-Titulo Original : The Pillowman A Play (faber Drama)-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: While still in his twenties, the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has filled houses in New York and London, been showered with the theatre worlds most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. With echoes of Stoppard and Kafka, his latest drama, The Pillowman, is the viciously funny and seriously disturbing tale of a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders occurring in his town. Review “Energizing . . . a blindingly bright black comedy.” Ben Brantley, The New York Times“A complex tale about life and art, about fact and illusion, about politics, society, cruelty and creativity.” Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times“Martin McDonagh, master of bad taste in black comedys cause and persistent enfant terrible, leaps towards maturity in this dazzling, disquieting nightmare of a play which makes up its own Grimm fairy-tales.” Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard“A play of extraordinary power and stunning theatrical bravura.” Michael Coveney, Daily Mail From the Inside Flap Praise for author Martin McDonagh: McDonagh is destined to be one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century. --The New Republic From the Back Cover Praise for author Martin McDonagh:McDonagh is destined to be one of the theatrical luminaries of the 21st century. --The New Republic About the Author Martin McDonaghs first play The Beauty Queen of Leenane was nominated for six Tony awards, of which it won four, and the Laurence Olivier Award. In 2003, his play The Pillowman had its world premiere at the Royal National Theatre and received the 2004 Olivier Award. In 2006, Martin McDonagh won an Oscar for his short film Six Shooter...

-Titulo Original : The White Road Journey Into An Obsession-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted.Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, The Hare with the Amber Eyes. In The White Road, bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or white gold. A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-and that would help him understand the clays mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three white hills-sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelains creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with the Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of the spectrum of porcelain and the mapping of desire. Review The history of porcelain, as told in The White Road, is a constantly surprising, sometimes absolutely staggering, coming together of art, craft and commerce, politics and religion, national identity, larger-than-life characters and wild, sometimes ruinous obsession . . . A terrific book. If you read it, you’ll never look at porcelain the same way again. Geoff Nicholson, Los Angeles Times The White Road is a unique book by a unique person. Polyglot, steeped in art and literature and history, able to throw a pot and turn a sentence with equal skill, endlessly curious and stupendously diligent, aesthetic to his fingertips but also deeply moral, Mr. de Waal brings a lot to the table, and with The White Road he goes all in. Ben Downing, The Wall Street Journal It is rare for someone to write as well as Edmund de Waal, all the more since its his secondary vocation . . . The White Road is the story of how objects, through the accumulation of intent, labor and the patina of history, accrue a sense of self. Brian Thomas Gallagher, The Seattle Times[A] shimmering paean to porcelain . . . De Waal digs deep into the substance of his live, and what he shares is precious. Jean Zimmerman, NPR“De Waal is a master of telling stories through material objects. He can see a vase and not only imagine the kind of room it once inhabited but the type of woman who might have brushed her fingertips across its lip . . . It’s de Waal’s own obsession the man counts pots when he can’t sleep at night that infuses the narrative with a true sense of the hunt . . . He is wonderfully manic in his research . . . He allows himself to get lost for weeks, to travel someplace only to return empty-handed which makes for a true adventure and a pleasure to read.” Thessaly La Force, The New Yorker“The White Road is filled with marvelous examples of storytelling, and de Waal has a gift for inhabiting his characters. Also, the historical material is interleaved with stories from de Waal’s own life as a ceramicist, which adds an extra and very welcome dimension to the tale.” Christina Thompson, The Boston Globe“At once meditation, memoir, and travelogue as well as history, The White Road is one of those unclassifiable books that simply astounds with the author’s infectious love of his subject . . . De Waal’s prose is both elegant and powerful . . . Despite covering so many places, so many historical periods, and so many themes, de Waal’s beautiful narrative voice and his love for his subject manage to shape t...

-Titulo Original : Role Models-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: Here, from the incomparable John Waters, is a paean to the power of subversive inspiration that will delight, amuse, enrich and happily horrify readers everywhere.Role Models is, in fact, a self-portrait told through intimate profiles of favorite personalities some famous, some unknown, some criminal, some surprisingly middle of the road. From Esther Martin, owner of the scariest bar in Baltimore, to the playwright Tennessee Williams; from the atheist leader Madalyn Murray OHair to the insane martyr Saint Catherine of Siena; from the English novelist Denton Welch to the timelessly appealing singer Johnny Mathis these are the extreme figures who helped the author form his own brand of neurotic happiness.Role Models is a personal invitation into one of the most unique, perverse, and hilarious artistic minds of our time. Review “Waters is a greater National Treasure than 90 percent of the people who are given ‘Kennedy Center Honors each December. Unlike those gray eminences of the show-business establishment, Waters doesnt kowtow to the received wisdom, he flips it the bird . . . [Waters] has the ability to show humanity at its most ridiculous and make that funny rather than repellent. To quote his linear ancestor W.C. Fields: Its a gift.” Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post“His acolytes wont need a reviewers say-so to lap up every word of Role Models, . . . But dilettantes at liberty to skip around will find a lot to charm them. In a way, the best joke is that - Baader-Meinhof gang, outsider porn and all--Waters cant help revealing one very page that hes both sentimental and good-hearted. Pass the relish, Uncle John.” Tom Carson, New York Times Book Review“If Waters began his career by seeking to infuriate, he now has mellowed to a place of gleeful tweaking. ‘Role Models is charming and chatty . . . it also reveals the making of a unique American artist through his influences. When he calls for people to make him a cult leader of filth --having left trash behind for becoming too acceptable--its hard for any outsider not to want to follow along.” Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times“Waters may not be a gloater, but there is a delightful lunatic glee that pulses through the book. It combusts in the final chapter, titled ‘Cult Leader, which exhorts readers to rise up against the ‘tyranny of good taste, wear their belts off center, and infiltrate living creches. Happily, for all the reflective and tender moments, Waters never suppresses his radiant pervert self.” Liz Brown, Bookforum “What is exhilarating about Waters is that hes not kidding, that hes the reporter, comedian and poet-in-chief of a fantasy cult which thinks ‘theres only one way to die--spontaneous combustion. The unexplained phenomenon of being so guilty and happy, so obsessed, so driven and so fanatical that you just burst into flames for no apparent reason on the street. He remains one of our most necessary fellow Americans.” Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News“The collision of the eloquent and the profane is probably the best reason to read this quasimemoir-cum-how-to, aside from its deeper philosophy: judge not lest ye have the whole story, indulge your inner pervert (within reason), and read, for the love of Divine. Waters puts it another way: ‘I believe in the opposite of original sin. I dont believe anybody is born guilty or evil. Glory-hole-lujah. Amen.” Heather McCormack, Library Journal“[Role Models is] an impressive, heartfelt collection by a true American iconoclast.” Kirkus Reviews (starred)“Apart from its consistently engaging voice, both casual and eloquent . . . what makes Role Models more than just the latest expression of a great American oddball is its appearance at a time when nearly every segment of society (hipsters, meet Tea Partiers) feels justified in dehumanizing anyone they deem as the other. Waters never does that, even to the truly abhorrent. This man who never sought respectabi...

