-Titulo Original : The Last Cowboys A Pioneer Family In The New West-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review The Last Cowboys is a beautiful book, threading deep reporting into a gorgeously written narrative. It is American portraiture at its best. Susan OrleanOne hell of a ride. Carson Vaughan, Washington PostRemarkable.… [The Last Cowboys] has an uncommon ambition: it’s a story not just of rodeo, but of the contemporary West. John Swansburg, New York Times Book ReviewGripping.… What Branch focuses on so beautifully is how one remarkable American family navigates the situation of wanting to do dangerous, peculiar and deeply impressive kinds of work. Nathan Deuel, Los Angeles TimesThe Last Cowboys is informed by scrupulous and compassionate reporting, casting light on a side of the sporting world typically hidden from view. Andrew Graybill, Wall Street JournalThe Last Cowboys is a humble but sweeping portrait of a humble but highly accomplished family. Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning NewsKeenly observed and artfully conveyed. Michael Berry, San Francisco ChronicleA fascinating dive into what it’s like to make a living by horseback, both on the range and at the rodeo. Christopher Collins, Texas ObserverBranch does a beautiful job chronicling a family as it navigates old traditions in a new, fast-paced century.… The Last Cowboys is an excellent, compassionate book. Michael Schaub, Minneapolis Star Tribune[The Last Cowboys] isn’t just about winning saddle bronc titles.… It’s about the Old West becoming new. Associated Press A cant-put-it-down modern Western. Kirk Siegler, NPR Longlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports WritingThe Last Cowboys is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter John Branch’s epic tale of one American family struggling to hold on to the fading vestiges of the Old West. For generations, the Wrights of southern Utah have raised cattle and world-champion saddle-bronc riders many call them the most successful rodeo family in history. Now they find themselves fighting to save their land and livelihood as the West is transformed by urbanization, battered by drought, and rearranged by public-land disputes. Could rodeo, of all things, be the answer? Written with great lyricism and filled with vivid scenes of heartache and broken bones, The Last Cowboys is a powerful testament to the grit and integrity that fuel the American Dream. About the Author John Branch is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times. He is the best-selling author of Boy on Ice and The Last Cowboys, and has been featured in The Best American Sports Writing. He lives near San Francisco, California...

-Titulo Original : Greek To Me Adventures Of The Comma Queen-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review A rapturous memoir of falling in love with a language. Rory Tolan, Washington PostNorris is an uncommonly engaging, witty enthusiast with a nose for delicious details. Heller McAlpin, NPRWhat a fantastic book! Not only is Greek to Me educational, entertaining, and gorgeously written, it shows us how intellectual curiosity coupled with a dash of bravery can pave the way for a more meaningful life. Ann PatchettNorris’ vibrant prose flies off the page.… She brings it all together with insight and wisdom. Elfrieda Abbe, Minneapolis Star TribuneCharming, ribald, highly informed, and always funny.… An adventure tale for intellectuals and also for the rest of us. Steve Martin[Mary] Norris… whose first book chronicled her passion for punctuation, here recounts, with the same contagious wit and enthusiasm, her obsession with Greece its language, history and culture. New York Times Book ReviewBeach reading for classicists and philhellenes… but with something more serious at stake. A. E. Stallings, Wall Street JournalNorris is a jaunty companion, splendidly bookish, full of excellent little facts. Charlotte Higgins, GuardianNorris has a remarkable gift for conveying and transmitting passion. Imogen Russell Williams, Times Literary SupplementDelightful. Bethanne Patrick, Washington PostGreek to Me bursts with a cheerful lust for all things Hellenic: the language, ancient and modern; the mythology; the wine; the sunshine; the sea; and, occasionally, the men. Susan Storer Clark, Washington Independent Review of Books “One of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read.” Vivian Gornick, New York Times Book ReviewMary Norris, The New Yorker’s Comma Queen and best-selling author of Between You & Me, has had a lifelong love affair with words. In Greek to Me, she delivers a delightful paean to the art of self-expression through accounts of her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, and reveals the surprising ways in which Greek helped form English. Greek to Me is filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine and more than a few Greek men. About the Author Mary Norris is the author of Greek to Me and the New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, an account of her years in The New Yorker copy department. Originally from Cleveland, she lives in New York...

-Titulo Original : Alone On The Ice The Greatest Survival Story In The History Of Exploration-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Gripping and superb. This book will steal the night from you. Laurence Gonzales, author of Deep SurvivalOn January 17, 1913, alone and near starvation, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was hauling a sledge to get back to base camp. The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface.Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, Which one are you?This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley’s famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States. 24 pages of illustrations Review Wonderfully told, impressively researched…For fans of outdoor adventure, Alone on the Ice brings you as close to trekking in a blizzard on icy, dangerous terrain as you’ll likely want to get. Chuck Leddy, Minneapolis Star TribuneImpressively seamless and straightforward. Christina Thompson, Boston GlobeA chilling story…You feel the freezing temperatures, the fear, the desperation, along with the loyalty of the other Australasian Antarctic Expedition members. Sandra Dallas, Denver PostIn Alone on the Ice, Roberts, a veteran mountain climber and chronicler of adventures, admirably succeeds in restoring the luster that the Australian Antarctic Expedition and its leader deserve. Dennis Drabelle, Washington PostA fresh and thoroughly researched account of Doulas Mawsons epic journey of self-rescue across one of the most inhospitable regions known to man. Roberts takes the reader alongside the men of the 1912 Australasian Antarctic Expedition, and the desperation of Mawson s sledge journey can be well imagined step by frigid step. Ed Viesturs, author of K2: Life and Death on the Worlds Most Dangerous MountainOthers have written the loose outlines of Douglas Mawsons astonishing survival against the worst conditions that Antarctica can deliver a lesser-known but equally compelling epic as that of Ernest Shackleton but Robertss telling trumps them all. Gordon Wiltsie, author of To the Ends of the EarthThis is Roberts at his best, telling a little-known tale of adventure, tragedy, and endurance. Mawson may be the most famous Australian explorer, and Alone on the Ice is an admirable introduction of him to American readers. Greg Child, author of Over the EdgeAn accurate and enthralling account of the greatest story of polar exploration and survival. Roberts takes the reader back to a time of hardship, collective friendship, and a level of determination unknown in todays culture. This book will make you cherish every meal and the joys of a warm bed. Conrad Anker, coauthor of The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mt. Everest About the Author David Roberts (1943-2021) is the author of thirty books on mountaineering, exploration, and anthropology. His books have won the Boardman Tasker Award for Mountain Literature and the Grand Prize at the Banff Mountain Book Competition...

