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    Between 1939 and 1974 he wrote the autobiography and eight novels now collected by the Library of America in an authoritative three-volume set, earning a place as one of the greatest writers of America, his beloved adopted home.The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, the first novel Nabokov wrote in English, published a year after he settled in the U. S., is a tantalizing literary mystery in which a writer’s half brother searches to unravel the enigma of the life of a famous author. A characteristically cunning play on identity and deception, this novel was published in 1941.Bend Sinister (1947), Nabokov’s most explicitly political novel, is the haunting, dreamlike story of Adam Krug, a quiet philosophy professor caught up in the bureaucratic bungling of a totalitarian police state. “I am neither a didacticist nor an allegorizer,” Nabokov affirms in his introduction to the novel, but goes on to state: “There can be distinguished, no doubt, certain reflections in the glass caused by idiotic and despicable regimes that we all know and that have brushed against me in the course of my life: worlds of tyranny and torture, of Fascists and Bolshevists, of Philistine thinkers and jack-booted baboons.”Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1951; revised 1966), Nabokov’s dazzling memoir of his childhood in imperial Russia and exile in Europe, is central to an understanding of his art. With its balance of inner and outer worlds—of family chronicle and private fantasy, revolutions and butterflies, the games of childhood and the disasters of politics—the work that Nabokov called “a systematically correlated assemblage of personal recollections” is a haunting transmutation of life into art. “I have to make a rapid inventory of the universe…I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love,” he writes toward the end of the book, “so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence.”The texts of this volume incorporate Nabokov’s penciled corrections in his own copies of his works and correct long-standing errors. They are the most authoritative versions available and have been prepared with the assistance of Dmitri Nabokov, the novelist’s son.

    a remarkable story—Leeza Gibbons, NBC-TV • Grippingly told ... a wonderful, powerful book—David Berner, Radio CKNW Vancouver • Reads with the pace of a taut thriller—George Henderson, Gloucestershire Citizen • Mesmerizing—Bob Stall, Vancouver Province. Now revised and updated. The amazing, true story of how medical authorities allow a family doctor to continue practising even after he begins living with a 15-year-old patient—and allegedly has sex with another girl in exchange for giving drugs to her father. The notorious doctor still carries on as before and a third patient complains about infamous conduct—until he silences her by putting out a contract for murder.

    Each chapter is bursting with creative and classic ideas to make the day as meaningful as it is beautiful: Stationery: Save-the-date cards do double duty when printed on coasters or delicate handkerchiefs.Ceremonies: An auspicious bird’s nest adds a beautiful and rustic touch for carrying rings at a farm wedding.Dressing Up: A retro bride goes glam with a feathered veil and pearl button–accented gloves. A casual groom and his mates add a personality pop with chocolate-brown Keds to match their wedding chinos.Cocktail Hour: For a low-key affair, mini grilled cheeses dipped in shot glasses of tomato soup satisfy.Centerpieces: Fruit slices suspended in crystal vases overflowing with Crayola-bright poppies and orchids offer a cheery setting.Cakes: White lace frosting details that match the bride’s dress and the couple’s monogram turn a pale green cake into a chic masterpiece.From classic white-on-white palettes to floral themes to fun fantasy ideas, the choices are limitless. Purple, pink, red, robin’s egg blue—find inspiration at every turn in all the colors a bride can dream of! And The Knot Ultimate Wedding Lookbook is loaded with money-saving ideas that don’t sacrifice style. Expert advice and rich images add up to a delicious visual feast and essential resource to help you create an event as special as you are as a couple.

    Cosman proves just how endlessly intriguing the answers to these questions are in this fascinating exploration of medieval food habits in service, table manners, menu, and courtly magnificence. Also provided are tempting recipes for the modern-day host and hostess who would like to delight their guests with a medieval feast. Fabulous Feasts received nominations for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

    When continental moviemakers combined horror with sex, they unleashed a tidal wave of celluloid strangeness that lasted nearly thirty years. From sexy thrillers to pulp surrealism, from decadent erotica to blood-soaked vampire epics, nothing could go too far. Immoral Tales tells the fascinating story of this unique period, peeking into the kaleidoscope of visceral horror, maverick directors, and erotic invention.

    This guidebook is not meant to replace a Lonely Planet/Frommers/Rough Guide, but rather to compliment them. In NZ Frenzy you'll find info about all the South's must-see spots, plus detailed info about the lesser-known and unheralded off-the-beaten-path wonder spots. This guidebook goes WAY beyond the vague outdoor info in the mainstream travel guidebooks. NZ Frenzy is about giving you the details you'll need to find the "real" NZ, the one without lines of tour buses, the one without brochures of pay-to-see commercialized natural "attractions". NZ Frenzy, unlike any of the other mainstream guidebooks, will deliver you to the New Zealand that you've been planning for and fantasizing about. I guarantee it. Please read the reviews of NZ Frenzy North Island to see what travelers think of my info. Are you going to NZ to be a tourist at touristy crowded places or do you want to find the "Real" New Zealand that you'll tell stories about?? When you have an NZ Frenzy in hand, you'll leave the other guidebooks in the glove box and you'll leave the tourists behind!! The South Island has natural wonders beyond compare, but the mainstream media only promotes the commercialized stuff. Don't waste your precious time while in NZ waiting in line at the tourist visitor centers...get NZ Frenzy and go experience the Real New Zealand, the Fabled New Zealand. You can have the trip of a lifetime, you will have the trip of a lifetime!!

