Book Lover

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Hardcover)

2008-08-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

What do you do? Tim Ferriss has trouble answering the question. Depending on when you ask this
controversial Princeton University guest lecturer, he might answer:

“I race motorcycles in Europe.”
“I ski in the Andes.”
“I scuba dive in Panama.”
“I dance tango in Buenos Aires.”

He has spent more than five years learning the secrets of the New Rich, a fast-growing subculture who has abandoned the “deferred-life plan” and instead mastered the new currencies—time and mobility—to create luxury lifestyles in the here and now.

Whether you are an overworked employee or an entrepreneur trapped in your own business, this book is the compass for a new and revolutionary world. Join Tim Ferriss as he teaches you:

• How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
• How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
• How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
• How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and freuent "mini-retirements"
• What the crucial difference is between absolute and relative income
• How to train your boss to value performance over presence, or kill your job (or company) if it’s beyond repair
• What automated cash-flow “muses” are and how to create one in 2 to 4 weeks
• How to cultivate selective ignorance—and create time—with a low-information diet
• What the management secrets of Remote Control CEOs are
• How to get free housing worldwide and airfare at 50–80% off
• How to fill the void and create a meaningful life after removing work and the office

You can have it all—really.

View product details at Amazon

Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (Hardcover)

2008-08-28T07:13:00.000-07:00

As One L did for Harvard Law School, Ahead of the Curve does for Harvard Business School—providing an incisive student’s-eye view that pulls the veil away from this vaunted institution and probes the methods it uses to make its students into the elite of the business world

In the century since its founding, Harvard Business School has become the single most influential institution in global business. Twenty percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are HBS graduates, as are many of our savviest entrepreneurs (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) and canniest felons (e.g., Jeffrey Skilling). The top investment banks and brokerage houses routinely send their brightest young stars to HBS to groom them for future power. To these people and many others, a Harvard MBA is a golden ticket to the Olympian heights of American business.

In 2004, Philip Delves Broughton abandoned a post as Paris bureau chief of the London Daily Telegraph to join nine hundred other would-be tycoons on HBS’s plush campus. Over the next two years, he and his classmates would be inundated with the best—and the rest—of American business culture that HBS epitomizes. The core of the school’s curriculum is the “case”—an analysis of a real business situation from which the students must, with a professor’s guidance, tease lessons. Delves Broughton studied more than five hundred cases and recounts the most revelatory ones here. He also learns the surprising pleasures of accounting, the allure of “beta,” the ingenious chicanery of leveraging, and innumerable other hidden workings of the business world, all of which he limns with a wry clarity reminiscent of Liar’s Poker. He also exposes the less savory trappings of b-school culture, from the “booze luge” to the pandemic obsession with PowerPoint to the specter of depression that stalks too many overburdened students. With acute and often uproarious candor, he assesses the school’s success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in business—leadership, decisiveness, ethical behavior, work/life balance.

Published during the one hundredth anniversary of Harvard Business School, Ahead of the Curve offers a richly detailed and revealing you-are-there account of the institution that has, for good or ill, made American business what it is today.

About the Author
Philip Delves Broughton was born in Bangladesh and grew up in England. From 1998 to 2004, he served successively as the New York and Paris bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph of London and reported widely from North and South America, Europe, and Africa. He led the Telegraph’s coverage of the 9/11 attacks on New York and his reporting has twice been nominated for the British Press Award. His work has also appeared in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and Spectator. In 2006, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School.

View product details at Amazon

Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve (Hardcover)

2008-08-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

"Dana is my life force."

--Christopher Reeve

"A terrible thing happened. I wish it hadn't. But would I change who I married? Never."

--Dana Reeve

He was a hero in every sense of the word--the chiseled-from-granite star of four blockbuster Superman films and the romantic classic Somewhere in Time who, after being paralyzed in a freak horseback riding accident, became a symbol of hope for millions. Dana Reeve was no less heroic, standing steadfastly by her husband's side until his surprisingly sudden and unexpected death at age fifty-two. When Dana, a non-smoker, passed away from lung cancer just seventeen months after Chris's death, she left behind their thirteen-year-old son, Will, to be raised by friends and family. Dana was only forty-four years old.

That fate could have dealt such a cruel hand to this golden couple seemed unfathomable. That they could endure it all with grace, courage, and humor defied belief.

Yet for all the millions of words that have been written about their public causes and private struggles following Chris's accident, little is known about the lives they led as passionate young lovers. Now, in the manner of his poignant-yet-stirring bestsellers Jack and Jackie, Jackie After Jack, An Affair to Remember, The Day Diana Died, After Diana, and The Day John Died, No. l New York Times bestselling author Christopher Andersen draws on those who knew them best to examine in touching detail the Reeves' unique partnership and the romance, faith, and fortitude that defined it.

Sometimes heartbreaking, often uplifting, always compelling, Somewhere in Heaven is more than just a portrait of a marriage. It is the profoundly human story of two souls whose brief lives made a difference, a bittersweet saga of tragedy, triumph, and loss, and--above all else--a love story for the ages.

About the Author
Christopher Andersen is the critically acclaimed author of twenty-eight books, which have been translated into more than twenty languages worldwide. A former contributing editor of Time and senior editor of People, Andersen has also written hundreds of articles for a wide range of publications, including Life magazine, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair.

View product details at Amazon

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (Hardcover)

2008-08-24T07:09:00.000-07:00

According to The Waiter, eighty percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining twenty percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths. Waiter Rant offers the server's unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places. Through outrageous stories, The Waiter reveals the secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and how to keep him from spitting in your food. The Waiter also shares his ongoing struggle, at age thirty-eight, to figure out if he can finally leave the first job at which he's truly thrived.

View product details at Amazon

Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness (Paperback)

2008-08-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

This Leading Edge work by Esther and Jerry Hicks, who present the teachings of the Non-Physical consciousness Abraham, explains that the two subjects most chronically affected by the powerful Law of Attraction are financial and physical well-being. This book will shine a spotlight on each of the most significant aspects of your life experience and then guide you to the conscious creative control of every aspect of your life, and also goes right to the heart of what most of you are probably troubled by: money and physical health. Not having enough money or not having good health puts you in the perfect position for creating more of that which you do not have. This book has been written to deliberately align you with the most powerful law in the universe—the Law of Attraction—so that you can make it work specifically for you.

Money, and the Law of Attraction is formatted in five, vibrant essays:

Part I – Processing of Pivoting and Positive Aspects

Part II – Attracting Money and Manifesting Abundance

Part III – Maintaining Your Physical Well-Being

Part IV – Perspectives of Health, Weight, and Mind

Part V – Careers, as Profitable Sources of Pleasure

Also included is a free CD (excerpted from a live Abraham-Hicks workshop) that features the Art of Allowing your physical and financial well-being to come through.

About the Author

Esther and Jerry Hicks produce and present the leading-edge Abraham-Hicks teachings on the art of allowing our natural Well-Being to come forth. They present Law of Attraction workshops in up to 60 cities a year.

View product details at Amazon

The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate (Hardcover)

2008-08-20T07:01:00.000-07:00

He's the media's darling, the fresh face of the Democratic ticket. But what does Barack Obama really stand for--and will his extreme liberal agenda and complete inexperience in global affairs endanger the country? That's what David Freddoso, investigative reporter and National Review Online columnist, examines in The Case Against Barack Obama. In this shocking exposé, Freddoso explores the reality behind the rhetoric, the plans behind the promises, and the faults behind the façade, revealing:

* Why Obama's inexperience and extreme left-wing voting record is more dangerous than any threat we face today
* Why the Rev. Wright debacle reveals Obama's poor judgment of character and deceitful nature
* Why it won't be politics of change with President Obama--it will be liberal politics as usual

Freddoso exposes the real Barack Obama: a typical big-government politician, the #1 most liberal U.S. senator, and--if he were commander in chief--a serious threat to our national security.

About the Author
David Freddoso has covered politics for six years and is a hard-hitting political reporter for National Review Online. Before working at NRO, Freddoso worked closely with legendary political journalist Bob Novak on the Evans and Novak Political Report, and worked as a reporter for the national news weekly, Human Events. He has a master's in journalism from Columbia University.

View product details at Amazon

The Obama Nation (Hardcover)

2008-08-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

THE OBAMA NATION Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality

Barack Obama stepped onto the national political stage when the then-Illinois State senator addressed the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Soon after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate, author Jerome Corsi began researching Obamas personal and political background.

Scrupulously sourced with more than 600 footnotes, THE OBAMA NATION is the result of that research. By tracing Obamas career and influences from his early years in Hawaii and Indonesia, the beginnings of his political career in Chicago, his voting record in the Illinois legislature, his religious training and his adoption of Christianity through to his recent involvement in Kenyan politics, his political advisors and fundraising associates and his meteoric campaign for president, Jerome Corsi shows that an Obama presidency would, in his words, be a repeat of the failed extremist politics that have characterized and plagued Democratic Party politics since the late 1960s.