-Titulo Original : J. Edgar Hoover The Man And The Secrets-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: The cumulative effect is overwhelming. Eleanor Roosevelt was right: Hoover’s FBI was an American gestapo. Newsweek Shocking, grim, frightening, Curt Gentry’s masterful portrait of America’s top policeman is a unique political biography. From more than 300 interviews and over 100,000 pages of previously classified documents, Gentry reveals exactly how a paranoid director created the fraudulent myth of an invincible, incorruptible FBI. For almost fifty years, Hoover held virtually unchecked public power, manipulating every president from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. He kept extensive blackmail files and used illegal wiretaps and hidden microphones to destroy anyone who opposed him. The book reveals how Hoover helped create McCarthyism, blackmailed the Kennedy brothers, and influenced the Supreme Court; how he retarded the civil rights movement and forged connections with mobsters; as well as insight into the Watergate scandal and what part he played in the investigations of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. 32 pages of photographs Review The most extensive and controversial [book on Hoover] yet…A chilling look at the darker side of American politics. Library Journal About the Author Curt Gentry (1931-2014), an Edgar winner, was the author of J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, Frame-Up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, and co-author of Helter Skelter with Vincent Bugliosi...

-Titulo Original : The Light Ages The Surprising Story Of Medieval Science-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Named a Best Book of 2020 by The Telegraph, The Times, and BBC History Magazine An illuminating guide to the scientific and technological achievements of the Middle Ages through the life of a crusading astronomer-monk.Soaring Gothic cathedrals, violent crusades, the Black Death: these are the dramatic forces that shaped the medieval era. But the so-called Dark Ages also gave us the first universities, eyeglasses, and mechanical clocks. As medieval thinkers sought to understand the world around them, from the passing of the seasons to the stars in the sky, they came to develop a vibrant scientific culture.In The Light Ages, Cambridge science historian Seb Falk takes us on a tour of medieval science through the eyes of one fourteenth-century monk, John of Westwyk. Born in a rural manor, educated in England’s grandest monastery, and then exiled to a clifftop priory, Westwyk was an intrepid crusader, inventor, and astrologer. From multiplying Roman numerals to navigating by the stars, curing disease, and telling time with an ancient astrolabe, we learn emerging science alongside Westwyk and travel with him through the length and breadth of England and beyond its shores. On our way, we encounter a remarkable cast of characters: the clock-building English abbot with leprosy, the French craftsman-turned-spy, and the Persian polymath who founded the world’s most advanced observatory.The Light Ages offers a gripping story of the struggles and successes of an ordinary man in a precarious world and conjures a vivid picture of medieval life as we have never seen it before. An enlightening history that argues that these times weren’t so dark after all, The Light Ages shows how medieval ideas continue to color how we see the world today. 8 pages of color illustrations Review Magnificent...[Falk lets] us inhabit, for a spell of seven finely crafted chapters, the vibrant mind of a 14th-century Benedictine monk, John Westwyk... [Written] as if John Westwyk and Seb Falk, separated in time but not in spirit, were joining hands while guiding us along; or as if The Light Ages were Mr. Falk’s own clever astrolabe, seeking to make that shimmering light in the distance look, as well it should, wonderfully close and luminously real. Christoph Irmscher, Wall Street JournalFalk’s bubbling curiosity and strong sense of storytelling always swept me along. By the end, The Light Ages didn’t just broaden my conception of science; even as I scrolled away on my Kindle, it felt like I was sitting alongside Westwyk at St. Albans abbey, leafing through dusty manuscripts by candlelight. Alex Orlando, DiscoverFalk offers a sense of the international nature of medieval scholarship, debunking the image of isolated, repressive monastic communities and highlighting the influence of both Muslim and Jewish innovators. Smithsonian MagazineThe Lights Ages…illuminates not just the visionaries of the past but also the troubled state of anti-intellectualism in the modern world. Financial TimesA wonderful book, as at home bringing to life the obscure details of a Hertfordshire monk as it is explicating the infinite reaches of space and time. Required reading for anyone who thinks that the Middle Ages were a dark age. Tom Holland, author of DominionCompulsive, brilliantly clear, and superbly well-written, The Light Ages is more than just a very good book on medieval science: it’s a charismatic evocation of another world. Seb Falk uses the monk John of Westwyk to weld us into the medieval ways of imagining as well as thinking. And there are surprises galore for everyone, no matter how knowledgeable they may think they are. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval EnglandLike a fictional scientist cloning dinosaurs from wisps of DNA, Seb Falk takes barely surviving fragments of evidence about an almost forgotten astronomer in a storm-chilled, clifftop cell to conj...

-Titulo Original : The Undoing Project A Friendship That Changed Our Minds-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review Lewis has written one hell of a love story. Jennifer Senior, New York TimesLewis is the ideal teller of [Tversky and Kahneman’s] story… You see his protagonists in three dimensions deeply likable, but also flawed, just like most of your friends and family. David Leonhardt, New York Times Book ReviewFascinating stories about intriguing people. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, The New YorkerBrilliant… Lewis has given us a spectacular account of two great men who faced up to uncertainty and the limits of human reason. William Easterly, Wall Street JournalCompelling… The Undoing Project is a history of the birth of behavioral economics, but it’s also Lewis’s testament to the power of collaboration. Peter Coy, Bloomberg BusinessweekIntellectually mesmerizing and inspiring. Harpers BazaarMind-blowing… [The Undoing Project] will raise doubts about how you personally perceive reality. Don Oldenburg, USA TodayMichael Lewis has a genius for finding stories about people who view reality from an unusual angle and telling these stories in a compulsively readable way. Geoffrey Kabat, ForbesA fantastic read. Jesse Singal, New York MagazineLewis [is a] master of the character-driven narrative. Charlie Gofen, The National Book ReviewTantalizing and tender… Lewis is an irresistible storyteller and a master at illuminating complicated and fascinating subjects. Booklist, starred review How a Nobel Prize-winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which the human mind erred, systematically, when forced to make judgments in uncertain situations. Their work created the field of behavioral economics, revolutionized Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. Kahneman and Tversky are more responsible than anybody for the powerful trend to mistrust human intuition and defer to algorithms.The Undoing Project is about a compelling collaboration between two men who have the dimensions of great literary figures. They became heroes in the university and on the battlefield both had important careers in the Israeli military and their research was deeply linked to their extraordinary life experiences. Amos Tversky was a brilliant, self-confident warrior and extrovert, the center of rapt attention in any room; Kahneman, a fugitive from the Nazis in his childhood, was an introvert whose questing self-doubt was the seedbed of his ideas. They became one of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, working together so closely that they couldn’t remember whose brain originated which ideas, or who should claim credit. They flipped a coin to decide the lead authorship on the first paper they wrote, and simply alternated thereafter.This story about the workings of the human mind is explored through the personalities of two fascinating individuals so fundamentally different from each other that they seem unlikely friends or colleagues. In the process they may well have changed, for good, mankind’s view of its own mind. About the Author Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children...

