Best of
Americana

1983

Cathedral


Raymond Carver - 1983
    . . . Carver is a writer of astonishing compassion and honesty. . . . his eye set only on describing and revealing the world as he sees it. His eye is so clear, it almost breaks your heart” (Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World).From the eBook edition.

The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake


Breece D'J Pancake - 1983
    In 1983 Little, Brown and Company's posthumous publication of this book electrified the literary world with a force that still resounds across two decades. A collection of stories that depict the world of Pancake's native rural West Virginia with astonishing power and grace, The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake has remained continuously in print and is a perennial favorite among aspiring writers, participants in creative writing programs, and students of contemporary American fiction. "Trilobites", the first of Pancake's stories to be published in The Atlantic, elicited an extraordinary immediate response from readers and continues to be widely anthologized.

Flashbacks


Timothy Leary - 1983
    Timothy Leary's passion affected an entire culture and influenced modern world history. Flashbacks, Leary's own account of his career as "an accomplished clinical psychologist at Harvard University, a dabbler in Eastern mysticism, a fugitive and convict, a stand-up comedian and actor, a writer and software designer and exponent of cybernetics" - (The New York Times), is the only book written by him that directly addresses the issues, people, and history of his personal awakening and crusade.

The Times Are Never So Bad


Andre Dubus - 1983
    . . may be the most compelling and suspenseful work of fiction [Dubus] has written."--Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times Book ReviewStories of men and women attempting to live together, to tell the truth as they see it (or don't see it), and to survive the crises, and sometimes the violence, of domestic life. Now included in Andre Dubus's Collected Short Stories & Novellas ) this original edition includes A Father's Story, as well as the novella The Pretty Girl. Upon its publication in 1991, Tobias Wolff wrote, "'It is a world of secrets, ' says the narrator of A Father's Story. Andre Dubus's fine new collection is made of those secrets, observed with an art that is luminous with honesty and generosity. Dubus is interested in essential things--in the shadowy powers that circle our lives and the slender resources of faith and love with which we try to keep them at bay."

The Last Days of MASH


Arlene Alda - 1983
    If you liked mash you should have this book!!

Democracy / Esther / Mont Saint Michel and Chartres / The Education of Henry Adams


Henry Adams - 1983
    Now brought together for the first time in a single volume, these works show the many forms—fiction, poetry, philosophical and historical speculation, autobiography—in which Adams gave expression to his vision of the meaning of the unsettling changes in American life and values.Each of the two novels, Democracy and Esther, chooses a woman on whom to center the effects of social change. In Democracy, Madeleine Lee, an emancipated and idealistic young widow, moves to Washington to learn the nature of political power and is disillusioned upon discovering the intrigues of rampant corruption. The free-thinking heroine in Esther, caught in the warfare between science and religion, finds that she cannot surrender her moral independence, even to marry a clergyman.Adams, though a man of the modern world, remained in temperament a child of the eighteenth century, his political ideals shaped by his presidential ancestors, great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams. The failure of those ideals to withstand the challenges of an industrialized America drove him to seek refuge in the study of the medieval age of faith in France. Out of it came his skeptic’s “Prayer to the Virgin of Chartres.” Her presence dominates the book that followed—Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. In evocative and sensitive prose Adams moves from the architecture, sculpture, and stained glass of Chartres to the religion, literature, politics, social order, and crusades of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Adams translates the poetry of courtly love and recounts the drama of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s life and the timeless love of Abelard and Heloise. The narrative rises at the end to the brilliantly re-enacted drama of St. Thomas Aquinas’ victory over the rival philosophers.If Mont Saint Michel portrayed a world unified by a common faith, The Education of Henry Adams portrayed a world irresistibly moving toward chaos. The world once unified by the Virgin was now ruled by the impersonal Dynamo and was already confronted by the “metaphysical bomb” of radium and the prospect of infinite energy for man’s use. Adams balances, with extraordinary urbanity and wit, the rival claims he found as much in himself as in modern civilization. Together, these two works still pose an urgent question: can the human mind ultimately control the monstrous aggregates of power which it has wrung from nature?

Machines That Think


Isaac Asimov - 1983
    With: Asimov (5x), Bierce, Wyndham, Vincent, Bates, R. M. Williams, Del Rey, van Vogt, Ellison, Leinster, Anderson, Miller, Bone, Harrison, Shaara, Dick (2x), Dickson, Clarke, Silverberg, Brunner, Brown, Vinge, Wolfe and Zebrowski.

Bridges to Infinity: The Human side of Mathematics


Michael Guillen - 1983
    Explains important mathematical concepts, such as probability and statistics, set theory, paradoxes, symmetries, dimensions, game theory, randomness, and irrational numbers

One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy


William Manchester - 1983
    This book has hardback covers.Ex-library,With usual stamps and markings,In good all round condition.Dust Jacket in good condition.

Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835-1920


Ronald Takaki - 1983
    Life on the plantation from 1835-1920.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Guide: Revised Edition


Philippe de Montebello - 1983
    The guide describes the museum's vast collections and its buildings, including the Cloisters, and includes nearly 900 works of art from the museum's 18 curatorial departments, selected by the director of the museum, Philippe de Montebello.

Journey to the High Southwest, 8th: A Traveler's Guide to Santa Fe and the Four Corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah


Robert L. Casey - 1983
    It offers insight into the history, culture, and geography of the area and all of the detail readers need on driving directions, activities, and attractions.

In the Shadow of FDR: From Harry Truman to George W. Bush


William E. Leuchtenburg - 1983
    FDR's formidable presence has cast a large shadow on the occupants of that office in the years since his death, and an appreciation of his continuing influence remains essential to understanding the contemporary presidency.This new edition of In the Shadow of FDR has been updated to examine Bill Clinton's presidency, including possible parallels between Hillary Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt. Concluding with an analysis of the 2000 presidential campaign, William E. Leuchtenburg assesses the influence FDR's legacy is likely to continue to have in the new century.

The Limits Of Liberty: American History, 1607 1992


Maldwyn A. Jones - 1983
    It traces the political, intellectual, economic, and cultural development of a distinctive American society, without losing sight of its continued connections with the Old World. Swelled by a continuous flux of immigration, the population of the United States spread with astonishing rapidity over a vast continent, evolving a new system of government and creating extraordinary wealth. Maldwyn A. Jones assesses not only the epic achievements of the nation, but also the tensions and limitations of the society behind the 'American dream'. In this second edition Professor Jones has continued his study to the present, with a new chapter examining the conservative revival of the 1980s and the presidential election of 1992. He has included an additional map, incorporated the most recently available statistics into the population tables, and completely revised and updated the Bibliography.

The Measure of the Universe


Isaac Asimov - 1983