Best of
21st-Century

2000

The Last Samurai


Helen DeWitt - 2000
    Ludo reads Homer in the original Greek at 4 before moving on to Hebrew, Japanese, Old Norse, and Inuit; studying advanced mathematical techniques (Fourier analysis and Laplace transformations); and, as the title hints, endlessly watching and analyzing Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece, The Seven Samurai. But the one question that eludes an answer is that of the name of his father: Sibylla believes the film obliquely provides the male role models that Ludo's genetic father cannot, and refuses to be drawn on the question of paternal identity. The child thinks differently, however, and eventually sets out on a search, one that leads him beyond the certainties of acquired knowledge into the complex and messy world of adults.The novel draws on themes topical and perennial--the hothousing of children, the familiar literary trope of the quest for the (absent) father--and as such, divides itself into two halves: the first describes Ludo's education, the second follows him in his search for his father and father figures. The first stresses a sacred, Apollonian pursuit of logic, precise (if wayward) erudition, and the erratic and endlessly fascinating architecture of languages, while the second moves this knowledge into the world of emotion, human ambitions, and their attendant frustrations and failures.The Last Samurai is about the pleasure of ideas, the rich varieties of human thought, the possibilities that life offers us, and, ultimately, the balance between the structures we make of the world and the chaos that it proffers in return. Stylistically, the novel mirrors this ambivalence: DeWitt's remarkable prose follows the shifts and breaks of human consciousness and memory, capturing the intrusions of unspoken thought that punctuate conversation while providing tantalizing disquisitions on, for example, Japanese grammar or the physics of aerodynamics. It is remarkable, profound, and often very funny. Arigato DeWitt-sensei. --Burhan Tufail

Of Marriageable Age


Sharon Maas - 2000
    Set against the Independence struggles of two British colonies, Of Marriageable Age is ultimately a story of personal triumph against a brutal fate, brought to life by a multicultural cast of characters:Savitri, intuitive and charismatic, grows up among the servants of a pre-war English household in the Raj. But the traditional customs of her Brahmin family clash against English upper-class prejudice, threatening her love for the privileged son of the house. Nataraj, raised as the son of an idealistic doctor in rural South India, finds life in London heady, with girls and grass easily available… until he is summoned back home to face raw reality.Saroj, her fire hidden by outward reserve, comes of age in Guyana, South America, the daughter of a strictly orthodox and very racist Hindu father. Her life changes forever on the day she finally rebels against him. ... and even against her gentle, apparently docile Ma.But Ma harbours a deep secret… one that binds these three so disparate lives and hurtles them towards a truth that could destroy their world.Reviews'A big book, big themes, an exotic background and characters that will live with you forever… unputdownable.' Katie Fforde'Beautifully and cleverly written. A wondrous, spellbinding story which grips you from the first to the last page… I can't recall when I last enjoyed a book so much.' Lesley Pearse'It's a wonderful panoramic story and conveys such vivid pictures of the countries it portrays I was immediately transported and completely captivated. A terrific writer.' Barbara Erskine'From the first page I was hooked with this enchanting book… unputdownable.' Audrey Howard'A vast canvas of memorable characters across a kaleidoscope of cultures… her epic story feels like an authentic reflection of a world full of sadness, joy and surprise.' The Observer--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Junie B. Jones Complete Collection


Barbara Park - 2000
    Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus; Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business; Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth; Junie B. Jones and Some Sneaky Peeky Spying; Junie B. Jones and the Yucky Blucky Fruitcake; Junie B. Jones and That Meanie Jim's Birthday; Junie B. Jones Loves Handsome Warren; Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed; Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook; Junie B. Jones Is a Party Animal; Junie B. Jones Is a Beauty Shop Guy; Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy; Junie B. Jones Is (almost) a Flower Girl; Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentine; Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket; Junie B. Jones Is Captain Field Day; Junie B., First Grader (at last!)/i>; Junie B. Jones Is a Graduation Girl; Junie B., First Grader: Boss of Lunch; Junie B., First Grader: Toothless Wonder; Junie B., First Grader: Cheater Pants; Junie B., First Grader: Boo . . . and I Mean It!; Junie B., First Grader: Shipwrecked; and Junie B., First Grader: One-Man Band.

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip


George Saunders - 2000
    In the seaside village of Frip live three families: the Romos, the Ronsens, and a little girl named Capable and her father. The economy of Frip is based solely on goat’s milk, and this is a problem because the village is plagued by gappers: bright orange, many-eyed creatures the size of softballs that love to attach themselves to goats. When a gapper gets near a goat, it lets out a high-pitched shriek of joy that puts the goats off giving milk, which means that every few hours the children of Frip have to go outside, brush the gappers off their goats, and toss them into the sea. The gappers have always been everyone’s problem, until one day they get a little smarter, and instead of spreading out, they gang up: on Capable’s goats. Free at last of the tyranny of the gappers, will her neighbors rally to help her? Or will they turn their backs, forcing Capable to bear the misfortune alone? Featuring fifty-two haunting and hilarious illustrations by Lane Smith and a brilliant story by George Saunders that explores universal themes of community and kindness, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip is a rich and resonant story for those that have all and those that have not.

A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World's Oldest Religion


Jonathan Sacks - 2000
    And it is true that, many times in the course of history, they have been nearly decimated: when the First and Second Temples were destroyed, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, when Hitler proposed his Final Solution. Astoundingly, the Jewish people have survived catastrophe after catastrophe and remained a thriving and vibrant community. The question Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks is, quite simply: How? How, in the face of such adversity, has Judaism remained and flourished, making a mark on human history out of all proportion to its numbers?Written originally as a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in-law, A Letter in the Scroll is Rabbi Sacks's personal answer to that question, a testimony to the enduring strength of his religion. Tracing the revolutionary series of philosophical and theological ideas that Judaism created -- from covenant to sabbath to formal education -- and showing us how they remain compellingly relevant in our time, Sacks portrays Jewish identity as an honor as well as a duty.The Ba'al Shem Tov, an eighteenth-century rabbi and founder of the Hasidic movement, famously noted that the Jewish people are like a living Torah scroll, and every individual Jew is a letter within it. If a single letter is damaged or missing or incorrectly drawn, a Torah scroll is considered invalid. So too, in Judaism, each individual is considered a crucial part of the people, without whom the entire religion would suffer. Rabbi Sacks uses this metaphor to make a passionate argument in favor of affiliation and practice in our secular times, and invites us to engage in our dynamic and inclusive tradition. Never has a book more eloquently expressed the joys of being a Jew.This is the story of one man's hope for the future -- a future in which the next generation, his children and ours, will happily embrace the beauty of the world's oldest religion.

And Other Stories


Georgi Gospodinov - 2000
    These stories within stories and contemporary fables—whether a tongue-in-cheek crime story or the Christmas tale of a pig, a language game leading to an unexpected epiphany or to an inward-looking tale built on the complexity of a puzzle box—come together in unique and surprising ways, offering readers a kaleidoscopic experience from one of Bulgaria's most critically acclaimed authors.

The Life You Imagine: Life Lessons for Achieving Your Dreams


Derek Jeter - 2000
    With the help and support of both of his parents, Derek developed a practical program that would assist him in achieving all of his personal and professional aspirations-and now he shares his secrets to success so that you can get closer to living your dream, too.

The Language of Inquiry


Lyn Hejinian - 2000
    Her autobiographical poem My Life, a best-selling book of innovative American poetry, has garnered accolades and fans inside and outside academia. The Language of Inquiry is a comprehensive and wonderfully readable collection of her essays, and its publication promises to be an important event for American literary culture. Here, Hejinian brings together twenty essays written over a span of almost twenty-five years. Like many of the Language Poets with whom she has been associated since the mid-1970s, Hejinian turns to language as a social space, a site of both philosophical inquiry and political address.Central to these essays are the themes of time and knowledge, consciousness and perception. Hejinian's interests cover a range of texts and figures. Prominent among them are Sir Francis Bacon and Enlightenment-era explorers; Faust and Sheherazade; Viktor Shklovsky and Russian formalism; William James, Hannah Arendt, and Martin Heidegger. But perhaps the most important literary presence in the essays is Gertrude Stein; the volume includes Hejinian's influential "Two Stein Talks," as well as two more recent essays on Stein's writings.