In this stunning and comprehensive new book, the reader will learn about: -Obamas extensive connections with Islam and radical politics, from his father and step-fathers Islamic backgrounds, to his Communist and socialist mentors in Hawaii and Chicago, to his long-term and close associations with former Weather Underground heroes William Ayers and Bernadette Dohrnassociations much closer than heretofore revealed by the press
-Barack and Michelles 20-year-long religious affiliation with the black-liberation theology of former Trinity United Church of Christ Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whose sermons have always been steeped in a rage first expressed by Franz Fanon , Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X, a rage that Corsi shows has deep meaning for Obama
-Obamas continuing connections with Kenya, the homeland of his father, through his support for the candidacy of Raila Odinga, the radical socialist presidential contender who came to power amid Islamist violence and church burnings
-Obamas involvement in the slum-landlord empire of the Chicago political fixer Tony Rezko, who helped to bankroll Obamas initial campaigns and to purchase of Barack and Michelles dream-home property.
-the background and techniques of the Obama campaigns cult of personality, including the derivation of the words hope and change
-Obamas far-left domestic policy, his controversial votes on abortion, his history of opposition to the Second Amendment, his determination to raise capital-gains taxes, his impractical plan to achieve universal health care, and his radical plan to tax Americans to fund a global-poverty-reduction program
-Obamas naïve, anti-war, anti-nuclear foreign-policy, predicated on the reduction of the military, the eradication of nuclear weapons and an overconfidence in the power of his personality, as if belief in change alone could somehow transform international politics, achieve nuclear-weapons disarmament and withdrawal from Iraq without adverse consequences, for us, for the Iraqis or for Israel.

Meticulously researched and documented, THE OBAMA NATION is the definitive source for information on why and how Barack Obama must be defeatednot by invective and general attacks, but by detailed arguments that are well-researched and fact-based.

About the Author
DR. JEROME CORSI received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972 and has written many books and articles, including the No. 1 New York Times best-seller, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. His latest best-seller was The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada. He is a senior staff reporter for WorldNetDaily.com and the author of two books on contemporary Iran: Atomic Iran and Showdown with Nuclear Iran. In his 2005 book Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil, which he co-authored with Craig. R. Smith, Dr. Corsi predicted oil prices at over $100 a barrel.

View product details at Amazon

sTORI Telling

2008-08-16T06:53:00.000-07:00

She was television's most famous virgin--and, as Aaron Spelling's daughter, arguably its most famous case of nepotism. Portraying Donna Martin on Beverly Hills, 90210, Tori Spelling became one of the most recognizable young actresses of her generation, with a not-so-private personal life every bit as fascinating as her character's exploits. Yet years later the name Tori Spelling too often closed--and sometimes slammed--the same doors it had opened.

sTORI Telling is Tori's chance to finally tell her side of the tabloid-worthy life she's led, and she talks about it all: her decadent childhood birthday parties, her nose job, her fairy-tale wedding to the wrong man, her so-called feud with her mother. Tori has already revealed her flair for brilliant, self-effacing satire on her VH1 show So NoTORIous and Oxygen's Tori & Dean: Inn Love, but her memoir goes deeper, into the real life behind the rumors: her complicated relationship with her parents; her struggles as an actress after 90210; her accident-prone love life; and, ultimately, her quest to define herself on her own terms.

From her over-the-top first wedding to finding new love to her much-publicized--and misunderstood--"disinheritance," sTORI Telling is a juicy, eye-opening, enthralling look at what it really means to be Tori Spelling.

View product details at Amazon

Life with My Sister Madonna

2008-08-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ciccone's extraordinary memoir is based on his life and forty-seven years of growing up with and working with his sister - the most famous woman in the world.

View product details at Amazon

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (Hardcover)

2008-08-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in his classic work The Great Railway Bazaar, the world's most acclaimed travel writer re-creates his 25,000-mile journey through eastern Europe, central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia.

Half a lifetime ago, Paul Theroux virtually invented the modern travel narrative by recounting his grand tour by train through Asia. In the three decades since, the world he recorded in that book has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India booms while Burma smothers under dictatorship; Vietnam flourishes in the aftermath of the havoc America was unleashing on it the last time Theroux passed through. And no one is better able to capture the texture, sights, smells, and sounds of that changing landscape than Theroux.
Theroux's odyssey takes him from eastern Europe, still hung-over from communism, through tense but thriving Turkey into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbor Azerbaijan revels in oil-fueled capitalism. Theroux is firsthand witness to it all, traveling as the locals do—by stifling train, rattletrap bus, illicit taxi, and mud-caked foot—encountering adventures only he could have: from the literary (sparring with the incisive Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk) to the dissolute (surviving a week-long bender on the Trans-Siberian Railroad). And wherever he goes, his omnivorous curiosity and unerring eye for detail never fail to inspire, enlighten, inform, and entertain.

PAUL THEROUX was born in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1941 and published his first novel, Waldo, in 1967. His fiction includes The Mosquito Coast, My Secret History, My Other Life, Kowloon Tong, Blinding Light, and most recently, The Elephanta Suite. His highly acclaimed travel books include Riding the Iron Rooster, The Great Railway Bazaar, The Old Patagonian Express, Fresh Air Fiend, and Dark Star Safari. He has been the guest editor of The Best American Travel Writing and is a frequent contributor to various magazines, including The New Yorker. He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod.

View product details at Amazon

What Happened to Anna K.: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-08-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

A mesmerizing debut novel that reimagines Tolstoy's classic tragedy, Anna Karenina, for our time

Vivacious thirty-seven-year-old Anna K. is comfortably married to Alex, an older, prominent businessman from her tight-knit Russian-Jewish immigrant community in Queens. But a longing for freedom is reignited in this bookish, overly romantic, and imperious woman when she meets her cousin Katia Zavurov's boyfriend, an outsider and aspiring young writer on whom she pins her hopes for escape. As they begin a reckless affair, Anna enters into a tailspin that alienates her from her husband, family, and entire world.

In nearby Rego Park's Bukharian-Jewish community, twenty-seven-year-old pharmacist Lev Gavrilov harbors two secret passions: French movies and the lovely Katia. Lev's restless longing to test the boundaries of his sheltered life powerfully collides with Anna's. But will Lev's quest result in life's affirmation rather than its destruction?

Exploring struggles of identity, fidelity, and community, What Happened to Anna K. is a remarkable retelling of the Anna Karenina story brought vividly to life by an exciting young writer.

View product details at Amazon

The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power (Hardcover)

2008-08-08T06:40:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: There have by now been many insider accounts of the Bush Administration and its War on Terror. Jonathan Mahler's The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power, on the other hand, is very much an outsider's account: the story of two lawyers and their attempt to scale the walls of the American government and overturn the system of military commissions set up to try the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. One observer called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld "the most important decision on presidential power and the rule of law, ever," and Mahler's focus on the odd-couple lawyers--the blustery, impulsive Navy JAG who made defending Hamdan his mission and the brilliant and tireless Indian immigrant's son who risked a meteoric career with his obsession with the case--and his ability to communicate the grave constitutional consequences of the case and the often bizarrely circuitous path they must take to reach the Supreme Court make for a thrilling and moving drama of justice, democracy, and the patriotism of challenging your own government. --Tom Nissley

View product details at Amazon

Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Hardcover)

2008-08-06T06:37:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: Throw on the legendary LP, Kind of Blue, and the genius of Miles Davis and John Coltrane sings with the first note. Right away, both men establish their styles within the warm, confident tones of "So What," setting the stage for an album that has sold over 3 million copies to date. Clawing at the Limits of Cool explores this early symbiotic relationship and how two mavericks went on to rewrite the rules of jazz. Davis was the prodigy, born with a once-in-a-generation talent and a desire to expand the limits of his sound. Coltrane, on the other hand, was a late bloomer with a tenacious focus who saw nothing but the music. "Trane was just into playing," Davis once remarked. "If a woman was standing in front of him naked he wouldn't have seen her." Yet while Davis' bold trumpet and Coltrane's searching sax mixed in perfect harmony, their off-stage relationship was surprisingly flat. According to alto saxophonist Sonny Fortune, "Miles wasn't a talker and Trane wasn't a talker. So you got to guess there's no talking." Added drummer Rashied Ali: "Not with words, anyway." With deft examinations of time-honored performances and colorful anecdotes from bandmates, Farah Jasmine Griffin and Salim Washington provide an honest portrait of the enduring legacies of both "The Chief" and "Trane." --Dave Callanan

View product details at Amazon

Lace Reader, The: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-08-05T06:34:00.000-07:00

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In Barry's captivating debut, Towner Whitney, a dazed young woman descended from a long line of mind readers and fortune tellers, has survived numerous traumas and returned to her hometown of Salem, Mass., to recover. Any tranquility in her life is short-lived when her beloved great-aunt Eva drowns under circumstances suggesting foul play. Towner's suspicions are taken with a grain of salt given her history of hallucinatory visions and self-harm. The mystery enmeshes local cop John Rafferty, who had left the pressures of big city police work for a quieter life in Salem and now finds himself falling for the enigmatic Towner as he mourns Eva and delves into the history of the eccentric Whitney clan. Barry excels at capturing the feel of smalltown life, and balances action with close looks at the characters' inner worlds. Her pacing and use of different perspectives show tremendous skill and will keep readers captivated all the way through. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

View product details at Amazon

The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of his Life--His Own (Hardcover)

2008-08-02T06:31:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, August 2008: In his fabulously entertaining The Kid Stays in the Picture, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans wrote: "There are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth." David Carr's riveting debut memoir, The Night of the Gun, takes this theory to the extreme, as the New York Times reporter embarks on a three-year fact-finding mission to revisit his harrowing past as a drug addict and discovers that the search for answers can reveal many versions of the truth. Carr acknowledges that you can't write a my-life-as-an-addict story without the recent memoir scandals of James Frey and others weighing you down, but he regains the reader's trust by relying on his reporting skills to conduct dozens of often uncomfortable interviews with old party buddies, cops, and ex-girlfriends and follow an endless paper trail of legal and medical records, mug shots, and rejection letters. The kaleidoscopic narrative follows Carr through failed relationships and botched jobs, in and out of rehab and all manner of unsavory places in between, with cameos from the likes of Tom Arnold, Jayson Blair, and Barbara Bush. Admittedly, it's hard to love David Carr--sometimes you barely like the guy. How can you feel sympathy for a man who was smoking crack with his pregnant girlfriend when her water broke? But plenty of dark humor rushes through the book, and knowing that this troubled man will make it--will survive addiction, fight cancer, raise his twin girls--makes you want to stick around for the full 400-page journey. --Brad Thomas Parsons

