-Titulo Original : Goodbye To A River A Narrative-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth.Goodbye to a Riveris his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment. Review “John Graves’s writing is invaluable. . . . The reader who misses Graves will have missed much.” --Larry McMurtry“As you read, you have the feeling that the whole colorful, brutal tapestry of the Lone Star State is being unrolled for you out of the biography of this one stream.” -The Atlantic Monthly“Graves’ originality and flair turn this local scene and regional lore into an hoest and powerfully evocative picture of frontier life anywhere.” -The Chicago Sunday Tribune“One of the most pleasing books I’ve ever read. I love the way it weaves together remote history, not so remote history, present events, and landscape.”-Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs From the Inside Flap , a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth.Goodbye to a Riveris his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tr From the Back Cover In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the streams regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the rivers people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment. About the Author John Graves was born in Texas and educated at Rice University and Columbia University. He published a number of books, chiefly concerned with his home reg...

-Titulo Original : Ruth Bader Ginsburg A Life-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: NATIONAL BESTSELLER“A vivid account of a remarkable life.” -The Washington PostIn this comprehensive, revelatory biography-fifteen years of interviews and research in the making-historian Jane Sherron De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg’s passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, and her meticulous jurisprudence. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs is her Jewish background, specifically the concept of tikkun olam, the Hebrew injunction to “repair the world,” with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. Ruth’s journey begins with her mother, who died tragically young but whose intellect inspired her daughter’s feminism. It stretches from Ruth’s days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn’s James Madison High School to Cornell University to Harvard and Columbia Law Schools; to becoming one of the first female law professors in the country and having to fight for equal pay and hide her second pregnancy to avoid losing her job; to becoming the director of the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and arguing momentous anti-sex discrimination cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. All this, even before being nominated in 1993 to become the second woman on the Court, where her crucial decisions and dissents are still making history. Intimately, personably told, this biography offers unprecedented insight into a pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, American society, and our American character and spirit will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond.REVISED AND UPDATED WITH A NEW AFTERWORD Review “Readable and rewarding. . . . Ginsburg is a true-blue legal icon.” -NPR“Engaging and admiring.” -The Wall Street Journal “In a revealing new biography, 15 years in the making, Jane Sherron De Hart helps untangle the mystery of the decorous Ginsburg as feminist gladiator.” -The Atlantic “An in-depth biography of the Supreme Court justice who has become a pop-culture icon.” -USA Today “De Hart’s thorough biography relates this life story with a nice sense of the sweep of feminist and legal history that is contained within it.” -Minneapolis Star Tribune “Monumental. . . . The first comprehensive biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. . . . De Hart excels in explaining the majority opinions, and later the dissents, in which she participated with remarkable clarity, illuminating the issues, the competing positions, and the significance of each in language easily grasped by readers with no legal training.” -Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “De Hart’s great strength is her ability to explain Ginsburgs cases and the legal strategies she employed. . . . An insightful, fascinating, and admiring biography of one of America’s most extraordinary jurists.” -Publishers Weekly “Meticulously researched. . . . Ginsburg’s career is skillfully placed within the context of American social and political history.” -Library Journal “Passionate and thorough. . . . A major event in scholarship on American law.” -Washington Monthly “Scholarly, yet accessible. . . . Rewarding and compelling.” -Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Magisterial and timely. . . . Written in clear language and grounded in historical context.” -The Forward “Compelling. . . . De Hart succeeds in showing us that the 107th person to be appointed to the Supreme Court is much more than a pop culture icon.” -Jewish Journal “A masterful biography that adds depth and insight to Ginsburgs only-in-America life story.” -Washington Independent Review of Books “De Hart displays an impressive grasp of each area of Ginsburg’s legal influence, from women’s rights to voting rights to gay rights to immigrant rights, with a particular focus on striking down laws that discriminated on the basis of gender.” -Newsweek “A rigorous, comprehensive, deftly written biography.” -The National Book Review “De Hart dynamically devotes more than 500 pa...

