-Titulo Original : Beloved-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding New York Times bestseller transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement...

-Titulo Original : The Architecture Of Happiness-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: The Achitecture of Happiness is a dazzling and generously illustrated journey through the philosophy and psychology of architecture and the indelible connection between our identities and our locations.One of the great but often unmentioned causes of both happiness and misery is the quality of our environment: the kinds of walls, chairs, buildings, and streets that surround us. And yet a concern for architecture is too often described as frivolous, even self-indulgent. Alain de Botton starts from the idea that where we are heavily influences who we can be, and argues that it is architectures task to stand as an eloquent reminder of our full potential...

-Titulo Original : The Secret History-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill...

-Titulo Original : The Spectacle Of Skill: Selected Writings Of Robert Hughes-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Over the course of his distinguished career, Robert Hughes wrote with brutal honesty about art, architecture, culture, religion-and himself. The Spectacle of Skill brings together some of his most unforgettable pieces, culled from nine of his most widely read and important books, alongside never-before-published pages from his unfinished second volume of memoirs. Showcasing Hughes’s enormous range, this indispensable anthology offers a uniquely cohesive view of both the critic and the man. Review “An eye-opener. [ The Spectacle of Skill] contains some of the most nakedly emotional prose [Hughes] ever committed to paper.” - The New York Times “Hughes wrote many kinds of things in a career that spanned four decades . . . but his primary goal was always the same: to entertain, especially while he was educating. The Spectacle of Skill will serve as a generous reminder to all those familiar with Hughes’s prose of just how dazzlingly he succeeded at that goal, and it will introduce newcomers to one of the great critical voices of the late 20th century.” - The Christian Science Monitor “[ The Spectacle of Skill] echo[es] with an erudite authority that would seem impossible to obtain in our day, and a bombast that would be unbearably rude. The combination, conveyed in a clear and entertaining prose, will feel nostalgic even to those who come to know [Hughes] only by this book.” - San Francisco Chronicle “Art writing is rarely readable and hardly ever done well. Few did it better than Robert Hughes.” - Chicago Tribune “For anyone who wishes emphatically to know what is what in the here and now.” - The Wall Street Journal About the Author Robert Hughes was born in Australia in 1938. In 1970 he moved to the United States to become chief art critic for Time, a position he held until 2001. His books include The Shock of the New, The Fatal Shore, Nothing if Not Critical, The Culture of Complaint, Barcelona, Goya, Things I Didn’t Know, and Rome. He is a New York Public Library Literary Lion, and was the recipient of a number of literary awards and prizes, including two Frank Jewett-Mather Awards. He is widely held as the most respected art critic of our time...

-Titulo Original : GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL - A Short History Of Everybody For The Last 13,000 Years-Fabricante : VINTAGE-Descripcion Original: THIS BOOK ANSWERS THE MOST OBVIOUS, THE MOST IMPORTANT, YET THE MOST DIFFICULT QUESTION ABOUT HUMAN HISTORY: WHY HISTORY UNFOLDED SO DIFFERENTLY ON DIFFERENT CONTINENTS. GEOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHY, NOT RACE, MOULDED THE CONTRASTING FATES OF EUROPEANS, ASIANS, NATIVE AMERICANS, SUB-SAHARAN AFRICANS, AND ABORIGINAL AUSTRALIANS. AN AMBITIOUS SYNTHESIS OF HISTORY, BIOLOGY, ECOLOGY AND LINGUISTICS, GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT AND HUMANE WORKS OF POPULAR SCIENCE...

-Titulo Original : Ogilvy On Advertising-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called the most sought after wizard in the business. Told with brutal candor and prodigal generosity, David Ogilvy reveals: * How to get a job in advertising * How to choose an agency for your product * The secrets behind advertising that works * How to write successful copy-and get people to read it * Eighteen miracles of research * What advertising can do for charities And much, much more. From the Inside Flap A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called the most sought after wizard in the business. 223 photos. From the Back Cover A candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called the most sought after wizard in the business. 223 photos. About the Author David Ogilvy (1911-1999) was a business executive who founded the advertising, marketing, and PR agency Ogilvy & Mather in 1948. Throughout his illustrious career, the mogul Time magazine called “the most sought-after wizard in the business” shared his knowledge of the industry in the books Ogilvy on Advertising and the bestselling Confessions of an Advertising Man...

-Titulo Original : Love In The Time Of Cholera. Lyubov Vo Vremya Chumy-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Love In The Time Of Cholera. Lyubov Vo Vremya Chum...