-Titulo Original : Self-portrait In Black And White Family, Fatherhood, And Rethinking Race-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review Challenges us to think beyond America’s racial binaries. Zaid Jilani, The GuardianAn elegant and sharp-eyed writer.… In a publishing environment where analyses of race tend to call out white fragilities and catalogue historical injustices, Self-Portrait in Black and White is a counterintuitive, courageous addition. Carlos Lozada, The Washington PostA fluent, captivating, if often disquieting story.… We witness Williams on a journey of both self-discovery and self-creation, and his memoir is most valuable as a way deeper into, as opposed to a way out of, race talk. Emily Bernard, Harper’sWilliams has the essential things a writer needs command of language, complexity and depth of thought, and, maybe above all, courage. In Self-Portrait in Black and White he sticks his neck way out in pursuit of unfashionable, necessary truths. This book brings a blast of fresh air that will change your thinking about race in America. George Packer, author of The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New AmericaThomas Chatterton Williams’ Self-Portrait in Black and White is a gorgeously written and deeply knowledgeable account of fatherhood, identity, and race. Tender and probing, respectful of intellectual disagreement and of the raw emotions these subjects can stir, it nevertheless proceeds fearlessly and rigorously toward his own original and challenging conclusions. This is a book that will surely provoke, inform, and move readers, regardless of where they stand on the political and philosophical divide. Phil Klay, author of RedeploymentThis small book poses a very large question: How to become a self? Williams uses his own story to remind us that inner freedom depends on escaping the insidious categories of history and the suffocating cliches of the present. It is a stirring call to genuine liberation. Mark Lilla, author of The Once and Future LiberalIn fifty years, smart students will be writing senior theses seeking to understand why anyone in the early twenty-first century found anything in Self-Portrait in Black and White at all controversial. For now, curl up with this book to join a conversation on race about progress rather than piety, thought rather than therapy. John McWhorter, author of The Creole DebateThis moving and engrossing memoir is unfashionable in the best of ways. At a time when even purportedly optimistic visions of the future seem to assume that Americans will always be defined by the color of their skin, Thomas Chatterton Williams makes us dream of a future in which the importance of race will recede, and we are finally able to love each other for who we truly are. An energizing book by one of the greatest writers of our time. Yascha Mounk, author of The People vs. DemocracyWith Self-Portrait in Black and White Thomas Chatterton Williams has given us an elegantly rendered and trenchantly critical reflection on ‘race’ and identity one that is perfectly suited to our time. This is a subtle, unsettling, and brave book. Using his own journey through life as point of departure, Williams launches a major assault on the conventional wisdom about racial categorization in America. Not only does he envision a New World; he dares to point the way toward how we all might yet arrive on those uncharted shores. Glenn Loury, professor of economics and faculty fellow, Watson Institute, Brown UniversityThomas Chatterton Williams has written a brave and powerful book that I could not put down. At a time when white supremacy is resurgent in many countries, should we fight it by insisting on the equality of the races or the elimination of race as a social and biological category? It is a question that needs to be asked and a debate that needs to be had. Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO, New America A Time “Must-Read” Book of 2019 “[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not t...

-Titulo Original : Hitler 1889-1936 Hubris-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Hailed as the most compelling biography of the German dictator yet written, Ian Kershaws Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the heart of its subjects immense darkness.From his illegitimate birth in a small Austrian village to his fiery death in a bunker under the Reich chancellery in Berlin, Adolf Hitler left a murky trail, strewn with contradictory tales and overgrown with self-created myths. One truth prevails: the sheer scale of the evils that he unleashed on the world has made him a demonic figure without equal in this century. Ian Kershaws Hitler brings us closer than ever before to the character of the bizarre misfit in his thirty-year ascent from a Viennese shelter for the indigent to uncontested rule over the German nation that had tried and rejected democracy in the crippling aftermath of World War I. With extraordinary vividness, Kershaw recreates the settings that made Hitlers rise possible: the virulent anti-Semitism of prewar Vienna, the crucible of a war with immense casualties, the toxic nationalism that gripped Bavaria in the 1920s, the undermining of the Weimar Republic by extremists of the Right and the Left, the hysteria that accompanied Hitlers seizure of power in 1933 and then mounted in brutal attacks by his storm troopers on Jews and others condemned as enemies of the Aryan race. In an account drawing on many previously untapped sources, Hitler metamorphoses from an obscure fantasist, a drummer sounding an insistent beat of hatred in Munich beer halls, to the instigator of an infamous failed putsch and, ultimately, to the leadership of a ragtag alliance of right-wing parties fused into a movement that enthralled the German people.This volume, the first of two, ends with the promulgation of the infamous Nuremberg laws that pushed German Jews to the outer fringes of society, and with the march of the German army into the Rhineland, Hitlers initial move toward the abyss of war. Black-and-white photos throughout Review An absolutely outstanding piece of work that will become the standard Hitler biography for the next generation....It shows a total command of the issues involved in writing a biography of Hitler and its judgments are invariable shrewd and balanced. -- Jeremy Noakes, editor of Nazism 1919-1945In quest of the definitive explanation of the Hitler phenomenon, Ian Kershaws prodigious work is an eminently worthy contender....Kershaw brilliantly sets down how Hitler influenced events to serve his grandiose visions. -- Baltimore Sun, Hans Knight, 10 January 1999There can be little doubt that this will become the classic Hitler biography of our time. -- The New York Review of Books, Gordon A. Craig, 18 March 1999[A]n exceptional literary achievement. Its scholarship is undeniable...but its reading rhythm is near-hypnotic. We probably never will understand Adolf Hitler fully, but Ian Kershaw provides as many important clues as any author who has attempted to explain him. -- Fort Worth Morning Star-Telegram, Jeff Gunn, 31 January 1999 About the Author Ian Kershaw is a professor of modern history at the University of Sheffield and the author of numerous works of history, including Hitler: A Biography, Fateful Choices and Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution. He lives in Manchester, England...

-Titulo Original : The Perfect Storm A True Story Of Men Against The Sea-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: There is nothing imaginary about Jungers book; it is all terrifyingly, awesomely real. Los Angeles TimesIt was the storm of the century, boasting waves over one hundred feet high a tempest created by so rare a combination of factors that meteorologists deemed it the perfect storm. In a book that has become a classic, Sebastian Junger explores the history of the fishing industry, the science of storms, and the candid accounts of the people whose lives the storm touched. The Perfect Storm is a real-life thriller that makes us feel like weve been caught, helpless, in the grip of a force of nature beyond our understanding or control.Winner of the American Library Associations 1998 Alex Award. 8 pages of illustrations From Booklist *Starred Review* Junger’s most recent book, War (2010), which recounts his experiences with combat troops in war-torn Afghanistan, embodies both his ongoing fascination with life “on the tip of the spear” and his public image as a square-jawed danger-seeker. But it was The Perfect Storm (1997), written while he was a freelance tree-climber with only a notepad and an idea, that put him on the map. The outline is well known because the events made the news, because the book became a best-seller, and because the book became a major motion picture with A-list talent. In October 1991, a freak convergence of weather-a storm from the west, a cold front from the north, and a hurricane from the south-resulted in the Halloween Storm, a once-in-a-century gale that wreaked havoc on the North Atlantic. As befits a story so huge, Junger follows a diverse array of people through it, including fishermen, sailors, and rescue personnel. But it’s the story of the doomed swordfish boat Andrea Gail, whose crew was never found, that is the most compelling, and it is here that Junger shows the strength of his craft. In re-creating what might have happened to the six-man crew, he seamlessly weaves known facts with everything from interviews with survivors of other storms to explanations of fishing-boat architecture and the science behind drowning, with results so unforgettable that we can well imagine their final moments. But the Andrea Gail is not the whole story. There are other sword boats, the beleaguered sloop Satori with its crew of three, and a diverse array of rescuers whose actions are nothing short of heroic. There is a wealth of information here about the practice and business of fishing and about weather, sea, and people, but Junger shapes it all with an almost novelistic sense of pace and timing. Like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (1997), about disaster on Mount Everest, it’s a thrilling, sobering, and extremely accessible book that may well serve as the point of entry for readers curious about its subject. Rarely are works of nonfiction so deeply affecting. --Keir Graff Review Thrilling…even if you have never been to sea, Jungers account will put the frighteners on you. New York Times Book ReviewGuaranteed to blow readers away…A. Entertainment WeeklyA superb book. Washington Post[A] white-knuckle chronicle…[A] true adventure story. NewsweekEvery boater is drawn to storm-at-sea stories, and this one beats them all. Philadelphia InquirerRich, compassionate characterization, as well as taut, suspenseful prose. A tale that doesnt skimp on facts, yet keeps you turning pages from beginning to end. Seattle TimesRiveting…The natural upheaval holds center stage and acts as a character, but the story converges upon human beings in this case, the six-man crew of the doomed Gloucester swordfishing boat Andrea Gail. Boston GlobeHarrowing, relentless…and thoroughly enjoyable. Kansas City StarThe pages of this book crunch with salt. BoatingA terrifying, edifying read…Readers…are first seduced into caring for the book’s doomed characters, then compelled to watch them carried into the jaws of a meteorological hell. Junger’s compassionate, ...

