"A moving illumination . . . Remnick is the witness for us all." —Wall Street Journal.

    Janet Malcolm brings her shrewd intelligence to bear on the legend of Sylvia Plath and the wildly productive industry of Plath biographies. Features a new Afterword by Malcolm.

    She's back.  Molly Ivins, our most perceptive, outrageously funny political commentator, has given us an uproarious new book.In Nothin' But Good Times Ahead, Ivins proved that no one has a steadier gaze or a quicker trigger finger, as she hits the bull's-eye in such targets as George Bush, Bill Clinton, Camille Paglia, the Clarence Thomas hearings, and the ethics-twisting, English-slaughtering pols of her beloved Texas.  Here's Molly on: The 1992 Republican Convention: "Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German."Texas politics: "Better than the zoo, better than the circus, rougher than football, and even more aesthetically satisfying than baseball."Gibber Lewis, former House Speaker of the Texas State Legislature: "He once announced, 'This is unparalyzed in the state's history." Another Gibberism: "It could have bad ramifistations in the hilterlands."

    Few people understand that in one part of the United Kingdom there exists a society where what matters most is religious origin and affiliation; still fewer empathize with the deep-rooted passions aroused by this. Tony Parker spent five months in the heart of Belfast talking to the people who make up this riven and self-destructive society. He interviewed priests and politicians, schoolchildren and students, bus drivers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, shop assistants, community workers, single mothers, soldiers, and police. He earned the trust of prisoners, their parents and children, and, perhaps most remarkably of all, Catholic and Protestant extremists implacably committed to violence as their means of expression. As Mary Loudon wrote in the Sunday Telegraph, "Tony Parker is an interviewer with an extraordinary capacity to filter what people say to him without turning their words his color." Through him the voices of the people of Belfast are heard for the first time, and the effect is devastating.

    Few have written with such insight as Christopher Hitchens about the large events — or with such discernment and wit about the small tell-tale signs of a disordered culture.For the Sake of Argument ranges from the political squalor of Washington, as a beleaguered Bush administration seeks desperately to stave off disaster and Clinton prepares for power; to the twilight of Stalinism in Prague; from the Jewish quarter of Damascus in the aftermath of the Gulf War to the embattled barrios of Central America and the imperishable resistance of Sarajevo, as a difficult peace is negotiated with ruthless foes. Hitchens’s unsparing account of Western realpolitik in the end shows it to rest on delusion as well as deception.The reader will find in these pages outstanding essays on political assassination in America as well as a scathing review of the evisceration of politics by pollsters and spin-doctors. Hitchens’s knowledge of the tortuous history of revolutions in the twentieth century helps him explain both the New York intelligentsia's flirtation with Trotskyism and the frailty of Communist power structures in Eastern Europe.Hitchens's pointed reassessments of Graham Greene, P. G. Wodehouse and C. L. R. James, or his riotous celebration of drinking and smoking, display an engaging enthusiasm and an acerbic wit. Equally entertaining is his unsparing rogues’ gallery, which gives us unforgettable portraits of the lugubrious “Dr.” Kissinger, the comprehensively reactionary “Mother” Teresa, the preposterous Paul Johnson and the predictable P. J. O’Rourke.

    The class would visit 30 states and ten national parks. They would read 12 books by American writers. Driven by Brinkley's energetic prose, "The Majic Bus" is a spirited travelogue of their unique experience.

    Here is the story of the catastrophe, and of the investigation that went awry. 30 photographs.

    There is considerable variety in the subjects she addresses....Compelling."THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALERThinking out loud is what Anna Quindlen does best. A syndicated columnist with her finger on the pulse of women's lives, and her heart in a place we all share, she writes about the passions, politics, and peculiarities of Americans everywhere. From gays in the military, to the race for First Lady, to the trials of modern motherhood and the right to choose, Anna Quindlen's views always fascinate.More of her views can be found in LIVING OUT LOUD, and OBJECT LESSONS.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    An autobiography in words and songs by one of the most influential figures in American music.

    "Her personality leaps off the page in all its quirky intensity."--Wilson Library Bulletin

    This volume covers a wide range of enthusiasms, criticisms, tributes, and reflections from the former National Review editor.

    Well assimilated within the white population, Jews had been diffident about voicing support of black civil rights. When violence erupted and Jewish voices began crying out for action, the Klan scapegoated Jews in a campaign of terror.Jack Nelson, himself a Mississippian and in the 1960s Atlanta bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, had lost no time in coming home to write page-one reports on the civil rights struggle. In Terror in the Night he re-creates the chilling experiences of investigating the Klan's campaign against the Jews. He reports on the bombing of a Jackson synagogue, the dynamiting of a rabbi's house, and the Klan's marking select Mississippi Jews for execution. He reports how law enforcement's clandestine investigations, bankrolled by Mississippi Jews, helped bag the terrorists in a nearly disastrous shootout.

