brand modern library (74 results)

Softcover. Condition: used. The classic Crazy Salad, by screenwriting legend and novelist Nora Ephron, is an extremely funny, deceptively light look at a generation of women (and men) who helped shape the way we live now. In this distinctive, engaging, and simply hilarious view of a period of great upheaval in America, Ephron turns her keen eye and wonderful sense of humor to the media, politics, beauty products, and women's bodies. In the famous "A Few Words About Breasts," for example, she tells us: "If I had had them, I would have been a completely different person. I honestly believe that." Ephron brings her sharp pen to bear on the notable women of the time, and to a series of events ranging from Watergate to the Pillsbury Bake-Off. When it first appeared in 1975, Crazy Salad helped to illuminate a new American era--and helped us to laugh at our times and ourselves. This new edition will delight a fresh generation of readers.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Ranging from poignant scrutiny of social pretension, to wicked tales of lust and love, to harrowing stories of terror and madness, the genius of Guy de Maupassant, Frances greatest short-story writer, is on full display in this enthralling new translation by Joachim Neugroschel. The stories Neugroschel has gathered vividly reveal Maupassants remarkable range, his keen eye, his technical perfection, his sexual realism, his ability to create whole worlds and sum up intricate universes of feeling in a few pages.Adam Gopniks Introduction incisively explores the essence of Maupassants unique style and his tremendous, if unjustly unacknowledged, influence (on everything from the American short story to contemporary cinema), bearing eloquent testimony to Maupassants continuing and vital appeal.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. As stated, 1st edition, 2nd printing. Football is force and fanatics, basketball is beauty and bounce. Baseball is everything: action, grace, the seasons of our lives. George Vecseys book proves it, without wasting a word.-Lee Eisenberg, author of The NumberIn Baseball, one of the great bards of Americas Grand Old Game gives a rousing account of the sport, from its pre-Republic roots to the present day. George Vecsey casts a fresh eye on the game, illuminates its foibles and triumphs, and performs a marvelous feat: making a classic story seem refreshingly new.Baseball is a narrative of Americas can-do spirit, in which stalwart immigrants such as Henry Chadwick could transplant cricket and rounders into the fertile American culture and in which die-hard unionist baseballers such as Charles Comiskey and Connie Mack could eventually become the tightfisted avatars of the games big-money establishment. Its a celebration of such underdogs as a rag-armed catcher turned owner named Branch Rickey and a sure-handed fielder named Curt Flood, both of whom flourished as true great men of history. But most of all, Baseball is a testament to the unbreakable bond between our nations pastime and the fans, whove remained loyal through the fifty-year-long interdict on black athletes, the Black Sox scandal, franchise relocation, and the use of performance-enhancing drugs by some major stars.Reverent, playful, and filled with Vecseys charm, Baseball begs to be read in the span of a rain-delayed doubleheader, and so enjoyable that, like a favorite teams championship run, one hopes it never ends.Vecsey possesses a journalists eye for detail and a historians feel for the sweep of action. His research is scrupulous and his writing crisp. This book is an instant classic-- a highly readable guide to Americas great enduring pastime. - The Louisville Courier Journal.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. The Boys Crusade is the great historian Paul Fussells unflinching and unforgettable account of the American infantrymans experiences in Europe during World War II. Based in part on the authors own experiences, it provides a stirring narrative of what the war was actually like, from the point of view of the children-for children they were-who fought it. While dealing definitively with issues of strategy, leadership, context, and tactics, Fussell has an additional purpose: to tear away the veil of feel-good mythology that so often obscures and sanitizes wars brutal essence.A chronicle should deal with nothing but the truth, Fussell writes in his Preface. Accord-ingly, he eschews every kind of sentimentalism, focusing instead on the raw action and human emotion triggered by the intimacy, horror, and intense sorrows of war, and honestly addressing the errors, waste, fear, misery, and resentments that plagued both sides. In the vast literature on World War II, The Boys Crusade stands wholly apart. Fussells profoundly honest portrayal of these boy soldiers underscores their bravery even as it deepens our awareness of their experiences. This book is both a tribute to their noble service and a valuable lesson for future generations.