-Titulo Original : Electric Eden Unearthing Britains Visionary Music-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title In the late 1960s, with popular culture hurtling forward on the sounds of rock music, some brave musicians looked back instead, trying to recover the lost treasures of English roots music and update them for the new age. The records of Fairport Convention, Pentangle, Steeleye Span, and Nick Drake are known as folk rock today, but Rob Youngs epic, electrifying book makes clear that those musicians led a decades-long quest to recover English music-and with it, the ancient ardor for mysticism and paganism, for craftsmanship and communal living.It is a commonplace that rock and R&B came out of the folk and blues revivals of the early 1960s, and Young shows, through enchanting storytelling and brilliant commentary, that a similar revival in England inspired the Beatles and Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Traffic, Kate Bush and Talk Talk. Folklorists notated old songs and dances. Marxists put folk music forward as the true voice of the people. Composers like Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughan Williams devised rich neo-traditional pageantry. Today, the pioneers of the acid folk movement see this music as a model for their own.Electric Eden is that rare book which has something truly new to say about popular music, and like Greil Marcuss LipstickTraces, it uses music to connect the dots in a thrilling story of art and society, of tradition and wild, idiosyncratic creativity. From Publishers Weekly In this massive, beguiling history of 20th-century British folk music and its legacy, music journalist Young surveys the scene from the Edwardian revival through its postwar coffee-house heyday to contemporary outcroppings. He probes its influences on other genres, from the classical music of Ralph Vaughan Williams to the plangent Renaissance-ish harmonies of Led Zeppelins Stairway to Heaven; the books headliners are folk-rock luminaries of the 60s and 70s: Fairport Convention, the Incredible String Band, Steeleye Span, and Nick Drake. Young roots his narrative in analyses of folk traditions and the eternal English nostalgia for a mythic rural past, but he also treats the folkie eruption as a very modern reaction to the discontents of industrial society. The folk culture he celebrates is really that of the musicians themselves: their gypsy wanderings, their clubs and festivals and country-house idylls, their debauches and overdoses, their fashion oscillations between hobbit outfits and pagan nudity. American readers eyes may glaze at the endless litany of groups they have never heard of, but many will be inspired to rediscover these bands by Youngs evocations of their music-and the romantic yearnings it expressed. Photos. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Review “Rob Youngs ambitious Electric Eden presents a flip side to the well-known story of the evolution of electric rock in Britain in the 1960s, a story of the rediscovery of Englands native folk music in the early 20th century by the likes of William Morris and Cecil Sharp, who went from town to town recording and notating the music that would hold great sway with those musicians who became associated with Englands less loud, more earthy music--the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Davy Graham, The Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Fairport Convention and Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, John Martyn, John Renbourn, Bert Jansch, Nick Drake, and many others would each deploy traditional folk music to their own ends in various recombinant ways, writing new songs laced with the idealism of the exploding sixties youth culture, while paying homage to the spirit and traditions of old. Eventually the tide of this music swelled to inspire some of the most influential names in electric rock, from the Beatles and Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. Thoroughly researched and well written, this book uncovers the secret history of British popular music in the sixties and beyond. H...

-Titulo Original : Bob Marley The Untold Story-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Chris Salewiczs writing on music and popular culture has appeared in publications around the globe. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including RedemptionSong: The Ballad of Joe Strummer and Bob Marley: The Untold Story. What was it about Bob Marley that made him so popular in a world dominated by rock n roll? How is it that he not only has remained the single most successful reggae artist ever, but also has become a shining beacon of radicalism and peace to generation after generation of fans? Chris Salewicz, the bestselling author of Redemption Song, the classic biography of Joe Strummer, interviewed Marley in Jamaica in 1979. Now, for the first time, in this thorough, detailed account of Marleys life and the world in which he grew up, Salewicz illuminates everything from the Rastafari religion and the musical scene in Jamaica to the spirit of the man himself. Interviews with dozens of people who knew Marley and have never spoken before are woven through the narrative as Salewicz seeks to explain why Marley has become such an enigmatic and heroic figure, loved by millions all over the world. Review “Faster, fuller, and fairer than [Stephen Daviss Bob Marley or Timothy Whites Catch a Fire] . . . Salewicz admires Bob Marley deeply without deifying him.” Robert Christgau, Barnes & Noble Review“Chris Salewiczs account of the life of the late, great Robert Nesta Marley contains a raft of never-before published interviews with scores of people who knew the reggae singer. Indeed, Salewicz--a respected journalist whose Joe Strummer biography is also well worth a read--got to know Marley in 1979, and its this authenticity that sets the book apart from other biographies about the man and the legend. From Bobs humble beginnings in Nine Miles to the years in Kingston and the fame, fortune and untimely death in 1981, Bob Marley: The Untold Story is the definitive account of the man and the myth.” Steve Richards, The Independent“Chris Salewicz, who worked for the NME throughout the 1970s, is well versed in the details of Marleys ascent. What makes his book worth reading, however, is his grasp of Marleys Jamaican background. Salewicz interviewed him in Kingston in 1979 and has clearly spent a lot of time since tracking down friends and relatives, many of whom have not been tapped before . . . [Salewicz] invades and illuminates Marleys privacy more effectively than previous biographers.” Robert Sandall, The Sunday Times (London)“Chris Salewiczs obvious knowledge . . . delivers the bulk of this literary epitaph on the rasta man. Those insights help the tome along at a reggae beat and, to Salewiczs credit, the reportage is evenly balanced between pro and con, making this an enjoyable, if at times disturbing, read . . . Whatever we know of Bob Marleys life will always remain open to conjecture, but at the very least in Salewiczs biography, we can take a step closer to what went on behind closed doors, in between the pleasure and pain. For Marley/ reggae fans, this work will probably stand the test, whereas for the uninitiated, it will serve as a meaty introduction to the ‘legend of Trench Town.” Teri Louise Kelly, The Independent Weekly (Australia) Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Bob MarleyThe Untold StoryBy Chris SalewiczFaber & FaberCopyright © 2011Chris SalewiczAll right reserved.ISBN: 9780865478527IntroductionME ONLY HAVE ONE AMBITION, Y’KNOW. I ONLY HAVE ONE THING I REALLY LIKE TO SEE HAPPEN. I LIKE TO SEE MANKIND LIVE TOGETHER-BLACK, WHITE, CHINESE, EVERYONE-THAT’S ALL.In early 1978 I spent two months in Jamaica, researching its music and interviewing many key figures, having arrived there on the same reggae-fanatics’ pilgrimage as John ‘Johnny Rotten’ Lydon and Don Letts, the Rastafarian film-maker. My first visit to the island was a life-changing experience, and I plunged into the land of magic realism that ...

-Titulo Original : Werner Herzog A Guide For The Perplexed Conversations With Paul Cronin-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Werner Herzog has directed more than sixty films, notably Aguirre, the Wrath of God; The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser; Fitzcarraldo; Little Dieter Needs to Fly; Grizzly Man; and Cave of Forgotten Dreams. He is the author of several books, including Conquest of the Useless, and has staged more than a dozen operas around the world.Paul Cronin is the editor of the filmmaker trilogy: Lessons withKiarostami, Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed, and AlexanderMackendricks On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of theDirector. He has made films about Amos Vogel, Peter Whitehead andHaskell Wexlers Medium Cool. His website is filmmakertrilogy . An invaluable set of career-length interviews with the German genius hailed by François Truffaut as the most important film director aliveMost of what weve heard about Werner Herzog is untrue. The sheer number of false rumors and downright lies disseminated about the man and his films is truly astonishing. Yet Herzogs body of work is one of the most important in postwar European cinema. His international breakthrough came in 1973 with Aguirre, the Wrath of God, in which Klaus Kinski played a crazed Conquistador. For The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Herzog cast in the lead a man who had spent most of his life institutionalized, and two years later he hypnotized his entire cast to make Heart of Glass. He rushed to an explosive volcanic Caribbean island to film La Soufriere, paid homage to F. W. Murnau in a terrifying remake of Nosferatu, and in 1982 dragged a boat over a mountain in the Amazon jungle for Fitzcarraldo. More recently, Herzog has made extraordinary documentary films, such as Little Dieter Needs to Fly. His place in cinema history is assured, and Paul Cronins volume of dialogues provides a forum for Herzogs fascinating views on the things, ideas, and people that have preoccupied him for so many years. This revised edition features new interviews discussing Herzogs films up to From One Second to the Next (2013), as well as additional text from Herzog, his collaborator Herbert Golder, the physicist Lawrence Krauss, and the filmmaker Harmony Korine. Review “[A] magnificent volume of interviews. . . This book presents an opportunity to enjoy extended musings from one of the most fascinating minds to which we are fortunate enough to have collective access. . . Reading [Herzog] expounding on his myriad interests and obsessions, in tones that are full and fluent without ever crossing into pretentiousness or obscurity, is a tonic for the brain.” Hannah McGill, The Independent“Extraordinary . . . the book is so full of marvelous passages that one could go on quoting forever . . . What is remarkable about A Guide for the Perplexed . . . is the access it provides to the furious inner excitement of one of the great artists . . . of our time.” Francine Prose, Prospect“A Guide for the Perplexed is a blockbuster performance of telling and hiding: remembering, denying, cursing, reliving traumas and triumphs; picking over all the project, triumphant and forgotten. This much revised and updated version of the one published in 2002 is an invaluable guide to a head-fought life and career. It is a black bible of verbiage, controlled rants and recollections, fit to stand beside any of the wandering directors savage pilgrimages.” Iain Sinclair, The Times Literary Supplement“This month, Faber published A Guide for the Perplexed, a compendium of conversations between Herzog and the writer Paul Cronin . . . Im putting my neck out and saying its the best book Ive read all year.” Nathalie Olah, Vice“A spectacular read . . . offering a rare glimpse of one of the most ravenously imaginative minds of our time.” Maria Popova, Brain Pickings“The heftiest and most fascinating one-stop guide that the Herzog fan, or even newcomer, could possibly ask for.” Seven Magazin...

