Books Store

Bulb (Hardcover)

2009-11-29T16:58:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A personal selection and authoritative guide to the most beautiful bulbs on the earth.

The publication of Anna Pavord's guide to her favorite bulbs, corms, and tubers is an event to be celebrated. Here, the world famous author of The Tulip, selects 540 favorite bulbs, more bulbs than and gardener could grow in a lifetime.

Easy-to-grow, generally inexpensive and highly accessible, bulbs are readily available from many outlets. From acis, anemones and arums to zantedeschia, zephyranthes, and zigadenus, this alphabetical collection provides inspiration, insight, anecdote, and helpful advice. Special photography reveals the glory of each bulb, explaining flowering size, height, planting depth and requires soil and climatic conditions.

This gorgeous book, a complete deluxe package, will appeal to gardeners as the world's most authoritative and affordable reference work on bulbs.

About the Author

Anna Pavord writes for several magazines in the UK and she has authored eight books, including the internationally acclaimed bestseller, The Tulip.

Link to Buy : Bulb

Cisco ASA: All-in-One Firewall, IPS, and VPN Adaptive Security Appliance (Paperback)

2009-11-27T20:07:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Identify, mitigate, and respond to network attacks
* Understand the evolution of security technologies that make up the unified ASA device and how to install the ASA hardware
* Examine firewall solutions including network access control, IP routing, AAA, application inspection, virtual firewalls, transparent (Layer 2) firewalls, failover and redundancy, and QoS
* Evaluate Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) solutions including IPS integration and Adaptive Inspection and Prevention Security Services Module (AIP-SSM) configuration
* Deploy VPN solutions including site-to-site IPsec VPNs, remote- access VPNs, and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
* Learn to manage firewall, IPS, and VPN solutions with Adaptive Security Device Manager (ASDM)

Achieving maximum network security is a challenge for most organizations. Cisco® ASA, a new unified security device that combines firewall, network antivirus, intrusion prevention, and virtual private network (VPN) capabilities, provides proactive threat defense that stops attacks before they spread through the network.

This new family of adaptive security appliances also controls network activity and application traffic and delivers flexible VPN connectivity. The result is a powerful multifunction network security device that provides the security breadth and depth for protecting your entire network, while reducing the high deployment and operations costs and complexities associated with managing multiple point products.

Cisco ASA: All-in-One Firewall, IPS, and VPN Adaptive Security Appliance is a practitioner’s guide to planning, deploying, and troubleshooting a comprehensive security plan with Cisco ASA. The book provides valuable insight and deployment examples and demonstrates how adaptive identification and mitigation services on Cisco ASA provide a sophisticated security solution for both large and small network environments.

The book contains many useful sample configurations, proven design scenarios, and discussions of debugs that help you understand how to get the most out of Cisco ASA in your own network.

“I have found this book really highlights the practical aspects needed for building real-world security. It offers the insider’s guidance needed to plan, implement, configure, and troubleshoot the Cisco ASA in customer environments and demonstrates the potential and power of Self-Defending Networks.”

–Jayshree Ullal, Sr. Vice President, Security Technologies Group, Cisco Systems®

This security book is part of the Cisco Press® Networking Technology Series. Security titles from Cisco Press help networking professionals secure critical data and resources, prevent and mitigate network attacks, and build end-to-end self-defending networks.

About the Author

Jazib Frahim, CCIE® No. 5459, is a senior network security engineer in the Worldwide Security Services Practice of Advanced Services for Network Security at Cisco. He is responsible for guiding customers in the design and implementation of their networks with a focus in network security.

Omar Santos is a senior network security engineer in the Worldwide Security Services Practice of Advanced Services for Network Security at Cisco. He has more than 12 years of experience in secure data communications.

Link to Buy : Cisco ASA: All-in-One Firewall, IPS, and VPN Adaptive Security Appliance

Public-Sector Project Management: Meeting the Challenges and Achieving Results (Hardcover)

2009-11-27T06:52:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Public-Sector Project Management

Meeting the Challenges and Achieving Results

David W. Wirick

Business & Economics/Project Management

Your guide to project management success in the public sector

There may be no simple formula for success in public-sector projects, but Public-Sector Project Management delivers the next best thing: a complete set of skill-building strategies that puts success well within your reach.

Building on industry standards and best practices as well as almost thirty years of public-sector experience, this definitive sourcebook clearly explains how to manage projects in the public sector and navigate their many challenges. Here is where you'll find all the tools to accomplish your goals for any public-sector project, whether you are overseeing military and security operations, the construction of public infrastructure, improving agency processes, deploying new systems or public programs, or any other public initiative.

The book describes both the obstacles and basic processes of public-sector project management and examines the differences between public-sector and private-sector projects, including the management of the wide array of public-sector stakeholders. Public-Sector Project Management is your comprehensive professional template for making a positive contribution to your agency or organization. Inside, you'll find:

* Expert guidance consistent with project management best practices

* In-depth coverage of public-sector constraints, including purchasing systems, legal mandates, political and media oversight, and complex rules and processes

* Specific strategies to enhance the management capability of public-sector managers and private-sector project managers working under government contracts

* Emphasis on the role of planning in managing customer, manager, and project team expectations, and coping with the overlapping systems of constraints that impede public-sector projects

* Techniques for managing contractors and vendors
* Tools for managing the complexity inherent in most public-sector projects

* Insightful case studies of notable and historic public-sector projects; chapter-ending discussion questions and exercises; numerous tables and figures; and key terms in the glossary

About the Author

David W. Wirick, PMP, CMA, is a Visiting Scholar, John Glenn School of Public Affairs, Ohio State University, and is Principal at Kreider-Wirick, LLC.

Link to Buy : Public-Sector Project Management: Meeting the Challenges and Achieving Results

Frank Gehry: The Houses (Hardcover)

2009-11-25T17:24:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Review

The first book of the seminal residential works of Frank Gehry, from his earliest architectural ideas to today.

Product Description

One of the great architects of our time, Frank Gehry has revolutionized the use of materials in design and redefined how architects use computers as a design tool to advance form-making as we know it. He has achieved worldwide fame for such large-scale public projects as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California, but it was in private houses that Gehry first explored and interrogated the principles of modern architecture. In these houses—most notably his own, in Santa Monica, California—Gehry distorted, expanded, and collapsed the modernist box, exploring everyday materials (corrugated metal, unfinished plywood, and chain link), experimenting with color, and challenging accepted notions about geometry and structure. In houses such as the Schnabel House in Brentwood, California, and the Winton Guest House in Wayzata, Minnesota, he experimented with collage and assemblage. More recently, Gehry’s work has taken on sculptural forms, aided by new structural and geometric potentials of digital design, as in the near-legendary Lewis House in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Color photographs, sketches, and plans create an illuminating visual record of some of the most groundbreaking, seminal projects of Gehry’s oeuvre.

Link to Buy : Frank Gehry: The Houses

The Orlov KGB File: The Most Successful Espionage Deception of All Time (Paperback)

2009-11-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Alexander M. Orlov carefully picked his moment to defect. With a letter from the Canadian Consul General, he disappeared with his family in Paris on the afternoon of July 13, 1938. They sailed to Canada and established himself in Montréal.

Soviet Intelligence jealously guards its secrets despite the flood of details published after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The historical facts that Moscow has revealed are not simply incomplete but are selected and structured to impress and to hide activities, past as well as ongoing, that remain classified. The true history of the Orlov defection offers a unique path to understand Soviet secret intelligence, its development, and its objectives from Lenin and Stalin to the present Russia of Putin and Medvedev.

Orlov defected in a specific context. On November 25, 1938, Lavrenti Beria was appointed as the new People’s Commissar of the Interior. His first task was to purge the NKVD of both Yehzov appointees and the remnants of Yagoda’s men. From September 1938 to February 1939, ninety-seven top NKVD functionaries were arrested, as many as in the whole two years of Yehzov’s rule. Most were shot in 1939, well before Yehzov, but some were interrogated for two years to collect material for future arrests.