The Miseducation Years


Ross O'Carroll-Kelly - 2000
    The further adventures of Paul Howard's eponymous anti-hero.

The Evil Dead Companion


Bill Warren - 2000
    To read the words therein is to release a hideously unspeakable force...Rigorously made on an almost absent budget in the backwoods of Tennessee, the film was a phenomenal success--the true definition of "cult film"--launching the careers of its director, Sam Raimi; producer, Bob Tapert; and star, Bruce Campbell. It also spawned two deliriously different and wildly inventive sequels, The Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn, and Army of Darkness, which have won over legions of fright fans around the globe. At last, acclaimed film critic Bill Warren takes us on a no-holds-barred behind-the-scenes tour of the making of the three films, including exclusive interviews with key cast and crew; rare and previously unpublished photographs, story-boards, and concept sketches; harrowing tales of hardship, discomfort, and practical jokes; and much more. Enough to keep any puss-oozing deadite drooling through the night.

Karmic Traces


Eliot Weinberger - 2000
    Full of stories, yet written in a condensed, imagistic language, his essays are works of the imagination where all the facts are verifiable. As entertaining as fiction and as vivid as poems, making unexpected stops in odd corners of the globe or forgotten moments in human history, erudite, politically engaged, and acerbically witty, there is nothing quite like his work in contemporary writing.In Karmic Traces, Weinberger's third collection from New Directions, twenty-four essays take the reader along on the author's personal travels from the Atacama Desert to Iceland to Hong Kong on the verge of the handover to China, as well as on imagined voyages in a 17th-century Danish ship bound for India and among strange religious cults or even stranger small animals. One never knows what will appear next: Viking dreams, Aztec rituals, Hindu memory, laughing fish, or prophetic dogs. And, in "The Falls", the long tour-de-force that closes the book, Weinberger recapitulates 3,000 years of history in a cascade of telling facts to uncover the deep roots of contemporary racism and violence.

Pass Thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics


Lou Reed - 2000
    This definitive collection includes lyrics to Lou's earliest work and to his most recent recording. Its brilliantly innovative interior design has brought it praise and awards.

Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary


Monica Byles - 2000
    Each entry is fully explained with its definition, usage, examples, and notes on spelling and punctuation. Word senses have also been refreshed to reflect modern usage, and maps and country statistics have been updated to include new countries, borders, flags, and cities. Throughout this new edition of Merriam-Webster Children's Dictionary, there is a fresh design with a different color-coded border for each letter of the alphabet, plus updated photographs and illustrations for a lively, accessible look that gives kids lots to look at as they build important research skills.

Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles


Jonathan Gold - 2000
    Counter Intelligence collects over 200 of Gold's best restaurant discoveries--from inexpensive lunch counters you won't find on your own to the perfect undiscovered dish at a beaten-path establishment. He reveals the hidden kitchens where Los Angeles' ethnic communities feed their own, including the best of cuisine from Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Burma, Canton, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Iran, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Middle East, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru, Thailand, Vietnam and more. Not to mention the perfectly prepared hamburger and Los Angeles' quintessential hot dog.Counter Intelligence is the richest and most complete guide to eating in Los Angeles. The listings include where to find it and how much you'll pay (in many cases, not very much) with appendices that cover food types and feeding by neighborhood.

The Grace of Repentance (Today's Issues (Wheaton, Ill.).)


Sinclair B. Ferguson - 2000
    But at the heart of the Reformation lay Martin Luther's great discovery, and a challenge that is still needed today: Repentance is not the action of a single moment, but a characteristic of a Christian's entire life.Sinclair Ferguson looks at the biblical definition of repentance, how some modern churches are repeating medieval errors, and the necessity of reformation. Whereas current teaching often belittles repentance, Ferguson believes that not only is it essential for salvation, it is the concrete expression of divine regeneration. When we see what we truly are--innately, inescapably sinful--we know our deep need for God's abundant grace. To this Ferguson declares, "According to Scripture, the Christian life is repentance from beginning to end So long as the believer is at the same time righteous and yet a sinner, it can be no other way."

Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District


Ben Katchor - 2000
    Savor the smell of a phone booth, circa 1961. Sign up for a guided tour of the oldest continually vacant storefront in America. Attend a championship grave-digging competition, or, should you feel you've wasted yet another day, you can check in for help at a local Misspent Youth Center.In "The Beauty Supply District," a new twenty-four-page story, Knipl attends an evening concert and unwittingly enters the world of wholesale empathizers and chiaroscuro brokers who make the decisions critical to the production of aesthetic pleasure in all its forms -- from the shape of an olive jar to the score of a string quartet.From the Hardcover edition.

At Home with Beatrix Potter: The Creator of Peter Rabbit


Susan Denyer - 2000
    Yet few in America are aware of the role she played in protecting some of England's most beautiful landscapes and in designing romantic interiors and a lovely garden at Hill Top, her beloved Lake District farmhouse.Taking the reader through her picturesque house and the breathtaking scenery around it that inspired many of her famous stories, this charming book is the first to look at the intimate connection between the English countryside and Potter's work. Her own exquisite sketches and watercolors, as well as personal ephemera, appear alongside specially commissioned full-color photographs, revealing a home filled with treasured old furniture and beautiful objects and celebrating an artist-storyteller whose legacy as a conservationist at last receives the attention it deserves.

Last Man Standing: The Tragedy and Triumph of Geronimo Pratt


Jack Olsen - 2000
    As a UCLA student, though, he had led the Los Angeles Chapter of the Black Panther Party, and became a target of the FBI. Here is the spellbinding saga of Pratt, his heroic lawyers, Johnnie Cochran and Stuart Hanlon, and the Reverend James McCloskey, who overcame all the odds to bring the truth to light and free Geronimo.

Bartleby & Co.


Enrique Vila-Matas - 2000
    D. Salinger, Bartleby Co. could be described as a meditation: a walking tour through the annals of literature. Written as a series of footnotes (a non-work itself), Bartleby embarks on such questions as why do we write, why do we exist? The answer lies in the novel itself: told from the point of view of a hermetic hunchback who has no luck with women, and is himself unable to write, Bartleby is an utterly engaging work of profound and philosophical beauty.

Rough Music


Patrick Gale - 2000
    Seamlessly alternating between the present day and a summer thirty years past, its twin stories unfold at a cottage along the eastern coast of England.Will Pagett receives an unexpected gift on his fortieth birthday, two weeks at a perfect beach house in Cornwall. Seeking some distance from the married man with whom he's having an affair, he invites his aging mother and father to share his holiday, knowing the sun and sea will be a welcome change for. But the cottage and the stretch of sand before it seem somehow familiar and memories of a summer long ago begin to surface. Thirty-two years earlier. A young married couple and their eight year-old son begin two idyllic weeks at a beach house in Cornwall. But the sudden arrival of unknown American relatives has devastating consequences, turning what was to be a moment of reconciliation into an act of betrayal that will cast a lengthy shadow.As Patrick Gale masterfully unspools these parallel stories, we see their subtle and surprising reflections in each other and discover how the forgotten dramas of childhood are reenacted throughout our lives.Deftly navigating the terrain between humor and tragedy, Patrick Gale has written an unforgettable novel about the lies that adults tell and the small acts of treason that children can commit. Rough Music gracefully illuminates the merciful tricks of memory and the courage with which we continue to assert our belief in love and happiness.From the Hardcover edition.