-Titulo Original : The Sisters The Saga Of The Mitford Family-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Fascinating, the way all great family stories are fascinating. Robert Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the world wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; beautiful Diana married the Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley; and Unity, a close friend of Hitler, shot herself in the head when England and Germany declared war. The Mitfords had style and presence and were mercilessly gifted. Above all, they were funny hilariously and mercilessly so. In this wise, evenhanded, and generous book, Mary Lovell captures the vitality and drama of a family that took the twentieth century by storm and became, in some respects, its victims. 24 b/w photographs From The New Yorker This is not a political book, the author writes, and quotes Lord Longford: You have to look at that family as fun. Well, perhaps. Of the six sisters, Diana was married to the Fascist politician Oswald Mosley; Unity, obsessed with Hitler, shot herself when England and Germany went to war; Jessica joined the Communist Party. Nancy, of course, wrote delicious, acidic novels; she was also partly responsible for sending her sister Diana to prison. While it seems that every nickname bestowed by the ever-inventive clan is recorded in this fulsome, willfully injudicious volume (Honks, Debo, Bobo, Muv, Farve, Rudbin, Idden, Nanny Blor), the only information that might be called revelatory is that Dinky, Jessicas daughter, is now an emergency nurse specializing in pain management. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker Review “A dazzling cast of characters.... A rivetingly intimate history lesson.” - Anneli Rufus, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review“Vivid social history that reads like a novel.... An impressive group biography.” - Malinda Nash, Houston Chronicle“These women were so powerfully, inescapably, passionately alive.... The book remains engrossing from beginning to end.” - John Powers, Vogue“Lovell deftly weaves together the various strands of her subjects lives, making great use of letters, interviews and unpublished correspondence, as well as interviews with the two surviving Mitford sisters, Diana and Deborah.” - Matthew Price, Newsday“This biography presents a fascinating family to a new generation of readers.” - Lisa Levy, Entertainment Weekly“Lovell rises with aplomb to the challenges of a group biography, deftly weaving together the narrative threads of six at times radically disparate lives to create a fascinating account of a fascinating family.” - Publishers Weekly“A captivating read.” - Amy Strong, Library Journal“The Mitfords stories have been told over and over again, but.... Lovell, utilizing previously unseen documents, explores the relationships between the sisters... and presents the utter fun of this privileged but madcap family.” - Allen Weakland, Booklist About the Author Mary S. Lovells best-selling biographies include Straight on Till Morning (Beryl Markham) and The Sisters (the Mitford family). She lives in England...

-Titulo Original : The Nine Lives Of Pakistan Dispatches From A Precarious State-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review A vivid, complex portrait of a country at a crossroads….Walsh’s writing is elegant and expressive. It does what the best foreign correspondence should: transport the reader. Amna Nawaz, New York Times Book ReviewWalsh is an engaging guide....Nine Lives of Pakistan is an unquestionably illuminating and engaging book…an elegantly crafted memoir of a gifted journalist. Bilal Qureshi, Washington PostAn irresistible combination of storytelling panache and in-depth knowledge; Declan Walsh brings vividly to life characters and situations that illuminate some of the most significant phases of Pakistan’s history. Kamila Shamsie, author of Home FireA wonderful book which sets a new benchmark for non-fiction about the complex palace of mirrors that is Pakistan. Star New York Times foreign correspondent Declan Walsh has a rapier wit, a talent for skillfully sketched pen portraits and a sharp eye for tragedy, paradox and absurdity. With The Nine Lives of Pakistan he has produced a beautifully, lightly, fluently written book that is as profoundly nuanced as it is sharply perceptive. William Dalrymple, author of The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an EmpireIn The Nine Lives of Pakistan, Declan Walsh describes, with intellectual power and cool elegance, a much-misunderstood country. All those interested in South Asia and its complex politics and culture should read [this book]. Pankaj Mishra, author of The Age of AngerCaptivating.... Walsh is a wonderful writer, with a gift for sketching an impression of a place, time and ambience with a few brief lines. He knows how to interweave travelogue with an account of the relentless tensions that always threaten to burst through each vignette in the book. What also shines through is the relish with which Walsh throws himself into the far corners of Pakistan, into crowds, celebrations and rites, with a drive born of fascination with the land and its people. Julian Borger, GuardianIf you want to read one book about contemporary Pakistan, it has to be The Nine Lives of Pakistan, an intimate yet sweeping account of Pakistan’s contemporary history. Walsh is a rare foreign correspondent who doesn’t condescend, a storyteller who lets his characters speak. Although I am familiar with most of the events and characters Walsh writes about, his retelling left me breathless. Mohammed Hanif, author of A Case of Exploding MangoesAn enthralling account of Mr. Walsh’s near-decade as a correspondent. Tunku Varadarajan, Wall Street Journal[A] thrilling, big-hearted book....If Walsh’s guts take him places others have not reached, his prose - vigorous, cockeyed and clear - brings it home to the reader....This is not just a book for someone wanting to find out about Pakistan, although it performs that job admirably. It is also a richly observed study of how humans respond to the extraordinary pressures of a sometimes-choking society; empathetic, but hard-nosed and never veering into hagiography. Memphis Barker, TelegraphAn immersive and splendidly written portrait of Pakistan….Rich with incisive historical context, astute cultural analysis, and evocative language, Walsh’s account brings Pakistan’s contradictions to fascinating life. This masterfully reported account deserves a wide readership. Publishers Weekly, starred review Winner of the 2021 Overseas Press Club of America Cornelius Ryan Award The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting, up-close portrait of a fractured country.Declan Walsh is one of the New York Times’s most distinguished international correspondents. His electrifying portrait of Pakistan over a tumultuous decade captures the sweep of this strange, wondrous, and benighted country through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals.On assignment as the country careened between crises, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of La...