In examining the true history of the Orlov defection, the author, Boris Volodarsky, himself a former GRU officer, takes the reader on a journey deep into the secrets of the KGB and piles one startling revelation over another, all the way to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

About the Author

Boris Volodarsky is a former officer of the GRU (Soviet and Russian)--military espionage. He is now living in England.

Link to Buy : The Orlov KGB File: The Most Successful Espionage Deception of All Time

Brooklyn: A Novel (Hardcover)

2009-11-24T01:42:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2009: Committed to a quiet life in little Enniscorthy, Ireland, the industrious young Eilis Lacey reluctantly finds herself swept up in an unplanned adventure to America, engineered by the family priest and her glamorous, "ready for life" sister, Rose. Eilis's determination to embrace the spirit of the journey despite her trepidation--especially on behalf of Rose, who has sacrificed her own chance of leaving--makes a bittersweet center for Brooklyn. Colm Tóibín's spare portrayal of this contemplative girl is achingly lovely, and every sentence rings with truth. Readers will find themselves swept across the Atlantic with Eilis to a boarding house in Brooklyn where she painstakingly adapts to a new life, reinventing herself and her surroundings in the letters she writes home. Just as she begins to settle in with the help of a new love, tragedy calls her home to Enniscorthy, and her separate lives suddenly and painfully merge into one. Tóibín's haunted heroine glows on the page, unforgettably and lovingly rendered, and her story reflects the lives of so many others exiled from home. --Daphne Durham

From Publishers Weekly

SignatureReviewed by Maureen HowardColm Tóibín's engaging new novel, Brooklyn, will not bring to mind the fashionable borough of recent years nor Bed-Stuy beleaguered with the troubles of a Saturday night. Tóibín has revived the Brooklyn of an Irish-Catholic parish in the '50s, a setting appropriate to the narrow life of Eilis Lacey. Before Eilis ships out for a decent job in America, her village life is sketched in detail. The shops, pub, the hoity-toity and plainspoken people of Enniscorthy have such appeal on the page, it does seem a shame to leave. But how will we share the girl's longing for home, if home is not a gabby presence in her émigré tale? Tóibín's maneuvers draw us to the bright girl with a gift for numbers. With a keen eye, Eilis surveys her lonely, steady-on life: her job in the dry goods store, the rules and regulations of her rooming house—ladies only. The competitive hustle at the parish dances are so like the ones back home—it's something of a wonder I did not give up on the gentle tattle of her story, run a Netflix of the feline power struggle in Claire Booth Luce's The Women. Tóibín rescues his homesick shopgirl from narrow concerns, gives her a stop-by at Brooklyn College, a night course in commercial law. Her instructor is Joshua Rosenblum. Buying his book, the shopkeeper informs her, At least we did that, we got Rosenblum out.You mean in the war?His reply when she asks again: In the holocaust, in the churben.The scene is eerie, falsely naïve. We may accept what a village girl from Ireland, which remained neutral during the war, may not have known, but Tóibín's delivery of the racial and ethnic discoveries of a clueless young woman are disconcerting. Eilis wonders if she should write home about the Jews, the Poles, the Italians she encounters, but shouldn't the novelist in pursuing those postwar years in Brooklyn, in the Irish enclave of the generous Father Flood, take the mike? The Irish vets I knew when I came to New York in the early '50s had been to that war; at least two I raised a glass with at the White Horse were from Brooklyn. When the stage is set for the love story, slowly and carefully as befits his serious girl, Tóibín is splendidly in control of Eilis's and Tony's courtship. He's Italian, you see, of a poor, caring family. I wanted to cast Brooklyn, with Rosalind Russell perfect for Rose, the sporty elder sister left to her career in Ireland. Can we get Philip Seymour Hoffman into that cassock again? J. Carol Naish, he played homeboy Italian, not the mob. I give away nothing in telling that the possibility of Eilis reclaiming an authentic and spirited life in Ireland turns Brooklyn into a stirring and satisfying moral tale. Tóibín, author of The Master, a fine-tuned novel on the lonely last years of Henry James, revisits, diminuendo, the wrenching finale of The Portrait of a Lady. What the future holds for Eilis in America is nothing like Isabel Archer's return to the morally corrupt Osmond. The decent fellow awaits. Will she be doomed to a tract house of the soul on Long Island? I hear John McCormick take the high note—alone in the gloaming with the shadows of the past—as Tóibín's good girl contemplates the lost promise of Brooklyn.Maureen Howard's The Rags of Time, the last season of her quartet of novels based on the four seasons, will be published by Viking in October.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Link to Buy : Brooklyn: A Novel

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] (Audio CD)

2009-11-23T21:21:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw, says Kessler, former FDA commissioner under presidents Bush and Clinton). Here Kessler (A Question of Intent) describes how, since the 1980s, the food industry, in collusion with the advertising industry, and lifestyle changes have short-circuited the body's self-regulating mechanisms, leaving many at the mercy of reward-driven eating. Through the evidence of research, personal stories (including candid accounts of his own struggles) and examinations of specific foods produced by giant food corporations and restaurant chains, Kessler explains how the desire to eat—as distinct from eating itself—is stimulated in the brain by an almost infinite variety of diabolical combinations of salt, fat and sugar. Although not everyone succumbs, more people of all ages are being set up for a lifetime of food obsession due to the ever-present availability of foods laden with salt, fat and sugar. A gentle though urgent plea for reform, Kessler's book provides a simple food rehab program to fight back against the industry's relentless quest for profits while an entire country of people gain weight and get sick. According to Kessler, persistence is all that is needed to make the perceptual shifts and find new sources of rewards to regain control. (May)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Kessler surveys the world of modern industrial food production and distribution as reflected in both restaurants and grocery stores. To his chagrin, he finds that the system foists on the American public foods overloaded with fats, sugars, and salt. Each of these elements, consumed in excess, has been linked to serious long-term health problems. Kessler examines iconic foods such as Cinnabon and Big Macs, all of which have skilled marketing machines promoting consumption. Such nutritionally unbalanced foods propel people who already tend to eat more than mere physical need might otherwise warrant into uncontrolled behavior patterns of irrational eating. These persistent psychological and sensory stimuli lead to what Kessler terms “conditioned hypereating,” which he believes is a disease rather than a failure of willpower. There is hope, however. Kessler identifies the cues that lead to overeating and offers some simple, practical tools to help control one’s impulses. --Mark Knoblauch --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Link to Buy : The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

Got Fight?: The 50 Zen Principles of Hand-to-Face Combat (Hardcover)

2009-11-21T18:31:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Wondering why you should purchase this book when there are other titles on the shelves written by much higher-caliber fighters? Well, Forrest Griffin is not as good-looking as those guys. He's not as smart as them. He's also not as athletically endowed. And let's face it, neither are you. Those other fighters are pretty much better than you in every way. But you can actually aspire to be as good as Forrest one day. Why? Because he is nothing special, just like you.

Forrest is not a martial artist. He's a fighter, and this book was written for his kin. If you're a hillbilly like Forrest and you get off on having your face rearranged, Got Fight? is for you. This is a manifesto more strategic than Sun Tzu's The Art of War, more philosophical than Bruce Lee's Tao of Jeet Kune Do, more powerful than a well-lubricated locomotive.

In these pages you will learn about true mental toughness—whether it's scraping it out in the Octagon or picking up chicks. You will learn about the mental defects that made Forrest Griffin into the abomination he is today and how you can use your shortcomings to become equally horrible. You will learn the essential tactics of hand-to-hand combat as well as how to defend yourself in the event of a sword attack. Never been attacked by a sword? You need this book worse that we thought.

Still not convinced? Don't worry. Even if you find that the book sucks, it will be no worse than having sex with Forrest Griffin. You'll feel a small prick and some minor discomfort, and then it will all be over.