View product details at Amazon

How Fiction Works (Hardcover)

2008-07-30T07:09:00.000-07:00

“Deservedly famous for [his] intellectual dazzle, literary acuteness and moral seriousness . . . Wood writes like a dream.” —Daniel Mendelsohn, The New York Times Book Review

“It is not enough to have one Wood. What is needed is a thicket—a forest—of Woods . . . [He proves] that superior criticism not only unifies and interprets a literary culture but has the power to imagine it into being.” —Cynthia Ozick, Harper’s Magazine

View product details at Amazon

America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA - the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define Real American Food (Hardcover)

2008-07-28T07:06:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: America Eats! originated as a 1935 WPA project that sent out-of-work writers (mostly unknowns, but also some soon-to-be famous names like Eudora Welty and Ralph Ellison) to chronicle America's regional cuisine, focusing on the group-dining dynamic of church suppers, harvest festivals, state fairs, political rallies, lodge suppers, and any gathering where food took center stage--"In a nation inhabited by strangers, sharing a meal lessened the loneliness of wandering across unfamiliar landscapes." While bits and pieces of their work saw the light of day over the years, the project was never completed or published and was filed away in the Library of Congress like a culinary Ark of the Covenant until Brooklyn-based food writer Pat Willard used this national artifact as a roadmap for her own coast-to-coast tour to see if these traditions still exist (many, sadly, are long gone) and offer a contemporary update on the WPA's original observations. Sprinkled throughout with heirloom recipes (Root Beer, Pickled Watermelon Rinds, Chess Pie, Son-of-Gun Stew) and never-before-published vintage photos, America Eats! is a celebration of our nation's table and a welcome addition to the popular food lit genre. "It's nice to report that, when a community need arises, we're still inspired as a nation to pull out a big pot and start throwing into it a lot of ingredients, with the understanding that sharing a large batch of something delicious with neighbors and strangers alike is a fine and proper way to accomplish some good." --Brad Thomas Parsons

View product details at Amazon

Lost on Planet China: The Strange and True Story of One Man's Attempt to Understand the World's Most Mystifying Nation, or How He Became Comfortable E

2008-07-26T07:03:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: Maarten Troost is a laowai (foreigner) in the Middle Kingdom, ill-equipped with a sliver of Mandarin, questing to discover the "essential Chineseness" of an ancient and often mystifying land. What he finds is a country with its feet suctioned in the clay of traditional culture and a head straining into the polluted stratosphere of unencumbered capitalism, where cyclopean portraits of Chairman Mao (largely perceived as mostly good, except for that nasty bit toward the end) spoon comfortably with Hong Kong's embrace of rat-race modernity. From Beijing and its blitzes of flying phlegm--and girls who lend new meaning to "Chinese take-out"--to the legendary valley of Shangri-La (as officially designated by the Party), Troost learns that his very survival may hinge on his underdeveloped haggling skills and a willingness to deploy Rollerball-grade elbows over a seat on a train. Featuring visits to Mao's George Hamiltonian corpse and a rural market offering Siberian Tiger paw, cobra hearts, and scorpion kebabs (in the food section), Lost on Planet China is a funny and engrossing trip across a nation that increasingly demands the world's attention. --Jon Foro

View product details at Amazon

Books: A Memoir (Hardcover)

2008-07-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: It wasn't enough for Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry to become one of the most prolific, bestselling, and beloved of American writers. Besides writing nearly forty books, including the Pultizer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, he has emerged as one this nation's greatest bookmen. In Books: A Memoir, McMurtry shares with readers his lifelong passion and dogged pursuit of books. In short, gem-like chapters, he paints a fascinating picture of the landscape of American book culture and book selling over a 50-year period. The story is as dusty, musty and crusty as any of McMurtry's fictionalized Westerns, and filled with characters who seem like they stepped out of central casting. Whether you love McMurtry, books, bookstores or a combination thereof, you'll find something to love in Books: A Memoir. Settle in with a cuppa coffee and let McMurtry kindle your passion for physical books. --Lauren Nemroff

View product details at Amazon

Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World (Hardcover)

2008-07-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: Armed with the same engaging narrative found in Clemente and When Pride Still Mattered, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss chronicles the triumphs, tragedies, and treacheries of "the Olympics that changed the world" with Rome 1960. The same Games that announced the greatness of icons like Cassius Clay, Wilma Rudolph, and Rafer Johnson, also exposed a growing unrest between East and West, black and white, and male and female. Even the host city of Rome, Maraniss recounts, was "infused with a golden hue...an illuminating that comes with a moment of historical transition, when one era is dying and another is being born." With moving portraits of the Games's remarkable personalities woven among tales of espionage and propaganda, Rome 1960 explores an Olympics unable to fight off the troubles of the modern world. Cold War sniping and issues of social inequalities were spilling into fields and stadiums, and the face of sport was rapidly changing. History buffs and sports fans alike will appreciate Maraniss’s quiet reporting, as he deftly removes himself from a storyline that is still relevant today. --Dave Callanan

View product details at Amazon

Alive in Necropolis (Hardcover)

2008-07-20T06:56:00.000-07:00

A fresh, imaginative debut novel about a young police officer in northern California struggling to keep the peace—and maintain a grip on reality—in a town where the dead outnumber the living.

Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime cemetery for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation pioneer Lincoln Beachey. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate a new realm of grownup relationships—including a shaky romance with an older woman; a growing alliance with his cocky, charismatic partner, Nick Toronto; fading college friendships; and an aching sense of responsibility for a local rich kid who Mercer rescues from a dangerous prank in the cemetery.

But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the police unit, Sergeant Featherstone, who seems to have become confused about whether he was policing the living or the dead. And as Mercer delves deeper into Featherstone’s story, it appears that Mercer’s own sanity is beginning to slip—either that, or Colma’s more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be.

With all the playful sensitivity of Haruki Murakami and the haunted atmosphere of Paul Auster, but with a voice all his own, Doug Dorst has crafted an irresistible, compelling debut.

View product details at Amazon

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) (Hardcover)

2008-07-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2008: How could no one have written this book before? These days we spend almost as much time driving as we do eating (in fact, we do a lot of our eating while driving), but I can't remember the last time I saw a book on all the time we spend stuck in our cars. It's a topic of nearly universal interest, though: everybody has a strategy for beating the traffic. Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) has plenty of advice for those shortcut schemers (Vanderbilt may well convince you to become, as he has, a dreaded "Late Merger"), but more than that it's the sort of wide-ranging contrarian compendium that makes a familiar subject new. I'm not the first or last to call Traffic the Freakonomics of cars, but it's true that it fits right in with the school of smart and popular recent books by Leavitt, Gladwell, Surowiecki, Ariely, and others that use the latest in economic, sociological, psychological, and in this case civil engineering research to make us rethink a topic we live with every day. Want to know how much city traffic is just people looking for parking? (It's a lot.) Or why street signs don't work (but congestion pricing does), why new cars crash more than old cars, and why Saturdays now have the worst traffic of the week? Read Traffic, or better yet, listen to the audio book on your endless commute. --Tom Nissley

View product details at Amazon

Bali & Lombok (Lonely Planet Travel Guide) (Paperback)

2008-07-16T07:20:00.000-07:00

Scramble down rocky cliffs to find a private surf beach, then climb back up to your motorbike, tanned and supercharged.
Flip yourself over the edge of a boat while diving the blue depths off the Gili Islands in Lombok.
Dance the day's sand off your feet at Kuta's rowdy clubs or spruce up for Seminyak's sleek bars and restaurants.
Sip honey-ginger tea in a rose-petal bath, drifting back to earth after a mandi lulur massage.

In This Guide:

Two great authors, 68 days of in-country research, 51 detailed maps, 133 bottles of Bintang.
An all new outdoor activities section with detailed diving and surfing information.
Features a Food & Drink chapter by renowned Ubud restaurateur and author Janet de Neefe.

View product details at Amazon

Indonesia (Lonely Planet Travel Guides) (Paperback)

2008-07-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Stretch your hand through ancient stone latticework to touch the lucky Buddhas atop Javas majestic Borobudur.
Drink with the dead (and dont slip on buffalo blood!) at an elaborate and riotous Torajan funeral.
Sniff out the infamous durian or scaly salak at a local fruit market.
Step aside as a giant Komodo dragon swaggers by with the confidence only 100kg of top-of-the-food-chain lizard can exude.

In This Guide:

Eleven authors, more than 300 days of in-country research, 73 ferry trips, 197 detailed maps, 205 bowls of nasi goreng.
Includes in-depth information on volcano trekking, surfing, diving, orang-utan watching and the best adventures.
Content updated daily: visit lonelyplanet.com for up-to-the-minute reviews, updates and traveler suggestions.