-Titulo Original : Killers Of The Flower Moon: The Osage Murders And The Birth Of The FBI-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * A twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history, from the author of The Lost City of Z. In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe. Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. One of her relatives was shot. Another was poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more Osage were dying under mysterious circumstances, and many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll rose, the newly created FBI took up the case, and the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including a Native American agent who infiltrated the region, and together with the Osage began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history. Review A New York Times Notable BookNamed a best book of the year by Amazon, Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR, Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub, and Slate “The best book of the year so far.” -Entertainment Weekly “Disturbing and riveting. . . . Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true. . . . It will sear your soul.” -Dave Eggers, New York Times Book Review “A marvel of detective-like research and narrative verve.” - Financial Times “A shocking whodunit. . . . What more could fans of true-crime thrillers ask?” - USA Today “A master of the detective form. . . . Killers is something rather deep and not easily forgotten.” - Wall St. Journal “David Granns Killers of the Flower Moon is unsurprisingly extraordinary. -Time “A masterful work of literary journalism crafted with the urgency of a mystery. . . . Contained within Granns mesmerizing storytelling lies something more than a brisk, satisfying read. Killers of the Flower Moon offers up the Osage killings as emblematic of Americas relationship with its indigenous peoples and the culture of killing that has forever marred that tie.” -The Boston Globe “[C]lose to impeccable. Its confident, fluid in its dynamics, light on its feet. . . . The crime story it tells is appalling, and stocked with authentic heroes and villains. It will make you cringe at mans inhumanity to man.” - The New York TimesNew York Times bestseller (April 2018) About the Author David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, which was chosen as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other publications and has been translated into more than twenty-five languages. He is also the author of The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. His work has garnered several honors for outstanding journalism, including a George Polk Award. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter 1 The Vanishing In April, millions of tiny flowers spread over the blackjack hills and vast prairies in the Osage territory of Oklahoma. There are Johnny-­jump-­ups and spring beauties and little bluets. The Osage writer John Joseph Mathews observed that the galaxy of petals makes it look as if the “gods had left confetti.” In May, when coyotes howl beneath an unnervingly large moon, taller plants, such as spiderworts and black-­eyed Susans, begin to creep over the tinier blooms, stealing their light and water. The necks of the smaller flowers break and their petals flutter away, and before long they a...

-Titulo Original : Homegoing-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * Ghana, eighteenth century: two half sisters are born into different villages, each unaware of the other. One will marry an Englishman and lead a life of comfort in the palatial rooms of the Cape Coast Castle. The other will be captured in a raid on her village, imprisoned in the very same castle, and sold into slavery. One of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year and a PEN/Hemingway award winner, Homegoing follows the parallel paths of these sisters and their descendants through eight generations: from the Gold Coast to the plantations of Mississippi, from the American Civil War to Jazz Age Harlem. Yaa Gyasi’s extraordinary novel illuminates slavery’s troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed-and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation. Review “Homegoing is an inspiration.” -Ta-Nehisi Coates Spectacular. -Zadie Smith “Powerful. . . . Compelling. . . . Illuminating.” - The Boston Globe “A blazing success.” -Los Angeles Times “I could not put this book down.” -Roxane Gay “Devastating. . . . Luminous.” -Entertainment Weekly “A beautiful story.” -Trevor Noah, The Daily Show “Spellbinding.” - Minneapolis Star Tribune “Dazzling. . . . Devastating. . . . Truly captivating.” - The Washington Post “Brims with compassion. . . . Yaa Gyasi has given rare and heroic voice to the missing and suppressed.” -NPR “Tremendous . . . Spectacular. . . . Essential reading.” - San Francisco Chronicle “Magical. . . . Hypnotic. . . . Yaa Gyasi [is] a stirringly gifted writer.” - The New York Times Book Review “Powerful. . . . Gyasi has delivered something unbelievably tough to pull off: a centuries-spanning epic of interlinked short stories. . . . She has a poet’s ability to pain a scene with a handful of phrases.” - The Christian Science Monitor “Thanks to Ms. Gyasi’s instinctive storytelling gifts, the book leaves the reader with a visceral understanding of both the savage realities of slavery and the emotional damage that is handed down, over the centuries. . . . By its conclusion, the characters’ tales of loss and resilience have acquired an inexorable and cumulative emotional weight.” - The New York Times “[Toni Morrison’s] influence is palpable in Gyasi’s historicity and lyricism; she shares Morrison’s uncanny ability to crystalize, in a single event, slavery’s moral and emotional fallout. . . . No novel has better illustrated the way in which racism became institutionalized in this country.” -Vogue “Gyasi gives voice, and an empathetic ear, to the ensuing seven generations of flawed and deeply human descendants, creating a patchwork mastery of historical fiction.” - Elle “A remarkable feat-a novel at once epic and intimate, capturing the moral weight of history as it bears down on individual struggles, hopes, and fears. A tremendous debut.” -Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment “Rich. . . . Fascinating. . . . Each chapter is tightly plotted, and there are suspenseful, even spectacular climaxes.” - Vulture “[A] commanding debut . . . will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. When people talk about all the things fiction can teach its readers, they’re talking about books like this.” - Marie Claire “ Homegoing weaves a spectacular epic. . . . Gyasi gives voice not just to a single person or moment, but to a resonant chorus of eight generations.” - Los Angeles Review of Books “Moving. . . . Compelling. . . . Gyasi is an enormously talented writer.” - The Dallas Morning News “I cannot remember the last time I read a novel that made me want to use the adjective perfect. . . . Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing is a feat rarely achieved: a book with the scope of world history and the craft of something much smaller. . . . The cumulative effect is staggering.” -Molly McArdle, Brooklyn Magazine “Carrying on in the tradition of her foremothers-like Toni Mo...