About the Author

Forrest Griffin is one of the top-ranked light-heavyweight mixed martial artists in the world. He won the first season of The Ultimate Fighter in 2005 and has been one of the most beloved UFC fighters ever since. He's a political science graduate from the University of Georgia and a former police officer, and can grow an awfully full set of muttonchops. But down, ladies; Forrest and his main squeeze, Jaime, live in Las Vegas.

Link to Buy : Got Fight?: The 50 Zen Principles of Hand-to-Face Combat

Stitches: A Memoir (Hardcover)

2009-11-21T06:44:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Reading Stitches may feel unexpectedly familiar. Not in the details of its story--which is David Small's harrowing account of growing up under the watchless eyes of parents who gave him cancer (his radiologist father subjected him to unscrupulous x-rays for minor ailments) and let it develop untreated for years--but in delicate glimpses of the author's child's-eye view, sketched most often with no words at all. Early memories (and difficult ones, too) often seem less like words than pictures we play back to ourselves. That is what's recognizable and, somehow, ultimately delightful in the midst of this deeply sad story: it reminds us of our memories, not just what they are, but what they look like. In every drawing, David Small shows us moments both real and imagined—some that are guileless and funny and wonderfully sweet, many others that are dark and fearful—that unveil a very talented artist, stitches and all. --Anne Bartholomew

Amazon Exclusive: David Small on Stitches

Amazon.com: Stitches is a hard story to tell. What inspired you ultimately to write it?

David Small: I needed a direct confrontation with my past. It wasn't easy, but I was ready to do it, so the work--though it was very difficult--felt rewarding, even exhilarating at times.

Now that it's become a book it seems so complete, so seamless, and--looking at it now--it seems as if it simply fell out onto the page. In reality it was like herding cats for three solid years, especially after the book was under contract and I was really committed to doing it. But deadlines are great energizers. (So, I should add, are the faith of a great editor, a great agent, and a great wife. I am lucky. I have all three.)

Amazon.com: "Graphic novel" is a form that now encompasses all kinds of storytelling, fictional and factual. As an artist, how would you compare reading pictures vs. words? What might your story lose (or gain) if you told it without pictures?

David Small: I like to say that images get straight inside us, bypassing all the guard towers. You often go to the movies and see people with tears streaming down their cheeks, but you don't see this in libraries, not in my experience at least.

I know now that the graphic form was the only way my memoir could have been told. First of all, drawing is my most fluent means of expression. Secondly, it's a story about being voiceless. It demanded a visual treatment because it involved so much of that guessing game we played in our family, of trying to figure out why someone was mad at us--someone who refused to communicate by any other means than slamming things around. If told in words--even if I could have--the story would have lost that visceral impact.

Amazon.com: Do you read a lot of graphic novels? Are there artists you'd recommend for fans of this genre?

David Small: I've read enough to know that the percentage of really good works in that medium is as small as in any other. For decades I've known and admired the work of Lynd Ward (God's Man, The Silver Pony), a pioneer of the form. Art Spiegelman's Maus and Craig Thompson's Blankets were moving and very pure. Recently I was impressed by Josh Neufeld's A.D.: New Orleans after the Deluge.

A lot of the living artists I admire are European: Blutch, Sylvain Chomet, Winchluss, Frederik Peeters, Nicholas de Crécy, and Gipi are my favorites.

Amazon.com: We're always curious to know more about what authors like to read. Are there any you'd say who have influenced your own approach to writing?

David Small: I frequently go back to Chekov's stories and to the short works of Henry James and Thomas Mann. John Cheever moves me tremendously.

Since I am a visual artist, the most serious influences came from other artists. I used to get totally infected by contact with any artist whose work I admired. So, for a while, in college, I thought I was, among others, Daumier, Rembrandt, Egon Schiele and Kathe Kollwitz. I would drown myself in their ways of seeing the world, to the point that I sometimes wondered if I would ever have a style of my own.

Amazon.com: One of my favorite scenes in the book begins on p. 62, where you dive into your drawing, Alice in Wonderland-style. It struck me as a cherished fantasy. What scenes might you single out as your favorites?

David Small: I like that one also. I'm glad that you equate it with Alice, because the parallel is certainly there. In fact, though, I intended something truer to my own experience, growing up surrounded by x-rays. At six I knew that x-rays were pictures of the secret places inside us. I imagined myself going down into those shadowy places and finding--what? I don’t know. A better world, I suppose. That is what I had in mind but, as I said, I have no problem at all with the Alice reference.

The party scene--where my entire adolescent social life gets summed up in a one-page image—also seems to work well. I'm happy with all the dream sequences. The 9-page "rain" sequence, in which the landscape is used as a metaphor for a state of mind, came out as I wanted it.

Amazon.com: The illustrations early in the story on pp 22-23—rendered again, in part, towards the end of the book on pp 290-91—are at once tender and terrifying, and they look remarkably different than most of the other panels that flow between them. Can you talk more about your approach to drawing this scene?

David Small: I tried to draw it the way it felt: that is, being an infant under all that hovering, humming x-ray machinery. If I recall correctly, I put an emphasis on the child's eyes looking around him at the dials, gauges, dangling cords and the blank walls of the machines. Later, the infant's gaze is coupled with the eyes of the young man who revisits the scene in his memory. Then, as the past and present fuse together, comes a shock of revelation. He realizes that what happened to him as an infant has now reached out and shaped--perhaps even ruined--his future. The infant's face and the young man's face converge into one.

Amazon.com: You've illustrated an award-winning roster of children's books. How did writing Stitches impact your style of drawing? Were there elements that took more iterations than others?

David Small: I took the advice of artist Mark Siegel, an old hand at graphic novels who--although his style is entirely different from mine--recommended that I develop a way of drawing that is more like handwriting than regular drawing. "Otherwise," he said, "the whole process will drive you insane." I leapt on this piece of advice because it sounded so right and because it was a direction I'd been moving toward anyway, especially in my sketchbooks. This was a very different effort from my picture book work.

Amazon.com: I'm curious which section of the book you found yourself writing first. Did you find that drawing one part would help you to construct other scenes?

David Small: The scenes in the empty hospital--the elevator ride and so forth--were my strongest childhood memories. Of that whole sequence, the little fetus in the jar stood out most clearly in my mind. I found, as I started drawing, that by some natural-seeming process of visual mnemonics, I could make connections from one thing to another. Then, gradually, whole scenes and episodes would flood back. To put it a simpler way: when I could "see"--that is, draw--the room, and had it all furnished again, the actors (the ghosts) would move in and begin saying their lines. I found all that really quite remarkable.

Amazon.com: Memoirists are often asked questions about memories—the tools of their trade, in a way—but do you think memories tell the whole story?

David Small: No. They are only your memories. The other people there saw it through their own lens. It’s Rashomon. Pure truth doesn’t exist. We shouldn't insist on it, and we should always be willing to bend.

Amazon.com: The afterword to Stitches was unexpected, but I found I appreciated the visual reference points for you, and for your mother and father. Why did you feel this was important to include?

David Small: I'm glad you found them helpful. I always do, too, when I'm reading about the lives of others; I go to the photographs, maybe as a way of affirming the descriptive skills of the writer, but also to meet the subjects in a more concrete way. Now you've got me thinking. Maybe I was showing off. It was like saying, "Here! Look! I'm so certain I've done my job well that I'm not afraid to show you these people, whom I've been drawing for 300 pages." Mainly, though, it seemed like the right and fair thing to do.

Amazon.com: Reviews of Stitches seem to swivel on the question of whether the book is redemptive or cathartic. What do you think? Did you write it with any expectation of how you'd feel afterwards?

David Small: Seeing my early life again from the perspective of an adult, I came to know my family members as fellow human beings. I understood their drives. This broke the spell they had over me. It freed me of their influence. I'd had enough, frankly, of living and thinking the way they had taught me to think and behave.