View product details at Amazon

Southeast Asia: On a Shoestring (Paperback)

2008-07-12T07:14:00.000-07:00

Trek deep into the jungles of Borneo or laze on stunning Bali beaches. Eat your way through Singapore or dance all night in buzzing Bangkok clubs. Discover ancient Angkor temples or go grass roots and volunteer in Hanoi. Whatever you seek, Lonely Planet's yellow bible has it covered. With more than 33 years of experience, and a team of backpacking authors, our guide helps you dig deeper, stay longer, and spend less. Get ready - your Southeast Asian adventure starts here.

Get The Lowdown on the environment, history, culture and current events in our Snapshots chapter

Eat Cheap and Sleep Easy with our fully updated coverage of the best street stalls, budget digs and places to party

Blaze Your Own Trail using our full-color regional map and detailed local maps

Talk The Talk with help from our Language chapter

View product details at Amazon

India (Country Guide) (Paperback)

2008-07-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

From Antarctica to Zimbabwe, if you're going there chances are Lonely Planet has been there first. With a pithy and matter-of-fact writing style, these guides are guaranteed to calm the nerves of first-time world travelers, while still listing off-the-beaten-path finds sure to thrill even the most jaded globetrotters. Lonely Planet has been perfecting its guidebooks for nearly 30 years and as a result, has the experience and know-how similar to an older sibling's "been there" advice. The original backpacker's bible, the LP series has recently widened its reach. While still giving insights for the low-budget traveler, the books now list a wide range of accommodations and itineraries for those with less time than money.

Explore the myriad wonders of India with this useful guide in hand. Whether you wish to cruise the backwaters of Kerala on the rooftop of a ferry, explore the Buddhist gompas of Leh, drink Darjeeling's namesake tea, get lost in the dusty bazaars of Hyderabad, or stroll the 16th-century ruins in Hampi, this book will help you get there. Highlights include more than 200 traveler-tested maps, thousands of places to stay and eat for all budgets, excellent health information, all you need to know about transportation options, and a 32-page color section on India's religions. --Kathryn True --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

View product details at Amazon

Grand Canyon National Park (National Parks) (Paperback)

2008-07-09T07:08:00.000-07:00

Mother Nature wasn't messing around when she created the Grand Canyon, slicing through Arizona with 277 miels of red rock spires, stomach-churning drops and wide open spaces. Whether you're an avid hiker, geology nut or sunset seeker, maximize your trip with this top-selling guide to the USA's most iconic national park.

Detailed Itineraries - explore the South and North Rims with 17 great itineraries, plus Las Vegas, Route 66, Sedona, Flagstaff and Skywalk!

Best Hiking Routes - more than 40 hikes for all levels, including rim-to-rim, waterfalls and remote overlooks, plus loads of topographic maps

Family Friendly Options - 'star parties,' mule trips, ranger programs and dozens of firsthand tips in our speciak Kids & Pets chapter

Adventure Ideas - covers rafting on the Colorado River, hiking, biking, horseback riding, skiing, swimming, fishing, helicopter rides, volunteering and mure more

With 700 hours of in-park research and 130 miles of trails hiked, our authors offer sound advice for visitors

View product details at Amazon

Los Angeles & Southern California (Regional Guide) (Paperback)

2008-07-08T07:04:00.000-07:00

Discover Los Angeles & Southern California

Hang onto your Mickey hat while careening down Space Mountain
Try on Pamela Anderson's tank top or designer shoes from Alias
Dangle your sandy feet over a concrete wall and watch a surfer-skater-dog parade
Swirl, sip, savor and spit your pinot on a sustainable wine tour

In This Guide:

Covers LA, Disneyland, Orange County, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs and Joshua Tree!
Three local authors; 1500 hours of on-the-ground research; 56 more pages; 65 detailed maps
New Southern California for Kids chapter packed with tips for families
Content updated daily - visit lonelyplanet.com for up-to-the-minute reviews, updates and traveler suggestions

View product details at Amazon

Hawaii (Regional Guide) (Paperback)

2008-07-08T06:58:00.000-07:00

From Antarctica to Zimbabwe, if you're going there, chances are Lonely Planet has been there first. With a pithy and matter-of-fact writing style, these guides are guaranteed to calm the nerves of first-time world travelers, while still listing off-the-beaten-path finds sure to thrill even the most jaded globetrotters. Lonely Planet has been perfecting its guidebooks for nearly 30 years and as a result, has the experience and know-how similar to an older sibling's "been there" advice. The original backpacker's bible, the LP series has recently widened its reach. While still giving insights for the low-budget traveler, the books now list a wide range of accommodations and itineraries for those with less time than money.

Join Lonely Planet Hawaii experts for the best advice on traveling to what Mark Twain called "the loveliest fleet of islands that lies anchored in any ocean." This is a great guide for people of every budget, featuring more than 60 maps, directions for the best outdoor activities, plus background notes on the islands' history, cultures, and people. There's also a Hawaiian language guide, including useful pidgin words and phrases. --Kathryn True --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

View product details at Amazon

The Night Tourist (Hardcover)

2008-07-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

"It was just after dusk when the accident happened." This alluring first sentence grabs readers' attention, and the compelling story line will hold that interest. Marsh's story focuses on ninth-grader Jack Perdu, a prodigy of classic mythology. Absorbed in a book, Jack fails to see the car that knocks him down. He's physically okay, but after the accident he sees ghostly beings. In New York City's subway, he meets Euri, a spectral girl who leads him eight stories below Grand Central Station, and together they enter the residence of hundreds of ghosts. The spirits, several dead for more than 200 years, are suspicious of Jack, because to them he appears to be alive. Is Jack actually dead? If so, will he be able to locate his mother who disappeared years before? Both Jack and readers will simultaneously unravel the mystery surrounding the author's surreal setting as he learns how to enter and exit this supernatural world. Teenagers knowledgeable about mythology and appreciative of sophisticated wordplay will especially enjoy this intricate read.

View product details at Amazon

Rat Life (Hardcover)

2008-07-04T06:49:00.000-07:00

Grade 6-10–Despite a slow start, this is a solid story set in the early 1970s, with a likable main character and a thrilling climax. Readers will sympathize with Todd, a creative, sensitive boy who helps his parents run a motel in upstate New York and dreams of becoming a writer. When he crosses paths with Rat, a moody young Vietnam veteran, he gets a job at the drive-in theater where Rat works, and finds himself fascinated by the young man, who is compelling but possibly dangerous. Todd begins to wonder if his new friend might have something to do with the unidentified body pulled out of the river. However, the mystery builds quietly as other elements take precedence, including Todd's encounter with an abandoned puppy and the subsequent rabies shots he must endure, his resentment over chores at the motel, his struggles to write a story for English class, and his grandmother's deteriorating mental condition. When the river floods, both Todd and Rat are caught up in the disaster, and the truth comes out at last. The final chapters are riveting, but readers hoping for a fast-paced mystery might be disappointed by the leisurely unfolding of events up to that point. More patient readers will enjoy the details of small-town life and identify with Todd's preoccupations and yearnings.–Miranda Doyle, San Francisco Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

View product details at Amazon

Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters (Hardcover)

2008-07-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

This remarkable annotated collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's previously unpublished private correspondence offers unique insight into one of the world's most popular authors. For the first time, Conan Doyle emerges from the shadow of Sherlock Holmes, revealing a man whose character and exploits rival that of his famous creation. In particular, Conan Doyle's correspondence with his mother exposes his endless search for fulfillment and success outside the Holmes stories.

At age sixteen Conan Doyle began studying medicine at Edinburgh University. Just months shy of graduating, he made the adventurous decision to accept a position as a surgeon on a whaling ship heading to the Arctic. He returned to Edinburgh, graduated, and struggled to establish his own medical practice while simultaneously writing and promoting his stories. He suffered years of disappointment as both doctor and author; yet, to his amazement, just two months after the first Sherlock Holmes short stories, he had garnered such a following that he completely abandoned medicine for literature.

As the public clamored endlessly for Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle explored other pursuits: He was a doctor during the Boer War, a World War I correspondent, and the foremost spokesman for Spiritualism. As his life changed, Doyle's correspondence with his mother remained constant. In his letters to "the Mam," Doyle shares the dismay he felt over the critical reception of his other writing, and as his irritation with the Holmes adventures mounts he announces his desire to kill off the character. She is his confidante and trusted counsel throughout her long life.

The editors are known for their expertise and scholarship on the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes. Daniel Stashower is an award-winning mystery novelist and author of Teller of Tales, a widely praised biography of Conan Doyle. Jon Lellenberg is the U.S. agent for the Conan Doyle estate and author of The Quest for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Charles Foley is the writer's great-nephew and executor of the estate. Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters will be a must-have collection for readers interested in the author, Sherlock Holmes, and the Victorian era.