-Titulo Original : Intelligence In War: The Value--and Limitations--of What The Military Can Learn About The Enemy-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: A masterly look at the value and limitations of intelligence in the conduct of war from the premier military historian of our time, John Keegan. Intelligence gathering is an immensely complicated and vulnerable endeavor. And it often fails. Until the invention of the telegraph and radio, information often traveled no faster than a horse could ride, yet intelligence helped defeat Napoleon. In the twentieth century, photo analysts didn’t recognize Germany’s V-2 rockets for what they were; on the other hand, intelligence helped lead to victory over the Japanese at Midway. In Intelligence in War, John Keegan illustrates that only when paired with force has military intelligence been an effective tool, as it may one day be in besting al-Qaeda. Review “Likely to jar the conventional wisdom. . . . Keegan is always a pleasure to read for his wit, insight and style.” - The New York Times Book Review “Bracing, meticulous case studies [by] our greatest modern military historian.” - Newsweek “Keegan is a . . . treasure. . . . His analysis is as sharp as ever, and it’s all written with his characteristic flair.” - The Christian Science Monitor “Thought-provoking. . . . Keegan’s book is a wise corrective, assessing just how useful intelligence has been in battle.” - The Dallas Morning News From the Inside Flap In fiction, the spy is a glamorous figure whose secrets make or break peace, but, historically, has intelligence really been a vital step to military victories? In this breakthrough study, the preeminent war historian John Keegan goes to the heart of a series of important conflicts to develop a powerful argument about military intelligence. In his characteristically wry and perceptive prose, Keegan offers us nothing short of a new history of war through the prism of intelligence. He brings to life the split-second decisions that went into waging war before the benefit of aerial surveillance and electronic communications. The English admiral Horatio Nelson was hot on the heels of Napoleon s fleet in the Mediterranean and never knew it, while Stonewall Jackson was able to compensate for the Confederacy s disadvantage in firearms and manpower with detailed maps of the Appalachians. In the past century, espionage and decryption have changed the face of battle: the Japanese surprise attack at the Battle of the Midway was thwarted by an early warning. Timely information, however, is only the beginning of the surprising and disturbing aspects of decisions that are made in war, where brute force is often more critical. Intelligence in War is a thought-provoking work that ranks among John Keegan s finest achievements. From the Hardcover edition. From the Back Cover John Keegan, whose many books, including classic histories of the two world wars, have confirmed him as the premier miltary historian of our time, here presents a masterly look at the value and limitations of intelligence in the conduct of war. Intelligence gathering is an immensely complicated and vulnerable endeavor. And it often fails. Until the invention of the telegraph and radio, information often traveled no faster than a horse could ride, yet intelligence helped defeat Napoleon. In the twentieth century, photo analysts didnt recognize Germanys V-2 rockets for what they were; on the other hand, intelligence helped lead to victory over the Japanese at Midway. In Intelligence in War, John Keegan illustrates that only when paired with force has military intelligence been an effective tool, as it may one day be in besting al-Qaeda. About the Author John Keegan was for many years senior lecturer in military history at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and has been a fellow at Princeton University and a visiting professor of history at Vassar College. He is the author of twenty books, including the acclaimed The Face of Battle and The Second World War. He lived in Wiltshire, England until...

-Titulo Original : The Bushwhacked Piano-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: As a citizen, Nicholas Payne is not in the least solid. As a boyfriend, he is nothing short of disastrous, and his latest flame, the patrician Ann Fitzgerald, has done a wise thing by dropping him. But Ann isnt counting on Nicholass wild persistence, or on the slapstick lyricism of Thomas McGuane, who in The Bushwhacked Piano sends his hero from Michigan to Montana on a demented mission of courtship whose highlights include a ride on a homicidal bronco and apprenticeship to the inventor of the worlds first highrise for bats. The result is a tour de force of American Dubious. Review The work of a writer of the first magnitude. His sheer writing skill is nothing short of amazing. The preternatural force, grace, and self-control of his prose recall Faulkner.... McGuane is a virtuoso. -- The New York Times Book Review McGuane shares with Celine a genius for seeing the profuse, disparate materials of everyday life as a highly organized nightmare. -- The New Yorker A novel of wisecracks and puns and ordinary objects invested with legendary potency. -- Newsweek From the Inside Flap A heroic young man is in pursuit of a spoiled rich girl, a career, and a manageable portion of the American Dream. From the Back Cover ng man is in pursuit of a spoiled rich girl, a career, and a manageable portion of the American Dream. About the Author Thomas McGuane lives in McLeod, Montana. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the author of ten novels, three works of nonfiction, and three collections of stories...