Deep Sound Channel


Joe Buff - 2000
    In Germany and South Africa, coordinated reactionary coups have established military governments that have overrun the rest of Europe and half of Africa. The South Atlantic has become a battleground where nuclear-tipped missiles rule -- and the only gun worth using is one that seeks and fires from deep beneath the sea.Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Fuller and his crew aboard the ceramic-hulled nuclear submarine USS Challenger are tapped for a mission critical to winning the war. Together with a team of Navy SEALs and assisted by Boer freedom fighter Ilse Reebeck, Commander Fuller must stop a group of scientists who are putting together the ultimate biological weapon. If the mission succeeds, the bioweapon will be destroyed and the South African government crippled. But if it goes wrong, thousands of innocent people will die....

Collected Stories


Ellen Gilchrist - 2000
    With the publication of 1983's The Annunciation, Ellen Gilchrist established herself as a teller of charming, bittersweet tales of the modern South. Since then, her works of fiction - sixteen in all - have built up a solid base of dedicated fans. With her uncanny insights into human character & the bittersweet complications of love, Ellen Gilchrist occupies a unique place in American fiction.

The Smashing Saxons


Terry Deary - 2000
    Want to know: Who got cow pats as Christmas presents? Why wearing a pig on your head is lucky? How to make a dead Saxon happy? Read on for foul facts on cut-throat kings, disgusting diseases and ghastly graves. find out how to make like a monk with silent signals, be the judge in a Saxon criminal court, and solve 1,000-year-old riddles. History has never been so horrible!

Capture the Moment: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs


Cyma Rubin - 2000
    Among them are Joe Rosenthal's World War II photograph of the raising of the flag over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, commemorating the more than 6,000 marines who died in the battle for that small Pacific island, and Robert Jackson's photograph of Jack Ruby killing Lee Harvey Oswald, recalling the anguish of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The pictures document that we have lived in a violent age, showing the brutalities of war, racism, and despotism. But the Pulitzer photojournalists also recorded tender and compassionate moments, as in Brian Lanker's pictures of joyous parents at the birth of their child, or Scott Shaw's photographs of the rescue of a little girl trapped in a well. In coming centuries, these indelible images will inevitably be used to illustrate the triumphs and tragedies of our era.

A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen


Martín Espada - 2000
    There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the "Mayan astronomer" calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books; and even Carmen Miranda.

The Fat Lady Sings


Jacqueline Roy - 2000
    Locked in a psychiatric unit because her public singing brought her to the attention of the police, Gloria meets another British woman of Jamaican descent with whom she can share her past, giving them both hope for the future.

The Hill Bachelors


William Trevor - 2000
    These beautifully rendered tales reveal Trevor's compassion for the human condition and confirm once again his position as one of the premier writers of the short story.

Seeing Things: An Autobiography


Oliver Postgate - 2000
    Full description

East India: “Even if God forsakes you, I will find you.” (Classic Historical Fiction Book 6)


Colin Falconer - 2000
    Cornelia Noorstrandt is a fine lady and a beautiful one, traveling alone on an eight-month voyage to the other side of the world, on a tiny and overcrowded ship at a time when most navigation was done by dead reckoning – guesswork. What could possibly go wrong? In any other circumstance, a man like Michiel van Texel would never have met a fine lady such as her. He was just a soldier, a sergeant in the Dutch East India company’s army, on his way to the Indies to fight the Mataram. Such a woman was far above the likes of him. But both their destinies intertwine far away from Holland, on some god-forsaken islands near the Great Southland. When their great ship, the Utrecht, founders far from home, surviving the Houtman Rocks is the least of their worries. As the fine gentlemen around her reveal themselves for what they really are, Cornelia’s only hope is a mercenary in a torn coat who shows her that a man is more than just manners and money. He makes her one promise: ‘Even if God forsakes you, I will find you.’ But can he keep it?

The Weight of All Things


Sandra Benítez - 2000
    Watching while her body is dragged away with other victims, Nicols believes that his mother is still alive and vows to find her again. Thus begins the young boys harrowing journey through his war-ravaged country.

The Question of Bruno


Aleksandar Hemon - 2000
    An exiled writer, working in a sandwich shop in Chicago, adjusts to the absurdities of his life. Love letters from war torn Sarajevo navigate the art of getting from point A to point B without being shot. With a surefooted sense of detail and life-saving humor, Aleksandar Hemon examines the overwhelming events of history and the effect they have on individual lives. These heartrending stories bear the unmistakable mark of an important new international writer.

Tales of Discworld (Pyramids, Moving Pictures and Small Gods)


Terry Pratchett - 2000
    But in this three-in-one volume, you get to explore other places of interest on this tasty little pizza-shaped planet. Places like the tiny but ancient kingdom of Djelibeybi, which boasts more pyramids per triangular foot than any other; Holy Wood, a ghostly repository of celluloid dreams and terrors; and Omnia, desert home of a people dedicated to the Great God Om...."

The Time That Remains: A Commentary On The Letter To The Romans


Giorgio Agamben - 2000
    Situating Paul's texts in the context of early Jewish messianism, this book is part of a growing set of recent critiques devoted to the period when Judaism and Christianity were not yet fully distinct, placing Paul in the context of what has been called "Judaeo-Christianity." Agamben's philosophical exploration of the problem of messianism leads to the other major figure discussed in this book, Walter Benjamin. Advancing a claim without precedent in the vast literature on Benjamin, Agamben argues that Benjamin's philosophy of history constitutes a repetition and appropriation of Paul's concept of "remaining time." Through a close reading and comparison of Benjamin's "Theses on the Philosophy of History" and the Pauline Epistles, Agamben discerns a number of striking and unrecognized parallels between the two works.

Jung and the Alchemical Imagination


Jeffrey Raff - 2000
    Unlike other books on Jung and alchemy which contain a psychological interpretation of alchemical material, this work uses alchemy to understand the three cornerstones of Jungian spirituality--the self, the transcendent function, and active imagination. Through the interpretation of alchemical imagery, Raff explains the nature of these three concepts and illustrates how together they form a new model of contemporary Western spirituality. This book is also unique in selecting alchemical texts for analysis that are relatively unknown and which, for the most part, have never been interpreted. In addition, he presents two new concepts--the ally and the psychoid realm. Through the addition of these ideas, and the new understanding that they offer, it is possible to apply alchemical imagery to transpsychic experience/ that is, to a world of spirits which may not be reduced to psychological concepts. By including this realm in the study of alchemy and Jungian thought, it is possible to gain insights into the nature of visionary and ecstatic experiences that form part of the path of individuation--the road to completion.

The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize


David Cavanagh - 2000
    During the Britpop boom of the mid-90s, the astonishing success of Oasis brought Creation fame on the world stage. In 1999, however, McGee announced his shock departure as his label's influence over a generation of British music came to a confusing and disappointing end.

Wise Men and Their Tales: Portraits of Biblical, Talmudic, and Hasidic Masters


Elie Wiesel - 2000
    And what interests him most about these people is their humanity, in all its glorious complexity. They get angry—at God for demanding so much, and at people, for doing so little. They make mistakes. They get frustrated. But through it all one constant remains—their love for the people they have been charged to teach and their devotion to the Supreme Being who has sent them. In these tales of battles won and lost, of exile and redemption, of despair and renewal, we learn not only by listening to what they have come to tell us, but by watching as they live lives that are both grounded in earthly reality and that soar upward to the heavens.From the Hardcover edition.

