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 | Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian World Product# 460546342 Selling for $13.95 "'Bowles, one of the four or five best writers in English in the second half of the twentieth century, embraced the desert as a Christian saint embraces his martyrdom. His self-abnegation and his love of traditional culture made him one of the keenest observers of other civilizations we have ever had in America. Unlike his countrymen he did not brashly set out to improve the rest of the world. For Bowles, Americanization was the problem, not the solution. As these startling, sober travel pieces show, Bowles, because of his powers of negative capability, was able to enter into the inner truth of even the most remote places and peoples.' -- from the Introduction by Edmund White" |
 | The Best American Magazine Writing of 2002 Product# 460678610 Selling for $14.95 "A treasury of great magazine pieces drawn from the winners of and finalists for the prestigious National Magazine Awards In the world of magazines, no recognition is more highly coveted than an 'Ellie,' the National Magazine Award presented by the American Society of Magazine Editors. This is the magazine equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize. Nominees and winners are chosen by hundreds of editors, educators, and art directors from more than a thousand submissions. These selections are among the very best of those. 'The Best American Magazine Writing anthology puts between the covers of a single book some of the most outstanding writing by some of the most eminent writers in this country. 'My Father's Brain' Jonathan Franzen, 'The New Yorker 'The Crash of EgyptAir 990' William Langewiesche, 'The Atlantic Monthly 'Inside the Battle at Qala-i-Jangi' Alex Perry, 'Time Magazine 'Dr. Daedalus' Lauren Slater, 'Harper's Magazine 'Salt Chic' Jeffrey Steingarten, 'Vogue 'Playing God on No Sleep' Anna Quindlen, 'Newsweek 'Sullivan's Travels" |
 | The Maine Woods Product# 460679764 Selling for $16 "With Abnaki guides, Thoreau climbed Mt. Katahdin and hiked deep into the Maine woods to places where one 'might live and die and never hear of the United States'. His accurate, evocative descriptions still reflect his belief that man himself is a part of the natural world." |
 | Small Wonder Product# 460681241 Selling for $23.95 "Twenty-two optimistic and articulate essays by the author of High Tide in Tucson cover such topics as nature, family, literature, and the joys of everyday life while examining the challenges of war, poverty, and violence. Reader's Guide available." |
 | Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden Product# 460681246 Selling for $13.95 "In the mode of her bestseller 'A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman celebrates the sensory pleasures of her garden through the seasons. Whether she is deadheading flowers or glorying in the profusion of roses, offering sugar water to a hummingbird or studying the slug, she welcomes the unexpected drama and extravagance as well as the sanctuary her garden offers. Written in sensuous, lyrical prose, 'Cultivating Delight is a hymn to nature and to the pleasure we take in it." |
 | Turning The Tables: Restaurants From The Inside Out Product# 460681791 Selling for $24.95 "An award-winning critic and food columnist offers insider information on how restaurants work and how to dine out like a professional, in a guide that shares practical advice on obtaining the best service, getting a coveted reservation, and identifying the best place for any event. 25,000 first printing." |
 | Shaken & Stirred: Through the Martini Glass and Other Drinking Adventures Product# 460681810 Selling for $17.95 "Drawn from the personal stories of bartenders, industry leaders, famous night-life entrepreneurs, chefs, and fellow imbibers, a collection of New York Times columns on the after-five lifestyle includes more than twenty-five previously unpublished essays and shares observations about beverage industry innovations, drinkers' attitudes, and cocktail recipes. 25,000 first printing." |
 | The Revolution Will Be Accessorized: Blackbook Presents Dispatches from the New Counterculture Product# 460682072 Selling for $13.95 "A compelling compilation of literary essays and articles from the pages of BlackBook Magazine brings together ground-breaking contributions from Augusten Burroughs, Chuck Palahniuk, Naomi Klein, Douglas Coupland, Francine Prose, Alain de Botton, Meghan Daum, William T. Vollmann, and other notable authors. Original. 30,000 first printing." |
 | Tracks in the Sea Product# 460683468 Selling for $12.95 "Navigation at sea was a matter of guesswork until well into the 19th century. Changing that became the obsession of Matthew Fontaine Maury. While others built railroads, Maury mapped highways of wind and current over the seas. Hearn uses Maury's career as a window on America's maritime development in the 19th century, including the clipper-ship era of the 1850s, the rise of steam and steel, and the Civil War." |
| The Maine Woods Product# 460686438 Selling for $16 "With Abnaki guides, Thoreau climbed Mt. Katahdin and hiked deep into the Maine woods to places where one 'might live and die and never hear of the United States'. His accurate, evocative descriptions still reflect his belief that man himself is a part of the natural world." |
 | Scratching the Beat Surface: Essays on New Vision from Blake to Kerouac Product# 460686482 Selling for $13 This insider's view of the Beat scene of the fifties and early sixties vividly marks the advancement of a new perception of art as 'a living bio-alchemical organism' through essays by a poet and playwright who helped shape the movement. |