-Titulo Original : Perla (Vintage Contemporaries)-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: From the author of the international bestseller, The Invisible Mountain, comes Perla, a coming-of-age story based on one of the darkest chapters in Argentinean history. Growing up as a privileged only child in Buenos Aires, Perla Correa learned early on not to discuss the profession of her naval officer father in a country still reeling from the abuses of a deposed military dictatorship. But when an uninvited visitor appears in Perla’s home, this encounter sets her on a journey that will force her to confront the unease she has suppressed all her life-and to make a wrenching decision about who she is, and who she will become. Review “Beautiful. . . . Wrenching. . . . De Robertis is an extraordinarily courageous writer who only gets better with every book.” -Junot Diaz“Mesmerizing. . . . A moving, poetic novel about the costs of revolution and the evolutionary process that is identity.” -O, The Oprah Magazine“Haunting . . . a sensitive exploration of love, loyalty, and hope in the wake of atrocity.” -The New Yorker “De Robertis brings the best of two cultures to bear in her work, melding the Latin literary tradition of magical realism with a thoroughly modern, politically charged North American sensibility. . . . [Her] extraordinary gift makes this brave, important book an object of beauty.” -Chicago Tribune “De Robertis holds the reader’s attention with her entrancingly rhythmic and pulsating prose. . . . [Her] voice is distinctive and her novel vivid and memorable.” -The Wall Street Journal “A gripping journey that’s as heart-wrenching as it is healing; a reminder that the Disappeared must not be forgotten. . . . Both the story and prose flow like a glistening Rio de la Plata. . . . De Robertis’ writing . . . from beginning to end hypnotizes with poetic, crushing beauty.” -Minneapolis Star Tribune “Impressive. . . . Bold. . . . In an artful blend of beauty and horror, De Robertis has made the disappeared visible once again. With that, she has done them-and us-a great service.” -San Francisco Chronicle “This ambitious narrative . . . is propulsive and emotionally gripping. . . . Culminating in a wrenching catharsis about rebirth and healing.” -Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[Perla] is a literary descendant of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, but very much its own achingly original, hauntingly lyrical outing.” -East Bay Express “Enthralling.” -New York Daily News “It’s no exaggeration to say I’ve rarely read a more poetic novel than Carolina De Robertis’ Perla. What makes it doubly impressive is the subject matter that this author takes on. . . . De Robertis is a new voice for Latin America, following in the footsteps of Isabel Allende, and dare I say it, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” -Washington Independent Book Review “De Robertis skillfully weaves a lyrical voice around her characters that treats victims, perpetrators, and bystanders with the same care and honesty. The result is a powerfully humanizing effort that examines a nation struggling with a very dark, recent past.” -Library Journal (starred review) “Lyrically combining into reality both the fantastic and the horrific, De Robertis weaves a beautiful and plain-faced tale about birth, rebirth, and the responsibility of inheritance from complex, startling history.” -Booklist (starred review) “An elegantly written and affecting meditation on life in the wake of atrocity.” -Kirkus Reviews About the Author Carolina De Robertis was raised in England, Switzerland, and California by Uruguayan parents. Her debut novel, The Invisible Mountain, was an international best seller that was translated into fifteen languages; it was an O, The Oprah Magazine 2009 Terrific Read, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, and the recipient of Italy’s Rhegium Julii Prize. She is the recipient of a 2012 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her fiction and literary translations have appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, a...

-Titulo Original : The Queens Gambit A Novel-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Engaging and fast-paced, this gripping coming-of-age novel of chess, feminism, and addiction speeds to a conclusion as elegant and satisfying as a mate in four. Now a highly acclaimed, award-winning Netflix series. Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting. Review “ The Queens Gambit is sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years--for the pure pleasure and skill of it.” --Michael Ondaatje “Compelling. . . . A magnificent obsession.” --Los Angeles Times “Beth Harmon is an unforgettable creation--and The Queens Gambit is Walter Teviss most consummate and heartbreaking work.” --Jonathan Lethem “Gripping reading. . . .Nabokovs The Defense and Zweigs The Royal Game are the classics: now joining them is The Queens Gambit.” -- The Financial Times “More exciting than any thriller Ive seen lately; more than that, beautifully written. “ --Martin Cruz Smith, author of GorkyPark “It’s advisable to tape your fingers before opening The Queen’s Gambit. Otherwise, the suspense may bring on nail-chewing right to the elbow.” -- Houston Chronicle “Tevis traps us in the breathless drama of the moment and makes us feel the same intense involvement his characters feel.” -- The Plain Dealer“There’s more excitement in Beth than in the collected works of Robert Ludlum.” -- Forth Worth Star-Telegram From the Inside Flap ld orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting. Engaging and fast-paced, The Queen s Gambit speeds to a conclusion as elegant and satisfying as a mate in four. From the Back Cover Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, shes competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as she hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting. Engaging and fast-paced, The Queens Gambit speeds to a conclusion as elegant and satisfying as a mate in four. About the Author Walter Tevis was an English literature professor at Ohio University. He is the author of seven books, including three that were the basis of major motion pictures: The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Hustler, and The Color of Money. His other books include Mockingbird, Far From Home, and The Steps of the Sun. He died in 1984. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. ONE BETH LEARNED OF HER MOTHERS DEATH FROM A WOMAN WITH A clipboard. The next day her picture appeared in the Herald-Leader. The photograph, taken on the porch of the gray house on Maplewood Drive, showed Beth in a simple cotton frock. Even then, she was clearly plain. A legend under the picture read: Orphaned by yesterdays pile-up on New Circle Road, Elizabeth Harmon surveys a troubled future. Elizabeth, eight, was left without family b...