The Better Angel: Walt Whitman in the Civil War


Roy Morris Jr. - 2000
    For nearly three years, Whitman immersed himself in the devastation of the Civil War, tending to thousands of wounded soldiers and recording his experience with an immediacy and compassion unequaled in wartime literature anywhere in the world. In The Better Angel, acclaimed biographer Roy Morris, Jr. gives us the fullest accounting of Whitman's profoundly transformative Civil War Years and an historically invaluable examination of the Union's treatment of its sick and wounded. Whitman was mired in depression as the war began, subsisting on journalistic hackwork, wasting his nights in New York's seedy bohemian underground, his great career as a poet apparently stalled. But when news came that his brother George had been wounded at Fredericksburg, Whitman rushed south to find him. Though his brother's injury was slight, Whitman was deeply affected by his first view of the war's casualties. He began visiting the camp's wounded and, almost by accident, found his calling for the duration of the war. Three years later, he emerged as the war's most unlikely hero, a living symbol of American democratic ideals of sharing and brotherhood. Instead of returning to Brooklyn as planned, Whitman continued to visit the wounded soldiers in the hospitals in and around the capital. He brought them ice cream, tobacco, brandy, books, magazines, pens and paper, wrote letters for those who were not able and offered to all the enormous healing influence of his sympathy and affection. Indeed, several soldiers claimed that Whitman had saved their lives. One noted that Whitman seemed to have what everybody wanted and added When this old heathen came and gave me a pipe and tobacco, it was about the most joyful moment of my life. Another wrote that There is many a soldier that never thinks of you but with emotions of the greatest gratitude. But if Whitman gave much to the soldiers, they in turn gave much to him. In witnessing their stoic suffering, in listening to their understated speech, and in being always in the presence of death, Whitman evolved the new and more direct poetic style that was to culminate in his masterpiece, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Brilliantly researched and beautifully written, The Better Angel explores a side of Whitman not fully examined before, one that greatly enriches our understanding of his later poetry. More than that, it gives us a vivid and unforgettable portrait of the other army--the legions of sick and wounded soldiers who are usually left in the shadowy background of Civil War history--seen here through the unflinching eyes of America's greatest poet.

The Heretic


Lewis M. Weinstein - 2000
    It tells the story of a family of secret Jews living in Seville on the eve of the Spanish Inquisition.

Green Architecture


James Wines - 2000
    James Wines puts up the various - and often irreconcilable - concepts of environmentally-friendly architecture for discussion, making a case for an architecture that not only focuses on technological solutions, but also tries to reconcile man and nature in its formal idiom. Among the examples of contemporary ecological architecture presented are works by Emilio Ambasz, Gustav Peichl, Arthur Quarmby, Jean Nouvel, Sim Van der Ryn, Jourda and Perraudin, Log ID, James Cutler, Stanley Saitowitz, Fran ois Roche, Nigel Coates and Michael Sorkin.

Happily


Lyn Hejinian - 2000
    Hejinian's characteristic linguistic intensity and philosophical approach are present in this book- length poem. "Reading Lyn Hejinian's HAPPILY can make one imagine a second, somewhat happier Stein telling stories in single long or short lines that are aware of one another as they go about their own affairs."--Bob Perelman "HAPPILY"...is a series of aphoristic statements interrogating 'hap' or, more prosaically, one's lot in life, one's fortune. This notion of chance as it is expressed through its root form, as in to happen, happenstance, happenings, haphazard, happenchance, happily, and happy happiness, becomes the generator that enlivens this ontological exploration of language's relationship to experience."--Claudia Rankine

Girl, Get Your Money Straight: A Sister's Guide to Healing Your Bank Account and Funding Your Dreams in 7 Simple Steps


Glinda Bridgforth - 2000
    Girl, Get Your Money Straight! presents her seven-step program for holistic financial healing–an upbeat, empowering road map that you can use to identify your heart’s desires, break away from negative spending patterns, pay off outstanding debts, develop a spending plan, conquer the checkbook blues, and create new wealth. Filled with Bridgforth’s warmhearted wisdom and advice, and complete with worksheets exercises, affirmations, and inspiring stories of African American women who have found financial peace of mind, Girl, Get Your Money Straight! is a fresh, fun, and eminently practical guide to healing your bank account and building a life that you love.

Observatory Mansions


Edward Carey - 2000
    One of them is Francis Orme, who earns his livelihood as a living statue. When not practicing “inner and outer stillness,” Francis steals the cherished possessions of others to add to his private museum. The other tenants are equally as odd: his mother and father, who haven’t interacted in years; a man who continually sweats and cries; a recluse who prefers television to reality; and a woman who behaves like a dog. When Anna Tapp arrives among them she stirs their souls, bringing long forgotten memories to the surface–and arousing fears that this new resident intends to provoke a metamorphosis.

The Book of Fathers


Miklós Vámos - 2000
    12 men - running in direct line from father to eldest son, who in turn becomes a father - are the heroes of this family saga which runs over 300 years' panorama of Hungarian life and history.

Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization


Jean-Bertrand Aristide - 2000
    In this startling and passionate book, Aristide demonstrates why those on the bottom will never lie down. A graphic revelation of what happens when "free" trade overruns local markets, eradicates local economies and creates dependence on foreign charity.

Mystery Spinner The Story of Jack Iverson


Gideon Haigh - 2000
    For most of his life he was an unexceptional estate agent in Australia. He died in obscurity, by his own hand, at the age of only 58. He was a clumsy fielder, and a hopeless batsman. But for four years he was the best spin bowler in the world. The story of Jack Iverson is one of the most remarkable in the history of cricket.

The Royal Family


William T. Vollmann - 2000
    Vollmann has established himself as one of the most fascinating and unconventional literary figures on the scene today. Named one of the twenty best writers under forty by the New Yorker in 1999, Vollmann received the best reviews of his career for The Royal Family, a searing fictional trip through a San Francisco underworld populated by prostitutes, drug addicts, and urban spiritual seekers. Part biblical allegory and part skewed postmodern crime novel, The Royal Family is a vivid and unforgettable work of fiction by one of today's most daring writers.

Science and Poetry


Mary Midgley - 2000
    But for Mary Midgley it can never be the whole story, as it cannot truly explain what it means to be human.In this typically crusading work, universally acclaimed as a classic on first publication, she powerfully asserts her corrective view that without poetry (or literature, or music, or history, or even theology) we cannot hope to understand our humanity. In this remarkable book, the reader is struck by both the simplicity and power of her argument and the sheer pleasure of reading one of our most accessible philosophers.

Vodou Visions: An Encounter with Divine Mystery


Sallie Ann Glassman - 2000
    It describes the tools and techniques for developing the magical mind and honoring the soul, while revealing how Vodou can release creative spirituality and open doors to self-awareness. Comprehensive and inviting, this book introduces readers to Vodou's rich history, powerful ancestors, and vibrant spirits, known as Lwa. With more than one hundred breathtaking illustrations, Vodou Visions reveals how to honor and invoke the Lwa with specific ceremonial offerings and litanies. Using methods drawn from more than twenty years of practice, Vodou priestess Sallie Ann Glassman shares purification and empowerment rituals for individuals, communities, homes, and spiritual spaces. For more advanced practitioners, Glassman describes ways to deepen communication with the Lwa and to give thanks for an ongoing spiritual relationship. The visions of the Lwa bring a living experience of the Spirit into daily life. Glassman welcomes readers to a community of faith and--above all--to a journey toward a creative spirituality that will enrich and affirm their lives.

