And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos


John Berger - 1984
    This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless . . . . In our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses."This brooding, provocative, and almost unbearably lovely book displays one of the great writers of our time at his freest and most direct, addressing the themes that run beneath the surface of all his work, from Ways of Seeing to his Into Their Labours trilogy.In an extraordinary distillation of his gifts as a novelist, poet, art critic, and social historian, John Berger reveals the ties between love and absence, the ways poetry endows language with the assurance of prayer, and the tensions between the forward movement of sexuality and the steady backward tug of time. He re-creates the mysterious forces at work in a Rembrandt painting, transcribes the sensorial experience of viewing lilacs at dusk, and explores the meaning of home to early man and to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in our cities today.A work of unclassifiable innovation and consummate beauty, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos reminds us of Nabokov and Auden, Brecht and Lawrence, in its seamless fusion of the political and the personal.

Night Fighter: From the Rise of Special Ops to the Age of Terrorism


William H. Hamilton Jr. - 2016
    Hamilton Jr., and the veteran military history writer and bestselling author of One Shot One Kill,, Hill 488, and Crosshairs on the Kill Zone, Charles W. Sasser, detailing how Hamilton brought together a combination of Navy, Army, and CIA training methods to shape the United States’ unconventional military force, culminating in the Navy Seals, the world's most effective warriors in combating terrorists and international criminals, whose Team Six carried out the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays


Bertrand Russell - 1935
    Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy's View of History


Isaiah Berlin - 1953
    The masterly essay on Tolstoy's view of history, in which Sir Isaiah underlines a fundamental distinction between those people (foxes) who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and those (hedgehogs) who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system.

Granta 138: Journeys


Sigrid Rausing - 2017
    What are the ethics of writing about a place you may visit only briefly and view with the eyes of an outsider? With Granta's long tradition of travel writing in mind, we ask some of the world's best writers: is travel writing dead in 2016?Plus: Will Atkins investigates a killing across the US-Mexico borderXan Rice goes back to school in South AfricaEdna O'Brien: 'Chekhov's Ladies'David Flusfeder visits record factories in Detroit and CaliforniaAll the way up London's Holloway Road with Tim AdamsLaura Vapynar: 'Vladimir in Love'

Armageddon in Retrospect: And Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace


Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - 2008
    To be published on the first anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new and unpublished writings on war and peace, imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humor.

The Lincoln Story Book A Judicious Collection of the Best Stories and Anecdotes of the Great President, Many Appearing Here for the First Time in Book Form


Henry Llewellyn Williams - 2005
    You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Nationalism


Rabindranath Tagore - 1917
    These have offered us problems and claimed their solutions from us, the penalty of non-fulfilment being death or degradation.

Letter to My Daughter


Maya Angelou - 1987
    Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family. Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”–from Letter to My Daughter

Tom Robbins: The Kindle Singles Interview (Kindle Single)


Mara Altman - 2014
    He also talked a fair amount about mayonnaise. The interview was conducted by Mara Altman, the author of four bestselling Kindle Singles including “Baby Steps” and “Bearded Lady.” Altman has worked as a staff writer for The Village Voice, and has also written for New York Magazine and The New York Times. In 2009, HarperCollins published Altman's first book, “Thanks For Coming: A Young Woman's Quest for an Orgasm,” which was optioned as a comedy series by HBO. Cover design by Adil Dara Kim.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost


Rebecca Solnit - 2005
    A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Solnit's own life to explore the issues of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown. The result is a distinctive, stimulating, and poignant voyage of discovery.

Dear Future Historians: Lyrics and Exegesis of Rou Reynolds for the Music of Enter Shikari


Enter Shikari - 2017
    They have become one of the most influential British rock bands of their generation, sharing with their fans a belief that music can inspire change. Dear Future Historians features front-man Rou Reynolds own song interpretations and social commentary alongside all of their lyrics to date.

Good Italy, Bad Italy: Why Italy Must Conquer Its Demons to Face the Future


Bill Emmott - 2012
    Now it is viewed as a major threat to the future of the Euro, indeed to the European Union as a whole. Italy's political system is shorn of credibility as it struggles to deal with huge public debts and anemic levels of economic growth. Young people are emigrating in droves, frustrated at the lack of opportunity, while older people stubbornly cling to their rights and privileges, fearful of an uncertain future.In this lively, up-to-the-minute book, Bill Emmott explains how Italy sank to this low point, how Italians feel about it, and what can be done to return the country to more prosperous and more democratic times. With the aid of numerous personal interviews, Emmott analyzes "Bad Italy"—the land of disgraced Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an inadequate justice system, an economy dominated by special interests and continuing corruption—against its contrasting foil "Good Italy," the home of enthusiastic entrepreneurs, truth-seeking journalists, and countless citizens determined to end mafia domination for good.

A History of Reading


Alberto Manguel - 1996
    Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader. Noted essayist Alberto Manguel moves from this essential moment to explore the 6000-year-old conversation between words and that magician without whom the book would be a lifeless object: the reader. Manguel lingers over reading as seduction, as rebellion, as obsession, and goes on to trace the never-before-told story of the reader's progress from clay tablet to scroll, codex to CD-ROM.

Truth Imagined


Eric Hoffer - 1983
    At eighteen, fate would take his remaining family, sending him on the road with three hundred dollars and into the life of a Depression Era migrant worker, but his appetite for knowledge--history, science, mankind--remained and became the basis for his insights on human nature. Filled with timeless aphorisms and entertaining stories, Truth Imagined tracks Hoffer's years on the road, which served as the breeding ground for his most fertile thoughts.