Hardcover. Condition: used. First Edition. I often said before starting, that I had no doubt I should frequently repent of the whole undertaking. So wrote Charles Darwin aboard The Beagle, bound for the Galapagos Islands and what would arguably become the greatest and most controversial discovery in scientific history. But the theory of evolution did not spring full-blown from the head of Darwin. Since the dawn of humanity, priests, philosophers, and scientists have debated the origin and development of life on earth, and with modern science, that debate shifted into high gear.In this lively, deeply erudite work, Pulitzer Prize-winning science historian Edward J. Larson takes us on a guided tour of Darwins dangerous idea, from its theoretical antecedents in the early nineteenth century to the brilliant breakthroughs of Darwin and Wallace, to Watson and Cricks stunning discovery of the DNA double helix, and to the triumphant neo-Darwinian synthesis and rising sociobiology today.Along the way, Larson expertly places the scientific upheaval of evolution in cultural perspective: the social and philosophical earthquake that was the French Revolution; the development, in England, of a laissez-faire capitalism in tune with a Darwinian ethos of survival of the fittest; the emergence of Social Darwinism and the dark science of eugenics against a backdrop of industrial revolution; the American Christian backlash against evolutionism that culminated in the famous Scopes trial; and on to todays world, where religious fundamentalists litigate for the right to teach creation science alongside evolution in U.S. public schools, even as the theory itself continues to evolve in new and surprising directions.Throughout, Larson trains his spotlight on the lives and careers of the scientists, explorers, and eccentrics whose collaborations and competitions have driven the theory of evolution forward. Here are portraits of Cuvier, Lamarck, Darwin, Wallace, Haeckel, Galton, Huxley, Mendel, Morgan, Fisher, Dobzhansky, Watson and Crick, W. D. Hamilton, E. O. Wilson, and many others. Celebrated as one of mankinds crowning scientific achievements and reviled as a threat to our deepest values, the theory of evolution has utterly transformed our view of life, religion, origins, and the theory itself, and remains controversial, especially in the United States (where 90% of adults do not subscribe to the full Darwinian vision). Replete with fresh material and new insights, Evolution will educate and inform while taking readers on a fascinating journey of discovery.

Softcover. Condition: used. First Edition. This book includes many of the greatest hits from 1930 to 1958--available only in this edition--by the devastatingly witty Perelman, the leading figure of The New Yorker magazine's golden age of humor and one of the most popular American humorists ever. In these hilarious pieces, the charmingly cranky Perelman turns his scathing attention to books, movies, New York socialites, the newspaper business, country life, travel, Hollywood, the publishing industry, and, last but not least, himself. His self-portrait: "Under a forehead roughly comparable to . . . Piltdown Man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence. . . . Before they made S. J. Perelman, they broke the mold." Sophisticated and supremely mischievous, Perelman is an acrobat of language who turns a phrase and then, before the reader has time to finish admiring his agility, turns it again.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Reprint. Eudora Welty's subjects are the people who live in southern towns like Jackson, Mississippi, which has been her home for all of her long life. I've stayed in one place,' she says, and 'it's become the source of the information that stirs my imagination.' Her distinctive voice and wry observations are rooted in the southern conversational tradition. The stories in this volume, from the first two collections she published, range in tone from the quietly understated and psychologically subtle to the outrageously grotesque. Linking them all is Welty's remarkable ear for the language and point of view of the South. 'She's a lot smarter than her cousins in Beula,' someone remarks about a reputed suicide in one story. 'Especially Edna Earle, that never did get to be what you'd call a heavy thinker. Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day on how the little tail of the 'c' got through the 'I' in a Coca-Cola sign."The stories in this volume, from the first two collections she published, range in tone from the quietly understated and psychologically subtle to the outrageously grotesque.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Hardcover. From the acclaimed authors of A Future Perfect comes the untold story of how the company became the worlds most powerful institution.Like all groundbreaking books, The Company fills a hole we didnt know existed, revealing that we cannot make sense of the past four hundred years until we place that seemingly humble Victorian innovation, the joint-stock company, in the center of the frame.With their trademark authority and wit, Economist editors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge reveal the company to be one of historys great catalysts, for good and for ill, a mighty engine for sucking in, recombining, and pumping out money, goods, people, and culture to every corner of the globe. What other earthly invention has the power to grow to any size, and to live to any age? What else could have given us both the stock market and the British Empire? The company man, the company town, and company time? Disneyfication and McDonaldsization, to say nothing of Coca-colonialism? Through its many mutations, the company has always incited controversy, and governments have always fought to rein it in. Today, though Marx may spin in his grave and anarchists riot in the streets, the company exercises an unparalleled influence on the globe, and understanding what this creature is and where it comes from has never been a more pressing matter. To the rescue come these acclaimed authors, with a short volume of truly vast range and insight.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Reprint. "Standing on the bare ground--my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space--all mean egotism vanishes," Emerson wrote in Nature, his statement of the principles of transcendentalism. "I become a transparent eyeball." Nature, published in 1836 when Emerson was thirty-three, is collected here with his book of observations on the English people; a famous sermon against administering communion in church; a sketch of his step-grandfather; the eulogy he delivered at the funeral of his Concord friend and neighbor Henry David Thoreau; twenty-three poems; and addresses, lectures, and essays on such subjects as slavery, self-reliance, and organized Christianity's obsession with the person of Jesus. Emerson called transcendentalism another word for idealism--"a hypothesis to account for nature by other principles than those of carpentry and chemistry." Considered intensely radical at a time when materialism and a rigid form of Christianity were ascendant, he urged Americans to "enjoy an original relation to the universe." These selections span Emerson's career as author and traveling lecturer, and chart his evolving thought: the concepts of the "oversoul", individualism without egotism, and antimaterialism; a belief in intuition, independence, and "the splendid labyrinth of one's own perceptions."

