From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, here is the universally acclaimed novelwinner of the Booker Prize and the basis for an award-winning film. This is Kazuo Ishiguro's profoundly compelling portrait of Stevens, the perfect butler, and of his fading, insular world in post-World War II England. Stevens, at the end of three decades of service at Darlington Hall, spending a day on a country drive, embarks as well on a journey through the past in an effort to reassure himself that he has served humanity by serving the "e;great gentleman,"e; Lord Darlington. But lurking in his memory are doubts about the true nature of Lord Darlington's "e;greatness,"e; and much graver doubts about the nature of his own life.
In the spirit of the mega-selling On Bullshit, philosopher Aaron James presents a theory of the asshole that is both intellectually provocative and existentially necessary.What does it mean for someone to be an asshole? The answer is not obvious, despite the fact that we are often personally stuck dealing with people for whom there is no better name. Try as we might to avoid them, assholes are found everywhereat work, at home, on the road, and in the public sphere. Encountering one causes great difficulty and personal strain, especially because we often cannot understand why exactly someone should be acting like that.Asshole management begins with asshole understanding. Much as Machiavelli illuminated political strategy for princes, this book finally gives us the concepts to think or say why assholes disturb us so, and explains why such people seem part of the human social condition, especially in an age of raging narcissism and unbridled capitalism. These concepts are also practically useful, as understanding the asshole we are stuck with helps us think constructively about how to handle problems he (and they are mostly all men) presents. We get a better sense of when the asshole is best resisted, and when he is best ignoreda better sense of what is, and what is not, worth fighting for.
In this seductive, wistful masterpiece, Truman Capote created a woman whose name has entered the American idiom and whose style is a part of the literary landscape. Holly Golightly knows that nothing bad can ever happen to you at Tiffany's; her poignancy, wit, and navete continue to charm.This volume also includes three of Capote's best-known stories, ';House of Flowers,' ';A Diamond Guitar,' and ';A Christmas Memory,' which the Saturday Review called ';one of the most moving stories in our language.' It is a tale of two innocentsa small boy and the old woman who is his best friendwhose sweetness contains a hard, sharp kernel of truth.
From the best-selling author and global feminist icon--an illustrated weekly planner containing her most powerful and inspiring quotes, as well as an introductory essay written exclusively for this publication.From her award-winning novels, including Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah, and her stirring calls to arms We Should All Be Feminists and Dear Ijeawele; from her work with Beyoncé and sharing the stage with Michelle Obama, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of the most empowering and iconic feminist figures of our time. Now, in this beautiful weekly planner, Adichie''s words will inspire you to be your own best self: to stand up and be truly heard. As Chimamanda says, "It''s not your job to be likable. It''s your job to be yourself."
A magnificent history of the American conquest of the West; "e;a story full of authority and color, truth and prophecy"e; (The New York Times Book Review).In the summer of 1846, the Army of the West marched through Santa Fe, en route to invade and occupy the Western territories claimed by Mexico. Fueled by the new ideology of ';Manifest Destiny,' this land grab would lead to a decades-long battle between the United States and the Navajos, the fiercely resistant rulers of a huge swath of mountainous desert wilderness.At the center of this sweeping tale is Kit Carson, the trapper, scout, and soldier whose adventures made him a legend. Sides shows us how this illiterate mountain man understood and respected the Western tribes better than any other American, yet willingly followed orders that would ultimately devastate the Navajo nation. Rich in detail and spanning more than three decades, this is an essential addition to our understanding of how the West was really won.