 | Blue Pastures Product# 460687101 Selling for $22 "With consummate craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned fifteen luminous prose pieces: of nature, of writing, of herself and those around her. She praises Whitman ('the brother I did not have') and denounces cuteness ('we are, none of use, cute'). She notes where the extraordinary is to be found ('it is more likely to stick to the risk-taker than the ticket-taker') and extols solitude ('creative work needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to'). Nature speaks to her, and she speaks to nature ('I put my face close to the lily, where it stands just above the grass, and give it a good greeting from the stem of my heart'). Says Mary Oliver, 'This book is biased, opinionated; also it is joyful, and probably there's despair here too - can a life slide forward sixty years without it? But the reader will find the pleasures more certain, and more constant, than the rills of despond. Thus it has turned out in my life so far, influenced by the sustaining passions: love of the wild world, love of literature, love for and from another person'." |
 | Time Bites: Views & Reviews Product# 460766355 Selling for $14.95 "A collection of literary essays and criticism by the award-winning author of The Golden Notebook and The Sweetest Dream includes her reviews of classic books, commentaries on world politics, and insights into the role of personal experience in the creation of literature. Reprint. 10,000 first printing." |
 | Literary Nonfiction: The Fourth Genre Product# 460767372 Selling for $45.6 "This book is an introduction to creative, or literary, nonfiction and to the art of writing fresh and original work. Presenting clear guidelines and fresh approaches to creativity, this well-written book explores the six basic approaches to non-fiction writing, differentiates between what is creative and what is utilitarian, and describes honest as opposed to deceitful work. Using short example essays to illustrate the key approaches of personal experience, biographical sketch, opinion, reflection, place, and historical incident, this book stresses the importance of learning to write by reading. Useful for individuals who wish to examine nonfiction essays critically, with the intention of writing themselves. Also, those who keep literary journals will benefit from this book." |
 | Notes of an Anatomist Product# 460767881 Selling for $15 "Essays discuss embalming, twins, mortality, character, the human body, child abuse, deformity, and human sexuality" |
 | Entropy and the Magic Flute Product# 460768224 Selling for $55 "Harold Morowitz has long been regarded highly both as an eminent scientist and as an accomplished science writer. The essays in The Wine of Life, his first collection, were hailed by C.P. Snow as 'some of the wisest, wittiest and best informed that I have read', and Carl Sagan called them 'a delight to read'. In later volumes such as Mayonnaise and the Origin of Life and The Thermodynamics of Pizza, he has established a reputation for a wide-ranging intellect, an ability to see unexpected connections and draw striking parallels, and a talent for communicating scientific ideas with optimism and wit. Kirkus Reviews praised Mayonnaise as 'wonderfully diverting and very wise'. Nature wrote of Thermodynamics, 'his chocolate-coated nuggets of science will continue to entertain and do surreptitious good'. With Entropy and the Magic Flute, Morowitz once again offers an appealing mix of brief reflections on everything from litmus paper to the hippopotamus to the sociology of Palo Alto coffee shops. Many of these pieces are appreciations of scientists that Morowitz holds in high regard. In the title piece, for instance, Morowitz tells of his pilgrimage to the grave of Ludwig Boltzmann, found in the same cemetery - Vienna's Central Cemetery - as the graves of Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms and the memorial to Mozart. He also writes of J. Willard Gibbs ('thought by many to be the greatest scientist yet produced by the United States'), Jean Perrin (author of Les Atomes, a now-forgotten classic that convinced virtually everyone in science of the validity of the atomic hypothesis), Einstein, Newton (on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his Principia, a date that passed virtually unnoticedexcept by Morowitz), Murray Gell-Mann, and Aristotle. Of Aristotle, Morowitz observes that 'most people whose information comes from academic philosophy fail to appreciate that - among his many fields of expertise - first and foremost, Aristotle was a biologist'. Indeed, fully a third of Aristotle's writings are on the life sciences, almost all of which has been left out of standard editions of his work. Many other pieces focus on health issues - such as America's obsession with cheese toppings, the addiction to smoking of otherwise intelligent people, questionable obstetric practices - and several touch upon ethics, whistle-blowing, and scientific research. There is also a fascinating piece on the American Type Culture Collection, a zoo or warehouse for microbes that houses some 11,800 strains of bacteria, and over 3,000 specimens of protozoa, algae, plasmids, and oncogenes. Here then are over forty light, graceful essays in which one of our wisest experimental biologists comments on issues of science, technology, society, philosophy, and the arts." |