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