-Titulo Original : Wave-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Review One of The New York Timess 10 Best Books of the Year, a Christian Science Monitor Best Nonfiction Book, a Newsday Top 10 Books pick, a People magazine Top 10 pick, a Good Reads Best Book of the Year, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction BookA National Book Critics Circle Award finalist“The most powerful and haunting book I have read in years.” -Michael Ondaatje“Unforgettable. . . . The most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read. . . . [Deraniyagala] has fearlessly delivered on memoir’s greatest promise: to tell it like it is, no matter the cost. . . . As unsparing as they come, but also defiantly flooded with light. . . . Extraordinary.” -Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book Review “Unforgettable . . . It is a miracle Deraniyagala lived. The fact that she could write such a memoir, bringing those she loved to life so completely that they breathe on the page, is itself a miracle.” -Vanity Fair “Out of unimaginable loss comes an unimaginably powerful book. . . . I urge you to read Wave. You will not be the same person after you’ve finished.” -Will Schwalbe “Vivid. . . . What emerges from this wizardry most clearly is, of course, Deraniyagala herself-carrying within her present life another gorgeously remembered one.” -San Francisco Chronicle “An amazing, beautiful book.” -Joan Didion“Stories of grief, like stories of love, are of permanent literary interest when done well. . . . Greatness reverberates from [Deraniyagala’s] simple and supple prose.” -The New York Times “Turns revealing into art as powerful as a planetary vibration.” -The Plain Dealer “Both heartbreaking and astonishingly beautiful.” -New York Post “[Deraniyagala’s family] spring from these pages with an exuberance and dimensionality that lifts Wave from memoir into some virtual realm of documentation.” -The Boston Globe “[A] quiet memoir of torturous loss. . . . Deraniyagala tours memories of her young family’s history with artistry.” -The New Yorker “A haunting chronicle of love and horrifying loss. . . . Memory, sorrow, and undying love.” -Abraham Verghese “Radiant. . . . The extremity of Deraniyagala’s story seizes the attention, but it’s the beauty of how she expresses it that makes it indelible. . . . [She is] a writer of such extraordinary gifts. . . . Wave is a small, slender book, but it is enormous on the inside.” -Salon “Chillingly real. . . . Wave captures the elusive, shape-shifting nature of grief.” -Newsday “Beautiful and ravaging . . . faultless prose.” -Daily Herald “Immeasurably potent. . . . Relentless in its explication of grief, this massively courageous, tenaciously unsentimental chronicle of unthinkable loss and incremental recovery explodes-and then expands-our notion of what love really means.” -More magazine NATIONAL BESTSELLER * One womans searing account of losing her entire family in a tsunami. “The most exceptional book about grief I’ve ever read.... As unsparing as they come, but also defiantly flooded with light.... Extraordinary.”-Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book ReviewIn 2004, at a beach resort on the coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala and her family-parents, husband, sons-were swept away by a tsunami. Only Sonali survived to tell their tale. This is her account of the nearly incomprehensible event and its aftermath. About the Author SONALI DERANIYAGALA teaches in the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is currently a visiting research scholar at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, working on issues of economic development, including post-disaster recovery. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. sri lanka, july--december 2005 Someone had removed the brass plate with my father’s name on it from the gray front wall. It had his name etched in black italics. I sat in the passenger seat of my friend Mary--Anne’s car, my eyes clinging t...

-Titulo Original : American Creation Triumphs And Tragedies In The Founding Of The Republic-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter One: The YearIf permitted the historical license to stretch the definition of a year, then the fifteen months between the shots fired at Lexington and Concord in April of 1775 and the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in July of 1776 can justifiably claim to be both the most consequential and the strangest year in American history. It was consequential because the rationale for American independence and the political agenda for an independent American republic first became explicit at this time. It was strange because while men were dying, whole towns being burned to the ground, women being raped, captured spies and traitors being executed, the official posture of what called itself “The United Colonies of North America” remained abiding loyalty to the British Crown.[1]Whether the American colonists were living a lie, an illusion, or a calculated procrastination is a good question. But when Thomas Jefferson finally got around to drafting the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776, one sentence enjoyed special resonance as an accurate characterization of the past year: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” This was Jefferson’s lyrical way of describing the quite remarkable feat of making an explosion happen in slow motion.After all, prudence does not ordinarily make its way onto any list of revolutionary virtues. The very idea of a cautious revolutionary would seem, on the face of it, a contradiction in terms. The standard story of most revolutions features a cast of desperate characters with impulsive temperaments, utopian visions, a surefire sense of where history is headed, and an unquenchable urge to get there fast. Indeed, tarrying along the way is usually regarded as counterrevolutionary.If that is what the standard story of a revolution requires, then one of two conclusions about the American Revolution follows naturally: either it was not really a revolution at all but merely (or perhaps not so merely) a war for colonial independence, the first of its kind in the modern world, to be sure, but not a fundamental shift in the social order that left the world changed forever. Or else it was a strange kind of revolution that did not fit the standard pattern because many of its most prominent leaders were convinced that the pace of change must be slowed down and the most radical of the revolutionary promises deferred. The result is another contradiction, or perhaps a paradox: namely, an evolutionary revolution.In short, the decision to secede from the British Empire was accompanied by a truly revolutionary agenda for the infant American republic. But the most prominent leaders, John Adams chief among them, insisted on the deferral of the revolutionary agenda and, in some instances, its postponement into the distant future. Instead of regarding this gradualist approach as a moral and political failure, a conclusion that historians on the left regard as, shall we say, self-evident, the argument offered here is just the opposite. In my judgment the calculated decision to make the American Revolution happen in slow motion was a creative act of statesmanship that allowed the United States to avoid the bloody and chaotic fate of subsequent revolutionary movements in France, Russia, and China.And so, within a very strange year of full-scale war occurring alongside political reticence, we find an equally strange pattern emerging that will establish the uniquely judicious framework within which the American Revolution proceeded. John Adams, the major figure in the Continental Congress, and George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, are the chief players in ...