View product details at Amazon

Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Hardcover)

2008-06-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Bugliosi, best known as Charles Manson's prosecutor, spent more than 20 years writing this defense of the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the slaying of President Kennedy, but his obsession has produced a massive tome that's likely to overwhelm most readers. At times, the author seems determined to present every detail his researches revealed, even if it doesn't add to the overall picture (like a footnote on Elvis sightings). Further, while Bugliosi says even serious conspiracy theorists don't claim the FBI or Secret Service were involved, he devotes chapters to each. The book's structure—it's organized by subject, such as theories about the role of the FBI, the KGB or anti-Castro Cubans—leads to needless repetition, and, for an author who excoriates conspiracy theorists, charging them with carelessness and making wild accusations, Bugliosi is not always temperate in his language; for example, twice he makes the nonsensical claim that some Warren Commission critics "were screaming the word conspiracy before the fatal bullet had come to rest." His decision to devote twice as many pages to critiquing Oliver Stone's movie JFK as to his chapter on organized crime (identified by the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassination as the likely conspirators) is a curious one, as is the choice to open the book with a dramatic re-creation of events surrounding the assassination rather than a straightforward chronology of the relevant facts. Moreover, Bugliosi does not always probe whether individuals who are the sole source for certain facts (for example, Oswald's widow, Marina) had any motive to lie. Bugliosi's voluminous endnotes are on an accompanying CD. Gerald Posner's 1993 Case Closed made most of the same points in a much more concise way. 32 pages of illus. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

View product details at Amazon

Queenpin: A Novel (Paperback)

2008-06-28T06:41:00.000-07:00

Edgar-finalist Abbott (Die a Little) delivers a sharp, slender, hardboiled tale of a protégé's schooling by a notorious, been-there-done-that moll. The first time the unnamed 22-year-old female narrator lays eyes on Gloria Denton, her first thought is I want the legs. The setting is the Club Tee Hee, an indeterminate Las Vegas–L.A. nowhere where the kid is doing the mobbed-up books, and Gloria comes in every few weeks to count Jerome's vig. The kid absorbs very entertaining lessons in how to dress, move, behave, and how to pick up, transport and distribute payoffs and winnings—until she falls for sweet-talking gambler Vic Riordan. Abbott is pitch-perfect throughout: Gloria Denton, still turning heads in her 40s, is as hard a moll as any, and the kid is a beautiful combination of foil and tool as she strives to emulate her role model. The collision, violent and inevitable, rips away the facade of glitz and glamour, and leaves their low-end edifice starkly exposed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

View product details at Amazon

In the Woods (Hardcover)

2008-06-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

Irish author French expertly walks the line between police procedural and psychological thriller in her debut. When Katy Devlin, a 12-year-old girl from Knocknaree, a Dublin suburb, is found murdered at a local archeological dig, Det. Rob Ryan and his partner, Cassie Maddox, must probe deep into the victim's troubled family history. There are chilling similarities between the Devlin murder and the disappearance 20 years before of two children from the same neighborhood who were Ryan's best friends. Only Maddox knows Ryan was involved in the 1984 case. The plot climaxes with a taut interrogation by Maddox of a potential suspect, and the reader is floored by the eventual identity and motives of the killer. A distracting political subplot involves a pending motorway in Knocknaree, but Ryan and Maddox are empathetic and flawed heroes, whose partnership and friendship elevate the narrative beyond a gory tale of murdered children and repressed childhood trauma. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

View product details at Amazon

Down River (Hardcover)

2008-06-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

Starred Review. Hart surpasses his bestselling debut, The King of Lies (2006), with his richly atmospheric second novel, which offers a tighter plot, more adroit pacing and less angst. Five years earlier, Adam Chase was arrested for murder, largely on the basis of his stepmother's sworn testimony against him. He was acquitted, but nearly everyone, including his father, still thinks he did it, and Adam's deep bitterness has kept him away from home ever since. Now, at the request of a childhood friend, he's back in Salisbury, N.C., where all the old demons still reside and new troubles await. The almost Shakespearean snarl of family ties is complicated by a very modern struggle between economic progress and love for the land, between haves and have-nots. Throughout, Hart expertly weaves his main theme: that by their freedom of choice, humans are capable of betrayal but also of forgiveness and redemption. This book should settle once and for all the question of whether thrillers and mysteries can also be literature. 150,000 first printing; 15-city author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

View product details at Amazon

Big Russ and Me [ABRIDGED] [AUDIOBOOK] (Audio CD)

2008-06-22T06:32:00.000-07:00

Veteran newsman and Meet the Press moderator Tim Russert is known for his direct and unpretentious style and in this charming memoir he explains why. Russert's father is profiled as a plainspoken World War II veteran who worked two blue-collar jobs while raising four kids in South Buffalo but the elder Russert's lessons on how to live an honest, disciplined, and ethical life are shown to be universal. Big Russ and Me, a sort of Greatest Generation meets Tuesdays with Morrie, could easily have become a sentimental pile of mush with a son wistfully recalling the wisdom of his beloved dad. But both Russerts are far too down-to-earth to let that happen and the emotional content of the book is made more direct, accessible, and palatable because of it. The relationship between father and son, contrary to what one would think of as essential to a riveting memoir, seems completely healthy and positive as Tim, the academically gifted kid and later the esteemed TV star and political operative relies on his old man, a career sanitation worker and newspaper truck driver, for advice. Big Russ and Me also traces Russert's life from working-class kid to one of broadcast journalism's top interviewers by introducing various influential figures who guided him along the way, including Jesuit teachers, nuns, his dad's drinking buddies, and, most notably, the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whom Russert helped get elected in 1976. Plenty of entertaining anecdotes are served up along the way from schoolyard pranks to an attempt to book Pope John Paul II on the Today Show. Though not likely to revolutionize modern thought, Big Russ and Me will provide fathers and sons a chance to reflect on lessons learned between generations. --Charlie Williams --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

View product details at Amazon

When You Are Engulfed in Flames [AUDIOBOOK] [UNABRIDGED] (Audio CD)

2008-06-20T06:28:00.000-07:00

Once again, David Sedaris brings together a collection of essays so uproariously funny and profoundly moving that his legions of fans will fall for him once more. He tests the limits of love when Hugh lances a boil from his backside, and pushes the boundaries of laziness when, finding the water shut off in his house in Normandy, he looks to the water in a vase of fresh cut flowers to fill the coffee machine. From armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds to the awkwardness of having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a sleeping fellow passenger on a plane, David Sedaris uses life's most bizarre moments to reach new heights in understanding love and fear, family and strangers. Culminating in a brilliantly funny (and never before published) account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking, David Sedaris's sixth essay collection will be avidly anticipated.

View product details at Amazon

Insurance for Dummies (Paperback)

2008-06-15T08:44:00.000-07:00

Insurance For Dummies introduces readers to the basics — as well as the more complicated issues — of every kind of insurance. Packed with expert advice and step-by-step guidance, it shows you how to find the right amount of protection at the best possible price, for your life, health, car, home, and anything else you can think of.

Thinking about insurance makes many people cringe with fear; this handy guide makes insurance make sense. It demystifies complicated policies and points out all the traps and pitfalls you need to avoid when buying coverage. Whether you’re a homeowner or a small business owner or you just need a basic policy for your car, you’ll find all the advice you need on:

* Managing your risk
* Reducing your liability
* Insuring a home business
* Buying an umbrella policy
* Dealing with insurers and filing claims
* Assessing your life insurance needs
* Decidin g between group and individual policies

Author Jack Hungelmann uses his twenty-five years of experience in the insurance industry to make buying insurance as simple as possible — even for those who’ve never bought a policy in their lives. Armed with the kind of straightforward, commonsense knowledge and advice you’ll find here, you’ll be able to handle any insurance question that comes up. Keep it on your reference shelf for quick-and-easy answers for all your insurance-related questions:

* Everything you should know about auto insurance
* Choosing cost-effective deductibles
* Picking the right property coverage for your home
* Estimating the value of your assets
* Insuring valuable portable items and collectibles
* Special advice on insuring condos and townhouses
* Getting the most coverage at the best price
* Filing claims and getting back the most
* Plus, online insurance resources

Knowing what kind of coverage you need for yourself and your possessions is a complicated process. With more competition than ever in the insurance business, finding a great deal on the coverage you need can be a challenge. Insurance For Dummies is the fun and friendly guide that gives you with all the essential knowledge it takes to get the maximum coverage at the minimum price.

View product details at Amazon

The Guide to Understanding the Insurance Industry 2007-2008: Dig Into the Financials That Drive Insurers (Paperback)

2008-06-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

'The Guide to Understanding the Insurance Industry 2007-2008' is an illustrated, easy-to-read handbook that takes an exhaustive look at today's insurance business environment. Using exclusive information from the many sources within the A.M. Best family of publications and products, the guide is handy reference for industry-current trends and terminology, and a comprehensive resource that focuses on the property/casualty, life, health and reinsurance industries. The guide also showcases information about captive domiciles, solvency and ratings, and how insurance is sold and regulated. It's a great gift for new employees, board members, clients and customers, and can be used for reports, speeches and presentations.

View product details at Amazon

The Handbook of Loan Syndications and Trading (Hardcover)

2008-06-13T08:37:00.000-07:00

The First Guide to Understanding and Capitalizing on the $1 Trillion-Plus Loan Syndications and Trading Market!

The Handbook of Loan Syndications and Trading is the first resource especially designed to equip institutional investors and professional money managers with expert analysis and insights on every key aspect of this rapidly growing financial market.

Co-published by McGraw-Hill and the Loan Syndications and Trading Association (LSTA), The Handbook of Loan Syndications and Trading fully explains the evolution and history of the loan market…primary and secondary markets …analytics and performance…the credit agreement… pricing and all legal and regulatory issues. This comprehensive reference guide features:
# First-ever guidance on the booming loan syndications and trading market, covering every topic that investors and money managers need to know
# Over 40 contributions from the leading players in loan syndication, including Standard & Poor's, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse, along with top Buyside Institutions and Law Firms
# Valuable insights and observations from industry experts
# A comprehensive A-Z glossary of all loan syndications and trading terms
# Dozens of helpful tables, charts, and examples

About the Author

Allison Taylor is executive director, and Alicia Sansone is senior vice president, with the Loan Syndications and Trading Association.

