Law and Literature


Richard A. Posner - 1998
    Posner's "Law and Literature" has handily lived up to the "Washington Post's" prediction that the book would "remain essential reading for many years to come." This new edition, extensively revised and enlarged, continues to emphasize the essential differences between law and literature, which are rooted in the different social functions of legal and literary texts. But it also explores areas of mutual illumination and expands its range to include new topics such as popular fiction about law, literary education for lawyers, the legal narrative movement, and judicial biography.Literary works from classics by Sophocles, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Melville, Kafka, and Camus to contemporary fiction by William Gaddis, Tom Wolfe, and John Grisham come under Posner's scrutiny, as do recent attempts to apply the techniques of literary analysis to statutes, judicial opinions, and the Constitution. In a section entirely new in this edition, Posner discusses the increasing efforts of legal scholars to enrich their scholarship by borrowing the methods and insights of literature--even by insisting that legal education is incomplete without the ethical insights afforded by an immersion in literature.Thoroughly rewritten and updated, free of legal and literary jargon, and informed by Posner's extensive erudition and legal experience, this book remains the most clear, acute, and comprehensive account of the intersection of law and literature--"a wonderfully original and instructive study of what literature has to teach us about the law, the methods of legal argument, and the interpretation of statutes and the Constitution" ("Wall Street Journal").

Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror


John Ashbery - 1975
    Ashberry reaffirms the poetic powers that have made him such an outstanding figure in contemporary literature. This new book continues his astonishing explorations of places where no one has ever been.

I Said Yes to Everything: A Memoir


Lee Grant - 2014
    She threw herself into work, accepting every theater or teaching job that came her way. She met a man ten years her junior and began a wild, liberat­ing fling that she never expected would last a lifetime. And after twelve years of fighting the blacklist, she was finally exonerated. With cour­age and style, Grant rebuilt her life on her own terms: first stop, a starring role on Peyton Place, and then leads in Valley of the Dolls, In the Heat of the Night, and Shampoo, for which she won her first Oscar.Set amid the New York theater scene of the fifties and the star-studded parties of Malibu in the seventies, I Said Yes to Everything evokes a world of political passion and movie-star glamour. Grant tells endlessly delightful tales of costars and friends such as Warren Beatty, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, and Sidney Poitier, and writes with the verve and candor befitting such a seductive and beloved star.

The Glory Boys


Gerald Seymour - 1976
    Jimmy is arguably the most dangerous of the lot, but only when sober. Will he be able to prevent a brutal killing?

A Gathering of Saints: A True Story of Money, Murder and Deceit


Robert Lindsey - 1988
    A Gathering of Saints is an astonishing report on one of this century's most puzzling, cunningly executed crimes. 16 pages of photos.

Nobody Eats Parsley: And other things I learned from my family


David Oakley - 2020
    They're so ridiculous you may think they're fiction. Like the time I went to a drive-in X-rated movie without realizing my parents were in the next car. Or the time I let my kid throw a rock through our living room window. There's the time I bought a camouflage thong in a bait shop and the time I ruined a kid's birthday party. And the other time I ruined a kid's birthday party. I can't guarantee that these stories will make you laugh, but I can guarantee that I didn't make them up.

Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews


Ray Bradbury - 2010
    From Mikhail Gorbachev to Alfred Hitchcock to David Bowie, Bradbury’s sway on contemporary culture is towering. Acclaimed biographer and Bradbury scholar Sam Weller has spent more than a decade interviewing the author; the fascinating conversations that emerge cast a high-definition portrait of a creative genius and a futurist who longs for yesterday. Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews is the definitive collection of interviews with an American icon.

The Interrogative Mood


Padgett Powell - 2009
    Did they?) it might look something like this remarkable little book of Padgett Powell’s.”—Richard FordThe Interrogative Mood is a wildly inventive, jazzy meditation on life and language by the novelist that Ian Frazier hails as “one of the best writers in America, and one of the funniest, too.” A novel composed entirely of questions, it is perhaps the most audacious literary high-wire act since Nicholson Baker’s The Mezzanine or David Foster Wallace’s stories; a playful and profound book that, as Jonathan Safran Foer says, “will sear the unlucky volumes shelved on either side of it. How it doesn’t, itself, combust in flames is a mystery to me.”

Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad Through the Wild


Novella Carpenter - 2014
    Carpenter’s father, George—a back-to-the-land homesteader and troubled Korean War veteran—has spent decades battling his inner demons while largely absenting himself from his children’s lives. Though George is ultimately found, Carpenter is forced to confront the truth: her time with her dad—now seventy-three years old—is limited, and the moment to restore their relationship is now. Gone Feral is the story of Carpenter’s search for her parents’ broken past in the harsh wilds of Idaho.The story starts in San Miguel de Allende in 1969, where Carpenter’s free-spirited parents meet and fall in love. Their whirlwind romance continues through Europe and ends on 180 acres near Idaho’s Clearwater River. Carpenter and her sister are born into a free, roaming childhood, but soon the harsh reality of living on the land—loneliness, backbreaking labor—tears the family apart. Carpenter’s mother packs the girls and heads for the straight life in Washington State while George remains on the ranch, tied to the land and his vision of freedom.In Gone Feral, Carpenter—now a grown woman leading an untraditional life, not unlike her parents’, raising livestock and growing vegetables in the city—finds herself contemplating a family of her own. Before that can happen, she knows she has to return to Idaho to discover why her father chose this life of solitude. She quickly finds that George is not living the principled, romantic life she imagined, and the truth is more com-plicated—and dangerous—than anything she suspected. As she comes to know the real George, Carpenter looks to her own life and comes to recognize her father’s legacy in their shared love of animals, of nature, and of the written word; their dangerous stubbornness and isolating independence. Finally, Gone Feral sees the birth of Carpenter’s own daughter, an experience that teaches that a parent’s love is itself a wild thing: unknowable, fierce, and ever changing. In reckoning with her past, Carpenter clears the road to her future.Raw, funny, unsentimental, alive with unforgettable characters and pitch-perfect dialogue, Gone Feral marks Carpenter’s transformative passage from daughter to mother, a wry and rough tale of life lived on the margins and redemption between generations.