-Titulo Original : Home Game An Accidental Guide To Fatherhood-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: The New York Times bestseller: “Hilarious. No mushy tribute to the joys of fatherhood, Lewis’ book addresses the good, the bad, and the merely baffling about having kids.” Boston Globe When Michael Lewis became a father, he decided to keep a written record of what actually happened immediately after the birth of each of his three children. This book is that record. But it is also something else: maybe the funniest, most unsparing account of ordinary daily household life ever recorded, from the point of view of the man inside. The remarkable thing about this story isn’t that Lewis is so unusual. It’s that he is so typical. The only wonder is that his wife has allowed him to publish it. Review Brief, clever and frank a good gift for Father s Day. Funny, frank, and engaging. It s refreshing to hear a dad describe so vividly the uglier aspects of the job. His failings amuse . . . and he captures serious moments with a warmth that shows he s a pretty good dad after all. Brief, clever and frank a good gift for Father s Day.Funny, frank, and engaging. It s refreshing to hear a dad describe so vividly the uglier aspects of the job. About the Author Michael Lewis is the best-selling author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, The Blind Side, The Big Short, The Undoing Project, and The Fifth Risk. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and three children...

-Titulo Original : Will In The World How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death.A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright. 23 illustrations Review Vividly written, richly detailed, and insightful from first chapter to last . . . certain to secure a place among the essential studies of the greatest of all writers. William E. Cain, Boston Sunday GlobeSo engrossing, clearheaded, and lucid that its arrival is not just welcome but cause for celebration. Dan Cryer, NewsdayDazzling and subtle. Richard Lacayo, TimeA magnificent achievement. Denis Donoghue, Wall Street Journal About the Author Stephen Greenblatt (Ph.D. Yale) is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. Also General Editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, he is the author of eleven books, including Tyrant, The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve: The Story that Created Us,The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (winner of the 2011 National Book Award and the 2012 Pulitzer Prize); Shakespeares Freedom; Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare; Hamlet in Purgatory; Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World; Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture; and Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. He has edited seven collections of criticism, including Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, and is a founding coeditor of the journal Representations. His honors include the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize, for both Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England and The Swerve, the Sapegno Prize, the Distinguished Humanist Award from the Mellon Foundation, the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale University Graduate School, the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre, the Erasmus Institute Prize, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the Distinguished Teaching Award from the University of California, Berkeley. He was president of the Modern Language Association of America and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters...

-Titulo Original : Journal Of A Solitude-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: In this, her bestselling journal, May Sarton writes with keen observation and emotional courage of both inner and outer worlds: a garden, the seasons, daily life in New Hampshire, books, people, ideas and throughout everything, her spiritual and artistic journey. I am here alone for the first time in weeks, May Sarton begins this book, to take up my real life again at last. That is what is strange that friends, even passionate love,are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is happening or what has happened. In this journal, she says, I hope to break through into the rough, rocky depths,to the matrix itself. There is violence there and anger never resolved. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. In this book, we are closer to the marrow than ever before in May Sartons writing. Review This journal is not only rich in the love of nature and the love of solitude. It is an honorable confession of the writers faults, fears, sadness, and disappointments. . . . On the surface, Journal of a Solitude is a quiet book, but if you will read it carefully you will be aware of violent needs and a valiant warrior who has battled every inch of the way to a share of serenity. This is a beautiful book, wise and warm within its solitude. Eugenia Thornton, Cleveland Plain Dealer About the Author May Sarton (1912-1995) was an acclaimed poet, novelist, and memoirist...

-Titulo Original : Greek To Me Adventures Of The Comma Queen-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review One of the most satisfying accounts of a great passion that I have ever read. Vivian Gornick, New York Times Book ReviewGreek to Me [is] an ode to the joy of exercising free reign in ones life…Norris is an uncommonly engaging, witty enthusiast with a nose for delicious details and funny asides that makes you willing to follow her anywhere. Heller McAlpin, NPRA rapturous memoir of falling in love with language…At their best, these pages leave you feeling salt-kissed and freshly tanned, languorous with ouzo. Rory Tolan, Washington PostCharming…Aiming at times for slapstick, Ms. Norris keeps uncovering veins of tragedy. A. E. Stallings, Wall Street JournalNorris’ vibrant prose flies off the page, and the breadth of her material set my head spinning at times. Still, she brings it all together with insight and wisdom. Elfrieda Abbe, Minneapolis Star TribuneAn entertaining, erudite, and altogether delightful journey fueled by the love of language. Publishers Weekly (starred review)What a fantastic book! Not only is Greek to Me educational, entertaining, and gorgeously written, it shows us how intellectual curiosity coupled with a dash of bravery can pave the way for a more meaningful life. Mary Norris does for Greek and Greece what Cheryl Strayed did for hiking. Readers will long to follow in her footsteps. Ann PatchettI fell in love with Mary Norris’s first book, and am now even more in love with this charming, ribald, highly informed, and always funny excursion through the language, culture, and oddities of Greece and the Greek language. An adventure tale for intellectuals and also for the rest of us. Steve MartinMary Norris’s love for all things Greek is palpable and infectious. She is a charming, insightful guide through both ancient and modern glories, and I expect her lush descriptions of the Greek countryside to provoke a tourism stampede. Madeline MillerAs a reader, I would follow the writer Mary Norris wherever she goes, and I found myself enthralled by this wondrous journey through Greek myths and language and art. Norris brings everything into the glimmering light most of all the beauty of words. David GrannPoignant, antic, hilarious, Mary Norris is the definition of wearing your learning lightly, and after a lifetime of Greek immersion, pouring beer libations, and skinny-dipping in the waters of Aphrodite, her lessons slip down sweetly. This book is true ambrosia. Caroline FraserMary Norris, our master grammarian, proves that knowing the rules sets you free. Here she writes about Greek language, culture, and mythology with an untrammeled grace that’s a delight to read and, almost incidentally, a demonstration of high-level literary skill. Greek to Me is a book to dive into a page-turning and wonderful achievement. Ian Frazier The Comma Queen returns with a buoyant book about language, love, and the wine-dark sea.In her New York Times bestseller Between You & Me, Mary Norris delighted readers with her irreverent tales of pencils and punctuation in The New Yorker’s celebrated copy department. In Greek to Me, she delivers another wise and funny paean to the art of self-expression, this time filtered through her greatest passion: all things Greek.Greek to Me is a charming account of Norris’s lifelong love affair with words and her solo adventures in the land of olive trees and ouzo. Along the way, Norris explains how the alphabet originated in Greece, makes the case for Athena as a feminist icon, goes searching for the fabled Baths of Aphrodite, and reveals the surprising ways Greek helped form English. Filled with Norris’s memorable encounters with Greek words, Greek gods, Greek wine and more than a few Greek men Greek to Me is the Comma Queen’s fresh take on Greece and the exotic yet strangely familiar language that so deeply influences our own. About the Author Mary Norris is the author of Greek to Me and the New York Ti...