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1994 Modern Library. A collection of stories and poems by the noted American humorist.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Reissue. Hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a gifted observer, able to discern the exact details that bring whole worlds into being" and "a storyteller who could keep a sultan on the edge of his throne for a thousand and one nights," A. S. Byatt writes some of the most engaging and skillful novels of our time. Time magazine calls her "a novelist of dazzling inventiveness."Possession, for which Byatt won England's prestigious Booker Prize, was praised by critics on both sides of the Atlantic when it was first published in 1990. "On academic rivalry and obsession, Byatt is delicious. On the nature of possession-the lover by the beloved, the biographer by his subject-she is profound," said The Sunday Times (London). The New Yorker dubbed it "more fun to read than The Name of the Rose . . . Its prankish verve [and] monstrous richness of detail [make for] a one-woman variety show of literary styles and types." The novel traces a pair of young academics-Roland Michell and Maud Bailey-as they uncover a clandestine love affair between two long-dead Victorian poets. Interwoven in a mesmerizing pastiche are love letters and fairytales, extracts from biographies and scholarly accounts, creating a sensuous and utterly delightful novel of ideas and passions.With an Introduction by the author that describes the novel's origins and its twenty-year gestation, this Modern Library edition is a handsome keepsake for fans of Possession-new and old alike.

Hardcover. Condition: used. Fanshawe -- The gray champion -- The wedding knell -- The minister's black veil -- The maypole of Merry Mount -- The gentle boy -- Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe -- Wakefield -- The great carbuncle -- David Swan -- The hollow of the three hills -- Dr. Heidegger's experiment -- Legends of the Province house -- Howe's masquerade -- Edward Randolph's portrait -- Lady Eleanor's mantle -- Old Esther Dudley -- The ambitious Guest -- Peter Goldthwaites's treasure -- The shaker bridal -- Endicott and the red cross -- The birthmark -- Young Goodman Brown -- Rappaccini's daughter. Mrs. Bullfrog. -- The celestial railroad -- The procession of life -- Feathertop: a moralized legend -- Egotism; or, the bosom serpent -- Drowne's wooden image -- Roger Malvin's burial -- The artist of the beautiful -- The scarlet letter.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they wend their way across sixteenth-century Spain. Milan Kundera calls Cervantes the founder of the Modern Era and Lionel Trilling observes that it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the acclaimed Tobias Smollett translation; as Salman Rushdie declares, To my mind, this is the only English rendering of the Quixote that reads like a great novel, a novel of immense daring, much wildness and many colours. It releases Don Quixote from the grey academic prison of many more recent translations, unleashing him upon the English language in all his brilliant, foolish glory. This edition also contains new endnotes.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. The snobbery and false values of the English country nobility are satirized in these two love stories involving the well-established Radlett and Hampton families.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Modern Library Edition. In exploring the manifestations of human spiritual experience both in the imaginative activities of the individual and in the formation of mythologies and of religious symbolism in various cultures, C. G. Jung laid the groundwork for a psychology of the spirit. The excerpts here illuminate the concept of the unconscious, the central pillar of his work, and display ample evidence of the spontaneous spiritual and religious activities of the human mind. This compact volume will serve as an ideal introduction to Jung's basic concepts. Part I of this book, "On the Nature and Functioning of the Psyche," contains material from four "Symbols of Transformation," "On the Nature of the Psyche," "The Relations between the Ego and the Unconscious," and "Psychological Types." Also included in Part I are "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" and "Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype." Part II, "On Pathology and Therapy," includes "On the Nature of Dreams," "On the Pathogenesis of Schizophrenia," and selections from "Psychology of the Transference." In Part III appear "Introduction to the Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy" and two sections of "Psychology and Religion." Part IV, called "On Human Development," consists of the essay "Marriage as a Psychological Relationship."