In this collection of stories, Dahl tantalizes, amuses, and sometimes terrifies readers into a sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary. Included in this collection are such notorious gems of the bizarre as "The Second Machine," "Lamb to the Slaughter," "Neck," and "The Landlady." Other stories explore: A wine connoisseur with an infallible palate and a sinister taste in wagers. A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate. Impeccable servants whose bland masks slip for one vertiginous instant. With the inventive power of a Thomas Edison and the imagination of a Lewis Carroll…Roald Dahl is a wizard of comedy and the grotesque, an artist with a marvelously topsy-turvy sense of the ridiculous in life." -Cleveland Plain Dealer
At last, a book about eating (and eating well) for health -- from Dr. Andrew Weil, the brilliantly innovative and greatly respected doctor who has been instrumental in transforming the way Americans think about health. Now Dr. Weil -- whose nationwide best-sellers Spontaneous Healing and Eight Weeks to Optimum Health have made us aware of the body's capacity to heal itself -- provides us with a program for improving our well-being by making informed choices about how and what we eat. He gives us all the basic facts about human nutrition. Here is everything we need to know about fats, protein, carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins, and their effects on our health.He equips us to make decisions about the latest miracle diet or reducing aid. At the heart of his book, he presents in easy-to-follow detail his recommended OPTIMUM DIET, including complete weekly menus for use both at home and in restaurants.He provides eighty-five recipes accompanied by a rigorous and reliable nutritional breakdown -- delicious recipes reminding us that we can eat for health without giving up the essential pleasures of eating.Customized dietary advice is included for dozens of common ailments, among them asthma, allergies, heart disease, migraines, and thyroid problems. Dr. Weil helps us to read labels on all food products and thereby become much wiser consumers. Throughout he makes clear how an optimal diet can both supply the basic needs of the body and fortify the body's defenses and mechanisms of healing. And he always stresses that good food -- and the good feeling it engenders at the table -- is not only a delight but also necessary to our well-being, so that eating for health means enjoyable eating.In sum, a hugely practical and inspiring book about food, diet, and nutrition that stands to change -- for the better and the healthier -- our most fundamental ideas about eating.
A warm, funny, irresistible book that follows an improbable and life-changing college friendship over the course of forty years—from the best-selling author of The End of Your Life Book ClubBy the time Will Schwalbe was a junior at college, he had already met everyone he cared to know: the theater people, writers, visual artists and comp lit majors, and various other quirky characters including the handful of students who shared his own major, Latin and Greek. He also knew exactly who he wanted to avoid: the jocks. The jocks wore baseball caps and moved in packs, filling boisterous tables in the dining hall, and on the whole seemed to be another species entirely, one Will might encounter only at his own peril. All this changed dramatically when Will collided with Chris Maxey, known to just about everyone as Maxey. Maxey was physically imposing, loud, and a star wrestler who was determined to become a Navy SEAL (where he would later serve for six years). Thanks to the strangely liberating circumstances of a little-known secret society at Yale, the two forged a bond that would become a mainstay of each other’s lives as they repeatedly lost and found each other and themselves in the years after graduation. From New Haven to New York City, from Hong Kong and Panama to a remarkable school on an island in the Bahamas—through marriages and a divorce, triumphs and devastating losses—We Should Not Be Friends tracks an extraordinary friendship over decades of challenge and change. Schwalbe’s marvelous new work is, at its heart, a joyful testament to the miracle of human connection—and how if we can just get past our preconceptions, we may find some of our greatest friends.
One of Charles Dickens's most fascinating novels, Great Expectations follows the orphan Pip as he leaves behind a childhood of misery and poverty after an anonymous benefactor offers him a chance at the life of a gentleman. From the young Pip's first terrifying encounter with the convict Magwitch in the gloom of a graveyard to the splendidly morbid set pieces in Miss Havisham's mansion to the magnificently realized boat chase down the Thames, Great Expectations is filled with the transcendent excitement that Dickens could so abundantly provide. Written in 1860, at the height of his maturity, it also reveals the novelist's bittersweet understanding of the extent to which our deepest moral dilemmas are born of our own obsessions and illusions.This edition includes Dickens's original, discarded conclusion to the novel, the 1907 Everyman preface by G. K. Chesterton, and twenty illustrations by F. W. Pailthorpe.
Set in the gloriously rugged backwoods of the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, Nina Shengold's gripping debut novel follows three people in search of new lives deep into uncharted terrain of the body and heart.When rough-hewn loner Earley Ritter picks up a hitchhiker one rainy night, he can't imagine how much it will change his life. A "shake-rat" who salvages cedar stumps left when loggers clearcut, Earley seems to have little in common with Reed Alton, a gifted Berkeley dropout. But when Earley meets Zan, the fiery and mysterious woman Reed has been following, erotic sparks fly in unexpected directions. Thrown together in the splendid isolation of the woods, with passions and tensions mounting, the unlikely trio achieves a fragile balance that--like their idyllic patch of forest--will be shattered by violence. At once a page-turning psychological drama and a colorful, wildly comic recreation of a lost time and place, Clearcut explores the boundaries that divide us, and what it takes to cross them.