-Titulo Original : Hiking With Nietzsche On Becoming Who You Are-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author John Kaag is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. He is the author of American Philosophy: A Love Story, which was an NPR Best Book of 2016 and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. He lives outside Boston with his wife and children. A stimulating book about combating despair and complacency with searching reflection. --Heller McAlpin, NPR Named a Best Book of 2018 by NPR. One of Lit Hubs 15 Books You Should Read in September and one of Outsides Best Books of FallA revelatory Alpine journey in the spirit of the great Romantic thinker Friedrich NietzscheHiking with Nietzsche: Becoming Who You Are is a tale of two philosophical journeys one made by John Kaag as an introspective young man of nineteen, the other seventeen years later, in radically different circumstances: he is now a husband and father, and his wife and small child are in tow. Kaag sets off for the Swiss peaks above Sils Maria where Nietzsche wrote his landmark work Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Both of Kaag’s journeys are made in search of the wisdom at the core of Nietzsche’s philosophy, yet they deliver him to radically different interpretations and, more crucially, revelations about the human condition.Just as Kaag’s acclaimed debut, American Philosophy: A Love Story, seamlessly wove together his philosophical discoveries with his search for meaning, Hiking with Nietzsche is a fascinating exploration not only of Nietzsche’s ideals but of how his experience of living relates to us as individuals in the twenty-first century. Bold, intimate, and rich with insight, Hiking with Nietzsche is about defeating complacency, balancing sanity and madness, and coming to grips with the unobtainable. As Kaag hikes, alone or with his family, but always with Nietzsche, he recognizes that even slipping can be instructive. It is in the process of climbing, and through the inevitable missteps, that one has the chance, in Nietzsche’s words, to “become who you are. Review Kaag is a lively storyteller who brings Nietzsches life into continual contact with his own . . . [He] challenges his readers to be what they might become. --Steven B. Smith, The New York Times Book ReviewNot just an approachable introduction to Nietzsche’s thought. Kaag’s book is also . . . a confirmation that philosophy thrives when it provides an antidote to the wholesome doldrums of sanity . . . Kaag may have outgrown his youthful dramatics, but he continues to let philosophy upend him. --Becca Rothfeld, The Atlantic[An] engagingly unacademic meditation . . . The question, ultimately, is whether Nietzsche’s philosophy, so attuned to lurking monstrous urges, can be of use in daily life. Kaag’s answer is both elliptical and profound, manifesting a deep understanding of his subject matter. --The New YorkerAs in American Philosophy, Kaag deftly intertwines sympathetic biography, accessible philosophical analysis, and self-critical autobiography . . . Kaag extracts plenty of relevant ideas from Nietzsche and his followers in this stimulating book about combating despair and complacency with searching reflection. --Heller McAlpin, npr Mr. Kaag deftly weaves his philosophical concerns with the small and large crises of daily life . . . his honesty is bracing. --Geoff Wisner, The Wall Street JournalIn [Hiking with Nietzsche] and in his previous book American Philosophy: A Love Story . . . Kaag has perhaps created a genre . . . [He combines] almost seamlessly a relatively rigorous though highly readable tour of Nietzsche’s life and authorship with personal writing in the mode of contemporary creative non-fiction . . . Hiking with Nietzsche may provide a new template for autobiographical philosophy and philosophical autobiography. --Cirspin Sartwell, TLSKaag has a pleasingly wry, co...

-Titulo Original : Black Spartacus The Epic Life Of Toussaint Louverture-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Sudhir Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford, since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history, and among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Memorial dAjaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoleon for the first of these, a Prix dHistoire du Senat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre dIdees for the third. Winner of the 2021 Wolfson History Prize“Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time . . . An extraordinarily gripping read.” David A. Bell, The GuardianA new interpretation of the life of the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture Among the defining figures of the Age of Revolution, Toussaint Louverture is the most enigmatic. Though the Haitian revolutionary’s image has multiplied across the globe appearing on banknotes and in bronze, on T-shirts and in film the only definitive portrait executed in his lifetime has been lost. Well versed in the work of everyone from Machiavelli to Rousseau, he was nonetheless dismissed by Thomas Jefferson as a “cannibal.” A Caribbean acolyte of the European Enlightenment, Toussaint nurtured a class of black Catholic clergymen who became one of the pillars of his rule, while his supporters also believed he communicated with vodou spirits. And for a leader who once summed up his modus operandi with the phrase “Say little but do as much as possible,” he was a prolific and indefatigable correspondent, famous for exhausting the five secretaries he maintained, simultaneously, at the height of his power in the 1790s. Employing groundbreaking archival research and a keen interpretive lens, Sudhir Hazareesingh restores Toussaint to his full complexity in Black Spartacus. At a time when his subject has, variously, been reduced to little more than a one-dimensional icon of liberation or criticized for his personal failings his white mistresses, his early ownership of slaves, his authoritarianism Hazareesingh proposes a new conception of Toussaint’s understanding of himself and his role in the Atlantic world of the late eighteenth century. Black Spartacus is a work of both biography and intellectual history, rich with insights into Toussaint’s fundamental hybridity his ability to unite European, African, and Caribbean traditions in the service of his revolutionary aims. Hazareesingh offers a new and resonant interpretation of Toussaint’s racial politics, showing how he used Enlightenment ideas to argue for the equal dignity of all human beings while simultaneously insisting on his own world-historical importance and the universal pertinence of blackness a message which chimed particularly powerfully among African Americans. Ultimately, Black Spartacus offers a vigorous argument in favor of “getting back to Toussaint” a call to take Haiti’s founding father seriously on his own terms, and to honor his role in shaping the postcolonial world to come.Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize | Finalist for the PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for BiographyNamed a best book of the year by the The Economist | Times Literary Supplement | New Statesman Review “Black Spartacus is a tour de force: by far the most complete, authoritative and persuasive biography of Toussaint that we are likely to have for a long time . . . An extraordinarily gripping read.” David A. Bell, The Guardian[A] superbly researched book . . . This reconstruction gives [Toussaints] political, military and intellectual accomplishments their due. The Economist[Hazareesinghs] way into the story is through Toussaint’s military adventures and, more importantly, through his catlike politics . . . Lustrous pearls . . . , scattered thr...