    The glossing over of deceit in Warnke's 20-year reign as the "king of Christian comedy" in the evangelical recording and publishing industry is brought to light, as are the struggles of those who sought to be a corrective measure in his life.-- It is more than the story of one individual; it also deals with his effect on others. (selling sattan) should be read by all those concerned with Satanic-cult hysteria", -- Peter Huston, Skeptical Inquirer

    For more than a quarter century the Bard of the Booth captured great moments in baseball—and effortlessly interwove them with essential and often hilarious insights into the human condition.In loving commemoration and celebration of the life and career of an exceptional Man of Baseball, this new edition of O Holy Cow! includes a new foreword by baseball legend Bobby Murcer, a new poem written by editors Tom Peyer and Hart Seely, and more than sixty additional never-before-published masterworks of short, impromptu verse that capture the unmistakable voice of the unforgettable Rizzuto.

    For the next five years he was cut off from everything and everybody he knew and loved, from family, friends, and, perhaps above all, from Jill Morrell, the girl he was going to marry.For five years, John McCarthy had to endure the deprivation - both physical and psychological - of captivity; the filth and squalor of the cells in which he was kept; the agony of isolation and repeated self-examination; and the pain of ignorance, of not knowing if those he loved even realized he was alive.For Jill Morrell, the five years of John's captivity were a different kind of hell: the initial shock and disbelief; the gradual acceptance that John had been taken and that her life had changed irrevocably, that all their plans had been shattered.But Jill refused to give up hope. For five years she and a group of friends worked ceaselessly on behalf of John and all British hostages in the Middle East, until the extraordinary day in August 1991 when John McCarthy stepped down from an aeroplane at RAF Lyneham. A day when they could begin again.This is their story, a remarkable account of courage, endurance, hope and love.

    Photos.

    Using archival evidence as well as in-depth interviews with space agency officials, Howard McCurdy investigates the relationship between the performance of the American space program and NASA's organizational culture. He begins by identifying the beliefs, norms, and practices that guided NASA's early successes. Originally, the agency was dominated by the strong technical culture rooted in the research-and-development organizations from which NASA was formed. To launch the expeditions to the moon, McCurdy explains, this technical culture was linked to an organizational structure borrowed from the Air Force ballistic-missile program. Changes imposed to accomplish the lunar landing—along with the normal aging process and increased bureaucracy in the government as a whole—gradually eroded NASA's original culture and reduced its technical strength.

    It is a story of personal ambition and corporate greed, of Wall Street and the courts - but, above all, it is a compelling cautionary tale about American journalism over the last three decades. Between them, the News and the Free Press claimed more readers per capita than any newspaper in any other major American city, but by the late 1980s both were losing millions of dollars a year. With Wall Street looking over their shoulders, Gannett and knight-Ridder sought a peculiar form of government relief that would allow the papers to continue in artificial competition - while promising their parent companies tens of millions of dollars in profits. But the simple solution soon becomes a complicated test of wits and wills between two long-time rivals: Alvah Chapman, Jr., the steely, Bible-reading chairman of Knight-Ridder, and Al Neuharth, the flamboyant leader of Gannett and the founder of USA Today. A battle that begins in Detroit rages across the land, from union halls and corporate boardrooms to the offices of legal legend Clark Clifford and Attorney General Edwin Meese. In the end, what Neuharth and Chapman believed could be settled in a polite chat winds up on the docket of the United States Supreme Court. Bryan Gruley weaves this many-layered and complex story into a fast-paced narrative filled with unforgettable characters and bitter conflicts. As riveting as Barbarians at the Gate, as incisive in its insights into the media business as The Powers That Be, this consummately reported and passionately told tale is one that has repercussions for all of us.

    They became... FIGHTING MENA special forces adventurer who became Korean Minister of Agriculture for a day...a mini-D-Day that happened when a Green Beret met some Navy guys with a problem...an Operation code named Barroom designed to parachute four five-ton elephants deep in the Vietnamese jungle. In Jim Morris' classic collection of Special Forces stories, we are given a vivid, sometimes humorous, and often terrifying, look at the culture of the elite warrior trained to fight outside the box, survive in hostile terrain, and kill the enemy before the enemy knew he was there. Profiling men who wanted to be the best, Morris leads us through night jumps and ambushes, from the day-to-day action of Green Berets fighting alongside indigenous Vietnamese to the onslaught that was the Tet Offensive. Along the way, the jungle comes alive, the smell of white phosphorous burns the nostrils, and the voices of brave and extraordinary men-some who lived and some who died-are etched in the mind forever...

    From Roosevelt to Clinton, Block tells us about his five decades of working in the nation's capital, with notes on famous personalities and his own strong political opinions. 8-page insert.