-Titulo Original : Isaacs Storm A Man, A Time, And The Deadliest Hurricane In History-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: From the bestselling author of The Devil in the White City, here is the true story of the deadliest hurricane in history.National BestsellerSeptember 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.Using Clines own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one mans heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaacs Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature. Review “A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and all the more compelling for being true.” -The New York Times Book Review “Gripping ... the Jaws of hurricane yarns.” -The Washington PostThe best storm book Ive read, consumed mostly in twenty-four hours; these pages filled me with dread. Days later, I am still glancing out the window nervously. A well-told story. -Daniel Hays, author of My Old Man and the SeaIsaacs Storm so fully swept me away into another place, another time that I didnt want it to end. I braced myself from the monstrous winds, recoiled in shock at the sight of flailing children floating by, and shook my head at the hubris of our scientists who were so convinced that they had the weather all figured out. Erik Larsons writing is luminous, the story absolutely gripping. If there is one book to read as we enter a new millennium, its Isaacs Storm, a tale that reminds us that there are forces at work out there well beyond our control, and maybe even well beyond our understanding. -Alex Kotlowitz, author of The Other Side of the River and There Are No Children HereThere is electricity in these pages, from the crackling wit and intelligence of the prose to the thrillingly described terrors of natural mayhem and unprecedented destruction. Though brimming with the subtleties of human nature, the nuances of history, and the poetry of landscapes, Isaacs Storm still might best be described as a sheer page turner. -Melissa Faye Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and The Temple BombingSuperb…. Larson has made [Isaac] Cline, turn-of-the-century Galveston, and the Great Hurricane live again. -The Wall Stret JournalErik Larons accomplishment is to have made this great-storm story a very human one -thanks to his use of the large number of survivors accounts-without ignoring the hurricane itself. -The Boston GlobeVividly captures the devastation. -NewsdayThis brilliant exploration of the hurricans deadly force...tracks the gathering storm as if it were a character…. Larson has the storytellers gift of keeping the reader spellbound. -The Times-PicayuneWith consumate narrative skill and insight into turn-of-the-century American culture…. Larsons story is about the folly of all who believe that man can master or outwit the forces of nature. -The News & ObserverA powerful story ... a classic tale of mankind versus nature. -The Christian Science Monitor From the Inside Flap September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely de...

-Titulo Original : Perfume The Story Of A Murderer-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind’s classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion-his sense of smell-leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated from the German by John E. Woods. Review ?A fable of criminal genius?. Remarkable.? The New York Times From the Inside Flap An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskinds classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one mans indulgence in his greatest passion-his sense of smell-leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouilles genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the ultimate perfume-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated by John E. Woods A fable of crimial genius.... Remarkable. -- The New York Times Superb storytelling all the way...the climax is a savage shocker. -- The Plain DealerAn astonishing performance, a masterwork of artistic conception and execution. A totally gripping page-turner. -- The San Francisco Chronicle From the Back Cover An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskinds classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one mans indulgence in his greatest passion-his sense of smell-leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouilles genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and frest-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the ultimate perfume-the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brillance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity. Translated by John E. Woods A fable of crimial genius.... Remarkable. --The New York Times Superb storytelling all the way...the climax is a savage shocker. --The Plain Dealer An astonishing performance, a masterwork of artistic conception and execution. A totally gripping page-turner. --The San Francisco Chronicle About the Author Patrick Suskind was born in Ambach, near Munich, in 1949. He studied medieval and modern history at the University of Munich. His first play, The Double Bass, ...

-Titulo Original : The Power Broker Robert Moses And The Fall Of New York-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping of twentieth-century New York. One of the Modern Library’s hundred greatest books of the twentieth century. Robert Caros monumental book makes public what few outsiders knew: that Robert Moses was the single most powerful man of his time in the City and in the State of New York. And in telling the Moses story, Caro both opens up to an unprecedented degree the way in which politics really happens-the way things really get done in Americas City Halls and Statehouses-and brings to light a bonanza of vital information about such national figures as Alfred E. Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt (and the genesis of their blood feud), about Fiorello La Guardia, John V. Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. But The Power Broker is first and foremost a brilliant multidimensional portrait of a man-an extraordinary man who, denied power within the normal framework of the democratic process, stepped outside that framework to grasp power sufficient to shape a great city and to hold sway over the very texture of millions of lives. We see how Moses began: the handsome, intellectual young heir to the world of Our Crowd, an idealist. How, rebuffed by the entrenched political establishment, he fought for the power to accomplish his ideals. How he first created a miraculous flowering of parks and parkways, playlands and beaches-and then ultimately brought down on the city the smog-choked aridity of our urban landscape, the endless miles of (never sufficient) highway, the hopeless sprawl of Long Island, the massive failures of public housing, and countless other barriers to humane living. How, inevitably, the accumulation of power became an end in itself. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He was held in fear-his dossiers could disgorge the dark secret of anyone who opposed him. He was, he claimed, above politics, above deals; and through decade after decade, the newspapers and the public believed. Meanwhile, he was developing his public authorities into a fourth branch of government known as Triborough-a government whose records were closed to the public, whose policies and plans were decided not by voters or elected officials but solely by Moses-an immense economic force directing pressure on labor unions, on banks, on all the citys political and economic institutions, and on the press, and on the Church. He doled out millions of dollars worth of legal fees, insurance commissions, lucrative contracts on the basis of who could best pay him back in the only coin he coveted: power. He dominated the politics and politicians of his time-without ever having been elected to any office. He was, in essence, above our democratic system. Robert Moses held power in the state for 44 years, through the governorships of Smith, Roosevelt, Lehman, Dewey, Harriman and Rockefeller, and in the city for 34 years, through the mayoralties of La Guardia, ODwyer, Impellitteri, Wagner and Lindsay, He personally conceived and carried through public works costing 27 billion dollars-he was undoubtedly Americas greatest builder. This is how he built and dominated New York-before, finally, he was stripped of his reputation (by the press) and his power (by Nelson Rockefeller). But his work, and his will, had been done. Review Surely the greatest book ever written about a city. -David Halberstam, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and author of The Best and the Brightest I think about Robert Caro and reading The Power Broker back when I was twenty-two years old and just being mesmerized, and Im sure it helped to shape how I think about politics. -President Barack Obama The most absorbing, detailed, instructive, provocative book ever published about the making and raping of modern New York Cit...