-Titulo Original : Incarnations A History Of India In Fifty Lives-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Sunil Khilnani, born in New Delhi and educated at Cambridge University, teaches politics at Birkbeck College, University of London. The author of Arguing Revolution, he is at work on a biography of Nehru (forthcoming from FSG). An entertaining and provocative account of India’s past, written by one of the country’s leading thinkersFor all India’s myths, its sea of stories and moral epics, Indian history remains a curiously unpeopled place. In Incarnations, Sunil Khilnani fills that space, bringing to life fifty extraordinary men and women who changed both India and the world. Journeying across India in pursuit of their stories visiting slum temples, ayurvedic call centers, Bollywood studios, textile mills, and Mughal fortresses Khilnani offers trenchant portraits of emperors, warriors, philosophers, artists, iconoclasts, and entrepreneurs. Some of these historical figures are famous. Some are unjustly forgotten. And all, Khilnani convinces us, are deeply relevant today. As their rich and surprising lives take the reader through twenty-five hundred winding years of Indian and world history, Khilnani brings wit, feeling, historical rigor, and uncommon insight to dilemmas that extend from ancient times to our own.We encounter the Buddha not as the usual beatific icon but as a radical young social critic. We meet the ancient Sanskrit linguist who inspires computer programmers today. We hear the medieval poets, ribald and profound, who mocked rituals and caste and whose voices resonate in contemporary poetry. And we see giants of the twentieth-century Independence movement among them Mohandas Gandhi; Ambedkar, the Untouchable lawyer turned constitution maker; and the legendary singer M. S. Subbulakshmi not as cardboard cutouts but as complex and striving human beings. At once a provocative and sophisticated reinterpretation of India’s history and an incisive commentary on its present-day conflicts and struggles, Incarnations is an authoritative, sweeping, and often moving account of a nation coming into its own. Review A whirlwind tour of roughly 2,500 years of Indian history in 50 fast-paced chapters. . . . Khilnanis writing is easy to read, yet authoritative. He has spent much of his career studying-India . . . [and] strives to connect the lives and ideas of his subjects to one another and to contemporary India . . . Readers can dip in and out of chapters randomly without being confused, but Incarnations is most rewarding when read from start to finish . . . To my mind the best thing Khilnani has done is to leave the reader wanting more. Vikas Bajaj, The New York Times Book ReviewAn incisive work of popular history . . . undercutting, irreverent, and impish. It attempts to show, through prodigious but lightly worn scholarship, how complex and heterodox the Indian past was, and how it has been, and continues to be, constructed . . . Khilnani offers a fresh, cosmopolitan way of examining the Indian past. Everywhere he looks he sees rivers of influence and thought and ideas. Karan Mahajan, The New YorkerBeautifully written with both scholarship and an enviably light touch, thoughtfully constructed and enviably erudite in its wide-ranging references, and as much at ease discussing higher mathematics and philosophy as politics and art, Incarnations is a major work by one of India’s most impressive minds, and the best possible introduction to both the complexities and the charms of Indian history. William Dalrymple, The GuardianIncisive and elegantly written . . . A work of distinction. John Keay, The Times Literary Supplement Revelatory, bold and contemplative . . . Scholarly and accessible, lively and deeply serious . . . Is this simply cashing in on the idea behind the blockbuster A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor? Can anyone ever match the erudition and verve of the erstwhile director of the British Museum? Yes and yes. And though thi...

-Titulo Original : The Man Who Would Be King The First American In Afghanistan-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: From The New Yorker A broken heart can lead men astray, but few have wandered as far off course as Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker. In 1822, after sailing to Calcutta on a merchant ship, he learned that his fiancee in America had married another man. He set out on a journey that ultimately brought him to Afghanistan, with the mad hope of carving out a kingdom for himself. Amazingly, he halfway succeeded. Trading on little more than a flair for diplomatic pomp, Harlan became a confidant of Afghan princes and a player in the Great Game between Russia and Britain. Macintyre recounts Harlans travels with dispatch, and draws on unpublished journals to let his subjects voice seep through. Harlan was relentless in cataloguing his obsessions, which included camels, alchemy, and fresh fruit; the first American to visit Kabul, he wrote memorably about the sherbet sold in the bazaar there, made with snow carried by donkey from the Hindu Kush. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker The Man Who Would Be King is the riveting story that inspired Kiplings classic tale and a John Huston movie In the year 1838, a young adventurer, surrounded by his native troops and mounted on an elephant, raised the American flag on the summit of the Hindu Kush in the mountainous wilds of Afghanistan. He declared himself Prince of Ghor, Lord of the Hazarahs, spiritual and military heir to Alexander the Great.The true story of Josiah Harlan, a Pennsylvania Quaker and the first American ever to enter Afghanistan, has never been told before, yet the life and writings of this extraordinary man echo down the centuries, as America finds itself embroiled once more in the land he first explored and described 180 years ago.Soldier, spy, doctor, naturalist, traveler, and writer, Josiah Harlan wanted to be a king, with all the imperialist hubris of his times. In an extraordinary twenty-year journey around Central Asia, he was variously employed as surgeon to the Maharaja of Punjab, revolutionary agent for the exiled Afghan king, and then commander in chief of the Afghan armies. In 1838, he set off in the footsteps of Alexander the Great across the Hindu Kush and forged his own kingdom, only to be ejected from Afghanistan a few months later by the invading British.Using a trove of newly discovered documents and Harlans own unpublished journals, Ben Macintyres The Man Who Would Be King tells the astonishing true story of the man who would be the first and last American king. Review “One of the most remarkable discoveries in the history of biography . . . It is a far more adventurous tale than the one invented by Kipling: its twists and tensions and dangerous escapades make it more like a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson or John Buchan or Rider Haggard . . . Its a ripping yarn as we used to say, and Macintyre is an excellent narrator, describing with skill a spirited and fast-moving life.” David Gilmour, The New York Review of Books“Macintyre unearths a trove of unseen documents...and imparts a tactile understanding of Afghanistans cultural impulses. B.” Raymond Fiore, Entertainment Weekly“Macintyre has been able to piece together this never-before-told story by a great archival find...[He] also tells with unflagging elan...There is so much tragedy, cruelty, and general badness afoot in this book that I wonder how to explain how really funny it is. But it is.” Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe“Macintyres riveting, scrupulously researched book [on Josiah Harlan] should place this remarkable man where he rightfully belongs.” Alexander Frater, The New York Times Book Review About the Author Ben Macintyre is the author of several books, including The Englishmans Daughter (FSG, 2002). A senior writer and columnist for The Times of London, he was the newspapers correspondent in New York, Paris, and Washington D.C. He now lives in London...

-Titulo Original : Troublesome Young Men The Rebels Who Brought Churchill To Power And Helped Save England-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Lynne Olson, former White House correspondent for The Sun (Baltimore), is the author of Freedom’s Daughters, and co-author, with her husband, Stanley Cloud, of A Question of Honor and The Murrow Boys. She lives in Washington, D.C. A riveting history of the daring politicians who challenged the disastrous policies of the British government on the eve of World War IIOn May 7, 1940, the House of Commons began perhaps the most crucial debate in British parliamentary history. On its outcome hung the future of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlains government and also of Britain indeed, perhaps, the world. Troublesome Young Men is Lynne Olsons fascinating account of how a small group of rebellious Tory MPs defied the Chamberlain governments defeatist policies that aimed to appease Europes tyrants and eventually forced the prime ministers resignation.Some historians dismiss the phony war that preceded this turning point from September 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, to May 1940, when Winston Churchill became prime minister as a time of waiting and inaction, but Olson makes no such mistake, and describes in dramatic detail the public unrest that spread through Britain then, as people realized how poorly prepared the nation was to confront Hitler, how their basic civil liberties were being jeopardized, and also that there were intrepid politicians willing to risk political suicide to spearhead the opposition to Chamberlain Harold Macmillan, Robert Boothby, Leo Amery, Ronald Cartland, and Lord Robert Cranborne among them. The political and personal dramas that played out in Parliament and in the nation as Britain faced the threat of fascism virtually on its own are extraordinary and, in Olsons hands, downright inspiring. Review “A well-written, fast-paced book that reads like a political thriller . . . Troublesome Young Men is an extraordinary tale of political courage in perilous times-and a wonderfully written book.” Terry Hartle, Christian Science Monitor“[A] riveting book . . . Olson tells her story with verve, never letting the reader forget what was really at risk--and what might have happened if these particular troublemakers hadnt been so willing to stir the political pot.” The Atlantic Monthly“During the 1930s, as the rise of Nazism threatened western civilization, Winston Churchills was a lonely voice warning of the coming danger, opposing the British governments policy of appeasement and urging immediate rearmament. Lonely, but not entirely alone. For a few younger Tory members of Parliament held similar views about the German threat, though they did not necessarily agree with Churchill on other issues. The odds were against them, and in attacking their own partys leaders they put their careers at risk, but in the end they and their allies prevailed: Neville Chamberlain and his defeatist government were overthrown, opening up the room at the top that Churchill so famously filled. Lynne Olson has seized upon their wonderful but neglected story and has told it with verve. It is a riveting tale, immensely readable, that brings to history the excitement of a novel.” David Fromkin, author of Europes Last Summe...