View product details at Amazon

The Loan Officer's Practical Guide to Residential Finance (Paperback)

2008-06-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Mortgage Originator Magazine, June 1998
...a fantastic resource for the new or seasoned loan officer... a great value for the amount of information presented...

Jim Gulvin
Haven't been able to find as much info in one place and as well organized anywhere else! Thanks, wildly exceeded

View product details at Amazon

The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook: Your Self-Treatment Guide for Pain Relief, Second Edition (Paperback)

2008-06-11T05:58:00.003-07:00

The first edition of this workbook is regarded as a classic in its field, and was the first book to introduce trigger point therapy to the general public as a self-care tool for alleviating chronic pain caused by a variety of conditions, including arthritis, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, headache, muscle ache, and repetitive strain injuries. As the author makes clear, all such conditions are related to lack of oxygen in exhausted or injured muscle tissue. Trigger point therapy has been used for decades by doctors, pain specialists, and massage therapists to quickly stimulate the flow of oxygen and promote rapid pain reduction. This book makes the same techniques available to the general public with instructions that are easy to follow, and abetted by an extensive collection of charts and corresponding illustrations.

The author’s interest in trigger point therapy began when he used it to successfully treat his frozen shoulder. Since that time, he has dedicated himself to teaching others the same techniques. That dedication is obvious throughout his writing and the care he takes to make the therapy understandable to the lay public. Also included in this new edition is updated information that should be of great interest to pain specialists and bodyworkers, as well as useful instruction in a variety of relaxation techniques. Overall, this book is an excellent self-care resource for anyone interested in pain relief.--Larry Trivieri Jr.

View product details at Amazon

The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-Term Health

2008-06-10T05:54:00.000-07:00

This exhaustive presentation of the findings from the China Study conclusively demonstrates the link between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. Referred to as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology" by The New York Times, this study examines more than 350 variables of health and nutrition with surveys from 6,500 adults in 65 counties, representing 2,500 counties across rural China and Taiwan. While revealing that proper nutrition can have a dramatic effect on reducing and reversing these ailments as well as obesity, this text calls into question the practices of many of the current dietary programs, such as the Atkins diet, that enjoy widespread popularity in the West. The impact of the politics of nutrition and the efforts of special interest groups on the creation and dissemination of public information on nutrition are also discussed.

About the Author
T. Colin Campbell, PhD, is the project director of the China-Oxford-Cornell Diet and Health Project (the China Study), a 20-year study of nutrition and health. He is a Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University. In more than 40 years of research he has received more than 70 grant-years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers. He lives in Ithaca, New York. Thomas M. Campbell II lives in Ithaca, New York.

View product details at Amazon

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (Paperback)

2008-06-09T05:51:00.000-07:00

...offers updated information on reporting statistics, writing withour bias, preparing manuscripts with a word processor for electronic production, and publishing research in accordance with ethical principles. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

View product details at Amazon

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-06-08T05:48:00.000-07:00

Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm--and into Edgar's mother's affections.

Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires--spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.

David Wroblewski is a master storyteller, and his breathtaking scenes--the elemental north woods, the sweep of seasons, an iconic American barn, a fateful vision rendered in the falling rain--create a riveting family saga, a brilliant exploration of the limits of language, and a compulsively readable modern classic.

View product details at Amazon

The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-06-07T05:46:00.000-07:00

A tall, yellow-haired, young European traveler calling himself “Mogor dell’Amore,” the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar, lord of the great Mughal empire, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the imperial capital, a tale about a mysterious woman, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, and her impossible journey to the far-off city of Florence.

The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man’s world. It is the story of two cities, unknown to each other, at the height of their powers–the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power.

Vivid, gripping, irreverent, bawdy, profoundly moving, and completely absorbing, The Enchantress of Florence is a dazzling book full of wonders by one of the world’s most important living writers.

View product details at Amazon

A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (Hardcover)

2008-06-06T05:43:00.000-07:00

The bestselling author of All the Shah's Men profiles one of the most successful revolutionaries of the modern era, telling the dramatic story of how he seized power in Rwanda and led this shattered country's astonishing recovery

Paul Kagame grew up as a wretched refugee. He and a group of comrades, determined to force their way back home after a generation of exile, designed one of the most audacious covert operations in the history of clandestine war. Then, after taking power, they amazed the world by stabilizing and reviving their devastated country. Now, as President Kagame, he's obsessed with a single outlandish dream: to make Rwanda the first middle-income country in Africa, and to do it in the space of a single generation. A Thousand Hills tells Kagame's tumultuous life story, including his early fascination with Che Guevara and James Bond, his years as an intelligence agent, his training in Cuba and the United States, the dazzlingly original way he built his secret rebel army, his bloody rebellion, and his outsized ambitions for Rwanda. It is the adventure-filled tale of a visionary who won a war, stopped a genocide, and then set out to turn his country into the star of Africa. Like Ishmael Beah's bestselling A Long Way Gone and Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, this book recounts the thrilling and uplifting tale of a man who defied the odds to lift himself and his country out of misery toward a more promising future.

Stephen Kinzer (Chicago, IL) is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has worked in more than 50 countries on five continents. He has been New York Times bureau chief in Istanbul, Berlin, and Managua, Nicaragua. His other books include the bestsellers All the Shah's Men (978-0-470-18549-0) and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (978-0-8050-8240-1).

View product details at Amazon

The Other (Hardcover)

2008-06-05T05:41:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, June 2008: When John William Barry and Neil Countryman meet at a high school track meet in the early 1970s, they are two sides of the same coin: John is a trust fund baby and student of a prestigious private school while Neil is solidly working class, but they share an affinity for the outdoors and apprehension over impending changes in their lives. After an unintentionally challenging week lost in the wilds of the North Cascades, John is compelled to an ascetic path: life in a remote river valley in the Olympic Peninsula rainforest, where he chips a shelter from a granite wall and immerses himself in the esoterica of Gnostic dualism --a philosophy that holds that the material world is illusional and destructive. Neil meanwhile chooses a traditional path as a father and school teacher, despite his troubled friend's exhortations to eschew "hamburger world" and find truth in a simpler, stripped-down existence. Nothing is that simple, of course, and The Other compellingly explores the compromises we make to balance meaning and security in our lives through the choices (and their subsequent consequences) of these two men. --Jon Foro

View product details at Amazon

Bank Loans: Secondary Market and Portfolio Management (Frank J. Fabozzi Series) (Kindle Edition)

2008-06-04T08:40:00.000-07:00

The bank loan market has increased dramatically in recent years and is now viewed by some as a distinct asset class. This comprehensive book covers the structure of the market, secondary market in trading practices, and how to manage a bank loan portfolio.

View product details at Amazon

Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-06-04T05:39:00.000-07:00

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In this enthralling debut, psychiatrist Dr. Leo Liebenstein sets off to find his wife, Rema, who he believes has been replaced by a simulacrum. Also missing is one of Leo's patients, Harvey, who is convinced he receives coded messages (via Page Six in the New York Post) from the Royal Academy of Meteorology to control the weather. At Rema's urging, Leo pretends during his sessions with Harvey to be a Royal Academy agent (she thinks the fib could help break through to Harvey), and once Re- ma and Leo disappear, Leo turns to actual Royal Academy member Tzvi Gal-Chen's meteorological work to guide him in his search for his wife. Leo's quest takes him through Buenos Aires and Patagonia, and as he becomes increasingly delusional and erratic, Galchen adeptly reveals the actual situation to readers, including Rema's anguish and anger at her husband. Leo's devotion to the real Rema is heartbreaking and maddening; he cannot see that the woman he seeks has been with him all along. Don't be surprised if this gives you a Crying of Lot 49 nostalgia hit. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Everything is other than it appears to be in Galchen's assured debut--an intricate puzzle powered by urgently beating heart . . . A superb first novel."

View product details at Amazon

The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America (Hardcover)

2008-06-03T05:36:00.000-07:00

The definitive account of Robert Kennedy’s exhilarating and tragic 1968 campaign for president—a revelatory history that is especially resonant now

After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy—formerly Jack’s no-holds-barred political warrior—almost lost hope. He was haunted by his brother’s murder, and by the nation’s seeming inabilities to solve its problems of race, poverty, and the war in Vietnam. Bobby sensed the country’s pain, and when he announced that he was running for president, the country united behind his hopes. Over the action-packed eighty-two days of his campaign, Americans were inspired by Kennedy’s promise to lead them toward a better time. And after an assassin’s bullet stopped this last great stirring public figure of the 1960s, crowds lined up along the country’s railroad tracks to say goodbye to Bobby.

With new research, interviews, and an intimate sense of Kennedy, Thurston Clarke provides an absorbing historical narrative that goes right to the heart of America’s deepest despairs—and most fiercely held dreams—and tells us more than we had understood before about this complicated man and the heightened personal, racial, political, and national dramas of his times.

View product details at Amazon

The Monster of Florence (Hardcover)

2008-06-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

In the nonfiction tradition of John Berendt ("Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil") and Erik Larson ("The Devil in the White City"), New York Times bestselling author Douglas Preston presents a gripping account of crime and punishment in the lush hills surrounding Florence, Italy.
In 2000, Douglas Preston fulfilled a dream to move his family to Italy. Then he discovered that the olive grove in front of their 14th century farmhouse had been the scene of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer known as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, meets Italian investigative journalist Mario Spezi to learn more. This is the true story of their search for--and identification of--the man they believe committed the crimes, and their chilling interview with him. And then, in a strange twist of fate, Preston and Spezi themselves become targets of the police investigation. Preston has his phone tapped, is interrogated, and told to leave the country. Spezi fares worse: he is thrown into Italy's grim Capanne prison, accused of being the Monster of Florence himself. Like one of Preston's thrillers, The Monster Of Florence, tells a remarkable and harrowing story involving murder, mutilation, and suicide-and at the center of it, Preston and Spezi, caught in a bizarre prosecutorial vendetta.