Did I expect that this would happen? No. I had no expectations, only the need to do it.

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In this profound and moving memoir, Small, an award-winning children's book illustrator, uses his drawings to depict the consciousness of a young boy. The story starts when the narrator is six years old and follows him into adulthood, with most of the story spent during his early adolescence. The youngest member of a silent and unhappy family, David is subjected to repeated x-rays to monitor sinus problems. When he develops cancer as a result of this procedure, he is operated on without being told what is wrong with him. The operation results in the loss of his voice, cutting him off even further from the world around him. Small's black and white pen and ink drawings are endlessly perceptive as they portray the layering of dream and imagination onto the real-life experiences of the young boy. Small's intuitive morphing of images, as with the terrible postsurgery scar on the main character's throat that becomes a dark staircase climbed by his mother, provide deep emotional echoes. Some understanding is gained as family secrets are unearthed, but for the most part David fends for himself in a family that is uncommunicative to a truly ghastly degree. Small tells his story with haunting subtlety and power. (Sept.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Link to Buy : Stitches: A Memoir

The Ancient Maya, 6th Edition (Paperback)

2009-11-20T18:11:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Review

'One of the great classic books in its field ... the most comprehensive and most lavishly illustrated book on its subject.'Journal of Latin American Studies --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The Ancient Maya is the definitive statement for our current understanding of their time and place. It goes well beyond any other competing volume in its encompassing reach."—Journal of Anthropological Research

“(T)he most comprehensive and most lavishly illustrated book on its subject.”—Journal of Latin American Studies

“The Ancient Maya has become a standard text on the study of Mayan culture and prehistory. Given the veritable explosion of research on the Maya, greater understanding of this past—yet living—culture has been realized.”—Colonial Latin American Historical Review.

Link to Buy : The Ancient Maya, 6th Edition

Great Yoga Retreats (Hardcover)

2009-11-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Product Description

Holistic Yoga Holidays

Beautiful locations, acclaimed yoga masters, restorative retreats

Looking for a tranquil vacation that leaves you relaxed, restored and uplifted? Then try a yoga retreat. Even if enlightenment is not your aim, you ll definitely achieve a luminous glow. Yogis understand the positive influence of natural surroundings and feng shui on the body, mind and soul, while the healthy organic food (almost always vegetarian) served at most retreats leaves you feeling lighter and purified. Whether you go by yourself, with a friend or partner, or even in a group, you will always find friendly company. Angelika Taschen has travelled the world to select the most exquisite and inspirational yoga retreats: choose from an exotic luxury hotel in Bhutan, a spiritual Ashram in India, a farmhouse in Tuscany or a beach resort in Mexico. But be warned, yoga can easily become a way of life. You might find yourself planning your days and even holidays around yoga practice.

Highlights include the Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh, the birthplace of yoga, one of the holy cities of the Ganges and a renowned pilgrimage site, where the Beatles attended the Maharishi's ashram in 1968; Yogamagic, an eco-retreat in Goa on the gentle Indian Ocean. Italy is not just a destination for the cultural and culinary traveller but also for the dedicated yogi: Il Convento in Tuscany and Santa Maria del Sole in Puglia strike a balance between yoga and the sensual Italian lifestyle. The Esalen Institute in Big Sur is a legendary New Age destination, offering yoga and much more, with over 500 spiritual and physical workshops; while Amansala's Bikini Boot Camp in Tulum, Mexico, combines beach life with yoga classes. Finally, Jungle Bay Resort & Spa on the Caribbean Island of Dominica offers wild rainforest surroundings with yoga teachers from all over the world.

About the Author

About the editor:

Angelika Taschen studied art history and German literature in Heidelberg, gaining her doctorate in 1986. Working for TASCHEN since 1987, she has published numerous titles on architecture, photography, design, contemporary art, interiors, and travel.

Texts by:

Kristin RÃ¼besamen holds an MA in German and Russian literature. Her two novels (SpÃ¤ter, Baby, 2003, Hitzefrei, 2007) were published by Random House and she is a contributing editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, SÃ¼ddeutsche Zeitung and German Vogue. A certified senior Jivamukti yoga teacher, she lives and teaches in London.

Link to Buy : Great Yoga Retreats

The Time of My Life (Hardcover)

2009-11-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

Product Description

In a career spanning more than thirty years, Patrick Swayze has made a name for himself on the stage, the screen, and television. Known for his versatility, passion and fearlessness, he's become one of our most beloved actors.

But in February 2008, Patrick announced he had been diagnosed with stage IV pancreatic cancer. Always a fighter, he refused to let the disease bring him to his knees, and his bravery has inspired both his legion of fans and cancer patients everywhere. Yet this memoir, written with wisdom and heart, recounts much more than his bout with cancer. In vivid detail, Patrick describes his Texas upbringing, his personal struggles, his rise to fame with North and South, his commercial breakthroughs in Dirty Dancing and Ghost, and the soul mate who's stood by his side through it all: his wife, writer and director Lisa Niemi.

A behind-the-scenes look at a Hollywood life and a remarkable love, this memoir is both entertainment and inspiration. Patrick and Lisa's marriage is a journey of two lives intertwined and lived as one--throughout their years in Hollywood and at home on their working ranch outside Los Angeles, and culminating in the hope and wisdom they've imparted to all who know them. This book will open the door for families, individuals, and husbands and wives to grow, bond and discover entirely new levels of love and sharing, proving that life shouldn't be lived as a series of endings, but rather as the beginning of greater strength and love.

About the Author

Patrick Swayze died with family at his side on September 14, 2009, at age 57, twenty months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Link to Buy : The Time of My Life

Redfern & Hunter on International Arbitration (Hardcover)

2009-11-17T23:46:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

"This latest edition ... makes a great contribution to the field of international commercial arbitration. It contains significant new information keeping pace with developments in this dynamic field ... It is an indispensable guide for anyone involved in, studying, or simply interested in, international commercial arbitration." (Legal Week - Review of 4th Edition)
"The most reliable and useful single-volume treatment of international commercial arbitration in the market today."
(Prof Richard Graving, South Texas College of Law - Review of Previous Edition)
"For most it is the first resource they turn to and they are rarely disappointed. This edition is indispensable and improved in almost every respect."
(Journal of Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, Volume 68, Number 1, Feb 2002 - Review of Previous Edition)
"Redfern and Hunter is like a good claret - it improves with age."
(Neil Kaplan QC, Hong Kong - Review of 4th Edition)

Product Description

Since it was first published in 1986, Redfern & Hunter's commentary on international commercial arbitration has been widely hailed as the leading text on the subject, and essential reading for lawyers and arbitrators around the world. Based on the four authors' extensive personal experience as counsel and arbitrators, this fifth edition provides a newly updated explanation of every element of the law and practice of international arbitration. With a focus on the practice as well as the theory of international arbitration, this text provides an invaluable guide to the international arbitral process, from the drafting of the arbitration agreement to the enforcement of arbitral awards. The fifth edition updates this classic text to incorporate reference to all of the latest significant developments in the field and provides a fuller treatment of investment treaty arbitration, and international arbitration beyond the UK and Europe. In particular, the fifth edition contains substantially increased coverage of the law and practice of international arbitration in the United States, Latin America, China and India.
Following the chronology of an arbitration, the book covers applicable laws, arbitration agreements, the establishment and powers of a tribunal, the conduct of proceedings and the role of domestic courts. In addition, it provides an in-depth examination of the award itself (including the challenge, recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards), and comments on the special considerations applying to arbitrations brought under investment treaties. It draws on examples of the rules and practice of arbitration at the International Chamber of Commerce, the London Court of International Arbitration, the American Arbitration Association, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.
Each of the book's editions has built on the strengths of its predecessor, achieved widespread acclaim and been variously reviewed as "one of the most authoritative in its field", "an excellent book - comprehensive, lucid, stylish and challenging", and "a practitioner's book of real quality and practical value, well organised and readably and clearly written". This latest edition reinforces and strengthens the book's standing as the authoritative guide to international commercial arbitration.