-Titulo Original : The Stranger-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger-Camuss masterpiece-givesus the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed the nakedness of man faced with the absurd and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. “The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” -from the Introduction by Peter DunwoodieFirst published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward. Review The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camuss compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that its not mired in period philosophy. The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once hes imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trials proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mothers death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable. Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the storys end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. She wanted to know if I loved her, he says of his girlfriend. I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didnt mean anything but that I probably didnt. Theres a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. Its undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with the gentle indifference of the world remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson Review “The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” -from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie From the Inside Flap Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed the nakedness of man faced with the absurd. First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward. From the Back Cover Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed the nakedness of man faced with the absurd. First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward. About the Author Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger-now one of the most widely read novels of this century-in 1942. Cele...

-Titulo Original : The Warmth Of Other Suns The Epic Story Of Americas Great Migration-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER *NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize-wiñer and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties.Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic. Review ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:The New York Times * USA Today * O: The Oprah Magazine * Publishers Weekly * Salon * Newsday * The Daily BeastONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:The New Yorker * The Washington Post * The Economist * Boston Globe * San Francisco Chronicle * Chicago Tribune * Entertainment Weekly * Philadelphia Inquirer * The Guardian * The Seattle Times * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * The Christian Science MonitorMARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE WINNER*HEARTLAND AWARD WINNER *DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST“A landmark piece of nonfiction . . . sure to hold many surprises for readers of any race or experience….A mesmerizing book that warrants comparison to The Promised Land, Nicholas Lemann’s study of the Great Migration’s early phase, and Common Ground, J. Anthony Lukas’s great, close-range look at racial strife in Boston….[Wilkerson’s] closeness with, and profound affection for, her subjects reflect her deep immersion in their stories and allow the reader to share that connection.” -Janet Maslin, The New York Times “The Warmth of Other Suns is a brilliant and stirring epic, the first book to cover the full half-century of the Great Migration… Wilkerson combines impressive research…with great narrative and literary power. Ms. Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what John Steinbeck did for the Okies in his fiction masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath; she humanizes history, giving it emotional and psychological depth.”-John Stauffer, Wall Street Journal“[A] massive and masterly account of the Great Migration….A narrative epic rigorous enough to impress all but the crankiest of scholars, yet so immensely readable as to land the author a future place on Oprah’s couch.” -David Oshinsky, The New York T...

-Titulo Original : When Breath Becomes Air-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Light wear to cover. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday...

-Titulo Original : Never Let Me Go-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: NOBEL PRIZE WINNER * From the acclaimed, bestselling author of The Remains of the Day comes “a Gothic tour de force (The New York Times) with an extraordinary twist-a moving, suspenseful, beautifully atmospheric modern classic. As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special-and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Review ONE OF THE ATLANTICS 15 BOOKS YOU WONT REGRET RE-READINGA page turner and a heartbreaker, a tour de force of knotted tension and buried anguish.” -Time“A Gothic tour de force. . . . A tight, deftly controlled story . . . . Just as accomplished [as The Remains of the Day] and, in a very different way, just as melancholy and alarming.” -The New York TimesElegaic, deceptively lovely. . . . As always, Ishiguro pulls you under. -Newsweek“Superbly unsettling, impeccably controlled . . . . The book’s irresistible power comes from Ishiguro’s matchless ability to expose its dark heart in careful increments.” -Entertainment Weekly From the Back Cover From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human. Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but its only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is. Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date. From the Hardcover edition. About the Author Kazuo Ishiguro is the 2017 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. His work has been translated into more than 40 languages. Both The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have sold more than 1 million copies, and both were adapted into highly acclaimed films. Ishiguros other work includes The Buried Giant, Nocturnes, A Pale View of the Hills, and An Artist of the Floating World. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. My name is Kathy H. I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That’ll make it almost exactly twelve years. Now I know my being a carer so long isn’t necessarily because they think I’m fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who’ve been told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete waste of space. So I’m not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact they’ve been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too. My donors have always tended to do much better than expected. Their recovery times have...