1000 Objects: Extra-Ordinary Everyday Things English


Colors Magazine - 2000
    They may or may not hold special meaning to us, but their importance as objects of cultural identity is unmistakable.Produced, under the direction of Olivieri Toscani, by the agency Colors (the same agency that produces Benetton's campaigns), Extra/Ordinary's subject matter may be already familiar to those who have seen recent features in the agency's magazine, Colors. Colors' motto, "diversity is good", translates perfectly into a book that celebrates the differences in our everyday objects. Continuing the theme introduced in Colors, this new book shows us the extraordinary in the ordinary. Jaunting off on a tour around the globe, you'll see that what is ordinary halfway across the world (or perhaps for your neighbors across the street) may be totally foreign to you.Discover the wonderful absurdity of a priest's portable mass-in-a-briefcase kit, or the stunning difference between fly-swatters from Zimbabwe and South Korea. Ogle at the juxtaposition of neoprene surfing shoes and bullfighting slippers; have a gander at a package of emu cutlets and a can of blowfish soup. In case you see something that you absolutely must have, check out the yellow pages section at the end of the book; here you can find out where to get it and even how much it costs, as well as lots of little tidbits of interesting information to make your journey complete.Maybe you've already come across some of these objects, or will seek them out on future voyages. Next time you pick up your toothbrush or comb your hair, youmay think twice about the things that you use every day- perhaps they're not so ordinary after all.

The Shadow of Imana


Véronique Tadjo - 2000
    Starting with the premise that what happened in Rwanda concerns us all, The Shadow of Imana is a reminder that humankind the world over is capable of genocide.

Juice


Renee Gladman - 2000
    African American Studies. Gladman wields an idiosyncratic skill with description and characters that has drawn praise and attention from her contemporaries. JUICE describes a world where seemingly minor obsessions and details (like the narrator's almost random preference for juice) can structure and develop an entire story, down to its tone and style. As her narrator puts it: So far it has been sex and leaves that keep me alive.

The Quick and the Dead


Joy Williams - 2000
    Misfit and motherless, they share an American desert summer of darkly illuminating signs and portents. In locales as mirrored strange as a nursing home where the living dead are preserved, to a wildlife museum where the dead are presented as living, the girls attend to their future. A remarkable attendant cast of characters, including a stroke survivor whose soulmate is a vivisected monkey, an aging big-game hunter who finds spiritual renewal in his infatuation with an eight-year-old–the formidable Emily Bliss Pickles–and a widower whose wife continues to harangue him, populate this gloriously funny and wonderfully serious novel where the dead are forever infusing the living, and all creatures strive to participate in eternity.

Good Peoples


Marcus Major - 2000
    A first novel. Reprint.

Play to the Angel


Maurine F. Dahlberg - 2000
    Herr Hummel believes in Greta, and she begins to prepare for a recital. Then the Nazis invade, and Greta discovers her teacher's secret. His life is in danger, and she may be the only one who can help him."While the unusual Holocaust setting is well drawn and rings true, this is first and foremost a novel about a girl who pursues a dream and learns to believe in herself." (School Library Journal)

The Celtic Quest in Art and Literature


Jane Lahr - 2000
    The works are separated into three sections, isolating the Celtic relationship with the natural world, chronicling Celtic heroes, and exploring the magic and shamanistic aspects of Celtic belief.

Anchored in Love: An Intimate Portrait of June Carter Cash


John Carter Cash - 2000
    On stage from a very young age, June found her niche in the spotlight with her vivacious personality and down-home sense of humor. Her confidence and spirit were what attracted Johnny Cash to her in the late 1950s. On the road together, they quickly bonded. June was his helpmate and closest companion. They were married for forty years, through addiction and success, tragedy and triumph. Anchored in Love is an inside look into the life of June Carter Cash, through the eyes of her only child with Johnny Cash-John Carter Cash. With skillful prose, he reveals new information about the legendary woman through his tender memories and heartwarming stories.

Lives of Extraordinary Women: Rulers, Rebels ~ and What the Neighbors Thought


Kathleen Krull - 2000
    Lives of Extraordinary Women turns the spotlight on women who have wielded power, revealing their feats--and flaws--for all the world to see. Here you'll find twenty of the most influential women in history: queens, warriors, prime ministers, first ladies, revolutionary leaders. Some are revered. Others are notorious. What were they really like? In this grand addition to their highly praised series, Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt celebrate some of the world's most noteworthy women, ranging from the famous to those whose stories have rarely been told. Features twenty extraordinary women, including:CleopatraJoan of ArcElizabeth IHarriet TubmanEleanor RooseveltEva Perón

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter


César Aira - 2000
    Greatly admired as a master landscape painter, he was advised by Alexander von Humboldt to travel West from Europe to record the spectacular landscapes of Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Rugendas did in fact become one of the best of the nineteenth-century European painters to venture into Latin America. However this is not a biography of Rugendas. This work of fiction weaves an almost surreal history around the secret objective behind Rugendas's trips to America: to visit Argentina in order to achieve in art the "physiognomic totality" of von Humboldt's scientific vision of the whole. Rugendas is convinced that only in the mysterious vastness of the immense plains will he find true inspiration. A brief and dramatic visit to Mendosa gives him the chance to fulfill his dream. From there he travels straight out onto the pampas, praying for that impossible moment, which would come only at an immense price—an almost monstrously exorbitant price that would ultimately challenge his drawing, and force him to create a new way of making art. A strange episode that he could not avoid absorbing savagely into his own body interrupts the trip and irreversibly and explosively marks him for life.

Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel


Daniel Charles Gerould - 2000
    Daniel Gerould's landmark work, Theatre/Theory/Theatre, collects history's most influential Eastern and Western dramatic theorists - poets, playwrights, directors and philosophers - whose ideas about theatre continue to shape its future. In complete texts and choice excerpts spanning centuries, we see an ongoing dialogue and exchange of ideas between actors and directors like Craig and Meyerhold, and writers such as Nietzsche and Yeats. Each of Gerould's introductory essays shows fascinating insight into both the life and the theory of the author. From Horace to Soyinka, Corneille to Brecht, this is an indispensable compendium of the greatest dramatic theory ever written.

Painting the Landscape in Pastel


Albert Handell - 2000
    After reviewing pastel supplies, the author discusses landscape composition and how to establish large shapes first, abstract certain areas, develop a focal point, work from dark to light, and capture the illusion of reality through color. Stepped demonstrations isolate specific landscape aspects, showing how the pastelist depicts skies, trees, buildings, water, rocks, woods, snow, and light.

Country Churchyards


Eudora Welty - 2000
    Published at long last, in her ninety-first year, this book includes ninety of her photographs along with a conversation in which Welty shares her impressions and her memories of the 1930s and 1940s when she rambled through Mississippi cemeteries taking pictures. She recalls poignant and sometimes chilling experiences that occurred."I took a lot of cemetery pictures in my life," she said. "For me cemeteries had a sinister appeal somehow." Her camera eye focused on distinctive funerary emblems, statuary, storied urns, and appealing folklife qualities expressed in the gravestones. Just as many pieces of Welty's fiction feature lyrical descriptions of cemeteries and graves in a way that is expressly Weltian, so too do these photographs taken in the cool, sequestered churchyards and graveyards of Jackson, Port Gibson, Churchill, Rodney, Utica, Crystal Springs, Vicksburg, Rocky Springs, and sites near the old Natchez Trace.They not only document her rambles but also accent the images of regional cemeteries that appear in her stories and novels. This is her unique view of the southern graveyard and of its unusual artworks that arrested her attention -- chains, willows, baskets, angels, lambs, pointing hands, doves, and wreaths. "I like the tombstones showing children asleep in seashells," she says. For her, an absorbed observer, there is charm in the stone motifs and in the sentimental modes of commemorating the dead.As a contemplative loner she called no attention to herself as she wandered quietly through small-town cemeteries with her camera. Both the country settings and the heart-felt inscriptions on decaying marble heightened her imagination and triggered her creative impulses.Accompanying the photographs are selected passages about graveyards and funerals from her fiction -- Losing Battles, The Golden Apples and Other Stories, A Curtain of Green and Other Stories, and The Optimist's Daughter -- and from her essay "Some Notes on River Country."In the introduction Elizabeth Spencer, a Mississippi writer who has been a life-long friend of Welty's, explores the photographic images for the meanings they yield, for the light they throw onto Welty's fiction, and for her own memories of their home state's evocative graveyards and burial customs.Eudora Welty, one of America's most acclaimed and honored writers, is the author of many novels and story collections, including The Optimist's Daughter (Pulitzer Prize), Losing Battles, The Ponder Heart, The Robber Bridegroom, and A Curtain of Green and Other Stories and two collections of her photographic work Photographs and One Time, One Place: Mississippi in the Depression (both from University Press of Mississippi).