Link to Buy : Redfern & Hunter on International Arbitration

Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood) (Paperback)

2009-11-17T17:23:00.000-08:00

Product Description
Cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse is no typical Southern belle. She can read minds. And she's got a thing for vampires. Which, in a town like Bon Temps, Louisiana, means she'll have to watch her back-and neck...

Includes:

Dead Until Dark
Living Dead in Dallas
Club Dead
Dead to the World
Dead as a Doornail
Definitely Dead
All Together Dead
From Dead to Worse

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
About a year ago I began a reading project of the major vampire novels and stories, from John Polidori's THE VAMPYRE to Bram Stoker's DRACULA to Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND to Theodore Sturgeon's SOME OF YOUR BLOOD to more recent works. I had previously read various novels, including the Anita Blake series, which started promisingly but not only never lived up to its initial promise but regressed to embarrassingly awful pornography. Last year I decided to read Charlaine Harris's vampire series, which was originally known as The Southern Vampire Mysteries but eventually became better known as the Sookie Stackhouse Novels.

Now, this is where the story gets odd. Completely independently of my reading project I had heard about and planned on watching Alan Ball's new series TRUE BLOOD. I was a huge fan of SIX FEET UNDER and was anxious to see how he would handle a series dealing with vampires. A few days after I had ordered the first four Sookie Stackhouse novels I learn to my great shock that Ball's new series was based on the very same novels. It is the most serendipitous coincidence in my life as a reader.

Because so many people have become aware of these books as a result of the TV series, a word about the differences between the two is in order. There are both definite similarities and some sharp differences between the two. The books focus much more on Sookie and less on the lives of the supporting characters, not surprising given that Sookie is the narrator in the novels. Sookie's narrative voice is for me one of the joys of the books and I miss that very personal perspective when I watch the TV series. The books are also far less sexual than the series, though there are several sex scenes (though it never descends to the pure porn found in the Anita Blake books). The series differs sharply from the books when it deals with characters other than Sookie. For instance, Tara in the books is a minor (and white--some debate this, but she is explicitly described as having olive skin, something that is virtually always said of Caucasians, and there is not a single word to suggest that she is African-American) character. Jason plays a far smaller role. Just about everything touching Tara and Jason cannot be found in the novels. Sam and Tara are not involved. Lafayette cannot be regarded as an important character in the books, though his fate in the books sets up a surprising twist in the TV series. On the other hand, Eric is as important as the other three main characters in the books, Sookie, Bill, and Sam. Still, overall the larger story arc of the first two novels very roughly adheres to the novels. If this persists into Season Three of the TV series, then it will take place to some degree in Jackson, Mississippi and will see the introduction of the werewolf community to the story.

The one huge advantage of the novels over the series is that there is just so much more that happens. Season One of the series corresponds to the first novel in the sequence. I expected that the TV show would begin to diverge from the novels in the second season and to a degree it did. The TV series introduced Sophie, the Queen of Louisiana much, much earlier than in the novels, so I think that some of the stories are going to be accelerated. So I see no reason for anyone who enjoys the show not to plunge in and enjoy a whole string of new adventures in the life of Sookie Stackhouse, barmaid and telepath. What has delighted me is how consistently superb the novels are. I felt the second novel in the series, DEAD AND LIVING IN DALLAS, was a bit less entertaining than the second book, but all the rest in the sequence were increasingly excellent. And they all mesh to tell a unified story. One novel ends and the next picks up the story perhaps as little as two or three weeks later.

The novels also introduce new and more interesting supernatural characters. The Anita Blake novels did this as well, but I felt that that series was increasingly less successful. Both series introduce weres (were wolves, were tigers, were panthers, and others), witches, vampires from other locales, and fairies. But throughout it all Sookie remains both an innocent and an explorer.

All in all, this is one of the most enjoyable long series of novels that I know. My only real disappointment is that a date has not yet been announced for the next and ninth novel in the series. Charlaine Harris (who lives in the southern part of my native state of Arkansas) has a couple of other series and 2009 apparently is devoted to those. My hope is that perhaps the success of the TV show will cause Ms. Harris to revise her plans and bring out another Sookie Stackhouse sooner rather than later.

I will add that on some boards many fans of the books don't like Anna Paquin as Sookie. I do. She isn't quite the way the books describe Sookie, being slender and not at all voluptuous, whereas in the books Sookie is constantly described as curvy and very chesty. But I think Anna Paquin gets a lot of the spirit of Sookie. She feels in her performance very much like someone who has been traumatized by hearing the thoughts of others.

If you are a fan of TRUE BLOOD, you should definitely read these. I actually prefer the books to the TV show, though I like the show as well. But if you haven't watched the show, but enjoy well written book on supernatural themes, you should read these anyway. In the recent tradition of revisionist accounts of vampires, this is one of the best.

By. Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA)

Link to Buy : Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set (Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood)

The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History (Hardcover)

2009-11-17T02:28:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Louis Bayard No matter how many times you're reminded, you will always forget you're watching an animated show. Mr. Burns and Waylon Smithers, Principal Skinner and Groundskeeper Willie, Barney and Apu and Moe and Ned Flanders and Krusty the Clown (with his superb initial "K") will seem more real than any flesh-and-blood television family. More real, maybe, than your own family because life can't distill us quite so succinctly into our essences. For that, we need art. Which "The Simpsons" manifestly is. If you go to lunch with a group of friends -- and I have recently field-tested this -- it's possible to spend the entire meal enumerating your favorite "Simpsons" moments without ever converging on one. Was it Marge's starring turn in the musical "Oh! Streetcar"? Was it the futuristic game show featuring the cryogenically preserved head of Kitty Carlisle? Was it the Ayn Rand School for Tots? Or the Bloodbath and Beyond gun store? Or the orthodontist's volume titled "Book of British Smiles"? Or the music video for trapped waif Timmy O'Toole, "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well"? Me, I have a soft spot for Homer's immortal toast: "To alcohol! The cause of -- and solution to -- all of life's problems." The list will keep going if you let it . . . and maybe, after an hour or so, you'll realize that all your favorite bits happened a long time ago, and come to think of it, you don't watch "The Simpsons" anymore. At least not as often as you did and not with the same enthusiasm you bring to, say, "Family Guy" or "30 Rock" or "The Office" or Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert (all of them heirs to the Simpsons legacy). But wait, someone's watching, right? Because "The Simpsons" has just entered its 21st season -- a longer run than any other situation comedy, longer even than "Gunsmoke." And this doesn't even gauge the full extent of its influence: the merchandising empire (air fresheners, talking dolls, T-shirts, bubble gum, snow boots, notebooks, underwear, posters, pasta); the neologisms (Homer's signature "Doh!" now sits in the pages of the OED); the strange bedfellows (Bart's anarchy underwrites the funny-in-its-own-way Fox News); the depth to which the show has "permeated our vernacular," as John Ortved writes, "the way we tell jokes, understand humor, and tell our stories." How did such a curious artifact become "the most powerful, lasting, and resonant entertainment force television has ever seen"? That is the task taken up by Ortved's "uncensored, unauthorized" history, which is as tasty as a pink-glazed donut with sprinkles, as refreshing as a Duff beer and as piquant as a curry slushy from Kwik-E Mart. And doubly delightful because, for once, the heroes are writers. Begin, as we must, with Matt Groening, a struggling alternative-weekly artist whose "Life in Hell" comics tickle the fancy of TV legend James Brooks. Brooks is producing "The Tracey Ullman Show" for the fledgling Fox network, and he wants some animated bits to serve as interstices between the show's sketches. Groening comes back with sketches of a nuclear family: bulbous-eyed, jaw-free and, by some strange quirk, named after Groening's own parents and siblings. (The exception, Bart, is an anagram of "brat.") The cartoons fare poorly with test audiences, but when they are played in sequence, a strangely attractive narrative begins to emerge. And you know the rest. Victory, as ever, has a thousand fathers. Groening injects the jaded sensibility. Brilliant voice actors jump-start each character into blazing life. Animator Gabor Csupo comes up with the Simpsons' yellow skin and the blue tint for Marge's hair. Veteran TV writer Sam Simon crafts the show's tone and template, and Brooks, in addition to stressing emotional truths, uses his clout to keep the suits out of the room. " 'The Simpsons,' " writes Ortved, "was the only show on television where network executives were forbidden from giving notes." Brooks did at least one thing wrong: He declined to talk to Ortved and, perhaps as a direct consequence, comes off badly in these pages. So does Groening, painted here as a blowhard and glory hog, taking credit for a product he has precious little say in. In Ortved's telling, the show's real auteurs were the least visible: the young writers who formed "one of the most hallowed staffs in television's history." Hailing mostly from the precincts of the Harvard Lampoon, these wonder boys (women were scarce) quickly grasped the opportunity that lay before them. "Not only could they take their characters anywhere, physically and emotionally, but there were no adorable actors to become tangled up in pubescence, no live studio audiences to dictate jokes . . . and the cartoon format meant that the humor could be riskier than would have been possible otherwise." As one writer recalls: "Working for The Simpsons felt like being in the graduate school of comedy, or a great comedy lab, where you could try and do anything and no one would stop you, as long as it was good or funny." The result was a show both good and funny -- and slippery. It is obviously the product of left-wingers; it also delights in parodying extremism of all kinds. ("Celebrities," muses Homer. "Is there anything they don't know?") Social conservatives nod approvingly at the Simpsons' regular church attendance, but surely they wince when Bart says grace: "Dear God, we pay for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing." No show is more aswim in ideology; no show is more fearful of affiliation. King Comedy rules Springfield, not Monty Burns. Or, as "South Park" creator Matt Stone puts it, "What's great about The Simpsons is it says, up front, 'All we're gonna do is make you laugh.' That's a purely noble cause, I think." bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Product Description
The Simpsons is one of the most successful shows to ever run on television. From its first moment on air, the series's rich characters, subversive themes, and layered humor resounded deeply with audiences both young and old who wanted more from their entertainment than what was being meted out at the time by the likes of Full House, Growing Pains, and Family Matters. Spawned as an animated short on The Tracy Ullman Show—mere filler on the way to commercial breaks—the series grew from a controversial cult favorite to a mainstream powerhouse, and after nineteen years the residents of Springfield no longer simply hold up a mirror to our way of life: they have ingrained themselves into it.