Hardcover. Condition: Good. First Edition. The Tao of Emerson strikingly brings together two of the most influential voices in the history of letters: Lao Tse, the sixth-century B.C. Chinese mystic, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American transcendentalist known to many as the sage of Concord.By adroitly juxtaposing on facing pages the texts of Lao Tses masterpiece, the Tao Te Ching, with Emersons writings, Richard Grossman illuminates how these two remarkable men, from opposite sides of the world and separated by 2,500 years, are united in an inspired wisdom and common spirit: to live simply and tranquilly; trust ones own intuition; seek out and appreciate the spiritual grace in the natural world; act without self-assertion; abjure violence; harmonize with the ebb and flow of nature and circumstances; and, above all, assure that there is a place in the world for humility, yielding, gentleness, and serenity.There is no direct path linking Lao Tse to Emerson, since the Tao Te Ching was not translated into English until 1891, nine years after Emersons death. But Americas Founding Thinker was nonetheless in many ways the heir to the great Chinese mystics insight and philosophy. As Grossman observes, Emersons brand of fresh home-grown English adds a radiant color to the ancient thoughts of the Chinese Master.Although Lao Tse was a citizen of the worlds oldest empire and Emerson of its youngest republic, The Tao of Emerson makes the brilliantly presented case that a common literary thread binds these two men. Grossmans Introduction, in which he compares the mens lives, and the passages he has selected from their work give both writers a special resonance for todays reader and help to reveal Emerson in a while new light.This volume includes original brush calligraphy by the celebrated Taoist master Chungliang Al Huang.Praise for The Tao of EmersonThis inspired book from one of Emersons strongest readers is a great gift. Through the reflected light of the Tao Te Ching, Richard Grossman has made the core of Emersons wisdom transparent, allowing us to see into the heart of what makes the sage of Concord our very own Lao Tse. -Richard G. Geldard, editor of The Essential TranscendentalistsOne measure of a spiritually serious book is whether it repeatedly stops us dead in our tracks as we read it and allows us to foresee the ultimate triumph of truth and principle in our lives and in the life of the world. This is such a book. -Jacob Needleman, author of Why Cant We Be Good?Deeply immersing himself in both the wisdom of Lao Tse and the philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Grossman has produced a remarkable Guide to life, a handbook filled with venerable worlds combined to yield a new poetry of the mind. Reading it, we stand, with Emerson, before the secrets of the world. -Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American RomanticismThis marvelous volume will bring joy and light to those who know or even suspect that Emersonianism is not a system, a product, or a position but a way or a path. For those who havent yet gotten it but want to try, this book is the perfect place to start. -Robert D. Richardson, Jr., author of Emerson: The Mind on Fire.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Modern Library Ed. For there is indeed something we can call the spirit of ancient Greece-a carefully tuned voice that speaks out of the grave with astonishing clarity and grace , a distinctive voice that, taken as a whole, is like no other voice that has ever sung on this earth.-BURTON RAFFEL, from his PrefaceFor centuries, the poetry of Homer, Aristophanes, Sophocles, Sappho, and Archilochus has served as one of our primary means of connecting with the wholly vanished world of ancient Greece. But the works of numerous other great and prolific poets-Alkaios, Meleager, and Simonides, to name a few-are rarely translated into English , and are largely unknown to modern readers. In Pure Pagan, award-winning translator Burton Raffel brings these and many other wise and witty ancient Greek writers to an English-speaking audience for the first time, in full poetic flower. Their humorous and philosophical ruminations create a vivid portrait of everyday life in ancient Greece -and they are phenomenally lovely as well.In short, sharp bursts of song, these two-thousand-year-old poems speak about the timeless matters of everyday life:Wine (Wine is the medicine / To call for, the best medicine / To drink deep, deep)History (Not us: no. / It began with our fathers, / Ive heard).Movers and shakers (If a man shakes loose stones / To make a wall with / Stones may fall on his head / Instead)Old age (Old age is a debt we like to be owed / Not one we like to collect)Frankness (Speak / As you please / And hear what can never / Please).There are also wonderful epigrams (Take what you have while you have it: youll lose it soon enough. / A single summer turns a kid into a shaggy goat) and epitaphs (Here I lie, beneath this stone, the famous woman who untied her belt for only one man).The entrancing beauty, humor, and piercing clarity of these poems will draw readers into the Greeks journeys to foreign lands, their bacchanalian parties and ferocious battles, as well as into the more intimate settings of their kitchens and bedrooms. The poetry of Pure Pagan reveals the ancient Greeks dreams, their sense of humor, sorrows, triumphs, and their most deeply held values, fleshing out our understanding of and appreciation for this fascinating civilization and its artistic legacy.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Reissue. Gathers fifteen of Kafka's stories, including "The Metamorphosis," "In the Penal Colony," "A Hunger Artist," and "A Report to an Academy."