Nine Visits to the Mythworld: Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas


Ghandl of the Qayahl Llaanas - 2000
    Ghandl was born in 1851 in a small Haida island community off the coast of British Columbia. His world was devastated by waves of European diseases, which wiped out over ninety percent of the Haidas and robbed him of his sight. He became a skilled listener, taking in the myths, legends, and everyday stories of his people. Creatively adapting them, the blind storyteller became a master of his craft. In 1900 John Swanton, with the help of a translator, transcribed a number of Ghandl's narrative poems.Nearly all of the poems in this volume are qqaygaang, narrative poems set in the Haida mythtime of long ago. One story, “The Names of Their Gambling Sticks,” is a qqayaagaang, a story that juxtaposes mythtime and historical time and is the property of a Haida family. Each poem creatively enacts a myth in a way that illuminates and celebrates the traditional world of the Haidas and reveals Ghandl's own acute sense of the foibles and great potential of all human beings. Meticulously and sensitively translated and annotated by Robert Bringhurst, these stories have finally been given the attention they deserve.

American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of Minnie Vautrin


Hua-Ling Hu - 2000
    Hua-ling Hu presents here the amazing untold story of the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, whose unswerving defiance of the Japanese protected ten thousand Chinese women and children and made her a legend among the Chinese people she served.Vautrin, who came to be known in China as the "Living Goddess" or the "Goddess of Mercy," joined the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and went to China during the Chinese Nationalist Revolution in 1912. As dean of studies at Ginling College in Nanking, she devoted her life to promoting Chinese women's education and to helping the poor.At the outbreak of the war in July 1937, Vautrin defied the American embassy's order to evacuate the city. After the fall of Nanking in December, Japanese soldiers went on a rampage of killing, burning, looting, rape, and torture, rapidly reducing the city to a hell on earth. On the fourth day of the occupation, Minnie Vautrin wrote in her diary: "There probably is no crime that has not been committed in this city today. . . . Oh, God, control the cruel beastliness of the soldiers in Nanking."When the Japanese soldiers ordered Vautrin to leave the campus, she replied: "This is my home. I cannot leave." Facing down the blood-stained bayonets constantly waved in her face, Vautrin shielded the desperate Chinese who sought asylum behind the gates of the college. Vautrin exhausted herself defying the Japanese army and caring for the refugees after the siege ended in March 1938. She even helped the women locate husbands and sons who had been taken away by the Japanese soldiers. She taught destitute widows the skills required to make a meager living and provided the best education her limited sources would allow to the children in desecrated Nanking.Finally suffering a nervous breakdown in 1940, Vautrin returned to the United States for medical treatment. One year later, she ended her own life. She considered herself a failure.Hu bases her biography on Vautrin's correspondence between 1919 and 1941 and on her diary, maintained during the entire siege, as well as on Chinese, Japanese, and American eyewitness accounts, government documents, and interviews with Vautrin's family.

The Implacable Order of Things


José Luís Peixoto - 2000
    José, a taciturn shepherd, sees his happiness crumble when “the devil” tells him he is being cuckolded. Old Gabriel offers wise counsel, while a different kind of love story develops concerning Moisés and Elias, conjoined twins attached at the tips of their little fingers. Unable to live without each other, they find their tender communion shattered when Moisés falls in love with the local cook. And, of course, there is the Devil himself. Love may be a luxury, but there are moments of the greatest tenderness among even the most unlikely lovers.Written with subtle prose and powerful imagery, The Implacable Order of Things draws us into this unique and richly textured world. It is a novel of haunting beauty and heralds the arrival of an astoundingly gifted and poetic writer.

Quarrel & Quandary: Essays


Cynthia Ozick - 2000
    She roams effortlessly from Kafka to James, Styron to Stein, and, in the book's most famous essay, dissects the gaudy commercialism that has reduced Anne Frank to "usable goods." Courageous, audacious, and sublime, these essays have the courage of conviction, the probing of genius, and the durable audacity to matter.

Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means


Siegfried Zielinski - 2000
    Deep Time of the Media takes us on an archaeological quest into the hidden layers of media development - dynamic moments of intense activity in media design and construction that have been largely ignored in the historical-media archaeological record. Siegfried Zielinski argues that the history of the media does not proceed predictably from primitive tools to complex machinery; in Deep Time of the Media, he illuminates turning points of media history - fractures in the predictable - that help us see the new in the old. Drawing on original source materials, Zielinski explores the technology of devices for hearing and seeing through two thousand years of cultural and technological history. He discovers the contributions of dreamers and modelers of media worlds, from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles and natural philosophers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods to Russian avant-gardists of the early twentieth century. separated, Zielinski writes. He describes models and machines - including a theatre of mirrors in sixteenth-century Naples, an automaton for musical composition created by the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, the eighteenth-century electrical tele-writing machine of Joseph Mazzolari, among others - that make this connection. Uncovering these moments in the media-archaeological record, Zielinski says, brings us into a new relationship with present-day moments; these discoveries in the deep time media history shed light on today's media landscape and may help us map our expedition to the media future.

By Night in Chile


Roberto Bolaño - 2000
    He believes he is dying and in his feverish delirium various characters, both real and imaginary, appear to him as icy monsters.

Guitar


Richard Chapman - 2000
    Featuring over 300 of the world's most outstanding players, with analysis of compositions, styles and preferred instruments.

Thank You for Not Reading


Dubravka Ugrešić - 2000
    because they're not sexy enough.A playful and biting critique, Ugresic's essays hit on all of the major aspects of publishing: agents, subagents, and scouts, supermarket-like bookstores, Joan Collins, book fairs that have little to do with books, authors promoted because of sex appeal instead of merit, and editors trying to look like writers by having their photograph taken against a background of bookshelves.Thanks to cultural influences such as Oprah, The Today Show, and Kelly Ripa, best-seller lists have become just a modern form of socialist realism, a manifestation of a society that generally ignores literature in favor of the next big thing.

Weapons of Peace: Secret Story of India's Quest to Be a Nuclear Power


Raj Chengappa - 2000
    India decided to begin nuclear tests in the late 1960s, and tension grew when Pakistan successfully launched a long range missile called Ghauri in the 1990s. Based on almost 200 interviews with participants, the author focuses on what happened and who knew about which aspects of the project, carrying the story forward to the late 1990s. The phrase “weapons of peace” is used to refer to nuclear weapons, because in India the people see the weapons as important in deterring war and keeping India a free state. The book flows nicely and allows readers who are not scientists to understand India’s nuclear history.

The Cambridge Handbook of Physics Formulas


Graham Woan - 2000
    An extensive index allows the required formulas to be located swiftly and simply, and an unique tabular format crisply identifies all the variables involved. All students and professionals in physics, applied mathematics, engineering and other physical sciences will want to have this essential reference book within easy reach.

The Further Inventions of Daedalus


David E.H. Jones - 2000
    Each week it offers a new scheme to challenge accepted notions of scientific principles, schemes that are neither feasible nor completely absurd. Always entertaining, the Daedalus schemes often have a serious purpose and raise crucial questions about science (sample title: A Womb with a View, or At Least a Phone).This delightful book compiles roughly one hundred of David Jones's popular columns, each of which exhibits a keen and approachable mixture of entertaining and thought-provoking material. Like the collection of articles that came before it, this work will appeal to a broad audience of the scientifically curious.