-Titulo Original : Ruthless River Love And Survival By Raft On The Amazons Relentless Madre De Dios (vintage Departures)-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: A stunning debut; a Departures original publication. The ultimate survival story; a wild ride-the wildest-down a South American river in the thick of the Amazon Basin; a true and thrilling adventure of a young married couple who survive a plane crash only to later raft hundreds of miles across Peru and Bolivia, ending up in a channel to nowhere, a dead end so flooded there is literally no land to stand on. Their raft-a mere four logs-separates them from the piranha-and-caiman-infested water until they finally realize that there is no way out but to swim. Vintage Original. Holly FitzGerald and her husband, Fitz-married less than two years-set out on a yearlong honeymoon adventure of a lifetime, backpacking around the world. Five months into the trip their plane crash lands in Peru at a penal colony walled in by jungle, and their blissfully romantic journey turns into a terrifying nonstop labyrinth of escape and survival. On a small, soon-ravaged raft that quickly becomes their entire universe through dangerous waters alive with deadly animals and fish, their only choice: to continue on, despite the rush of insects swarming them by day, the sounds of encroaching predators at night. Without food or means of communication, with no one to hear their cries for help or on a search-and-rescue expedition to find them, the author and her husband make their way, fighting to conquer starvation and navigate the brute force of the river, their only hope for survival, in spite of hunger and weakening resolve, to somehow, miraculously hang on and find their way east to a large riverside town, before it is too late. . . . Review Admiration for Holly FitzGerald’s RUTHLESS RIVER The survival tale has long occupied a storied corner of the travel writing genre, from The Worst Journey in the World to In the Heart of the Sea. Holly FitzGeralds Ruthless River instantly takes its spot among these giants ... In this world of water, the FitzGeralds struggle in vain to find their way back to the rivers current ... The couple endures, maintaining hope and affection for each other. Its this that elevates Ruthless River above the typically heroic tale of survival. In simple, unsentimental terms, Holly FitzGerald has given us a most unlikely love story.--Andrew McCarthy, The New York Times Book Review“If you built a survival-adventure book in a laboratory, you’d end up with Ruthless River . . . A completely unexpected real-life thriller. -Jon Foro, Omnivoracious (Best Biographies & Memoirs of June) “Adventurous.” -Outside Magazine (The Best New Survival Books) “A harrowing survival saga . . . In vivid, absorbing prose, FitzGerald unspools a story that moves from optimism, energy, and a thrilled sense of adventure to abject fear and near starvation.” -Nina MacLaughlin, The Boston Globe “Both travel memoir and shocking adventure story, like a real-life Survivor or Naked and Afraid . . . A powerful story about survival, love, and faith in the face of impossible odds . . . Unputdownable . . . absolutely fascinating.” -Katie Lawrence, Library Journal “Vivid and consistently compelling . . . An absorbing tale of survival, love, and the generosity of people who helped save their lives.” -Kirkus Reviews “A detailed, high-stakes debut memoir . . . FitzGerald weaves in the stories from their past with palpable, evocative details of their daily struggles with starvation, strong currents, and despair, all while the couple’s love, self-knowledge, and faith deepen . . . Recommended for fans of survival narratives, coming-of-maturity stories, and travelogues from off the beaten path.” -Louisa Whitfield-Smith, Booklist “Adventure, romance, danger, salvation-all in a story that’s beautifully told and, incredibly, really happened. Pick up Ruthless River, but be careful. You might find it hard to put down. This is one of those memoirs you won’t soon forget.” -Damon DiMarco, author of Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/1...

-Titulo Original : A Man For All Seasons A Play In Two Acts-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: The classic dramatization of Sir Thomas Mores historic conflict with Henry VIII-a compelling portrait of a courageous man who died for his convictions.Sir Thomas More-the brilliant nobleman, lawyer, humanist, author of such works as Utopia-was a long-time friend and favorite of Henry VIII, ascending to the position of Lord Chancellor in 1529. Yet he was also a staunch Catholic, and when Henry broke with the Church in 1531 after the Pope had refused to grant him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, More resigned the Chancellorship. In 1534, Parliament passed a bill requiring all subjects to take an oath acknowledging the supremacy of Englands king over all foreign sovereigns-including the Pope. More refused, was imprisoned, and finally was executed in 1535. An enduring modern classic, A Man for All Seasons challenges the mind, and, in the end, touches the heart (New York Times). From the Inside Flap play about Sir Thomas More, the Lord chancellor who refused to compromise and was executed by Henry VIII. About the Author Robert Bolt (1924-1995) was distinguished as one of the most successful British writers of his generation. Bolt was an English playwright who earned a degree in history from Manchester University in 1949 and intended to be a school teacher after serving in the Royal Air Force. The incredible success of his first play, Flowering Cherry (staged in 1957/1958), drove Bolt into becoming a full-time playwright. Robert Bolt is best known for his most successful play, A Man for All Seasons (staged in 1960), which won five Tony Awards, starring Paul Scofield on Broadway. Bolt himself wrote the film version, adapted in 1966 for director Fred Zinnemann. The motion picture received six Oscars, including an award for Best Screenplay...