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Reprint. Portrays characters that constitute life on the waterfront of New York City.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy. As his native optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, cannot stand aside and just watch.From the Trade Paperback edition.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. 1. Cumings, Bruce.

Softcover. Condition: Good. The first and best known volume of one of the landmarks of world literature. Available separately for those who want to approach Proust carefully!From the Trade Paperback edition.

Hardcover. Condition: used. California has always been our Shangri-la-the promised land of countless pilgrims in search of the American Dream. Now the Golden States premier historian, Kevin Starr, distills the entire sweep of Californias history into one splendid volume. From the age of exploration to the age of Arnold, this is the story of a place at once quintessentially American and utterly unique.Arguing that Americas most populous state has always been blessed with both spectacular natural beauty and astonishing human diversity, Starr unfolds a rapid-fire epic of discovery, innovation, catastrophe, and triumph.For generations, Californias native peoples basked in the abundance of a climate and topography eminently suited to human habitation. By the time the Spanish arrived in the early sixteenth century, there were scores of autonomous tribes were thriving in the region. Though conquest was rapid, nearly two centuries passed before Spain exerted control over upper California through the chain of missions that stand to this day.The discovery of gold in January 1848 changed everything. With population increasing exponentially as get-rich-quick dreamers converged from all over the world, California reinvented itself overnight. Starr deftly traces the successive waves of innovation and calamity that have broken over the state since then-the incredible wealth of the Big Four railroad tycoons and the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906; the emergence of Hollywood as the worlds entertainment capital and of Silicon Valley as the center of high-tech research and development; the heroic irrigation and transportation projects that have altered the face of the region; the role of labor, both organized and migrant, in key industries from agriculture to aerospace.Kevin Starr has devoted his career to the history of his beloved state, but he has never lost his sense of wonder over Californias sheer abundance and peerless variety. This one-volume distillation of a lifetimes work gathers together everything that is most important, most fascinating, and most revealing about our greatest state.