John Ortved's oral history will be the first-ever look behind the scenes at the creation and day-to-day running of The Simpsons, as told by many of the people who made it: among them writers, animators, producers, and network executives. It’s an intriguing yet hilarious tale, full of betrayal, ambition, and love. Like the family it depicts, the show's creative forces have been riven by dysfunction from the get-go—outsize egos clashing with studio executives and one another over credit for and control of a pop-culture institution. Contrary to popular belief, The Simpsons did not spring out of one man's brain, fully formed, like a hilarious Athena. Its inception was a process, with many parents, and this book tells the story.

Link to Buy : The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History

The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide (Hardcover)

2009-11-16T19:54:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic.com
“The most interesting mind in journalism.”

Gordon Crovitz, former publisher, the Wall Street Journal
“From its earliest drafts, the U.S. Constitution was always meant to be read closely for its meaning, context, and intent. Seth Lispky has now undertaken an unprecedented labor in parsing the details of the document, clause by clause, and has produced, with great insight and wit, an extraordinary book — that will help to ensure that our founding and sustaining document gets the respect it deserves. It couldn't be more timely.”

Bernard Nussbaum, former White House counsel
“The history of our country — the history of our Constitution — is a series of great stories. And there is no better story teller than Seth Lipsky. Only he could take our Constitution, break it down, paragraph by paragraph, line by line, word by word and tell the ongoing tale behind each of these provisions. And bring them to life with real people grappling with real issues. The Citizen’s Constitution is more than an annotation; it reads like a novel and will be enjoyed by all, lawyer and non-lawyer alike, for years to come."

James Grant, author of John Adams: Party of One
“Where did the Constitution come from? Where have we, the people, taken it? Seth Lipsky's wonderful Baedecker holds the answers. The ultimate user's manual of America's founding document.”

Jack Fuller, former editor and publisher, Chicago Tribune
“Whether you are a constitutional conservative or liberal, you need to start your thinking with what the words of the document meant when they were written and how their definition has changed in time. Seth Lipsky's annotated constitution is an invaluable resource for this purpose. With rigorous scholarship and delightful wit, Lipsky takes us through the nation's founding document, phrase by phrase. Though The Citizen’s Constitution is written to be understood by non-lawyers, I would be surprised if most lawyers don't learn a thing or two reading it. I certainly did.”

Product Description

Pocket versions of the Constitution of the United States of America abound, as do multi-volume commentaries, scholarly histories of its writing, and political posturings of various clauses. But what if you want a delightfully quick, witty, and readable reference that, in one compact volume, places the document and its clauses into context? You’re out of luck—until now. Written by Seth Lipsky, described in the Boston Globe as “a legendary figure in contemporary journalism,” The Citizen’s Constitution draws on the writings of the Founders, case law from our greatest judges, and current events in more than 300 illuminating annotations. Lipsky provides a no-nonsense, entertaining, and learned guide to the fundamental questions surrounding the document that governs how we govern our country. Every American should know the Constitution. Rarely has it glinted so brightly.

Link to Buy : The Citizen's Constitution: An Annotated Guide

Relational Intelligence: How Leaders Can Expand Their Influence Through a New Way of Being Smart (J-B Leadership Network Series) (Hardcover)

2009-11-16T06:39:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

An insightful and practical guide for developing relational leadership skills and engaging new paradigms of influence

Relational Intelligence reveals how leaders can become smarter in the way they conduct their relationships, and as a result, catalyze their impact. This book unwraps the hidden power of a relational genius and the practical pursuits that contribute to increasing one's relational quotient (RQ). Steve Saccone offers thought-provoking and compelling pathways into understanding the synergistic effect of relational intelligence, mission, and influence. He demonstrates how critical the art of relational intelligence is for leaders who desire to better serve those they lead, as well as the organizations and communities they love.

1. Offers practical wisdom, engaging anecdotes, and compelling stories that show leaders how to develop relational intelligence
2. Delineates the essential skills that make leaders relationally intelligent
3. Unwraps six roles of a relational genius and how these transform our approaches to influence
4. Includes Foreword by Erwin Raphael McManus
5. A new book in the popular Leadership Network Series

The author reveals how to increase one's awareness of the nuances in relational dynamics and suggests ways to help navigate relationships more intelligently and productively.

From the Inside Flap

RI

Relational Intelligence (RI) reminds us that the way we choose to relate to one another determines the quality of our human experience and reveals what we value most. If we took a panoramic view of humanity, we'd discover that human relationships unfortunately are often reduced to a commodity, as if people were buying, selling, and trading relationships for personal benefit. This book challenges leaders to no longer see people as a means to an end but to approach people with relational intelligence.

In this book, thought leader, relational intelligence practitioner, and professor Steve Saccone defines the six roles of a relational genius and why they're essential for the relationally intelligent leader. These life-changing principles can be applied both to church leadership and any other leadership context.

While many leaders want to be relationally intelligent, they struggle to understand what it means and how to implement it. Saccone defines RI in a clear and provocative way: "Relational" in RI means learning to see people as the highest value and conveying that to them. The "Intelligent" part of RI means learning effective interpersonal skills and then applying them in ways that expand influence.