    A narrative tour de force that reveals not only a deeply troubling image of the way things are, but also a glimpse of the way they might be.

    Police commissioner "Bull" Connor loosed dogs and turned fire hoses on black demonstrators; four young girls at Sunday school were killed when a bomb exploded in a black church; and Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his famous letter from the Birmingham jail, defending his activism to fellow ministers.Birmingham native Paul Hemphill, disillusioned with his hometown, had left home to pursue a journalistic career, so he witnessed these historic events with the rest of the world through newspaper and television reports. "That grim old steel town," he writes, "was the most blatantly segregated city of its size in the United States of America, and most of us regarded it with the same morbid fascination that causes us to slow down and gawk at a bloody wreck on the highway."Thirty years later, Hemphill returned to Birmingham to explore the depths of change that had taken place in the decades since the violence. In this powerful memoir, he interweaves his own autobiography with the history of the city and the stories of two very different Birmingham residents: a wealthy white matron and the pastor of the city's largest black church. As he struggles to come to terms with his own conflicting feelings toward his father's attitudes, Hemphill finds ironic justice in the integration of his childhood neighborhood and a visit with the black family who moved into his family's former home.

    These documentary photographs are the best from the University of Missouri Photography Workshop's 43 years.

    With those words, Joel Chandler Harris kindly admonished his six children on how to write to him while they were off at school, on prolonged visits, or working away from home. In turn, Harris kept his offspring informed about his works in progress, current events, household activities, and the latest gossip. He sternly advised his four boys--especially the oldest, Julian--on how they should conduct their lives and careers. He regaled his two daughters--his "dearest chums and partners"--with skits and sketches.In this volume, Hugh T. Keenan has collected the 280 surviving letters--most of them never before published--written by Harris to his children. In compiling this correspondence, Keenan uses Harris's own words to "fill in the domestic autobiography for the years 1890 to 1908," offering not only an intimate portrait of the author but also a compelling glimpse of the turn-of-the-century South in which he lived. The result is the most substantial book on Harris to be published in nearly twenty-five years.Harris's literary output during the period in which these letters were written was considerable. He produced thirteen books during the 1890s and contributed numerous short stories, essays, and articles to Scribner's and other national magazines; he was also deriving a steady income as associate editor for the Atlanta Constitution. Living in the West End section of Atlanta, he filled his letters with fascinating details of daily life, along with insights on such famous visitors to the city as James Whitcomb Riley, William Jennings Bryan, and James O'Neill.Dearest Chums and Partners also elucidates heretofore undisclosed aspects of the writer's personality and tastes, including his significant interest in the Roman Catholic Church. His French-Canadian wife, Esther LaRose Harris, was a devout Catholic, and their two daughters, Lillian and Mildred, attended convent school together. Many of the letters were mailed to the two girls at St. Joseph's Academy in Washington, Georgia. Because all incoming and outgoing mail was screened by the nuns, Harris developed a rapport with several of the sisters and wrote parts for them in skits he created for his daughters.Letters to his sons tended to be more instructive, although he would clarify his intent: "I am not lecturing, nor issuing orders. I am merely making suggestions." He advised Julian to keep a journal and to record his "experience and observation each day, and all the incidents that occur," adding, "To do this would seem monotonous to you now, but it would be invaluable to you later".In recording his own experiences and observations in these letters, Harris created a record of his last eighteen years that modern readers--especially those interested in the social and literary history of the South and in children's literature--will find invaluable.

    The book will anger and inspire anyone who cares about African wildlife and the people whose future is intertwined with the fate of these animals.

    Founded in the mid-1960s, the Black Mask group melded the ideas and inspiration of Dada with the anarchism of the Spanish Revolution, and this volume demonstrates how they heavily influenced the art, politics, and culture of the decade as they briefly shut down the Museum of Modern Art, protested Wall Street, battled at Students for a Democratic Society conferences, and defended the shooting of Andy Warhol. This history then details how in 1968 Black Mask reorganized as Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker, which combined the confrontational theater and tactics of Black Mask with a much more aggressive approach in dealing with the police and authorities. A lengthy interview with founder Ben Morea provides context and color to this fascinating documentary legacy.

    of duotone photos.

    Haslund, a Danish-Swedish explorer, takes us to the lost city of Karakota in the Gobi desert. We meet the Bodgo Gegen, a god-king in Mongolia similar to the Dalai Lama of Tibet. We meet Dambin Jansang, the dreaded warlord of the 'Black Gobi'. There is even material on the Hi-mori, an 'airhorse' that flies though the air (similar to a Vimana) and carries with it the sacred stone of Chintamani. Aside from the esoteric and mystical material, there is plenty of just plain adventure.

    Now, he takes aim at the Clinton administration.