-Titulo Original : Townie A Memoir-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Review Townie is a better, harder book than anything [Dubus III] has yet written; it pays off on every bet that’s been placed on him. Dwight Garner, New York TimesHarrowing and strange and beautiful…This book marks an important moment in the growing body of Dubus’s work. Bret Lott, Boston GlobeAs a memoir, and as a family story, Townie is beautiful and almost perfectly executed. As a meditation on violence, from an author who once embraced it, it is shocking, necessary and indispensable. Michael Schaub, NPRThis haunting memoir is as explosive as a Muhammad Ali prize fight, as vivid as a Basquiat canvas…This wrenching story can only strengthen the reputation of Andre Dubus III. From father to son, the torch has passed. Dan Cryer, San Francisco ChronicleA stormy and courageous memoir. Kate Bittman, The New Yorker[Dubus III] is such a solid writer, he redeems the genre. He shows that truth can be as honest as fiction. Mark Lindquist, Seattle TimesDubus has an eye for searing detail that is unequaled so far this century…and he employs that here to maximum effect. Joy Tipping, Dallas Morning NewsThe best first-person account of an author’s life I have ever read. The violence that is described is the kind that is with us every day, whether we recognize it or not. The characters are wonderful and compassionately drawn. I sincerely believe Andre Dubus may be the best writer in America. His talent is enormous. No one who reads this book will ever forget it. James Lee BurkeWhatever it cost Dubus to bare his soul and write this brutally honest and life-affirming memoir, it is an extraordinary gift to his readers. Wally LambI’ve never read a better or more serious meditation on violence, its sources, consequences, and, especially, its terrifying pleasures, than Townie. It’s a brutal and, yes, thrilling memoir that sheds real light on the creative process of two of our best writers, Andre Dubus III and his famous, much revered father. You’ll never read the work of either man in quite the same way afterward. You may not view the world in quite the same way either. Richard Russo Dubus relives, absent self-pity or blame, a life shaped by bouts of violence and flurries of tenderness. Vanity FairAfter their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their overworked mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and everyday violence. Nearby, his father, an eminent author, taught on a college campus and took the kids out on Sundays. The clash between town and gown, between the hard drinking, drugging, and fighting of townies and the ambitions of students debating books and ideas, couldn’t have been more stark. In this unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Dubus shows us how he escaped the cycle of violence and found empathy in channeling the stories of others bridging, in the process, the rift between his father and himself. About the Author Andre Dubus III is the author of Gone So Long, Dirty Love, The Garden of Last Days, House of Sand and Fog (a #1 New York Times bestseller, Oprah’s Book Club pick, and finalist for the National Book Award), and Townie, winner of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His writing has received many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and two Pushcart Prizes. He lives with his family north of Boston...

-Titulo Original : Loud In The House Of Myself Memoir Of A Strange Girl-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: “An utterly unique journey down some of the mind’s more mysterious byways . . . ranges from the shocking to the simply lovely.” Marya Hornbacher Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a thirteen-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall’s journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system. Review [An] electrifying account . . . this is one whirlwind ride. BooklistPershall’s way of describing how the disordered mind works is joltingly accurate. Loud in the House of Myself is a beautifully written sliver of understanding that is frank, self-­deprecating, and, at times, funny. This memoir is more than just a tear-jerking page turner; it’s the manifesto of a ‘strange girl’ and could be, for some, a lifeline. Bust About the Author Stacy Pershall is a belly dancer and artist living in New York City...

-Titulo Original : Deep Creek Finding Hope In The High Country-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Winner of the 2020 Reading the West Advocacy Award Winner of the 2020 Colorado Book Award for Creative Nonfiction This is a book for all of us, right now. Cheryl Strayed, author of WildOn her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, beloved writer Pam Houston learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. Through her travels from the Gulf of Mexico to Alaska, she explores what ties her to the earth, the ranch most of all. Alongside her devoted Irish wolfhounds and a spirited troupe of horses, donkeys, and Icelandic sheep, the ranch becomes Houston’s sanctuary, a place where she discovers how the natural world has mothered and healed her after a childhood of horrific parental abuse and neglect.In essays as lucid and invigorating as mountain air, Deep Creek delivers Houston’s most profound meditations yet on how “to live simultaneously inside the wonder and the grief… to love the damaged world and do what I can to help it thrive.” 12 black and white illustrations Review Pam Houston is in possession of a deep, heart- achingly beautiful love for her own personal piece of earth. And as equally deep is her ability for hope. Sara Cutaia, Chicago Review of BooksInsightful and evocative Nathan Devel, Los Angeles TimesPam Houston is the rodeo queen of American letters. In Deep Creek, her voice has never been more fully realized, and her message never more important. Samantha Dunn, author of Not by AccidentGood writing can make you envious, no matter how foreign the terrain. Other times, you read a good memoir and find yourself wanting to track down the author and become friends. A third kind of book is so insightful and evocative, you shelve it beside other favorite and instructive titles. Deep Creek might just do all three. Nathan Deuel, Los Angeles TimesPam Houstons Deep Creek is (of course) fantastic. Heather Hansman, OutsideThere are few books I have read that remind me how knowing a place, studying a place the soil and weather and beasts and flora and trails and light at a given time of year, and scent at another, and sounds at another is one of the ways we heal, one of the ways we de-alienate, one of the ways we return to what we are the earth; our home. Pam Houston’s Deep Creek is a miracle this way. It reminds us how to get home. Ross Gay, author of The Book of DelightsDeep Creek is a love letter to earth, animals, and the best of humanity. Pam Houston has taken our heartache and woven it back into hope. Her stories of love, loss, and a life lived in relationship to land give us good reasons not to give up on ourselves or each other. This is the book we need right now to remind us how to endure passionately. An unstoppable heart song. Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Misfit’s ManifestoIn the face of the world’s turmoil, this book is utter clarity. In the face of the world’s harshness, this book is a soft place to land.… If you find yourself careening toward despair, pick up Deep Creek and read even just one page. The words there will lift you back to hope not the sentimental kind, but the kind that can and does change the world for the better. What gratitude we owe to Pam Houston for writing it. B. K. Loren, author of Animal, Mineral, RadicalFull of wisdom, wit, and loving attention, Pam Houston’s survey of her life and land should be required reading for anyone who loves this planet we call home. Camille T. Dungy, author of Guidebook to Relative StrangersHouston has a great range of vision, and she’s fun to read. She gets the land right.… In this perfectly American memoir, a restless heart finds its place. Craig Childs, author of Atlas of a Lost WorldPam Houston is in possession of a deep, heart-achingly beautiful love for h...