-Titulo Original : Sula-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner: Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. This brilliantly imagined novel brings us the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Nel and Sulas devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal-or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life. Review “Extravagantly beautiful. . . . Enormously, achingly alive. . . . A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter.” -The New York Times “Exemplary. . . . The essential mysteries of death and sex, friendship and poverty are expressed with rare economy.” -Newsweek “In characters like Sula, Toni Morrison’s originality and power emerge.” -The Nation “Enchanting. . . . Powerful.” -Chicago Daily News “Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature.” -The New York Review of Books “Sula is one of the most beautifully written, sustained works of fiction I have read in some time. . . . [Morrison] is a major talent.” -Elliot Anderson, Chicago Tribune “As mournful as a spiritual and as angry as a clenched fist . . . written in language so pure and resonant that it makes you ache.” -Playboy “In the first ranks of our living novelists.” -St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Toni Morrison’s gifts are rare: the re-creation of the black experience in America with both artistry and authenticity.” -Library Journal “Should be read and passed around by book-lovers everywhere.” -Los Angeles Free Press From the Inside Flap Toni Morrisons first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), was acclaimed as the work of an important talent, written--as John Leonard said in The New York Times--in a prose so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.Sula has the same power, the same beauty.At its center--a friendship between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel--both black, both smart, both poor, raised in a small Ohio town--meet when they are twelve, wishbone thin and dreaming of princes.Through their girlhood years they share everything--perceptions, judgments, yearnings, secrets, even crime--until Sula gets out, out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where beneath the sporting life of the men hanging around the place in headrags and soft felt hats there hides a fierce resentment at failed crops, lost jobs, thieving insurance men, bug-ridden flour...at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped. Sula leaps it and roams the cities of America for ten years. Then she returns to the town, to her friend. But Nel is a wife now, settled with her man and her three children. She belongs. She accommodates to the Bottom, where you avoid the hand of God by getting in it, by staying upright, helping out at church suppers, asking after folks--where you deal with evil by surviving it. Not Sula. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, she can never accommodate. Nel cant understand her any more, and the others never did. Sula scares them. Mention her now, and they recall that she put her grandma in an old folks home (the old lady who let a train take her leg for the insurance)...that a child drowned in the river years ago...that there was a plague of robins when she first returned...In clear, dark, resonant language, Toni Morrison brilliantly evokes not only a bond between two lives, but the harsh, loveless, ultimately mad world in which that bond is destroyed, the world of the Bottom and its people, through forty years, up to the time of their bewildered realization that even more than they feared Sula, their pariah, they needed her.F...

-Titulo Original : 1491 New Revelations Of The Americas Before Columbus-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Why Billington SurvivedTHE FRIENDLY INDIANOn March 22, 1621, an official Native American delegation walked through what is now southern New England to negotiate with a group of foreigners who had taken over a recently deserted Indian settlement. At the head of the party was an uneasy triumvirate: Massasoit, the sachem (political-military leader) of the Wampanoag confederation, a loose coalition of several dozen villages that controlled most of what is now southeastern Massachusetts; Samoset, sachem of an allied group to the north; and Tisquantum, a distrusted captive, whom Massasoit had reluctantly brought along as an interpreter.Massasoit was an adroit politician, but the dilemma he faced would have tested Machiavelli. About five years before, most of his subjects had fallen before a terrible calamity. Whole villages had been depopulated-indeed, the foreigners ahead now occupied one of the empty sites. It was all he could do to hold together the remnants of his people. Adding to his problems, the disaster had not touched the Wampanoag’s longtime enemies, the Narragansett alliance to the west. Soon, Massasoit feared, they would take advantage of the Wampanoag’s weakness and overrun them.Desperate threats require desperate countermeasures. In a gamble, Massasoit intended to abandon, even reverse, a long-standing policy. Europeans had been visiting New England for at least a century. Shorter than the natives, oddly dressed, and often unbearably dirty, the pallid foreigners had peculiar blue eyes that peeped out of the masks of bristly, animal-like hair that encased their faces. They were irritatingly garrulous, prone to fits of chicanery, and often surprisingly incompetent at what seemed to Indians like basic tasks. But they also made useful and beautiful goods-copper kettles, glittering colored glass, and steel knives and hatchets-unlike anything else in New England. Moreover, they would exchange these valuable items for cheap furs of the sort used by Indians as blankets. It was like happening upon a dingy kiosk that would swap fancy electronic goods for customers’ used socks-almost anyone would be willing to overlook the shopkeeper’s peculiarities.Over time, the Wampanoag, like other native societies in coastal New England, had learned how to manage the European presence. They encouraged the exchange of goods, but would only allow their visitors to stay ashore for brief, carefully controlled excursions. Those who overstayed their welcome were forcefully reminded of the limited duration of Indian hospitality. At the same time, the Wampanoag fended off Indians from the interior, preventing them from trading directly with the foreigners. In this way the shoreline groups put themselves in the position of classic middlemen, overseeing both European access to Indian products and Indian access to European products. Now Massasoit was visiting a group of British with the intent of changing the rules. He would permit the newcomers to stay for an unlimited time-provided that they formally allied with the Wampanoag against the Narragansett.Tisquantum, the interpreter, had shown up alone at Massasoit’s home a year and a half before. He spoke fluent English, because he had lived for several years in Britain. But Massasoit didn’t trust him. He seems to have been in Massasoit’s eyes a man without anchor, out for himself. In a conflict, Tisquantum might even side with the foreigners. Massasoit had kept Tisquantum in a kind of captivity since his arrival, monitoring his actions closely. And he refused to use him to negotiate with the colonists until he had another, independent means of communication with them.That March Samoset-the third member of the triumvirate-appeared, having hitched a ride from his home in Maine on an English ship that was plying the coast. Not known is whether his arrival was due to chance or if Massasoit had asked him to come down because he had picked up a f...