-Titulo Original : Happy City Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Charles Montgomery is an award-winning journalist and the author of The Shark God, which won the 2005 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction under its Canadian title, The Last Heathen. A globe-trotting, eye-opening exploration of how cities can and do make us happier peopleCharles Montgomerys Happy City is revolutionizing the way we think about urban life. After decades of unchecked sprawl, more people than ever are moving back to the city. Dense urban living has been prescribed as a panacea for the environmental and resource crises of our time. But is it better or worse for our happiness? Are subways, sidewalks, and condo towers an improvement on the car dependence of the suburbs? The award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery finds answers to such questions at the intersection between urban design and the emerging science of happiness, during an exhilarating journey through some of the worlds most dynamic cities. He meets the visionary mayor who introduced a sexy bus to ease status anxiety in Bogota; the architect who brought the lessons of medieval Tuscan hill towns to modern-day New York City; the activist who turned Pariss urban freeways into beaches; and an army of American suburbanites who have hacked the design of their own streets and neighborhoods. Rich with new insights from psychology, neuroscience, and Montgomerys own urban experiments, Happy City reveals how cities can shape our thoughts as well as our behavior. The message is ultimately as surprising as it is hopeful: by retrofitting cities and our own lives for happiness, we can tackle the urgent challenges of our age. The happy city can save the world and we can all help build it. Review “Happy City is not only readable but stimulating. It raises issues most of us have avoided for too long. Do we live in neighborhoods that make us happy? That is not a silly question. Montgomery encourages us to ask it without embarrassment, and to think intelligently about the answer.” Alan Ehrenhalt, The New York Times Book Review“Beautifully researched, Charles Montgomerys tale cleverly interweaves rigorous inquiry on urban history and the science of happiness with intimate and personal stories that humanize the vast task of understanding urban dynamics. An inspiring book that reminds us that the power to change our cities often lies in our own hands.” Maria Nicanor, Associate Curator of Architecture and Urbanism, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York“Happy City is its own opiate: an eye-opening, pleasurable, utterly necessary tour through the best and worst neighborhoods of our urbanized world. Charles Montgomery shows us the way to a beautiful city.” Andrew Blum, author of Tubes“Happy City will fundamentally change the way you see, experience, and feel the place you inhabit. It is a hopeful and optimistic vision of our urban future that uses science to argue what we always should have known: in building the good city, we wont just save our planet. Well save ourselves.” Robert Hammond, cofounder of Friends of the High Line“A brilliant, entertaining, and vital book. Charles Montgomery deftly leads us from our misplaced focus on money, cars, and stuff to consider what makes us truly happy. Then everything changes--the way we live, work, and play in humanitys major habitat, the city.” David Suzuki, host of CBCs The Nature of Things and cofounder of the David Suzuki Foundation“Charles Montgomerys message is simple: If were going to save the world, we must first be happier, and that means creating happier cities. Happy City isnt just a book about urban design written for urban professionals; its for everyone whos ever wondered if their city could be a better place, and what they can do about it.” Jarrett Walker, author of Human Transit“In a word, wow. I thought I had it all figured out, but this is something I was missing. In echoing all the great economic, health, and environmental man...

-Titulo Original : Dead Aid Why Aid Is Not Working And How There Is A Better Way For Africa-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Dambisa Moyo is the author of How the West Was Lost and Dead Aid. Born and raised in Lusaka, Zambia, Moyo completed a Ph.D. in economics at Oxford University and holds a master’s from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. She worked for the World Bank as a consultant, and also worked at Goldman Sachs for eight years. In 2009, Time magazine named her one of the “100 most influential people in the world.” Her writing frequently appears in publications including the Financial Times, The Economist, and The Wall Street Journal.Niall Ferguson is Professor of Political and Financial History, Jesus College, Oxford. A national bestseller, Dead Aid unflinchingly confronts one of the greatest myths of our time: that billions of dollars in aid sent from wealthy countries to developing African nations has helped to reduce poverty and increase growth. In fact, poverty levels continue to escalate and growth rates have steadily declined and millions continue to suffer. Debunking the current model of international aid promoted by both Hollywood celebrities and policy makers, Dambisa Moyo offers a bold new road map for financing development of the worlds poorest countries. Much debated in the United States and the United Kingdom on publication, Dead Aid is an unsettling yet optimistic work, a powerful challenge to the assumptions and arguments that support a profoundly misguided development policy in Africa. And it is a clarion call to a new, more hopeful vision of how to address the desperate poverty that plagues millions. Review “Moyo is right to raise her voice, and she should be heard if African nations and other poor countries are to move in the right direction.” Jagdish Bhagwati, Foreign Affairs“Moyo presents a refreshing view.” Lisa Miller, Newsweek“A tightly argued brief . . . Vivid.” Matthew Rees, The Wall Street Journal“An incendiary new book . . . Here is a refreshing voice . . . What makes Dead Aid so powerful is that its a double-barrelled shotgun of a book. With the first barrel, Moyo demolishes all the most cherished myths about aid being a good thing. But with the second, crucially, she goes on to explain what the West could be doing instead.” Christopher Hart, The Daily Mail“Dambisa Moyo is to aid what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam. Here is an African woman, articulate, smart, glamorous, delivering a message of brazen political incorrectness: cut aid to Africa. Aid, she argues, has not merely failed to work; it has compounded Africas problems. Moyo cannot be dismissed as a crank . . . She catalogues evidence, both statistical and anecdotal . . . The core of her argument is that there is a better alternative [and it deserves] to be taken seriously.” Paul Collier, The Independent“The wisdom contained here--if absorbed by African and global policymakers--will turn this chronically depressed continent into an inspiring miracle of dazzling economic growth.” STEVE FORBES, President and Chief Executive Officer of Forbes and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine“Dambisa Moyo makes a compelling case for a new approach in Africa. Her message is that Africas time is now. It is time for Africans to assume full control over their economic and political destiny. Africans should grasp the many means and opportunities available to them for improving the quality of life. Dambisa is hard--perhaps too hard--on the role of aid. But her central point is indisputable. The determination of Africans, and genuine partnership between Africa and the rest of the world, is the basis for growth and development.” KOFI ANNAN, former Secretary-General of the United Nations“Dead Aid is an important book . . . at the very least, [it] provides a first step towards changing how America, and the world, thinks about how to help Africa.” Heather Wilhelm, Real Clear World“Dead Aid is a wonderfully liberating book.” Doug Bandow, The Washington Times“[Moyos] book offers an analy...

-Titulo Original : Talking To My Daughter About The Economy Or, How Capitalism Works--and How It Fails-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Yanis Varoufakis is the former finance minister of Greece and the co-founder of an international grassroots movement, DiEM25, campaigning for the revival of democracy in Europe. He is the author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? and The Global Minotaur. After many years teaching in the United States, Britain, and Australia, he is currently professor of economics at the University of Athens. A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard SelectionIn Talking to My Daughter About the Economy, activist Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and the author of the international bestseller Adults in the Room, pens a series of letters to his young daughter, educating her about the business, politics, and corruption of world economics. Yanis Varoufakis has appeared before heads of nations, assemblies of experts, and countless students around the world. Now, he faces his most important and difficult audience yet. Using clear language and vivid examples, Varoufakis offers a series of letters to his young daughter about the economy: how it operates, where it came from, how it benefits some while impoverishing others. Taking bankers and politicians to task, he explains the historical origins of inequality among and within nations, questions the pervasive notion that everything has its price, and shows why economic instability is a chronic risk. Finally, he discusses the inability of market-driven policies to address the rapidly declining health of the planet his daughter’s generation stands to inherit. Throughout, Varoufakis wears his expertise lightly. He writes as a parent whose aim is to instruct his daughter on the fundamental questions of our age and through that knowledge, to equip her against the failures and obfuscations of our current system and point the way toward a more democratic alternative. Review Best Book of 2018, Business & LeadershipCharming and utterly fascinating . . . Its a sharp analysis mixed with philosophical rumination told in a breezy mix of family anecdotes, Greek myth, world history and a surprisingly deep dive into the hidden meanings embedded in Star Trek and The Matrix . . . Its a book for everyone. Varoufakis dispenses with technical jargon, and when he does use it, he goes to great lengths to clearly define what hes talking about. Mark Haskell Smith, The Los Angeles TimesVaroufakis has used his considerable talents . . . to demystify complex financial concepts designed to elude us . . . Ensuring that everyone is allowed to talk authoritatively about the economy is a prerequisite for a good society and a precondition for an authentic democracy [he writes]. If this is his goal, then Varoufakis has more than achieved it . . . He clearly and patiently helps readers come to an understanding of just how much power global corporate finance and the supranational institutions that serve it wields over our lives . . . If anyone can figure out a way to put a chicken in every pot and a bottle of bubbly on every table, its Yanis Varoufakis. Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, The NationVaroufakis [promises] to explain economics in a language that everyone can understand, in place of the jargon- infested pseudo-scientific language of mainstream economics....Varoufakis comes up with a vivid comparison between money supply and the market in cigarettes in a German prisoner-of-war camp to explain inflation, deflation and interest rates, in terms any teenager - or adult - will understand . . . Varoufakis does equip his readers with the beginnings of a new language, and punctures myth after myth Anna Minton, The Guardia...