-Titulo Original : A Worse Place Than Hell How The Civil War Battle Of Fredericksburg Changed A Nation-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Matteson illuminates three harrowing months of the Civil War and their enduring legacy for America.December 1862 drove the United States toward a breaking point. The Battle of Fredericksburg shattered Union forces and Northern confidence. As Abraham Lincoln’s government threatened to fracture, this critical moment also tested five extraordinary individuals whose lives reflect the soul of a nation. The changes they underwent led to profound repercussions in the country’s law, literature, politics, and popular mythology. Taken together, their stories offer a striking restatement of what it means to be American.Guided by patriotism, driven by desire, all five moved toward singular destinies. A young Harvard intellectual steeped in courageous ideals, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. confronted grave challenges to his concept of duty. The one-eyed army chaplain Arthur Fuller pitted his frail body against the evils of slavery. Walt Whitman, a gay Brooklyn poet condemned by the guardians of propriety, and Louisa May Alcott, a struggling writer seeking an authentic voice and her father’s admiration, tended soldiers’ wracked bodies as nurses. On the other side of the national schism, John Pelham, a West Point cadet from Alabama, achieved a unique excellence in artillery tactics as he served a doomed and misbegotten cause.A Worse Place Than Hell brings together the prodigious forces of war with the intimacy of individual lives. Matteson interweaves the historic and the personal in a work as beautiful as it is powerful. 16 pages of illustrations, 2 maps Review [A] moving group portrait…[Matteson’s] firm grasp of detail, visible as well in his fine biographies of the Alcott family and Margaret Fuller, makes each of his characters vivid and distinctive. David S. Reynolds, Wall Street JournalMatteson deftly unfurls many stories within stories with a confident, novelistic flair. Ambitious, nuanced, and thoroughly rewarding. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)John Matteson has once again delivered a beautifully written, exhaustively researched, and brilliantly interpreted work of history. This is a riveting and eerily relevant account of America at its most divided, yet also seeking redemption. Debby Applegate, author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for BiographyIf you already know who won the Battle of Fredericksburg, you will soon forget, as John Matteson follows the intimate and intricate lives of five people who lived through it. Courage and valor vie with fear and anxiety on a wintertime battlefield, on the home front, and in field hospitals. This story of choices, mistakes, and shifting luck is also a portrait of war on a human scale. Martha Hodes, author of Mourning LincolnFredericksburg in 1862 became a true touchstone of history…John Matteson’s genius flows effortlessly through the entire narrative, taking us through the blast furnace of war and its battles and hospitals, and its suffering. This is the best book I’ve ever read on the impact and meaning of Fredericksburg, where ordinary lives were made extraordinary. Francis A. O’Reilly, author of The Fredericksburg Campaign: Winter War on the RappahannockIf the truest history is biography, as Emerson says, then seldom has history been better told than in this epic biography of five lives upended and transformed by the Civil War. John Matteson helps us see through the surface to the deeper currents beneath, revealing how one key battle became the inflection point transforming not only these men and women but the nation they composed, right down to the stories we tell, the poems we read, the monuments we build, the laws we live by, the prayers we utter even the buildings we live in. Not to be missed. Laura Dassow Walls, author of Henry David Thoreau: A Life About the Author John Matteson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize fo...

-Titulo Original : The Man Who Ate Too Much The Life Of James Beard-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: The definitive biography of America’s best-known and least-understood food personality, and the modern culinary landscape he shaped.In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard’s life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the Dean of American Cookery to give voice to the gourmet’s complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an American cuisine.Informed by previously overlooked correspondence, years of archival research, and a close reading of everything Beard wrote, this majestic biography traces the emergence of personality in American food while reckoning with the outwardly gregarious Beard’s own need for love and connection, arguing that Beard turned an unapologetic pursuit of pleasure into a new model for food authors and experts.Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1903, Beard would journey from the pristine Pacific Coast to New York’s Greenwich Village by way of gay undergrounds in London and Paris of the 1920s. The failed actor-turned-Manhattan canape hawker-turned-author and cooking teacher was the jovial bachelor uncle presiding over America’s kitchens for nearly four decades. In the 1940s he hosted one of the first television cooking shows, and by flouting the rules of publishing would end up crafting some of the most expressive cookbooks of the twentieth century, with recipes and stories that laid the groundwork for how we cook and eat today.In stirring, novelistic detail, The Man Who Ate Too Much brings to life a towering figure, a man who still represents the best in eating and yet has never been fully understood until now. This is biography of the highest order, a book about the rise of America’s food written by the celebrated writer who fills in Beard’s life with the color and meaning earlier generations were afraid to examine. 16 pages of photographs Review For the first time, Mr. Birdsall brings both scholarly research and a queer lens to Beard’s life, braiding the strands of privilege and pain, performance and anxiety, into an entirely new story. Julia Moskin, New York TimesJohn Birdsall is not a polite biographer, and I say this with admiration. In his new book, The Man Who Ate Too Much, he pokes and prods at Beard’s most tender places, his hidden traumas, his deepest insecurities. Birdsall gets to what’s often missing from the cheerful narrative of James Beard, shading in the face sketched on medals and vintage book covers a man known chiefly as a gregarious entertainer, enormous in profile, appetite and knowledge. Tejal Rao, New York TimesA marvel of narrative nonfiction that achieves for 20th-century gay history what Tom Wolfe did for aviation in The Right Stuff, a subjective and objective reconstruction of a neglected American subculture hiding in plain sight. Anne Matthews, The American ScholarLike the life of James Beard, this biography is big and beautiful, heartbreaking and true. It is the celebration that Beard deserves. Rien Fertel, Wall Street JournalBeard was both a victim and a perpetrator of multiple erasures, which Birdsall records in meticulous detail… The story of Beard’s life invites us to recognize the violence that was done in the name of American cooking and expand our understanding of authenticity to include not only what’s on the plate but everything around it: the norms, prejudices, economic wounds, environmental traumas, and other social forces that go into the production of food and culinary authority. It’s a reminder that food is part of culture, and terroir not simply a matter of the soil. Aaron Timms, New RepublicBirdsall’s sentences have rhythm, too, and compress time and place so that a meal becomes a history... like the greediest of din...

-Titulo Original : Sid Meiers Memoir! A Life In Computer Games-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: The life and career of the legendary developer celebrated as the “godfather of computer gaming” and creator of Civilization, featuring his rules of good game design.Sid Meier is a foundation of what gaming is for me today. Phil Spencer, head of XboxOver his four-decade career, Sid Meier has produced some of the world’s most popular video games, including Sid Meier’s Civilization, which has sold more than 51 million units worldwide and accumulated more than one billion hours of play. Sid Meier’s Memoir! is the story of an obsessive young computer enthusiast who helped launch a multibillion-dollar industry. Writing with warmth and ironic humor, Meier describes the genesis of his influential studio, MicroProse, founded in 1982 after a trip to a Las Vegas arcade, and recounts the development of landmark games, from vintage classics like Pirates! and Railroad Tycoon, to Civilization and beyond.Articulating his philosophy that a video game should be “a series of interesting decisions,” Meier also shares his perspective on the history of the industry, the psychology of gamers, and fascinating insights into the creative process, including his rules of good game design. 21 illustrations Review Any game designer who tries to tell you that he hasn’t taken anything away from a Sid Meier game is akin to a film director saying he has never watched a Hitchcock movie. For Sid is our Hitchcock, our Spielberg, our Ellington. Gamespot Sid Meier is a foundation of what gaming is for me today. Phil Spencer, head of Xbox[Meier is] the master of turn-based gaming. Will Wright, developer of The SimsIf you ever wished you could stay up all night and hear the most amazing stories from one of the worlds most creative people, Sids memoir is for you. This book is full of incredible tech history and deep insights into what it takes to make a world-class game. But most of all, I loved getting inside Sid’s brain and seeing things from his inventive and wise point of view. Jane McGonigal, author of the New York Times bestseller Reality is Broken: How Games Can Change the World and Make Us Better[A] fascinating look at the legendary designer’s career. It’s full of anecdotes and design principles that Meier has learned over the years. Jason Schreier, BloombergA growing pile of video-game histories…suggest that the medium has always had collective effort at its heart, from its academic beginnings to its ascent into everyday life. In Meier’s memoir, we discover that he was a good game-maker when he fought this essential fact, but that he became great when he learned to embrace it. Neima Jahromi, The New Yorker[H]eartfelt and informative….[This book] will appeal to old-school gamers with an appreciation for the history of video games. Kirkus Reviews About the Author Sid Meier, creator of Civilization, has been honored with virtually every award in the video game industry. A member of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame and founder of Firaxis Games, Meier lives in Hunt Valley, Maryland...