Hardcover. Condition: Good. Subsequent. The first issue of The Paris Review in 1953 included an interview on the craft of writing with E. M. Forster, perhaps the greatest living author of the time. Subsequent issues carried interviews with, among others, Franois Mauriac, Graham Greene, Irwin Shaw, William Styron, Ralph Ellison, and William Faulkner; in the intervening years, many of the world's most significant writers (Ezra Pound, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, and John Dos Passos) sat down with The Paris Review. Many of the interviews have been collected in a series of volumes entitled Writers at Work. From these interviews, The Paris Review's editor, George Plimpton, has selected the best and most illuminating insights that the writers have provided and arranged them by subject rather than by author. The book is divided into four parts: "The Writer: A Profile" (including the sections "On Reading," "On Work Habits," On the Audi-ence," etc.); Part II is "Technical Matters" ("On Style," "On Plot," etc.); Part III is "Different Forms" ("On Biography," "On Journalism"); and Part IV is "The Writer's Life," covering topics like conferences, courses, and teaching, along with a section in which writers provided portraits of other writers.The Writer's Chapbook is a fund of observations by writers on writing. These range from marvel-ous one-liners (Eugene O'Neill on critics: "I love every bone in their heads"; T. S. Eliot on editors: "I suppose some editors are failed writers--but so are most writers") to expositions on plot, character, and the technical process of putting pen to paper and doing it for a living. "I don't even have a plot," says Norman Mailer; Paul Bowles describes writing in bed; Toni Morrison talks about inventing characters; and Edward Albee and Tom Wolfe explain where they discovered the titles for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Bonfire of the Vanities.This book is a treasure. But beware: What is true for the Writers at Work series holds for The Writer's Chapbook even more--a reader who picks it up, intending just to dip into it, might not emerge for days.

Hardcover. Condition: used. Modern Library. "The thorn was in my flesh," Mann said about the genesis of Doctor Faustus, which was composed during World War II. "I knew what I was setting out to do and what task I was imposing upon myself: to write nothing else than the novel of my era, disguised as the story of an artist's life, a terribly imperilled and sinful artist."Adrian Leverkuhn, a former theological student who has become a composer, enters symbolically into a pact with the devil in exchange for two and a half decades of inspired work. Narrated by Serenus Zeitblom, Leverkuhn's faithful friend, this retelling of the Faust legend turns on the composer's slow descent into syphilitic paralysis. Densely orchestrated with musical constructions and what Mann called historical "montage", the book discourses on the tragedy of Germany, the Schonbergian twelve-tone system, Nietzche, the life of Tchaikovsky, and the introduction of syphilis into Europe. Mann described Doctor Faustus as "difficult, weird, uncanny, sad as life.".

Hardcover. Condition: used. Full of mischief and valor, ribaldry and romance, The Arabian Nights is a work that has enthralled readers for centuries. The text presented here is that of the 1932 Modern Library edition for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the "most famous and representative" of the stories from the multivolume translation of Richard F. Burton.The origins of The Arabian Nights are obscure. About a thousand years ago a vast number of stories in Arabic from various countries began to be brought together; only much later was the collection called The Arabian Nights or the Thousand and One Nights. All the stories are told by Shahrazad (Scheherazade), who entertains her husband, King Shahryar, whose custom it was to execute his wives after a single night. Shahrazad begins a story each night but withholds the ending until the following night, thus postponing her execution.This selection includes many of the stories that are universally known though seldom read in this authentic form:"Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp," "Sindbad the Seaman and Sindbad the Landsman," and "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." These, and the tales that accompany them, make delightful reading, demonstrating, as the Modern Library noted in 1932, that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.