-Titulo Original : The Unwinding An Inner History Of The New America-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author George Packer is an award-winning author and staff writer at The Atlantic. His previous books include The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America (winner of the National Book Award), The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, and Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century (winner of the Hitchens Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography). He is also the author of two novels and a play, and the editor of a two-volume edition of the essays of George Orwell. NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOKAN NPR BEST BOOKSelected by New York Times critic Dwight Garner as a Favorite BookA Washington Post Best Political BookA New Republic Best BookA riveting examination of a nation in crisis, from one of the finest political journalists of our generation. American democracy is beset by a sense of crisis. Seismic shifts during a single generation have created a country of winners and losers, allowing unprecedented freedom while rending the social contract, driving the political system to the verge of breakdown, and setting citizens adrift to find new paths forward. In The Unwinding, George Packer, author of The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq, tells the story of the United States over the past three decades in an utterly original way, with his characteristically sharp eye for detail and gift for weaving together complex narratives.The Unwinding journeys through the lives of several Americans, including Dean Price, the son of tobacco farmers, who becomes an evangelist for a new economy in the rural South; Tammy Thomas, a factory worker in the Rust Belt trying to survive the collapse of her city; Jeff Connaughton, a Washington insider oscillating between political idealism and the lure of organized money; and Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire who questions the Internets significance and arrives at a radical vision of the future. Packer interweaves these intimate stories with biographical sketches of the eras leading public figures, from Newt Gingrich to Jay-Z, and collages made from newspaper headlines, advertising slogans, and song lyrics that capture the flow of events and their undercurrents.The Unwinding portrays a superpower in danger of coming apart at the seams, its elites no longer elite, its institutions no longer working, its ordinary people left to improvise their own schemes for success and salvation. Packers novelistic and kaleidoscopic history of the new America is his most ambitious work to date. Review “[The Unwinding] hums with sorrow, with outrage and with compassion...Packers gifts are Steinbeckian in the best sense of that term...[Packer has] written something close to a nonfiction masterpiece.” Dwight Garner, The New York Times“Gripping...deeply affecting...beautifully reported.” David Brooks, The New York Times Book Review“Remarkable.” Joe Klein, Time“Packers dark rendering of the state of the nation feels pained but true. He offers no false hopes, no Hollywood endings, but he finds power in...the dignity and heart of a people.” The Washington Post“[The Unwinding] has many of the qualities of an epic novel...[a] professional work of journalism that also happens to be more intimate and textured and certainly more ambitious than most contemporary works of U.S. fiction dare to be...What distinguishes The Unwinding is the fullness of Packers portraits, his willingness to show his subjects human desires and foibles, and to give each of his subjects a fully throated voice.” Hector Tobar, The Los Angeles Times“A monumental work that is both intimate and sweeping...Packers writing dazzles...[his] reporting excels...The cumulative effect is extraordinary.” Ken Armstrong, The Seattle Times“Brilliant. Harrowing. Gorgeously written...The Unwinding is a lyrical requiem for a lost time, for downsized dreams and surrendered hopes. Its beautiful...but also...heartbreaking, a ...

-Titulo Original : Fulfillment Winning And Losing In One-click America-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Alec MacGillis is a senior reporter for ProPublica and the recipient of the George Polk Award, the Robin Toner prize, and other honors. He worked previously at The Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, and The New Republic, and his journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and other publications. His ProPublica reporting on Dayton, Ohio was the basis of a PBS Frontline documentary about the city. He is the author of The Cynic, a 2014 biography of Mitch McConnell. He lives in Baltimore. A New York Times Book Review Editors ChoiceA grounded and expansive examination of the American economic divide . . . It takes a skillful journalist to weave data and anecdotes together so effectively. Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles TimesAn award-winning journalist investigates Amazon’s impact on the wealth and poverty of towns and cities across the United States.In 1937, the famed writer and activist Upton Sinclair published a novel bearing the subtitle A Story of Ford-America. He blasted the callousness of a company worth “a billion dollars” that underpaid its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and sometimes dangerous assembly line labor. Eighty-three years later, the market capitalization of has exceeded one trillion dollars, while the value of the Ford Motor Company hovers around thirty billion. We have, it seems, entered the age of one-click America and as the coronavirus makes Americans more dependent on online shopping, its sway will only intensify.Alec MacGillis’s Fulfillment is not another inside account or expose of our most conspicuously dominant company. Rather, it is a literary investigation of the America that falls within that company’s growing shadow. As MacGillis shows, Amazon’s sprawling network of delivery hubs, data centers, and corporate campuses epitomizes a land where winner and loser cities and regions are drifting steadily apart, the civic fabric is unraveling, and work has become increasingly rudimentary and isolated.Ranging across the country, MacGillis tells the stories of those who’ve thrived and struggled to thrive in this rapidly changing environment. In Seattle, high-paid workers in new office towers displace a historic black neighborhood. In suburban Virginia, homeowners try to protect their neighborhood from the environmental impact of a new data center. Meanwhile, in El Paso, small office supply firms seek to weather Amazon’s takeover of government procurement, and in Baltimore a warehouse supplants a fabled steel plant. Fulfillment also shows how Amazon has become a force in Washington, D.C., ushering readers through a revolving door for lobbyists and government contractors and into CEO Jeff Bezos’s lavish Kalorama mansion.With empathy and breadth, MacGillis demonstrates the hidden human costs of the other inequality not the growing gap between rich and poor, but the gap between the country’s winning and losing regions. The result is an intimate account of contemporary capitalism: its drive to innovate, its dark, pitiless magic, its remaking of America with every click. Review A grounded and expansive examination of the American economic divide . . . This is much more than a story of retail. It’s about real estate. It’s about lobbying, data centers and the CIA . . . It takes a skillful journalist to weave data and anecdotes together so effectively. Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles TimesIn Alec MacGillis’s urgent book, Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America, true fulfillment is elusive in Amazon’s America. Through interviews, careful investigative reporting and vignettes from across the country, MacGillis deftly unravels the strong grip Amazon has on the United States . . . [Through] deeply humanizing portraits of communities impacted by Amazon, MacGillis gives us a picture of contemporary America as mere survival under precarity. Xiaowei Wang, The New York Times Book...