-Titulo Original : The Killing Zone My Life In The Vietnam War-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: “The best damned book from the point of view of the infantrymen who fought there.” Army Times Among the best books ever written about men in combat, The Killing Zone tells the story of the platoon of Delta One-six, capturing what it meant to face lethal danger, to follow orders, and to search for the conviction and then the hope that this war was worth the sacrifice. The book includes a new chapter on what happened to the platoon members when they came home. About the Author Frederick Downs Jr. received four Purple Hearts, the Bronze Star with Valor, and the Silver Star for his service in the Vietnam War. He lives in Fort Washington, Maryland...

-Titulo Original : Mengele Unmasking The Angel Of Death-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: A gripping…sober and meticulous (David Margolick, Wall Street Journal) biography of the infamous Nazi doctor, from a former Justice Department official tasked with uncovering his fate.Perhaps the most notorious war criminal of all time, Josef Mengele was the embodiment of bloodless efficiency and passionate devotion to a grotesque worldview. Aided by the role he has assumed in works of popular culture, Mengele has come to symbolize the Holocaust itself as well as the failure of justice that allowed countless Nazi murderers and their accomplices to escape justice. Whether as the demonic doctor who directed mass killings or the elusive fugitive who escaped capture, Mengele has loomed so large that even with conclusive proof, many refused to believe that he had died.As chief of investigative research at the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations in the 1980s, David G. Marwell worked on the Mengele case, interviewing his victims, visiting the scenes of his crimes, and ultimately holding his bones in his hands. Drawing on his own experience as well as new scholarship and sources, Marwell examines in scrupulous detail Mengele’s life and career. He chronicles Mengele’s university studies, which led to two PhDs and a promising career as a scientist; his wartime service both in frontline combat and at Auschwitz, where his “selections” sent innumerable innocents to their deaths and his “scientific” pursuits including his studies of twins and eye color traumatized or killed countless more; and his postwar flight from Europe and refuge in South America.Mengele describes the international search for the Nazi doctor in 1985 that ended in a cemetery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the dogged forensic investigation that produced overwhelming evidence that Mengele had died but failed to convince those who, arguably, most wanted him dead. This is the riveting story of science without limits, escape without freedom, and resolution without justice. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs Review Has much new to tell us, both about Mengele himself and, more significant, about the social and scientific milieu that allowed him to flourish. Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker[David] Marwell comprehensively recounts this case of justice denied, and how helped by his wealthy family, loyal friends and Nazi sympathizers Mengele succeeded in evading his would-be captors. Steven Aschheim, The New York Times Book ReviewDefinitive…Marwell’s authority as a scholar of this era is commanding. Wendy Lower and Jonathan Petropoulos, Times Literary SupplementHas all the pleasures of a suspenseful crime novel, and all the inside detail of a police procedural…This absorbing, exhaustively researched work is surely destined to become the standard reference on its subject. Bob Goldfarb, Jewish Book CouncilCompelling…[A]t once a compact biography of the notorious war criminal, a detailed account of Mengele’s flight to South America, and an absorbing narrative of the quest to bring him to justice. Patricia Heberer Rice, ScienceAuthoritative…[A]n adventure in pathology and criminology. Robert Siegel, MomentChilling and masterful. Jonathan Mark, New York Jewish WeekGripping and disturbing. Molly Odintz, LitHub CrimeReadsThe most thorough-going account of Mengele’s life available to date. Christopher Priest, The Spectator About the Author David G. Marwell, former director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, is a historian who has served and led a number of government and nonprofit institutions. He lives in University Park, Maryland, with his wife, Judith...

-Titulo Original : Mad At The World A Life Of John Steinbeck-Fabricante : W. W. Norton & Company-Descripcion Original: Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2020 in Nonfiction A resonant biography of America’s most celebrated novelist of the Great Depression.The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Pulitzer Prize finalist William Souder explores Steinbeck’s long apprenticeship as a writer struggling through the depths of the Great Depression, and his rise to greatness with masterpieces such as The Red Pony, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California’s limitless bounty, fascinated by the guileless decency of the downtrodden denizens of Cannery Row, and appalled by the country’s refusal to recognize the humanity common to all of its citizens, Steinbeck took a stand against social injustice paradoxically given his inherent misanthropy setting him apart from the writers of the so-called lost generation.A man by turns quick-tempered, compassionate, and ultimately brilliant, Steinbeck could be a difficult person to like. Obsessed with privacy, he was mistrustful of people. Next to writing, his favorite things were drinking and womanizing and getting married, which he did three times. And while he claimed indifference about success, his mid-career books and movie deals made him a lot of money which passed through his hands as quickly as it came in. And yet Steinbeck also took aim at the corrosiveness of power, the perils of income inequality, and the urgency of ecological collapse, all of which drive public debate to this day.Steinbeck remains our great social realist novelist, the writer who gave the dispossessed and the disenfranchised a voice in American life and letters. Eloquent, nuanced, and deeply researched, Mad at the World captures the full measure of the man and his work. 8 pages of illustrations Review Painstakingly researched, psychologically nuanced, unshowy, lucid.... Souder, in his own humble style, has brought a deeply human Steinbeck forth in all his flawed, melancholy, brilliant complication. Alexander C. Kafka, Washington PostSouder’s sympathy for Steinbeck ... is most effective and eloquent in his depiction of the California landscape or of the sea, which he describes as swimming with small pelagic crabs ‘like a crimson carpet spread across an ocean the color of lapis lazuli.’ Brenda Wineapple, New York Times Book ReviewA comprehensive new biography of America’s best-known novelist of the Great Depression arrives at a timely moment. Joumana Khatib, New York TimesVividly evokes the landscape ‘between the mountains and by the sea’ that nurtured [Steinbeck’s] love of nature.... [An] appreciative yet clear-eyed assessment. Wendy Smith, Boston GlobeForges a powerful and courageous path through the life, times, and works of John Steinbeck.... with discernment, energy, and grace. Gavin Jones, California HistorySouder’s genial style has qualities of simplicity, immediacy, and grace that attract readers to Steinbeck’s writing.... Style and subject are perfect match.... Souder’s elegant and engrossing biography of Steinbeck adds substantially to our understanding and appreciation of an author whose feeling for wronged humanity, like Faulkner’s sense of Southern history, is never out of date. William Ray, Steinbeck ReviewA brisk and engaging account by a highly-regarded biographer whose estimation of Steinbeck’s importance a half-century after his death is itself testimony to his durability as a writer of fiction and critic of our world. Donald Coers, Steinbeck Now[Souder] knows his subject well and writes with a storyteller’s clean momentum. Phillip Lopate, Times Literary SupplementWilliam Souder’s Mad at the World is a stupendous ...