-Titulo Original : The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat And Other Clinical Tales-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: In his most extraordinary book, the bestselling author of Awakenings and poet laureate of medicine” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients inhabiting the compelling world of neurological disorders, from those who are no longer able to recognize common objects to those who gain extraordinary new skills. Featuring a new preface, Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual disorders: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. In Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, his patients are deeply human and his tales are studies of struggles against incredible adversity. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine’s ultimate responsibility: “the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject.” Review Insightful, compassionate, moving . . . the lucidity and power of a gifted writer. -The New York Times Book Review A provocative introduction to the human mind. -St. Louis Post-Dispatch Dr. Sackss best book. . . . One sees a wise, compassionate and very literate mind at work in these 20 stories, nearly all remarkable, and many the kind that restore ones faith in humanity. -Chicago Sun-Times Dr. Sackss most absorbing book. . . . His tales are so compelling that many of them serve as eerie metaphors not only for the condition of modern medicine but of modern man -New York Magazine “This book is for everybody who has felt from time to time that certain twinge of self-identity and sensed how easily, at any moment, one might lose it.” -The Times “Oliver Sacks has become the worlds best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness.” -The Guardian “Populated by a cast as strange as that of the most fantastic fiction . . . Dr Sacks shows the awesome powers of our mind and just how delicately balanced they have to be.” -Sunday Times “Sacks explores neurological disorders with a novelists skill and an appreciation of his patients as human beings.” -Publishers Weekly “Sensitive yet lively. . . . This book ranks with the very best of its genre. It will inform and entertain anyone, especially those who find medicine an intriguing and mysterious art.” -Kirkus Reviews About the Author Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at Queens College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Franciscos Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York. Familiar to the readers of The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, Dr. Sacks spent more than fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as the poet laureate of medicine, and over the years he received many awards, including honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal College of Physicians. His memoir On the Move was published shortly before his death in August 2015...

-Titulo Original : The Mysterious Affair At Styles: The First Hercule Poirot Mystery-Fabricante : Vintage-Descripcion Original: Agatha Christie’s debut novel was the first to feature Hercule Poirot, her famously eccentric Belgian detective. A refugee of the Great War, Poirot is settling in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactress, the elderly Emily Inglethorp. When Emily is poisoned and the authorities are baffled, Poirot puts his prodigious sleuthing skills to work. Suspects are plentiful, including the victim’s much younger husband, her resentful stepsons, her longtime hired companion, a young family friend working as a nurse, and a London specialist on poisons who just happens to be visiting the nearby village. All of them have secrets they are desperate to keep, but none can outwit Poirot as he navigates the ingenious red herrings and plot twists that earned Agatha Christie her well-deserved reputation as the queen of mystery. Review “Christie’s books are so much more than great puzzles. Each of her novels demonstrates a profound understanding of people-how they think, feel and behave-all delivered in her crisp, elegant, addictively readable style.” -The Guardian Agatha Christie created the modern murder mystery. -The New Yorker“Christie wrote brilliantly compact, stylized and efficient mysteries. . . . The genre in its lean classic English form fit her like a cat burglar’s thin black glove.” -John Updike About the Author Agatha Christie is the worlds best-known mystery writer. Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language, and another billion in 44 foreign languages. She is the most widely published author of all time in any language, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Her writing career spanned more than half a century, during which she wrote 79 novels and a short story collection, as well as 14 plays, one of which, The Mousetrap, is the longest running play in history. Two of the characters she created, the brilliant Belgian detective Hercule Poirot and the irrepressible and relentless Miss Marple, went on to become world famous detectives. Both have been widely dramatized in feature films and made-for-TV movies. Agatha Christie died in 1976. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter I I Go to Styles The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as The Styles Case has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which still persist. I will therefore briefly set down the circumstances which led to my being connected with the affair. I had been invalided home from the Front; and, after spending some months in a rather depressing Convalescent Home, was given a months sick leave. Having no near relations or friends, I was trying to make up my mind what to do, when I ran across John Cavendish. I had seen very little of him for some years. Indeed, I had never known him particularly well. He was a good fifteen years my senior, for one thing, though he hardly looked his forty-five years. As a boy, though, I had often stayed at Styles, his mothers place in Essex. We had a good yarn about old times, and it ended in his inviting me down to Styles to spend my leave there. The mater will be delighted to see you again--after all those years, he added. Your mother keeps well? I asked. Oh, yes. I suppose you know that she has married again? I am afraid I showed my surprise rather plainly. Mrs. Cavendish, who had married Johns father when he was a widower with two sons, had been a handsome woman of middle-age as I remembered her. She certainly could not be a day less than seventy now. I recalled her as an energetic, autocratic personality, somewhat inclined to charitable and social notoriety, with a fondness for opening bazaars and playing the Lady Bountiful. She ...