-Titulo Original : Bad Pharma How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors And Harm Patients-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Ben Goldacre is a doctor and writer. His first book Bad Science was an international bestseller, and has been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in London. Smart, funny, clear, unflinching: Ben Goldacre is my hero. Mary Roach, author of Stiff, Spook, and BonkWe like to imagine that medicine is based on evidence and the results of fair testing and clinical trials. In reality, those tests and trials are often profoundly flawed. We like to imagine that doctors who write prescriptions for everything from antidepressants to cancer drugs to heart medication are familiar with the research literature about these drugs, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. We like to imagine that regulators have some code of ethics and let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve useless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients. All these problems have been shielded from public scrutiny because they are too complex to capture in a sound bite. Ben Goldacre shows that the true scale of this murderous disaster fully reveals itself only when the details are untangled. He believes we should all be able to understand precisely how data manipulation works and how research misconduct in the medical industry affects us on a global scale. With Goldacres characteristic flair and a forensic attention to detail, Bad Pharma reveals a shockingly broken system in need of regulation. This is the pharmaceutical industry as it has never been seen before. Review “Slightly technical, eminently readable, consistently shocking, occasionally hectoring and unapologetically polemical . . . This is a book that deserves to be widely read, because anyone who does read it cannot help feeling both uncomfortable and angry.” The Economist“Ben Goldacre has done it again . . . This is a morbidly fascinating and dispiriting account, yet one which deserves (and needs) to be read and acted upon without delay.” Dennis Rosen, Dennis Rosen, The Boston Globe“Read this book. It will make you mad, it will make you scared. And, hopefully, it will bring about some change. ” Chris Lee, Ars Technica“A thorough piece of investigative medical journalism. What keeps you turning its pages is the accessibility of Goldacres writing, . . . his genuine, indignant passion, his careful gathering of evidence and his use of stories, some of them personal, which bring the book to life.” Luisa Dillner, The Guardian“Goldacres research is scrupulous, and lay readers may find themselves converted by his geeky ardor. ” The New Yorker“[A]n eye-opening glance into a world of experts who have failed us.” The New York Times Book Review“In this searing expose of the pharmaceutical industry, physician and journalist Goldacre uncovers a cesspool of corrupt practices designed to sell useless or dangerous drugs to an unsuspecting public . . . Goldacre conveys complicated scientific, medical, and ethical issues in simple, clear, plainspoken language that pulls no punches. The result is a smart, infuriating diagnosis of the rotten heart of the medical-industrial complex.” Publishers Weekly“A useful guide for policymakers, doctors and the patients who need protection against deliberate disinformation.” Kirkus Reviews“Goldacres essential expose will prompt readers to ask more questions before automatically popping a doctor-prescribed pill.” Karen Springen, Booklist“Smart, funny, clear, unflinching: Ben Goldacre is my hero.” Mary Roach, author of Stiff, Spook, and Bonk, on Bad Science“Ben Goldacre is exasperated . . . He is irked, vexed, bugged, ticked off at sometimes inadvertent (because of stupidity) but more often deliberate deceptions perpetrated in the name of science . . . Youll get a good groun...

-Titulo Original : Encounters With The Archdruid Narratives About A Conservationist And Three Of His Natural Enemies-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: Review Born in 1915, the mountaineer and outdoorsman David Brower has arguably been the single most influential American environmentalist in the last half of the 20th century; even his erstwhile foes at the Department of the Interior grudgingly credit him with having nearly single-handedly halted the construction of a dam in the heart of the Grand Canyon, and he has converted thousands, even millions, of his compatriots to the preservationist cause through his work with the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and other organizations. Brower was in the thick of battle when John McPhee profiled him for the New Yorker in a piece that would evolve into Encounters with the Archdruid. McPhee follows Brower into unusually close combat as Brower faces down a geologist who is, it seems, convinced that there is no sight quite so elevating as that of a fully operational mine; a developer who (successfully, it turned out) sought to convert an isolated stretch of the Carolina coast into a resort for the moneyed few--and who provided the title for McPhees book, wryly opining that conservationists are at heart druids who sacrifice people and worship trees; and, most formidable of all, former Interior Secretary Floyd Dominy, who oversaw the construction of a structure that for Brower stands as one of the most hated creations of our time, Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River. McPhee offers up an engaging portrait of Brower, a man unafraid of a good fight in the service of the earth, making Encounters an important contribution to the history of the modern environmental movement. --Gregory McNamee The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide. Review “The importance of this lively book in the unmanageably proliferating literature on ecology is in its confrontation between remarkable men who hold great differences of opinion with integrity on all sides. Mr. McPhee, not pushing, just presenting, portrays them all in the round, showing them clashing in concrete situations where factors are complex and decisions hard. Readers must choose sides.” The Wall Street Journal“For those who want to understand the issues of the environmental crisis, Encounters with the Archdruid is a superb book. McPhee reveals more nuances of the value revolution that dominates the new age of ecology than most writers could pack into a volume twice as long. I marvel at his capacity to listen intently and extract the essence of a man and his philosophy in the fewest possible words.” Stewart Udall “Brower and his antagonists are revealed as subtly and convincingly as they would be in a good novel.” Time About the Author John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey...

-Titulo Original : Superclass The Global Power Elite And The World They Are Making-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author DAVID ROTHKOPF is an author and commentator who has written extensively on politics, power and national security. Recent books include Great Questions of Tomorrow, National Insecurity, Power, Inc., Superclass, and Running the World. He is a former senior official in the Clinton Administration and has taught international affairs at Columbia, Georgetown, and Johns Hopkins. He lives in New York City. Each of them is one in a million. They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the worlds most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time.Todays superclass has achieved unprecedented levels of wealth and power. They have globalized more rapidly than any other group. But do they have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen, as nationalist critics have argued? They control globalization more than anyone else. But has their influence fed the growing economic and social inequity that divides the world? What happens behind closeddoor meetings in Davos or aboard corporate jets at 41,000 feet? Conspiracy or collaboration? Deal-making or idle self-indulgence? What does the rise of Asia and Latin America mean for the conventional wisdom that shapes our destinies? Who sets the rules for a group that operates beyond national laws?Drawn from scores of exclusive interviews and extensive original reporting, Superclass answers all of these questions and more. It draws back the curtain on a privileged society that most of us know little about, even though it profoundly affects our everyday lives. It is the first in-depth examination of the connections between the global communities of leaders who are at the helm of every major enterprise on the planet and control its greatest wealth. And it is an unprecedented examination of the trends within the superclass, which are likely to alter our politics, our institutions, and the shape of the world in which we live. Review “Whether you like it or not, there is no way to deny the enormous, disproportionate, concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of people in the world today. David Rothkopf has vividly described who they are, and how they operate and interact, in his valuable (and often disturbing) new book.” Richard Holbrooke, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations“No, no vast conspiracy runs the world. But, according to Rothkopfs book, a tiny but diverse global elite, a Superclass, comes close. His finely-honed prose takes the reader on a joyous, entertaining, and erudite romp around the globe in search of that class.” Alan Blinder, Former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States“Thanks to Rothkopfs special blend of analysis, direct interaction with his subjects and vivid writing, this is a must read book for people interested in understanding the genesis of leadership in the new global economy.” Ernesto Zedillo, Director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and Former President of Mexico“David Rothkopf has written a super book about the people presently executing an historic shift of world economic and political power and about how they are doing it and why. If you want to know how your choices are being determined and the circumstances of your life conditioned, you must read this book.” Clyde Prestowitz, President of the Economic Strategy Institute and author of Three Billion New Capitalists“The activities of a growing cosmopolitan elite are having profound effects. They can be highly desirable when they promote international cooperation or more problematic when the interests of the elites diverge from those of their citizens. David Rothkopfs Superclass skillfully probes these issues and many more and s...

-Titulo Original : Draft No. 4 On The Writing Process-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author John McPhee was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and was educated at Princeton University and Cambridge University. His writing career began at Time magazine and led to his long association with The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer since 1965. Also in 1965, he published his first book, A Sense of Where You Are, with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the years since, he has written over 30 books, including Oranges (1967), Coming into the Country (1977), The Control of Nature (1989), The Founding Fish (2002), Uncommon Carriers (2007), and Silk Parachute (2011). Encounters with the Archdruid (1972) and The Curve of Binding Energy (1974) were nominated for National Book Awards in the category of science. McPhee received the Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1977. In 1999, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey. The long-awaited guide to writing long-form nonfiction by the legendary author and teacherDraft No. 4 is a master class on the writer’s craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the most esteemed writers of recent decades. McPhee offers definitive guidance in the decisions regarding arrangement, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces, and he presents extracts from his work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny. In one essay, he considers the delicate art of getting sources to tell you what they might not otherwise reveal. In another, he discusses how to use flashback to place a bear encounter in a travel narrative while observing that “readers are not supposed to notice the structure. It is meant to be about as visible as someone’s bones.” The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising and revising, and revising.Draft No. 4 is enriched by multiple diagrams and by personal anecdotes and charming reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee describes his enduring relationships with The New Yorker and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and recalls his early years at Time magazine. Throughout, Draft No. 4 is enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world. Review John McPhee is the recipient of the 2017 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement AwardFollowers of John McPhee, perhaps the most revered nonfiction narrative journalist of our time, will luxuriate in the ship-shape prose of Draft No. 4 . . . Delightful . . . Interspersed with observations every writer should remember . . . The last three chapters will be assigned and reassigned by grateful writing teachers . . . I savored every word Corby Kummer, New York Times Book Review[Draft No. 4]s combination of shop talk, war stories, slices of autobiography, and priceless insights and lessons suggests what it must be like to occupy a seat in the McPhee classroom . . . McPhees observations about writing are always invigorating to engage with. And Draft No. 4 belongs on the short shelf of essential books about the craft. Ben Yagoda, The Wall Street JournalA sunny tribute to the gloomy side of the writing life . . . Its McPhee on McPhee; commentary on his greatest hits, a little backstory, a little affectionate gossip . . . His advice is in the service of making the text as sturdy, useful and beautiful as possible. Its an intimate book and intimacy is rare in McPhees work . . . For most of his career, McPhee has written reverently about . . . methodical, somewhat solitary men (mostly) who work with their hands and take quiet pride in their work. Parul Sehgal, The New York TimesA book that any writer, aspiring or accomplished, could profitably read, study and argue with . . . For over half a century, John McPhee now 86 has been writing profiles of scientists, eccentrics and specialists of every ...