On Conan Doyle


Michael Dirda - 2011
    Combining memoir and appreciation, On Conan Doyle is a highly engaging personal introduction to Holmes's creator, as well as a rare insider's account of the curiously delightful activities and playful scholarship of The Baker Street Irregulars. Because Arthur Conan Doyle wrote far more than the mysteries involving Holmes, this book also introduces readers to the author's lesser-known but fascinating writings in an astounding range of other genres. A prolific professional writer, Conan Doyle was among the most important Victorian masters of the supernatural short story, an early practitioner of science fiction, a major exponent of historical fiction, a charming essayist and memoirist, and an outspoken public figure who attacked racial injustice in the Congo, campaigned for more liberal divorce laws, and defended wrongly convicted prisoners. He also wrote novels about both domestic life and contemporary events (including one set in the Middle East during an Islamic uprising), as well as a history of World War I, and, in his final years, controversial tracts in defense of spiritualism. On Conan Doyle describes all of these achievements and activities, uniquely combining skillful criticism with the story of Dirda's deep and enduring affection for Conan Doyle and his work. This is a book for everyone who already loves Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and the world of 221B Baker Street, or for anyone who would like to know more about them, but it is also a much-needed celebration of Arthur Conan Doyle's genius for every kind of storytelling.

Giacometti: A Biography


James Lord - 1985
    From modest beginnings in a Swiss village, Giacometti went on to flourish in the picturesque milieu of prewar Paris and then to achieve international acclaim in the fifties and sixties. Picasso, Balthus, Samuel Beckett, Stravinsky and Sartre have parts in his story, along with flamboyant art dealers, whores, shady drifters, unscrupulous collectors, poets and thieves. Women were a complex yet important element of his life--particularly his wife, Annette, and his last mistress and model, Caroline--as was the intimate relationship he shared with his brother Diego, who was both Alberto's confidant and collaborator.James Lord was personally acquainted with Giacometti and his entourage, and combines firsthand experience with a unique knowledge gathered during many years of observation and research. In this exceptional biography Lord unfolds the personal history of a man who managed to achieve a heroic destiny by remaining utterly true to himself and to his calling.Giacometti: A Biography was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. James Lord has subsequently published three volumes of memoirs. In recognition of his contribution to French culture he has been made an officer of the Legion of Honour.

Where You're At: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip-Hop Planet


Patrick Neate - 2004
    Covering five continents and cities as diverse as New York, Rio, Tokyo, and Johannesburg, Neate discovers hip-hop reinventing itself internationally, locally, and individually. Spirited and idealistic, yet grittily insightful, "Where You're At" is a global tour of a small planet, with hip-hop, in all its multifarious forms, as the main character.

The Cheese Monkeys


Chip Kidd - 2001
    The Cheese Monkeys is a college novel that takes place over a tightly written two semesters. The book is set in the late 1950s at State U, where the young narrator, has decided to major in art, much to his parents’ dismay. It is an autobiographical, coming-of-age novel which tells universally appealing stories of maturity, finding a calling in life, and being inspired by a loving, demanding, and highly eccentric teacher.

Enchantment


Christina Skye - 1998
    Listening length: 2 hoursWhen art conservator Kacey Mallory travels to the beautiful and mysterious Draycott Abbey in a remote corner of England to verify the authenticity of a newly-discovered James Whistler masterpiece, little does she suspect that something far more precious awaits her; nothing less than echoes of her past, the promise of her future, and a dashing British viscount...the man who is her destiny.

The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles Into Everyday Greatness


Paul G. Stoltz - 2007
    What if you could convert everyday struggles, big and small, into the kind of fuel that spurs you past everyday normality to everyday greatness? This book is built upon a simple but powerful promise: anyone can use the ingredients of adversity to elevate one's business and life. Dr. Paul G. Stoltz is the world's leading expert on adversity-related research, theory, and applications. Erik Weihenmayer—a world-class mountain climber who happens to be blind—is Stoltz's Adversity Advantage personified. Their dream-team combination of wisdom and experience adds up to an application-packed program that shows listeners how to: —Rewire core response mechanisms to respond optimally to anything that happens the moment it strikes. —Move past coping with and managing adversity to harnessing adversity. —Pinpoint and grow Adversity Strengths—bring out the best under pressure.The Adversity Advantage blends proven leadership techniques with real-world anecdotes for a seven-step path to success.