About the Author
Douglas Preston worked for the American Museum of Natural History as managing editor of Curator magazine. He's also written articles for The New Yorker, Natural History, Travel & Leisure, Reader's Digest, National Geographic, Harper's, Smithsonian, and Atlantic.

Mario Spezi is an Italian journalist who has been investigating the Monster of Florence case since the first murders in 1974.

View product details at Amazon

Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy Basic to Advanced Techniques for the Professional (Hardcover)

2008-05-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

Professional techniques and procedures for doing outstanding hypnotherapy using direct suggestion, convincers, covert testing, age regression and more. This is an exciting new book for professionals who are using hypnotherapy in their work (or would like to).It is highly organized and readable, and outlines and explains some of the most powerful and reliable techniques and procedures available to the modern hypnotherapist. A treasure of over 180 Hypnotherapy Techniques and Procedures that lead to successful hypnotherapy including: how to hypnotize every client, how to show every client that he or she was hypnotized, how to make your hypnotic suggestions more powerful than ever, how to make each session 10 times more powerful than the last one, how to covertly test your clients and use convincers that cannot fail, how to expertly conduct age regression sessions that are successful, how to work with overly-analytical, resistant or nervous clients, and how to amaze your clients and receive referrals from other professionals.

About the Author
Calvin D. Banyan is the CEO and Supervising Hypnotherapist at The Hypnosis Center, Inc.,in Mounds View, (a suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul)Minnesota. At The Hypnosis Center, Inc., he has conducted thousands of hypnosis sessions and supervised hypnotherapists who have conducted thousands more. His is one of the fastest growing practices and schools in the country. Holding both Bachelors (Summa Cum Laude) and Masters degrees in Psychology from the University of North Dakota, as well as publishing in the professional journals of the American Psychological Associaation and the American Psychiatric Association demonstrates his strong academic background which he brings to the practice of hypnotherapy. This is balanced with practical experience having worked in both private and government mental health facilities. The result is that Cal writes about a practical approach to doing hypnotherapy.

Gerald F. Kein is the director of the Omni Hypnosis Training Center in DeLand, Florida, where he maintains a highly successful hypnosis practice and professional training center. Having trained thousands of hypnotherapists nationally and internationally in over thirty countries, he is widely recognized as one of this country's leading instructors of clinical hypnotism. A graduate of Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, Jerry holds a degree in education. He serves as Executive Director of the Florida Society of Professional Hypnotherapists. He is Vice President of Chapter 104 of the National Federation of Hypnotists and is active in legislative protection and creation around the country. He is also a contributing author to The Journal of Hypnotism, serves on the Advisory Board of the National Guild of Hypnotists and on the Certification Board of the National Guild of Hypnotists.

View product details at Amazon

Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy: The Complete Works (Hardcover)

2008-05-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Scripts and Strategies in Hypnotherapy have been combined to create the single most comprehensive source of hypnotherapy scripts and strategies that can be used by hypnotherapists to build a successful franework for almost any therapy session.

View product details at Amazon

Hypnotherapy Scripts 2nd Edition (Hardcover)

2008-05-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

In this innovative and informative revision of their classic text, Havens and Walters provide a clear description of the hypnotic experience and a compelling explanation of its therapeutic potential within the clinical setting. The poetic and metaphorical communication patterns integrated into this hypnotic technique are designed to create therapeutic change efficiently and effectively while providing a healing relationship within which deeper personal meanings may be explored. Verbatim sample transcripts of various induction and therapeutic suggestion procedures offer an exhaustive range of possible applications.
This revised edition incorporates recent research and writings on the role of unconscious processes, wellness, and positive psychology along with new metaphor scripts for problems and disorders not included in the first edition. It also includes specific guidelines for creating one's own hypnotherapeutic inductions and metaphors, as well as a detailed explanation of the therapeutically efficient and effective Diagnostic Trance process.

Book Info
Univ. of Illinois, Springfield. Incorporates recent research and writings on the role of unconscious processes, and positive psychology with metaphor scripts for problems and disorders. Also includes guidelines for creating hypnotherapeutic inductions and metaphors, and an explanation of the diagnostic trance process. Previous edition: c1989.

View product details at Amazon

The New Hypnotherapy Handbook: Hypnosis and Mind/Body Healing (Paperback)

2008-05-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

# Paperback: 400 pages
# Publisher: Network 3000; 2 Revised edition (May 2001)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0970932103
# ISBN-13: 978-0970932105
# Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
# Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

View product details at Amazon

Hypnotherapy (Hardcover)

2008-05-24T08:29:00.000-07:00

# Hardcover: 336 pages
# Publisher: Westwood Publishing Company; New Ed edition (June 1, 1984)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0930298047
# ISBN-13: 978-0930298043
# Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
# Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds

View product details at Amazon

Rich Dad's Increase Your Financial IQ: Get Smarter with Your Money (Rich Dad's) (Paperback)

2008-05-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

For years, Robert Kiyosaki has firmly believed that the best investment one can ever make is in taking the time to truly understand how one's finances work. Too many people are much more interested in the quick-hitting scheme, or trying to find a short-cut to real wealth. As Kiyosaki has preached over and over again, one has to truly under the process of how money works before one can start out on trying to escape the daily financial Rat Race.

Now, in this latest book in the popular Rich Dad Poor Dad series, Kiyosaki lays out his 5 key principles of Financial Intelligence for all to understand. In INCREASE YOUR FINANCIAL IQ, Kiyosaki provides real insights on these key steps to wealth:

o How to increase your money -- how to assess what you're really worth now, what your prospects are, and how to start mapping out your financial future.

o How to protect your money -- for better or for worse, taxes are a way of life. Kiyosaki shows you that "it's not what you make....it's what you keep."

o How to budget your money -- everybody wants to live large, but you have to learn how to live within your budget. Kiyosaki shows you how you can.

o How to leverage your money -- as you build your financial IQ, knowing how to put your money to work for you is a crucial step.

o How to improve your financial information -- Kiyosaki shows you how to accelerate your wealth as you learn more and more.

View product details at Amazon

If You Want to Be Rich & Happy: Don't Go to School? : Ensuring Lifetime Security for Yourself and Your Children (Paperback)

2008-05-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

As co-founder of the Excellerated Learning Institute, Robert Kiyosaki has had ample opportunity to observe our public education system. Like many concerned educators, he finds it woefully inadequate for the job of preparing young people to cope with the demands of modern life. In this new edition he dissects the reasons why schools fail and describes solutions that can put every child in touch with the innate joy of learning. At a time when more children are failing in school-and more schools are failing children-Kiyosaki introduces a note of sanity and hope for improvement.

View product details at Amazon

The Post-American World (Hardcover)

2008-05-21T07:52:00.000-07:00

One of our most distinguished thinkers argues that the "rise of the rest" is the great story of our time.

"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

About the Author
Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International and writes a weekly column on international affairs. His previous book was the New York Times bestseller The Future of Freedom. He lives in New York City.

View product details at Amazon

Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) (Hardcover)

2008-05-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

Twilight tempted the imagination. New Moon made readers thirsty for more. Eclipse turned the saga into a worldwide phenomenon. And now, the book that everyone has been waiting for....
Breaking Dawn, the final book in the #1 bestselling Twilight Saga, will take your breath away.

About the Author
Stephenie Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English Literature, and she lives with her husband and three young sons in Arizona. Stephenie is the author of Twilight,New Moon, and Eclipse.

View product details at Amazon

Audition: A Memoir (Roughcut)

2008-05-19T07:29:00.000-07:00

“an indispensable book along with a surefire monster best seller…intensely readable…She’s TV’s original monarch and superstar where power, show business and journalism converge. It’s Barbara Walters’ world, and the rest of us just live in it. [Her] mammoth memoir, doesn’t just touch chords, it’s a 600-plus page oratorio.”
–Jeff Simon, The Buffalo News

View product details at Amazon

The Host: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Stephenie Meyer, creator of the phenomenal teen-vamp Twilight series, takes paranormal romance into alien territory in her first adult novel. Those wary of sci-fi or teen angst will be pleasantly surprised by this mature and imaginative thriller, propelled by equal parts action and emotion. A species of altruistic parasites has peacefully assumed control of the minds and bodies of most humans, but feisty Melanie Stryder won't surrender her mind to the alien soul called Wanderer. Overwhelmed by Melanie's memories of fellow resistor Jared, Wanderer yields to her body's longing and sets off into the desert to find him. Likely the first love triangle involving just two bodies, it's unabashedly romantic, and the characters (human and alien) genuinely endearing. Readers intrigued by this familiar-yet-alien world will gleefully note that the story's end leaves the door open for a sequel--or another series. --Mari Malcolm

View product details at Amazon

The Girl of His Dreams (A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery) (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:50:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Reading The Girl of His Dreams leaves you no choice but to reconsider what makes a mystery novel so good. Certainly there's no denying the appeal of a hard-boiled crime story, where more often than not a brilliant yet battered P.I. drives you white-knuckled to the edge of your seat, but Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti--at once exactingly inquisitive and disarmingly sensitive--bucks that genre convention entirely. Here, in Leon's seventeenth Brunetti mystery, is a man who investigates the tragic drowning of a young Gypsy girl relentlessly, yet--in his thoughtful meanderings through the streets and cafes of Venice--also struggles to understand the human warps and weaknesses that make his beloved city so vulnerable. In the end, it's this pure love and curiosity for life (and, I admit, his lusty appreciation of daily luxuries like prosecco, good coffee, or a burst of sunshine) that make Brunetti such a seductive hero--so much so that you're willing to follow him wherever he goes. --Anne Bartholomew