-Titulo Original : Lose Your Mother A Journey Along The Atlantic Slave Route-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Saidiya Hartman is the author of Scenes of Subjection, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, and Lose Your Mother. She was a professor in the Department of English and African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, prior to joining the faculty of Columbia University, where she is currently a professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. She received a MacArthur fellowship in 2019. She lives in New York City. In Lose Your Mother, Saidiya Hartman traces the history of the Atlantic slave trade by recounting a journey she took along a slave route in Ghana. Following the trail of captives from the hinterland to the Atlantic coast, she reckons with the blank slate of her own genealogy and vividly dramatizes the effects of slavery on three centuries of African and African American history.The slave, Hartman observes, is a stranger torn from family, home, and country. To lose your mother is to be severed from your kin, to forget your past, and to inhabit the world as an outsider. There are no known survivors of Hartmans lineage, no relatives in Ghana whom she came hoping to find. She is a stranger in search of strangers, and this fact leads her into intimate engagements with the people she encounters along the way and with figures from the past whose lives were shattered and transformed by the slave trade. Written in prose that is fresh, insightful, and deeply affecting, Lose Your Mother is a landmark text (Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams). Review “An original, thought-provoking meditation on the corrosive legacy of slavery, [Lose Your Mother is] splendidly written, driven by this writers prodigious narrative gifts.” Elizabeth Schmidt, The New York Times Book Review“This is a memoir about loss, alienation, and estrangement, but also, ultimately, about the power of art to remember. Lose Your Mother is a magnificent achievement.” Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard Universit...

-Titulo Original : Fierce Attachments A Memoir (fsg Classics)-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Vivian Gornicks books include Approaching Eye Level, The End of The Novel of Love, and The Situation and The Story. She lives in New York City. Vivian Gornick’s Fierce Attachments hailed by the New York Times for the renowned feminist author’s “mesmerizing, thrilling” truths within its pages has been selected by the publication’s book critics as the #1 Best Memoir of the Past 50 Years.In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick’s groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O’Brien has called “the principal crux of female despair”: the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond.Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of “urban peasants,” Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother’s romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick’s struggle to find herself in love and in work.As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader’s admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter’s mother. Unsparing, deeply courageous, Fierce Attachments is one of the most remarkable documents of family feeling that has been written, a classic that helped start the memoir boom and remains one of the most moving examples of the genre.“[Gornick] stares unflinchingly at all that is hidden, difficult, strange, unresolvable in herself and others at loneliness, sexual malice and the devouring, claustral closeness of mothers and daughters…[Fierce Attachments is] a portrait of the artist as she finds a language original, allergic to euphemism and therapeutic banalities worthy of the women that raised her.” The New York Times Review There’s a clarity to this memoir that’s so brilliant its unsettling; Gornick finds a measure of freedom in her writing and her feminist activism, but even then, she and her mother can never let each other go. Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review “There are only so many words in the dictionary with which to say how very good this book is. Fierce Attachments deserves them all.” The Washington Post Book World“Gornick is a distinctive and startling artist--the true subject of this brilliant book.” The Nation“Searingly intimate and courageous... Gornicks writing is brilliant, clean, and colorful, simultaneously evoking the inner and outer spaces she is trying to illuminate.” Mother Jones“Inspiring... Gornick carves, in careful, electrifying words, each scar and glory of her unconventional life.” Guardian Book Supplemen...

-Titulo Original : The Fellowship The Literary Lives Of The Inklings J.r.r. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski are the coauthors of Prayer: A History and The Book of Heaven. Philip is also the former editor of the Best American Spiritual Writing series.Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski are the coauthors of Prayer: A History and The Book of Heaven. Carol is the author of several books and a professor of religion at Smith College. Best Book of June 2015 (The Christian Science Monitor)Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and LiteratureC. S. Lewis is the 20th centurys most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewiss Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the groups most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brothers motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewiss favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellows chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of supernatural shockers, and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth centurys darkest years-and did so in dazzling style. Review Named Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature“The husband-and-wife team of Philip and Carol Zaleski bring to bear both extensive scholarship and a neatly interwoven narrative; this is a story about storytellers, and it shows . . . In The Fellowship, the authors never cease to feel for the Inklings, particularly sympathizing with their yearnings for spiritual and professional fulfillment, with occasional wry asides on the nature of their marriages and their politics to take note of shortcomings both personal and institutional. Taken together, it makes the overarching life of the group something greater than the sum of its parts.” Genevieve Valentine, The New York Times Book Review“The Zaleskis have produced a major work of biography and criticism, and if you are a devotee of any of the Inklings, you will want to read it.” Michael Dirda, The Washington Post“The Zaleskis deftly interweave the four stories [of Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, and Williams], showing how, when read together, these very different men can help us more clearly see the state of literary and religious culture in mid-century England and beyond.” Anthony Domestico, Christian Science Monitor“A fascinating overview of this intellectual orchestra . . . a captivating story of young writers finding their literary footing while trying to rectify competing desires for happiness, love, fame, and faith.” Ethan Gilsdorf, The Boston Globe“The Fellowship makes a convincing case that [the Inklingss] cultural legacy deserves comparison with that of the less Christian, more intellectually austere B...

-Titulo Original : Slaves In The Family-Fabricante : Farrar, Straus And Giroux-Descripcion Original: About the Author Edward Ball is the author of several nonfiction books, including The Inventor and the Tycoon, about the birth of moving pictures in California, and Slaves in the Family, an account of his family’s history as slaveholders in South Carolina, which received the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has taught at Yale University and has been awarded fellowships by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard and the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center. He is also the recipient of a Public Scholar Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. More than twenty years after this celebrated work of narrative nonfiction won the National Book Award and changed the American conversation about race, Slaves in the Family is reissued by FSG Classics, with a new preface by the author.The Ball family hails from South Carolina Charleston and thereabouts. Their plantations were among the oldest and longest-standing plantations in the South. Between 1698 and 1865, close to four thousand black people were born into slavery under the Balls or were bought by them.In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball recounts his efforts to track down and meet the descendants of his familys slaves. Part historical narrative, part oral history, part personal story of investigation and catharsis, Slaves in the Family is, in the words of Pat Conroy, a work of breathtaking generosity and courage, a magnificent study of the complexity and strangeness and beauty of the word ‘family. Review “Powerful.” The New York Times Book Review“Gripping.” The Boston Globe“Brilliant.” The New Yorker“A landmark book.” San Francisco Chronicle“Everyone should read and learn from this luminous book...[Slaves in the Family] is not only honest in its scrupulous reporting but also personal narrative at its finest.” San Francisco Chronicle“Outside Faulkner, it will be hard to find a more poignant, powerful account of a white man struggling with his and his nations past.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution“Much more than bare history...Its the human encounters, and the live, breathing juxtaposition of past and present, that give [Edward Balls] book its vibrancy and importance.” Detroit Free Press“A masterpiece . . . It is a work about slaves in the family. But it is also a large omnium-gatherum of enchanting fireside anecdotes, secrets teased out of reluctant fragments from the remote past, the real lives of blacks and whites whose stories had been lost in the disintegrating churn of time until Edward Balls patient reconstructions.” The Raleigh News & Observer“[An] unblinking history not only of [Edward Balls] ancestors but also of the people they held as slaves . . . It reminds us of our common humanity and of the ties that still bind us, no matter what the wounds of the past.” The Philadelphia Inquire...