The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture


Holly George-Warren - 2000
    Thompson, Joyce Johnson, Richard Hell, and others. It includes rare pieces from the Rolling Stone archives by William Burroughs, Lester Bangs, and Robert Palmer as well as intimate photographs by Robert Frank, Annie Leibovitz, and rarely seen photos taken by the Beats themselves. A rich tapestry of voices and a visual treat, this treasury of Beat lore and literature is a true collector's item whose entertainment value will go on...and on."A huge dim sum cart of a book...a first-rate companion." --Publishers Weekly"Compelling reading."--The Denver Post

Lewis and Clark for Kids: Their Journey of Discovery with 21 Activities


Janis Herbert - 2000
    It takes children from President Jefferson’s vision of an exploratory mission across a continent full of unique plants and animals through their dangerous and challenging journey into the unknown to the expedition’s triumphant return to the frontier town of St. Louis. Twenty-one activities bring to life the Native American tribes they encountered, the plants and animals they discovered, and the camping and navigating techniques they used. A glossary of terms and listings of Lewis and Clark sites, museums, and related websites round out this comprehensive activity book.

Horsefeathers!


Dandi Daley Mackall - 2000
    Scoop learns major coming-of-age lessons as she learns to rely on God.

Patrick O'Brian: A Life


Dean King - 2000
    Like his life, O'Brian's death was marked by secrecy and confusion, sharpening the curiosity of his many readers who for years have speculated about the man behind the beloved Aubery-Maturin series of novels.Dean King at last unveils the story of Richard Patrick Russ, a writer and intellectual who emerged from the Second World War as Patrick O'Brian, a persona created by his imagination and refined over decades. To research this book, King crisscrossed Europe to speak to long-lost relatives, friends, and colleagues of his famously reclusive subject; now he has fashioned this wealth of information into a dramatic and compelling narrative. As King meticulously examines the events of O'Brian's life, he deepens and enriches our understanding and appreciation of O'Brian's work.

Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect


Claudia Hunter Johnson - 2000
    Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect is the first screenwriting guide to introduce connection as an essential, although essentially overlooked, aspect of creating stories for the screen and of the screenwriting process itself. Written with clarity and humor, this book teaches the craft of writing short screenplays by guiding the student through carefully focused writing exercises of increasing length and complexity. Eight award-winning student screenplays are included for illustration and inspiration.The text is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on preparing to write by means of exercises designed to help students think more deeply about the screenwriter's purposes; their own unique vision, material and process; and finally about what screenplays are at their simplest and most profound level—a pattern of human change, created from specific moments of change—discoveries and decisions. Part two teaches students how to craft an effective pattern of human change. It guides them through the writing and re-writing of "Five (Not So Easy) Pieces"—five short screenplays of increasing length and complexity—focusing on a specific principle of dramatic technique: The Discovery, The Decision, The Boxing Match, The Improbable Connection, and The Long Short Screenplay. Part Three presents the five screenplays used throughout the book to illustrate the dramatic principles that have beendiscussed, and includes interviews with the screenwriters, a look at where they are now and what they are doing, and brief discussion of how each film evolved. * Groundbreaking book that stresses human connection as the basis of a good screenplay&151;not conflict* The only screenwriting book that includes a DVD that contains performances of the short films and screenplays that are featured in the book* Ample exercises for practice and inspiration

The Shock of Your Life


Adrian Holloway - 2000
    they just died. Were they ready? The Shock of Your Life grapples with life's biggest question-What happens when we die?

Naturalist's Guide to Canyon Country


David B. Williams - 2000
    Comprehensive and beautifully illustrated trailside refernce to plants, animals, and geology of an area that includes nine national parks and monuments

Twenty is Too Many


Kate Duke - 2000
    As guinea pigs leave the scenes, they leap on and around oversized numbers representing the arithmetic behind their actions. In the end, only one guinea pig remains -- but one can be fun, too.

This House Has Fallen: Nigeria In Crisis


Karl Maier - 2000
    This House Has Fallen is a bracing and disturbing report on the state of Africa's most populous, potentially richest, and most dangerously dysfunctional nation. Each year, with depressing consistency, Nigeria is declared the most corrupt state in the entire world. Though Nigeria is a nation into which billions of dollars of oil money flow, its per capita income has fallen dramatically in the past two decades. Military coup follows military coup. A bellwether for Africa, it is a country of rising ethnic tensions and falling standards of living, very possibly on the verge of utter collapse -- a collapse that could dramatically overshadow even the massacres in Rwanda. A brilliant piece of reportage and travel writing, This House Has Fallenlooks into the Nigerian abyss and comes away with insight, profound conclusions, and even some hope. Updated with a new preface by the author.

Monumental Propaganda


Vladimir Voinovich - 2000
    From the author of The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin comes a brilliant new novel spanning 50 years of Russian history--from the tumult following the Second World War to the chaos of today's new Russia.

Josh Kirby A Cosmic Cornucopia


David Langford - 2000
    As this definitive collection of Kirby's art--including many formerly unpublished works--proves, his vision has many facets. They go from the wildest fantasies to the hardest sci-fi; some images evoke a macabre realm of horror, others portray chilling futuristic landscapes, but all are wondrous. An analysis of Kirby's career and techniques will increase your appreciation of each picture: the Discworld delights, bursting with detail and action; the ghoulish depictions of things that go bump in the night; and the representations of the science fiction worlds inspired by Ray Bradbury and Robert Silverberg. Plus: enjoy a comic compendium of interpretations from the pens of authors such as Tom Holt. A visual feast not to be missed, with an informative text by multiple Hugo Award-winner David Langford. 112 pages (all in color), 8 1/4 x 11 3/4.

Lizzie at Last


Claudia Mills - 2000
    She exchanges her flowing lace dresses for jeans and tank tops, feigns dumb in math in a misguided attempt to impress a boy, abandons her beloved poetry-writing and imitates the guy-pleasing giggling of a popular girl in her class. On a class trip to the rare books room of a university library, Lizzie, inspired by Emily Dickinson's individuality, suddenly realizes that she can be herself without worrying about what others think and without severing the new bonds that she has made with her classmates.

The Sea Nymph


Ruth Ryan Langan - 2000
    The Sea Nymph by Ruth Langan released on Dec 25, 2000 is available now for purchase.

Alternate Channels: The Uncensored Story of Gay and Lesbian Images on Radio and Television, 1930s to the Present


Steven Capsuto - 2000
    Splashed against the tumultuous backdrop of the McCarthy witch hunts, Stonewall and the gay liberation movement, the birth of the 700 Club and the religious right, the outbreak of AIDS and the arrival of in-your-face queer activism, this chatty, authoritative broadcast history tells the stories of such notorious and noteworthy moments as- 1947: Radio gays--A bitchy fashion photographer throws fits at the drop of a designer hat on the adaptation of Moss Hart's Lady in the Dark- 1967s: Monkey business--The Monkees flick limp wrists while caroling "Don we now our gay apparel" for a Christmas special- 1974: Pepper in the wound--A notorious Police Woman episode depicts a gang of deadly lesbians who rob, torture, and murder senior citizens- 1977: Wash your mouth out--Billy Crystal portrays Jodie Dallas on Soap, the first hit series with a gay character in a central role- 1991: L.A. Law breaks 'em--Amanda Donohoe and Michelle Greene share a two-second kiss . . . and start a storm of controversy- 2000: The last laugh--Featuring not one but two gay male characters, Will & Grace skyrockets to the top of the ratings chartsFrom mocking banter between Bing Crosby and Bob Hope on '50s radio to a historic peck between women on '90s television, from the stereotyping of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals as sissies and psychopaths to their widespread acceptance as real people, Alternate Channels is a compulsively readable chronicle of lesbian, gay, and bisexual images in the media--packed with unthinkable shows, bizarre personalities, unlikely heroes, and some of the strangest protests ever staged in the name of civil rights.