"Young or old, newbie or seasoned pro, Christina Tosi's Bake Club is open to everyone. Covering all the categories of the baking universe-from Glazed Pumpkin Pie Bars to Blueberries and Cream Muffins, Cheesy Lava Love Cakes to Caramel Apple Pie Apples-these are recipes designed to empower home bakers to have fun in the kitchen and to dispel all baking misconceptions: I don't have enough time, I don't have the right ingredients, I don't have a standing mixer, and I'm a terrible baker. That means no fancy ingredients or equipment are required-and modifications are very much allowed! Disarmingly doable yet show stoppingly impressive, the 100-plus recipes that make up Bake Club are classic Tosi creations-simple, inviting, and eminently bakeable"--
WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE® IN LITERATURE 2013In these fifteen short stories--her eighth collection of short stories in a long and distinguished career--Alice Munro conjures ordinary lives with an extraordinary vision, displaying the remarkable talent for which she is now widely celebrated. Set on farms, by river marshes, in the lonely towns and new suburbs of western Ontario, these tales are luminous acts of attention to those vivid moments when revelation emerges from the layers of experience that lie behind even the most everyday events and lives."Virtuosity, elemental command, incisive like a diamond, remarkable: all these descriptions fit Alice Munro."--Christian Science Monitor"How does one know when one is in the grip of art--of a major talent?....It is art that speaks from the pages of Alice Munro's stories."--Wall Street Journal
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • From the legendary actor and best-selling author: a novel about the making of a star-studded, multimillion-dollar superhero action film...and the humble comic books that inspired it. Funny, touching, and wonderfully thought-provoking, while also capturing the changes in America and American culture since World War II."Wild, ambitious and exceptionally enjoyable." —Matt Haig, best-selling author The Midnight Library, The Humans and Reasons to Stay AlivePart One of this story takes place in 1947. A troubled soldier, returning from the war, meets his talented five-year-old nephew, leaves an indelible impression, and then disappears for twenty-three years.Cut to 1970: The nephew, now drawing underground comic books in Oakland, California, reconnects with his uncle and, remembering the comic book he saw when he was five, draws a new version with his uncle as a World War II fighting hero. Cut to the present day: A commercially successful director discovers the 1970 comic book and decides to turn it into a contemporary superhero movie.Cue the cast: We meet the film’s extremely difficult male star, his wonderful leading lady, the eccentric writer/director, the producer, the gofer production assistant, and everyone else on both sides of the camera.Bonus material: Interspersed throughout are three comic books that are featured in the story—all created by Tom Hanks himself—including the comic book that becomes the official tie-in to this novel’s "major motion picture masterpiece."
"Bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands narrates the fierce debate over America's role in the world in the runup to World War II through its two most important figures: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who advocated intervention, and his isolationist nemesis, aviator and popular hero Charles Lindbergh. Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 launched a momentous period of decision-making for the United States. With fascism rampant abroad, should America take responsibility for its defeat? For popular hero Charles Lindbergh, saying no to another world war only twenty years after the first was the obvious answer. Lindbergh had become famous and adored around the world after his historic first flight over the Atlantic in 1927. In the years since, he had emerged as a vocal critic of American involvement overseas, rallying Americans toward isolationism as the nominal head of the America First Committee. As Hitler advanced across Europe and threatened the British Isles, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt struggled to turn the tide of public opinion. With great effort, political shrewdness and outright deception-aided by secret British disinformation efforts in America-FDR readied the country for war. He pushed the US onto the world stage where it has stayed ever since. In this gripping narrative, H.W. Brands sheds light on a crucial tipping point in American history and depicts the making of a legendary president"--
"A serious historical novel that reads like a dream." --The Washington Post Book World"One of the most spohisticated fictional treatments of the enduring themes of class, color, and freedom." --San Francisco ChronicleNATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALISTPEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST This first installment of the epic Haitian trilogy brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the world's first Black republic. From the center of this horrific maelstrom, the heroic figure of Toussaint Louverture-a loyal, literate slave and both a devout Catholic and Vodouisant-emerges as the man who will take the merciless fires of violence and vengeance and forge a revolutionary war fueled by liberty and equality. Bell assembles a kaleidoscopic portrait of this seminal movement through a tableau of characters that encompass black, white, male, female, rich, poor, free and enslaved. Pulsing with brilliant detail, All Soul's Rising provides a visceral sense of the pain, terror, confusion, and triumph of revolution.
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