View product details at Amazon

Beijing Coma: A Novel (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:48:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Like a latter-day Rip Van Winkle, a troubled young man slumbers away for ten years. While he slowly retraces the experiences that brought him into this dream state, the world around him morphs into a nearly unrecognizable place. The place is not a mountain fairyland in pre-Revolutionary America, but China at the turn of the twenty-first century. And, our story's hero is not a beleaguered farmer seeking solace among the mountains and rivers, but a promising graduate student named Dai Wei who was shot in the head during the pro-democracy protests in 1989 at Tiananmen Square. Beijing Coma is an unexpectedly visceral and daring work of fiction by critically acclaimed author Ma Jian that explores why a promising young student would risk it all in the spring of 1989. In this ingeniously constructed novel--which sets Dai Wei's internal recollections against the contemporary changes occurring beyond him--Ma Jian reveals the profound personal consequences of that historic struggle for freedom--long after the CNN cameras stopped rolling. --Lauren Nemroff

View product details at Amazon

The Lazarus Project (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: America has a richer literary landscape since Aleksandar Hemon, stranded in the United States in 1992 after war broke out in his native Sarajevo, adopted Chicago as his new home. He completed his first short story within three years of learning to write in English, and since then his work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and The Paris Review and in two acclaimed books, The Question of Bruno and Nowhere Man. In The Lazarus Project, his most ambitious and imaginative work yet, Hemon brings to life an epic narrative born from a historical event: the 1908 killing of Lazarus Averbuch, a 19-year-old Jewish immigrant who was shot dead by George Shippy, the chief of Chicago police, after being admitted into his home to deliver an important letter. The mystery of what really happened that day remains unsolved (Shippy claimed Averbuch was an anarchist with ill intent) and from this opening set piece Hemon springs a century ahead to tell the story of Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian-American writer living in Chicago who gets funding to travel to Eastern Europe and unearth what really happened. The Lazarus Project deftly weaves the two stories together, cross-cutting the aftermath of Lazarus's death with Brik's journey and the tales from his traveling partner, Rora, a Bosnian war photographer. And while the novel will remind readers of many great books before it--Ragtime, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Everything Is Illuminated--it is a masterful literary adventure that manages to be grand in scope and intimate in detail. It's an incredibly rewarding reading experience that's not to be missed. --Brad Thomas Parsons

View product details at Amazon

A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:43:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: On August 17, 1988, Pak One, the airplane carrying Pakistani dictator General Zia and several top generals, crashed, killing all on board --and despite continued investigation, a smoking gun--mechanical or conspiratorial--has yet to be found. Mohammed Hanif's outrageous debut novel, A Case of Exploding Mangoes, tracks at least two (and as many as a half-dozen) assassination vectors to their convergence in the plane crash, incorporating elements as diverse as venom-tipped sabers, poison gas, the curses of a scorned First Lady, and a crow impaired by an overindulgence of ripe mangoes. The book has been aptly compared to Catch-22 for its hilarious (though not quite as madcap) skewering of the Pakistani military and intelligence infrastructure, but it also can trace its lineage to Don DeLillo, doing for Pakistan what Libra did for JFK conspiracy theory, and Kafka's The Trial, with its paranoid-but-true take on pathological bureaucracy. Recent events pushing Pakistan into the worst kind of headlines make A Case of Exploding Mangoes a timely and entertaining read, and when a mysterious bearded man called "OBL" makes an appearance at a Fourth of July party for U.S. military brass, we're coolly reminded of the fickleness of opportunistic policy in unpredictable lands. --Jon Foro

View product details at Amazon

The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:40:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: You don't have to be a rabid Chris Farley fan to enjoy The Chris Farley Show, an honest, endearing oral biography about a truly funny, deeply troubled addict that is as likely to make you cry as it is to make you laugh out loud. Made up mostly of excerpts from intimate interviews with family, childhood friends, famous castmates, and writers, The Chris Farley Show is a vivid portrait of a performer, told plainly by the people who knew him best at every stage of his life. These hundred or so interviews piece together the complex back-story of a hugely talented, big-hearted guy who could make the funniest people in the business laugh with "just a look," but whose vulnerability and "puppy dog personality" charmed friends and family into letting him off the hook--preventing him from getting help when he needed it most. Funny and heart wrenching, The Chris Farley Show is a must-read for fans of Farley and of the people who loved him (including David Spade, Chris Rock, Tim Meadows), as well as anyone looking for a glimpse into life on the stage. --Daphne Durham

View product details at Amazon

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Hardcover)

2008-05-15T05:35:00.000-07:00

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: How did we go from Lyndon Johnson's landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon's equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a "Silent Majority" that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace. In Nixonland Rick Perlstein tells a more familiar story than the one he unearthed in his influential previous book, Before the Storm, which argued that the stunning success of modern conservatism was founded in Goldwater's massive 1964 defeat. But he makes it fresh and relentlessly compelling, with obsessive original research and a gleefully slashing style--equal parts Walter Winchell and Hunter S. Thompson--that's true to the times. Perlstein is well known as a writer on the left, but his historian's empathies are intense and unpredictable: he convincingly channels the resentment and rage on both sides of the battle lines and lets neither Nixon's cynicism nor the naivete of liberals like New York mayor John Lindsay off the hook. And while election-year readers will be reminded of how much tamer our times are, they'll also find that the echoes of the era, and its persistent national divisions, still ring loud and clear. --Tom Nissley

View product details at Amazon

The Last Lecture (Hardcover)

2008-05-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."
--Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled "The Last Lecture." Professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can't help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think"). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to believe. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his lecture such a phenomenon and given it an indelible form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

View product details at Amazon

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) (Hardcover)

2008-05-13T05:50:00.000-07:00

Readers beware. The brilliant, breathtaking conclusion to J.K. Rowling's spellbinding series is not for the faint of heart--such revelations, battles, and betrayals await in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that no fan will make it to the end unscathed. Luckily, Rowling has prepped loyal readers for the end of her series by doling out increasingly dark and dangerous tales of magic and mystery, shot through with lessons about honor and contempt, love and loss, and right and wrong. Fear not, you will find no spoilers in our review--to tell the plot would ruin the journey, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an odyssey the likes of which Rowling's fans have not yet seen, and are not likely to forget. But we would be remiss if we did not offer one small suggestion before you embark on your final adventure with Harry--bring plenty of tissues.

The heart of Book 7 is a hero's mission--not just in Harry's quest for the Horcruxes, but in his journey from boy to man--and Harry faces more danger than that found in all six books combined, from the direct threat of the Death Eaters and you-know-who, to the subtle perils of losing faith in himself. Attentive readers would do well to remember Dumbledore's warning about making the choice between "what is right and what is easy," and know that Rowling applies the same difficult principle to the conclusion of her series. While fans will find the answers to hotly speculated questions about Dumbledore, Snape, and you-know-who, it is a testament to Rowling's skill as a storyteller that even the most astute and careful reader will be taken by surprise.

A spectacular finish to a phenomenal series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is a bittersweet read for fans. The journey is hard, filled with events both tragic and triumphant, the battlefield littered with the bodies of the dearest and despised, but the final chapter is as brilliant and blinding as a phoenix's flame, and fans and skeptics alike will emerge from the confines of the story with full but heavy hearts, giddy and grateful for the experience. --Daphne Durham

View product details at Amazon

Kindle: Amazon's New Wireless Reading Device

2008-05-11T02:54:00.000-07:00

Still looking for a perfect gift for your lovely Mom? Amazon Kindle lets her wirelessly download from more than 120,000 books, newspapers, magazines and blogs in less than a minute.

View product details at Amazon

The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

2008-05-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

Ekhart Tolle's message is simple: living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment. And while this message may not seem stunningly original or fresh, Tolle's clear writing, supportive voice, and enthusiasm make this an excellent manual for anyone who's ever wondered what exactly "living in the now" means. Foremost, Tolle is a world-class teacher, able to explain complicated concepts in concrete language. More importantly, within a chapter of reading this book, readers are already holding the world in a different container--more conscious of how thoughts and emotions get in the way of their ability to live in genuine peace and happiness.

Tolle packs a lot of information and inspirational ideas into The Power of Now. (Topics include the source of Chi, enlightened relationships, creative use of the mind, impermanence, and the cycle of life.) Thankfully, he's added markers that symbolize "break time." This is when readers should close the book and mull over what they just read. As a result, The Power of Now reads like the highly acclaimed A Course in Miracles--a spiritual guidebook that has the potential to inspire just as many study groups and change just as many lives for the better. --Gail Hudson

View product details at Amazon

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)

2008-05-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

The highly anticipated follow-up to the 2,000,000 copy bestselling inspirational book, The Power of Now

With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived "in the now." In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

The Power of Now was a question-and-answer handbook. A New Earth has been written as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.

About the Author

ECKHART TOLLE is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition. In his writing and seminars, he conveys a simple yet profound message with the timeless and uncomplicated clarity of the ancient spiritual masters: There is a way out of suffering and into peace. Eckhart travels extensively, taking his teachings throughout the world.

View product details at Amazon