Softcover. Condition: Good. Reprint. "His monumental work.is the most thorough study of the U-boat campaign available." --Library JournalHitler's U-boat War is an epic sea story about the most arduous and prolonged naval battle in history. For a period of nearly six years, the German U-boat force attempted to blockade and isolate the British Isles in hopes of forcing the British out of the war, thereby thwarting both the Allied strategic air assault on German cities and Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Occupied France. Fortunately for the Allies, the U-boat force failed to achieve either of these objectives, but in the attempt they sank 2,800 Allied merchant ships, while the Allies sank nearly 800 U-boats. On both sides, tens of thousands of sailors perished.For decades, an authoritative and definitive history of the Battle of the Atlantic could not be attempted, since London and Washington agreed to withhold all official code-breaking and U-boat records in order to safeguard the secrets of code breaking in the postwar years. The accounts that did appear were incomplete and full of false conclusions and errors of fact, often leaving the entirely wrong impression that the German U-boats came within a whisker of defeating the Allies, a myth that is finally laid to rest in this account.Clay Blair, acclaimed author of the bestselling naval classic Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan, has drawn from the official records as well as the work of German, British, American, and Canadian naval scholars. Never before has Hitler's U-boat war been chronicled with such authority, fidelity, objectivity, and detail. The result is this magnificent and monumental work, crammed with vivid and dramatic scenes of naval actions and dispassionate but startling new revelations, interpretations, and conclusions about all aspects of the Battle of the Atlantic.

Hardcover. Condition: new. Reprint. Product Description This fine novel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardys most unforgettable creations: his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath. The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moor where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a clandestine meeting with her lover, Damon Wildeve. But Eustacias dreams of escape are not to be realized-neither Wildeve nor the returning native Clym Yeobright can bring her salvation.Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardys characters struggle vainly in the net of destiny. In the end, only the face of the lonely heath remains untouched by fate in this masterpiece of tragic passion, a tale that perfectly epitomizes the authors own unique and melancholy genius.From the Paperback edition. Review "This is the quality Hardy shares with the great writers.this setting behind the small action the terrific action of unfathomed nature."--D. H. LawrenceFrom the Trade Paperback edition. From the Inside Flap vel sets in opposition two of Thomas Hardy's most unforgettable creations:his heroine, the sensuous, free-spirited Eustacia Vye, and the solemn, majestic stretch of upland in Dorsetshire he called Egdon Heath.The famous opening reveals the haunting power of that dark, forbidding moon where proud Eustacia fervently awaits a clandestine meeting with her lover, Damon Wildeve.But Eustacia's dreams of escape are not to be realized--neither Wildeve nor the retuming native Clym Yeobright can bring her salvation.Injured by forces beyond their control, Hardy's characters struggle vainly in the net of destiny.In the end, only the face of the lonely heath remains untouched by fate in this masterpiece of tragic passion, a tale that perfectly epitomizes the author's own unique and melancholy genius.From the Paperback edition. Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. A SATURDAY afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking dread. In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn: then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity.

Hardcover. Condition: used. First Edition. "The short stories of Chekhov are an inexhaustible treasure of humanity and wisdom," wrote Elizabeth Hardwick. "The whole of Russian life lies within them."Some six hundred tales bear Chekhov's name, not a few of which are the famous "long short stories" written during roughly the last decade of his brief life. This volume gives us eleven of these, in eminent translations by Constance Garnett and chosen by Shelby Foote. Perhaps the most autobiographical is "Three Years," which offers a portrayal of mercantile greed and exploitation that was new to Russian literature. "The Duel" is the story of Ivan Layevsky, a self-styled "St. Petersburg Hamlet," who, filled with Tolstoyan ideas of a noble life of toil on the land, escapes (with another man's wife) to the Caucasus. The ensuing philosophical confrontations among the major characters clearly resemble those in Uncle Vanya. And in the masterly "Ward No. 6," a doctor, disgusted by the stupidity and misery of the world of normal men, forms such a close relationship with an interesting lunatic that society declares the doctor a lunatic too and incarcerates him. The story is devastatingly symbolic of the corruption and hopelessness in Russia toward the end of theautocracy. Also included are "The Black Monk," "An Anonymous Story," "A Woman's Kingdom," "The Wife," "In the Ravine," "Peasants," "The Murder," and "My Life." "Chekhov is not only a great writer but, even rarer, a liberating one," said Susan Sontag.Shelby Foote has provided an Introduction for this edition.

Hardcover. Condition: used. First Edition. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their faces. There was no apparent motive for the crime, and there were almost no clues.As Truman Capote reconstructs the murder and the investigation that led to the capture, trial, and execution of the killers, he generates both mesmerizing suspense and astonishing empathy. In Cold Blood is a work that transcends its moment, yielding poignant insights into the nature of American violence.