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The American Future: A History
by Simon Schama
In November 2008 the United States will elect a new President. But the imminent collapse of twenty years of Republican conservativism means the country is already conducting an intense self-examination about the trajectory of its history; how it came to find itself in multiple crises and how an America that began as 'the last, best hope of earth' came to be so suspected and vilified around much of the world. The American Future: A History, written by an author who has spent half his life there, takes the long view of how the United States has come to this anguished moment of truth about its own identity as a nation and its place in the world.In each of the chapters devoted to the most compelling issues facing Americans now - the projection of power ("American war"); race, immigration and the problematic promise of e pluribus unum ("American skin"); the intensity of religious conviction in public life ("American fervour"); the mystique of American land and its battles with the imperatives of profit ('American Plenty'- Schama traces the deep history of the present crisis. Cumulatively the chapters build into a history of American exceptionalism - the 'American difference' that means so much to its people but which has led it into calamities as well as triumphs. The American Future: A History argues that if you want to know what is truly at stake, you need to absorb these stories and understand this history - for understanding is the condition of hope. |
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At Large and At Small
by Anne Fadiman
In At Large and At Small, Anne Fadiman returns to one of her favorite genres, the familiar essay—a beloved and hallowed literary tradition recognized for both its intellectual breadth and its miniaturist focus on everyday experiences. With the combination of humor and erudition that has distinguished her as one of our finest essayists, Fadiman draws us into twelve of her personal obsessions: from her slightly sinister childhood enthusiasm for catching butterflies to her monumental crush on Charles Lamb, from her wistfulness for the days of letter-writing to the challenges and rewards of moving from the city to the country. Many of these essays were composed "under the influence" of the subject at hand. Fadiman ingests a shocking amount of ice cream and divulges her passion for Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Chocolate Chip and her brother's homemade Liquid Nitrogen Kahlúa Coffee (recipe included); she sustains a terrific caffeine buzz while recounting Balzac's coffee addiction; and she stays up till dawn to write about being a night owl, examining the rhythms of our circadian clocks and sharing such insomnia cures as her father's nocturnal word games and Lewis Carroll's mathematical puzzles. At Large and At Small is a brilliant and delight |
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Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Pulitzer Prize-winner Goodwin (No Ordinary Time) seeks to illuminate what she interprets as a miraculous event: Lincoln's smooth (and, in her view, rather sudden) transition from underwhelming one-term congressman and prairie lawyer to robust chief executive during a time of crisis. Goodwin marvels at Lincoln's ability to co-opt three better-born, better-educated rivals—each of whom had challenged Lincoln for the 1860 Republican nomination. The three were New York senator William H. Seward, who became secretary of state; Ohio senator Salmon P. Chase, who signed on as secretary of the treasury and later was nominated by Lincoln to be chief justice of the Supreme Court; and Missouri's "distinguished elder statesman" Edward Bates, who served as attorney general. This is the "team of rivals" Goodwin's title refers to.The problem with this interpretation is that the metamorphosis of Lincoln to Machiavellian master of men that Goodwin presupposes did not in fact occur overnight only as he approached the grim reality of his presidency. The press had labeled candidate Lincoln "a fourth-rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar." But East Coast railroad executives, who had long employed Lincoln at huge prices to defend their interests as attorney and lobbyist, knew better. Lincoln was a shrewd political operator and insider long before he entered the White House—a fact Goodwin underplays. On another front, Goodwin's spotlighting of the president's three former rivals tends to undercut that Lincoln's most essential Cabinet-level contacts were not with Seward, Chase and Bates, but rather with secretaries of war Simon Cameron and Edwin Stanton, and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles. These criticisms aside, Goodwin supplies capable biographies of the gentlemen on whom she has chosen to focus, and ably highlights the sometimes tangled dynamics of their "team" within the larger assemblage of Lincoln's full war cabinet. (PW Review) |
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Deep Economy
by Bill McKibben
