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.
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The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Hardcover)
Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (Hardcover)
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.
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Somewhere in Heaven: The Remarkable Love Story of Dana and Christopher Reeve (Hardcover)
"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.
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Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (Hardcover)
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.
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Money, and the Law of Attraction: Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness (Paperback)
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.
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The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate (Hardcover)
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.
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The Obama Nation (Hardcover)
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.
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sTORI Telling
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.
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Life with My Sister Madonna
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.
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Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar (Hardcover)
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.
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What Happened to Anna K.: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
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The Challenge: Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Fight over Presidential Power (Hardcover)
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
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Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (Hardcover)
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
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Lace Reader, The: A Novel (Hardcover)
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.
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The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of his Life--His Own (Hardcover)
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
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How Fiction Works (Hardcover)
“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
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America Eats!: On the Road with the WPA - the Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts That Define Real American Food (Hardcover)
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
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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
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
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Books: A Memoir (Hardcover)
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
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Rome 1960: The Olympics That Changed the World (Hardcover)
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
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