Many leaders long to be influential and missional but, mistakenly, this pursuit is often at the cost of valuing people. When leaders get the relational part right (loving well), and combine it with the intelligence part (applying effective interpersonal skills), their impact will be far-reaching, and even immeasurable.

As a result of becoming relationally intelligent, the world will become not only a smarter place, but a more human one. This is the world Jesus envisions, where love and mission intersect—a world that can only become a reality if we begin to live—and lead with—this new way of being smart.

About Leadership Network

The mission of Leadership Network identifies and connects innovative church leaders, providing them with resources in the form of new ideas, people, and tools. Contact Leadership Network at www.leadnet.org.

Link to Buy : Relational Intelligence: How Leaders Can Expand Their Influence Through a New Way of Being Smart (J-B Leadership Network Series)

Strength in What Remains [DECKLE EDGE] (Hardcover)

2009-11-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Amazon Best of the Month, September 2009: Strength in What Remains is an unlikely story about an unreasonable man. Deo was a young medical student who fled the genocidal civil war in Burundi in 1994 for the uncertainty of New York City. Against absurd odds--he arrived with little money and less English and slept in Central Park while delivering groceries for starvation wages--his own ambition and a few kind New Yorkers led him to Columbia University and, beyond that, to medical school and American citizenship. That his rise followed a familiar immigrant's path to success doesn't make it any less remarkable, but what gives Deo's story its particular power is that becoming an American citizen did not erase his connection to Burundi, in either his memory or his dreams for the future. Writing with the same modest but dogged empathy that made his recent Mountains Beyond Mountains (about Deo's colleague and mentor, Dr. Paul Farmer) a modern classic, Tracy Kidder follows Deo back to Burundi, where he recalls the horrors of his narrow escape from the war and begins to build a medical clinic where none had been before. Deo's terrible journey makes his story a hard one to tell; his tirelessly hopeful but clear-eyed efforts make it a gripping and inspiring one to read. --Tom Nissley

Amazon Exclusive: Tracy Kidder on Strength in What Remains

Strength in What Remains is the story of Deogratias, a young man from the central African nation of Burundi. In 1993, through no fault of his own, he was forced onto a terrifying journey, a journey that split his life in two. First he made a six-months-long escape, on foot, from ethnic violence in Burundi and from genocide in Rwanda. Then, in a strange twist of fate, he was, as it were, transported to New York City, where it sometimes seemed that his travails had only just begun.

I met Deo by chance 6 years ago. When I first heard his story, I had one simple thought: I would not have survived. I hoped in part to reproduce that feeling as I retold his story. I also hoped to humanize what, to most westerners anyway, is a mysterious, little-known part of the world. We hear about mass slaughter in distant countries and we imagine that murder and mayhem define those locales. Deo’s story opens up one of those places into a comprehensible landscape—and also opens up a part of New York that is designed to be invisible, the service entrances of the upper East Side, the camping sites that homeless people use in Central Park. But above all, I think, this is a book about coming to terms with memories. How can a person deal with memories like Deo’s, tormenting memories, memories with a distinctly ungovernable quality?

In the first part of Strength In What Remains, I recount Deo’s story. In the second part, I tell about going back with him to the stations of his life, in New York and Burundi. So the story that I tell isn’t only about the memories that Deo related to me. It’s also about seeing him overtaken by memories—again and again, and sometimes acutely. But Deo didn’t take me to Burundi just to show me around. Giving me a tour of his past was incidental to what he was up to in the present and the future. His story has a denoument that even now amazes me.

Deo is an American citizen. He doesn’t have to go back to Burundi. But he has returned continually and keeps on returning, and, amid the postwar wreckage, with the help of friends and family, he has created a clinic and public health system, free to those who can’t pay, in a rural village—part of a beginning, Deo dreams, of a new Burundi.

This facility was a pile of rocks when I visited the site in the summer of 2006. By the fall of 2008, it had become a medical center with several new buildings, a trained professional staff, and a fully stocked pharmacy. In its first year of operation it treated 21,000 different patients. (The organization that Deo founded and that sponsors and operates this facility is called Village Health Works.)

Deo was very young when he went through his long travail. Several strangers helped to save him from death and despair in Burundi and New York. So did sheer courage and pluck, and also Columbia University, which he attended as an undergraduate. But when it’s come to dealing with the burden of his memories, the public health system and clinic that he founded has been the nearest thing to a solution. In the end, it’s neither forgetting the past nor dwelling on the past that has worked for him. For him the answer has been remembering and acting. I once asked Deo why he had studied philosophy at Columbia. He told me, "I wanted to understand what had happened to me." In the end, he received what most students of philosophy receive—not answers, but more questions. As I was trying to describe his effort to build a clinic, I found myself writing: "Deo had discovered a way to quiet the questions he’d been asking at Columbia. That is, he saw there might be an answer for what troubled him most about the world, an answer that lay in his hands, indeed in his memory. You had to do something."—Tracy Kidder

(Photo © Gabriel Amadeus Cooney)

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. With an anthropologist's eye and a novelist's pen, Pulitzer Prize–winning Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains) recounts the story of Deo, the Burundian former medical student turned American émigré at the center of this strikingly vivid story. Told in flashbacks from Deo's 2006 return visit to Burundi to mid-1990s New York and the Burundi of childhood memory and young adulthood—as the Rwandan genocide spilled across the border following the same inflamed ethnic divisions—then picking up in 2003, when author and subject first meet, Deo's experience is conveyed with a remarkable depth of vision and feeling. Kidder renders his subject with deep yet unfussy fidelity and the conflict with detail and nuance. While the book might recall Dave Eggers's novelized version of a real-life Sudanese refugee's experience in What Is the What, reading this book hardly covers old ground, but enables one to walk in the footsteps of its singular subject and see worlds new and old afresh. This profoundly gripping, hopeful and crucial testament is a work of the utmost skill, sympathy and moral clarity. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Link to Buy : Strength in What Remains

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel (Hardcover)

2009-11-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Amazon Best of the Month, June 2009: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later. You might find yourself paused, considering the universe of lives one city contains in any slice of time, each of us a singular world, sometimes passing close enough to touch or collide, to birth a new generation or kill it, sending out ripples, leaving residue, an imprint, marking each other, our city, the very air--compassionately or callously, unable to see all the damage we do or heal. And most of us stumbling, just trying not to trip, or step in something awful.

But then someone does something extraordinary, like dancing on a cable strung 110 stories in the air, or imagining a magnificent novel that lifts us up for a sky-scraping, dizzy glimpse of something greater: the sordid grandeur of this whirling world, "bigger than its buildings, bigger than its inhabitants." --Mari Malcolm
Amazon Exclusive: Frank McCourt on Let the Great World Spin

Frank McCourt (1930-2009) was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Irish immigrant parents, grew up in Limerick, Ireland, and returned to America in 1949. For thirty years he taught in New York City high schools. His first book, Angela's Ashes, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the L.A. Times Book Award. In 2006, he won the prestigious Ellis Island Family Heritage Award for Exemplary Service in the Field of the Arts and the United Federation of Teachers John Dewey Award for Excellence in Education. McCourt also wrote Tis and Teacher Man, both memoirs. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Let the Great World Spin:

Now I worry about Colum McCann. What is he going to do after this blockbuster groundbreaking heartbreaking symphony of a novel? No novelist writing of New York has climbed higher, dived deeper.

Trust me, this is the sort of book that you will take off your shelf over and over again as the years go along. It’s a story of the early 1970s, but it’s also the story of our present times. And it is, in many ways, a story of a moment of lasting redemption even in the face of all the evidence.