Feast


Tomaž Šalamun - 2000
    He is one of the major names in the international avant-garde. Irreverent, self-mythologizing, tragic, and visionary, he is a poet of immense range and cunning, able to encompass everything from Balkan wars and politics to the most intimate personal experiences. Feast, his latest collection in English, brings together both early and more recent work. "Realism, surrealism, song. Aphorisms, lyric, anti-lyric," as Jorie Graham wrote, are all to be found in these poems. Here is the most blasphemous of poets who is also a great religious poet. "Throw open a window, pull up a chair, and enjoy the imaginative feast" (Edward Hirsch).

Visual Encyclopedia of Science


David Burnie - 2000
    It features fun fact boxes and quick-reference sections so science homework can be done in a snap.

Old Ontario Houses: Traditions in Local Architecture


Tom Cruickshank - 2000
    Here and there -- in rural townships, small towns and the older parts of cities -- many of its original houses are still standing, a surprising number lovingly restored and maintained with historical authenticity in mind. Old Ontario Houses: Traditions in Local Architecture, a collaborative tribute to the past by writer Tom Cruickshank and renowned photographer John de Visser, offers a glimpse into a selection of these homes dating from the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, more than 150 in all. Filled with de Visser's exceptional full color photographs, the book features well-known landmarks as well as vintage houses. Their stories, told in Cruickshank's lively, appreciative voice, remind us of a bygone era and speak volumes about the values and aspirations of the province that built them.

In The Gloaming


Alice Elliott Dark - 2000
    In these ten stories, Alice Elliott Dark visits the fictional town of Wynnemoor and its residents, present and past, with skill, compassion, and wit. By turns funny, sad, and disturbing, these are stories of remarkable power.

17 Lies That Are Holding You Back and the Truth That Will Set You Free


Steve Chandler - 2000
    His first book, 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, was read by over a hundred thousand people and the audio edition spent three consecutive weeks as the top-selling selection of the Audio Book Club. His second book, Reinventing Yourself, showed even greater strength. 17 Lies That Are Holding You Back & the Truth That Will Set You Free describes the lies that most of us tell ourselves to prevent us from being everything we could be, lies such as: "It's who you know""That's just the way I am""I'm not good with people""I'm too old . . .""The longer I have a habit the harder it is to break""Winning the lottery would solve everything""I don't have the time""There's nothing I can do." Actually, as Chandler points out, you already have all the power you need to free yourself. His book outlines these truths and shows you how to recover them and use them to change your life.In 17 Lies That Are Holding You Back, Chandler is in top form, going beyond the self-help category to the level of such inspirational classics as The Road Less Traveled.

Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams


Mark Ford - 2000
    The story Mark Ford tells about Roussel's life and work is at once captivating, heartbreaking, and almost beyond belief. Could even Proust or Nabokov have invented a character as strange and memorable as the exquisite dandy and graphomaniac this book brings to life?Roussel's poetry, novels, and plays influenced the work of many well-known writers and artists: Jean Cocteau found in him "genius in its pure state," while Salvador Dalí, who died with a copy of Roussel's Impressions d'Afrique on his bedside table, believed him to be one of France's greatest writers ever. Edmond Rostand, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Michel Foucault, and Alain Robbe-Grillet all testified to the power of his unique imagination.By any standards, Roussel led an extraordinary life. Tremendously wealthy, he took two world tours during which he hardly left his hotel rooms. He never wore his clothes more than twice, and generally avoided conversation because he dreaded that it might turn morbid. Ford, himself a poet, traces the evolution of Roussel's bizarre compositional methods and describes the idiosyncrasies of a life structured as obsessively as Roussel structured his writing.

France Since 1870: Culture, Politics and Society


Charles Sowerwine - 2000
    The book ends with President Mitterand's retirement, an epochal event that marked the severing of France's last link with the Vichy government and the Fourth Republic.

Undomesticated Ground


Stacy Alaimo - 2000
    Feminists, troubled by the way in which such representations show women controlled by powerful natural forces and confined to domestic space, have sought to distance themselves from nature. In Undomesticated Ground, Stacy Alaimo issues a bold call to reclaim nature as feminist space. Her analysis of a remarkable range of feminist writings--as well as of popular journalism, visual arts, television, and film--powerfully demonstrates that nature has been and continues to be an essential concept for feminist theory and practice.Alaimo urges feminist theorists to rethink the concept of nature by probing the vastly different meanings that it carries. She discusses its significance for Americans engaged in social and political struggles from, for example, the Indian Wars of the early nineteenth century, to the birth control movement in the 1920s, to contemporary battles against racism and heterosexism. Reading works by Catherine Sedgwick, Mary Austin, Emma Goldman, Nella Larson, Donna Haraway, Toni Morrison, and others, Alaimo finds that some of these writers strategically invoke nature for feminist purposes while others cast nature as a postmodern agent of resistance in the service of both environmentalism and the women's movement.By examining the importance of nature within literary and political texts, this book greatly expands the parameters of the nature writing genre and establishes nature as a crucial site for the cultural work of feminism.

Listening For Small Sounds


Penelope Trevor - 2000
    Her days are full: there is school and playing, hanging out with her mother and fighting with her friends. Her nights are long as she listens for small sounds to determine the mood of her violent father.

Vietnam & Other American Fantasies


Howard Bruce Franklin - 2000
    Written by a cultural historian, this text offers a wide-ranging exploration of the causes, meaning and continuing significance of the American war in Vietnam, arguing that the war was not a mistake, or a quagmire but a defining event in global history.

Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender


Charlotte E. Fonrobert - 2000
    Is the designated impurity of menstruation sexist? Or does ritual absence from sex during menstruation encourage a rhythmic reaffirmation of conjugal intimacy?This book offers a new perspective on the extensive rabbinic discussions of menstrual impurity, female physiology, and anatomy, and on the social and religious institutions those discussions engendered. It analyzes the functions of these discussions within the larger textual world of rabbinic literature and in the context of Jewish and Christian culture in late antiquity.How did gender work—how was it made to work—in rabbinic literature? How did that literature dictate the place of women in Jewish culture? In search of answers to these questions, the author analyzes the architectural metaphors deployed to describe female anatomy, arguing that this discursive construction operated culturally to associate women with the home and exclude them from rabbinic study halls.The author shows that rabbinic discourse is not completely controlled by rabbinic ideology, however. She analyzes talmudic discussions that allow alternative gender perspectives to emerge, indicating that women and their bodies were not completely objectified. This suggests that the Babylonian Talmud does not present a completely homogeneous gender structure, but contains a number of different, sometimes contradictory, possibilities.The book concludes with a study of early Christian texts that relate to the same biblical laws on menstrual impurity as rabbinic texts, focusing in particular on a Jewish-Christian text in which the anonymous author polemicizes against Jewish women converts who remain attached to the biblical laws. This text allows us to reconstruct women’s perspectives on the inscription of religious meaning onto their bodies and physiological processes.

The Cricklewood Tapestry


Alan Coren - 2000
    

The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran


Robin Wright - 2000
    In The Last Great Revolution, Wright meticulously describes the ongoing transformation of society, politics and religion that ranges from the empowerment of women to the blossoming of a movie industry and an independent press. She demonstrates why Iran's Islamic revolution equals the French and Russian revolutions in new ideas and impact, while standing alone as "the last great revolution" of the modern era.

About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made


Ben Yagoda - 2000
    With all the authority and elegance such a subject demands, Yagoda tells the fascinating story of the tiny journal that grew into a literary enterprise of epic proportions. Incorporating interviews with more than fifty former and current New Yorker writers, including the late Joseph Mitchell, Roger Angell, the late Pauline Kael, Calvin Trillin, and Ann Beattie, Yagoda is the first author to make extensive use of the New Yorker's archives. About Town penetrates the inner workings of the New Yorker as no other book has done, opening a window on a lost age.