"Masterfully crafted, deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding."—Los Angeles Times In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. Deep Economy makes the compelling case for moving beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursuing prosperity in a more local direction, with regions producing more of their own food, generating more of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. Our purchases need not be at odds with the things we truly value, McKibben argues, and the more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our own. |
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Paris Noir
Edited by Aurlien Masson
Rarely has the City of Light seemed grittier than in this hard-boiled short story anthology, part of Akashic's noir series that began in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. The 12 freshly penned pulp fictions by some of France's most prominent practitioners play out in a kind of darker, parallel universe to the tourist mecca; visitors cross these pages at their peril, like the hapless hunk taken captive in Chantal Pelletier's kinky The Chinese Guy. As is usual for such volumes, the quality varies considerably among the selections made by Masson, young editor of Gallimard's Série Noire, but it's worth fast-forwarding through the few duds for direct hits like Christophe Mercier's Christmas, the poignant tale of a pair of doomed lovers on a snowy night in Pigalle, or Dominique Mainard's La Vie en Rose, in which a Piaf-worthy tragedy unfolds amid her old haunts in Belleville. Bull's-eye. (PW Review) |
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Goodbye Mr. Socialism
by Antonio Negri
In the current era of war, globalization, and domestic crisis, what is to be made of the global left? Goodbye Mr. Socialism offers a gripping encounter with one of today's leading leftists, presenting his most up-to-date analysis of global events and his views on the prospects for the left in an age of neoliberalism. In his most accessible work yet, Antonio Negri discusses the state of the global left since the end of the Cold War and suggests a new politics in a series of rousing conversations with Italian journalist Raf Scelsi. Scelsi prompts Negri to critique the episodes in the post-Cold War period that have afforded the left opportunities to rethink its strategies, both in terms of organization and of political programs and objectives. Addressing the twilight of social democracy, Negri offers a compelling defense of the prospects for social transformation. |
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A Journey to Mount Athos
by Francois Augieras
An adolescent boy sails to the remote monasteries and hermitages of Mount Athos. His spiritual and erotic wanderings in the picturesque surroundings of the Holy Mountain take both the author and the reader on a journey of self-discovery. Augiéras described Athos as a place where you find everything within yourself , and the experiences in this book as a sojourn in the Land of the Spirits according to the strictest Buddhist or Pythagorean Orthodoxy . Depicted variously as an anti-Christian nomad, a barbarian in the West and a madman, Augiéras is one of France's greatest underground writers. |
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The Vampire of Ropraz
by Jacques Chessex
1903, Ropraz - a small village in the Jura Mountains. The virginal daughter of a local judge dies of meningitis and on a howling December day a lone walker discovers her tomb recently opened. Her body is violated, her left hand cut off, sex mutilated and heart torn out. Horror in the nearby village brings the return of atavistic superstitions, along with mutual suspicion. Garlic and crucifixes are again brandished in the Protestant region - and after two more bodies are violated a suspect must be found. |
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Gold Dust
by Ibrahim Al-Koni
Rejected by his tribe and hunted by the kin of the man he killed, Ukhayyad and his thoroughbred camel flee across the desolate Tuareg deserts of the Sahara. Between bloody wars against the Italians in the north and famine raging in the south, Ukhayyad rides for the remote rock caves of Jebel Hasawna. There, he says farewell to the mount who has been his companion through thirst, disease, lust and loneliness. Alone in the desert, haunted by the prophetic cave paintings of ancient hunting scenes and the cries of jinn in the night, Ukhayyad awaits the arrival of his pursuers and their insatiable hunger for blood and gold. Gold Dust is a classic story of the brotherhood between man and beast, the thread of companionship that is all the difference between life and death in the desert. It is a story of the fight to endure in a world of limitless and waterless wastes, and a parable of the struggle to survive in the most dangerous landscape of all: human society. |
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The Bachelors
by Adalbert Stifter
Victor leaves the home of his foster mother to take his first job in another town but stops on a remote island to visit his uncle who he has never met. Surrounded by an atmosphere of death and decay, Victor and his uncle symbolise opposite attitudes to life and their existential effects: stillness and movement, light and dark, openness and withdrawal. Ultimately, Victor, in balancing the differences between himself and the old man who has never known love, chooses his own path with hope. |
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