There are dozens of intimate tales and threads at the core of Let the Great World Spin. On one level there’s the tightrope walker making his way across the World Trade Center towers. But as the novel goes along the “walker” becomes less and less of a focal point and we begin to care more about the people down below, on the pavement, in the ordinary throes of their existence. There’s an Irish monk living in the Bronx projects. There’s a Park Avenue mother in mourning for her dead son, who was blown up in the cafés of Saigon. There are the original computer hackers who "visit" New York in an early echo of the Internet. There’s an artist who has learn to return to the simplicity of love. And then--in possibly the book’s wildest and most ambitious section--there’s a Bronx hooker who has brought up her children in “the house that horse built”--“horse” of course being the heroin that was ubiquitous in the '70s.

All the voices feel realized and authentic and the writing floats along. This was my city back then--and now. McCann has written about New York before, but never quite as piercingly or as provocatively as this. This is fiction that gets the heart thumping.

The stories are interweaved so that it is one story, on one day, in one city, and yet it is also a history of the present time. In Let the Great World Spin, you can’t ignore the overtones for today: suffice it to say that the novel is held together by an act of redemption and beauty. I didn’t want to stop turning the pages.

I’m really not sure what McCann will do after this, but this is a great New York book, not just for New Yorkers but for anyone who walks any sort of tightrope at all. And yes, it doesn’t surprise me that it takes an Irishman to capture the heart of the city... --Frank McCourt
(Photo © Kit DeFever)

From Publishers Weekly

McCann's sweeping new novel hinges on Philippe Petit's illicit 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers. It is the aftermath, in which Petit appears in the courtroom of Judge Solomon Soderberg, that sets events into motion. Solomon, anxious to get to Petit, quickly dispenses with a petty larceny involving mother/daughter hookers Tillie and Jazzlyn Henderson. Jazzlyn is let go, but is killed on the way home in a traffic accident. Also killed is John Corrigan, a priest who was giving her a ride. The other driver, an artist named Blaine, drives away, and the next day his wife, Lara, feeling guilty, tries to check on the victims, leading her to meet John's brother, with whom she'll form an enduring bond. Meanwhile, Solomon's wife, Claire, meets with a group of mothers who have lost sons in Vietnam. One of them, Gloria, lives in the same building where John lived, which is how Claire, taking Gloria home, witnesses a small salvation. McCann's dogged, DeLillo-like ambition to show American magic and dread sometimes comes unfocused—John Corrigan in particular never seems real—but he succeeds in giving us a high-wire performance of style and heart. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

Under the Dome: A Novel (Hardcove

2009-11-11T19:27:00.000-08:00

Editorial Reviews

Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan share their enthusiasm for Stephen King's thriller, Under the Dome. This pair of reviewers knows a thing or two about the art of crafting a great thriller. Del Toro is the Oscar-nominated director of international blockbuster films, including Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy. Hogan is the author of several acclaimed novels, including The Standoff and Prince of Thieves, which won the International Association of Crime Writer's Dashiell Hammett Award in 2005. The two recently collaborated to write the bestselling horror novel, The Strain, the first of a proposed trilogy. Read their exclusive Amazon guest review of Under the Dome:

The first thing readers might find scary about Stephen King's Under The Dome is its length. The second is the elaborate town map and list of characters at the front of the book (including "Dogs of Note"), which sometimes portends, you know, heavy lifting. Don't you believe it. Breathless pacing and effortless characterization are the hallmarks of King's best books, and here the writing is immersive, the suspense unrelenting. The pages turn so fast that your hand--or Kindle-clicking thumb--will barely be able to keep up.

You Are Here.

Nobody yarns a “What if?” like Stephen King. Nobody. The implausibility of a dome sealing off an entire city--a motif seen before in pulp magazines and on comic book covers--is given the most elaborate real-life alibi by crafting details, observations, and insights that make us nod silently while we read. Promotional materials reference The Stand in comparison, but we liken Under The Dome more to King's excellent novella, The Mist: another locked-door situation on an epic scale, a tour-de-force in which external stressors bake off the civility of a small town full of dark secrets, exposing souls both very good...and very, very bad.

Yes, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," but there is so much more this time. The expansion of King’s diorama does not simply take a one-street fable and turn it into a town, but finds new life for old archetypes, making them morally complex and attuned to our world today. It makes them relevant and affecting once again. And the beauty of it all is that the final lesson, the great insight that is gained at the end of this draining journey, is not a righteous 1950’s sermon but an incredibly moving and simple truth. A nugget of wisdom you'll be using as soon as you turn the last page.

This Is Now

Along the way, you get bravura writing, especially featuring the town kids, and a delicious death aria involving one of the most nefarious characters--who dies alone, but not really--as well as a few laugh-out-loud moments, and a cameo (of sorts) by none other than Jack Reacher. Indeed--whether during a much-needed comfort break, or a therapeutic hand-flexing--you may find yourself wondering, "Is this a horror novel? Or is it a thriller?" The answer, of course, is: Yes, yes, yes.

"...the blood hits the wall like it always hits the wall."

It seems impossible that, as he enters his sixth decade of publishing, the dean of dark fiction could add to his vast readership. But that is precisely what will happen...when the Dome drops.

Now Go Read It. --Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan

The Story Behind the Cover

The jacket concept for Under the Dome originated as an ambitious idea from the mind of Stephen King. The artwork is a combination of photographs, illustration and 3-D rendering. This is a departure from the direction of King's most recent illustrated covers.

In order to achieve the arresting image for this jacket, Scribner art director Rex Bonomelli had to seek out artists who could do a convincing job of creating a realistic portrayal of the town of Chester's Mill, the setting of the novel. Bonomelli found the perfect team of digital artists, based in South America and New York, whose cutting edge work had previously been devoted to advertisement campaigns. This was their first book jacket and an exciting venture for them. "They are used to working with the demands of corporate clients," says Bonomelli. "We gave them freedom and are thrilled with what they came up with."

The CGI (computer generated imagery) enhanced image looks more like something made for the big screen than for the page and is sure to make a lasting impact on King fans.

Meet the Characters

Dale Barbara

Barbie, a drifter, ex-army, walks with a burden of guilt from the time he spent in Iraq. Working as a short-order cook at Sweetbriar Rose is the closest thing he’s had to a family life. When his old commander, Colonel Cox, calls from outside, Barbie's burden becomes the town itself.

Julia Shumway

The attractive Editor and Publisher of the local town newspaper, The Chester's Mill Democrat, Julia is self-assured and Republican to the core, but she is drawn to Barbie and discovers, when it matters most, that her most vulnerable moment might be her most liberating.

Jim Rennie, Sr.

"Big Jim." A used car dealer with a fierce smile and no warmth, he'd given his heart to Jesus at age sixteen and had little left for his customers, his neighbors, or his dying wife and deteriorating son. The town's Second Selectman, he’s used to having things his way. He walks like a man who has spent his life kicking ass.

Joseph McClatchey

Scarecrow Joe, a 13-year-old also known as "King of the Geeks" and "Skeletor, a bona fide brain whose backpack bears the legend "fight the powers that be." He’s smarter than anyone, and proves it in a crisis.

From Publishers Weekly

King's return to supernatural horror is uncomfortably bulky, formidably complex and irresistibly compelling. When the smalltown of Chester's Mill, Maine, is surrounded by an invisible force field, the people inside must exert themselves to survive. The situation deteriorates rapidly due to the dome's ecological effects and the machinations of Big Jim Rennie, an obscenely sanctimonious local politician and drug lord who likes the idea of having an isolated populace to dominate. Opposing him are footloose Iraq veteran Dale “Barbie” Barbara, newspaper editor Julia Shumway, a gaggle of teen skateboarders and others who want to solve the riddle of the dome. King handles the huge cast of characters masterfully but ruthlessly, forcing them to live (or not) with the consequences of hasty decisions. Readers will recognize themes and images from King's earlier fiction, and while this novel doesn't have the moral weight of, say, The Stand, nevertheless, it's a nonstop thrill ride as well as a disturbing, moving meditation on our capacity for good and evil. (Nov.)

Link to Buy : Under the Dome: A Novel