    For thirty years, beginning in the hippie scene of San Francisco in 1965, they were a musical institution, the original jam band that broke new ground in so many ways. From the music to their live concert sound systems and fan recordings, they were forward-thinking champions of artistic control and outlaw artists who marched to the beat of their own drums.In Deal, Bill Kreutzmann, one of their founding members and drummer for every one of their over 2,300 concerts has written an unflinching and wild account of playing in the greatest improvisational band of all time. Everything a rock music fan would expect is here, but what sets this apart is Bill's incredible life of adventure that was at the heart of the Grateful Dead experience. This was a band that knew no limits and Bill lived life to the fullest, pushing the boundaries of drugs, drums and high times, through devastating tragedy and remarkable triumph.But at this book's beating heart is the music--theirs and others. Some of the greatest musicians and concerts were a part of the Grateful Dead's career, from sharing the stage with Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, and The Who, to playing in the Acid Tests, The Monterey Pop Festival, Woodstock and Altamont. Bill's life is a chronicle of American music and pop culture history and his epic personal journey is one of sonic discovery and thrilling experiences.

    . . Genius of the People is an absorbing look at the incomparable personalities who brought us our Constitution."- Michael BeschlossGenius of the People is a timely account of how America's national government came to be born during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Charles L. Mee, Jr., vividly describes the personalities, issues, conflicts, and implications of an epoch-making meeting of brilliant and not-so-brilliant political leaders, who had different and often opposed agendas and whose disagreements and compromises, alliances and feuds, vision and shortsightedness create the main storylines of the years to come.Mee sets the events and issues of the Convention against a background of a small but diverse society that had just won its independence and was already wracked with dissension and factionalism as to how it should be governed. The axial line of Mee's account is the ongoing struggle between what he calls the party of liberty and the party of order. On one side was the loose coalition of states' rights and local government people, such as the patrician democrat George Mason, the tenacious Puritan shopkeeper Roger Sherman, and the prototypical Southern politician John Rutledge. Opposed to them and their followers was the coalition of nationalists led by the frail but resourceful James Madison, the arrogant Gouverneur Morris, and the brilliant, aristocratic Alexander Hamilton.These two broad positions roughly organized a myriad of different interests, ideals, and whims. Forced by their disagreements to one unpleasant compromise after another, the delegates finally found themselves compelled to resort to a set of general principles based on the American experience that people are most secure and most free when power is not gathered up in the hands of a few - not the president and his friends, or of a class of businesspeople or landed gentry, or of the military, or of a group of politicians.Without partisanship, Mee has written a history of the Convention for our own time. On virtually every page, his reporting on the proceedings undermines the view of many Americans of the Constitution as a rigidly fixed screed of political fundamentalism. At the same time, Mee invigorates and challenges the reader's faith in American democracy. He shows us our dissatisfied and contentious Founding Fathers entrusting their own class interests and power to the genius of the American people for self-government, knowing fully that only a politically informed and active public could preserve their work.

    Even the wealthy, powerful, and world-renowned must ultimately meet their Maker—though some have departed this life more ignobly than they might have wished.From Mozart to rock and roll, which performers ended their lives on the wrong note?What famous U.S. bridge is named after an explorer who was eaten by cannibals?Everyone wants to hit the lottery, but does Lady Luck visit winners with deadly fangs?Plus: Learn the real fate of Gilligan's Island castaways and all your favorite TV actors as well as famous writers, senators, saints, dictators, and philosophers, among many others.Michael Largo, the man who illuminated readers on the myriad ways of death in Final Exits, has compiled a fascinating, off-beat, and darkly humorous necrology that provides the grim, often outrageous details about the passing of influential persons. Meticulously researched—employing archaeological records, published obituaries, official documents, and forensic evidence—this authoritative, one-of-a-kind reference presents the unabashed truth about a multitude of celebrity deaths, while examining the various deeds, misdeeds, and lifestyle quirks that hastened the demise and determined the departed's role in history and popular myth. The Portable Obituary has the skinny on what made our late icons—whether through overindulgence or neglect: on the john, in the sack, or in some spectacular accident—what they are today: dead!

    Indeed, Lincoln's record on the Constitution and individual rights has fueled a century of debate, from charges that Democrats were singled out for harrassment to Gore Vidal's depiction of Lincoln as an absolute dictator. Now, in the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Fate of Liberty, one of America's leading authorities on Lincoln wades straight into this controversy, showing just who was jailed and why, even as he explores the whole range of Lincoln's constitutional policies. Mark Neely depicts Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus as a well-intentioned attempt to deal with a floodtide of unforeseen events: the threat to Washington as Maryland flirted with secession, disintegrating public order in the border states, corruption among military contractors, the occupation of hostile Confederate territory, contraband trade with the South, and the outcry against the first draft in U.S. history. Drawing on letters from prisoners, records of military courts and federal prisons, memoirs, and federal archives, he paints a vivid picture of how Lincoln responded to these problems, how his policies were actually executed, and the virulent political debates that followed. Lincoln emerges from this account with this legendary statesmanship intact--mindful of political realities and prone to temper the sentences of military courts, concerned not with persecuting his opponents but with prosecuting the war efficiently. In addition, Neely explores the abuses of power under the regime of martial law: the routine torture of suspected deserters, widespread antisemitism among Union generals and officials, the common practice of seizing civilian hostages. He finds that though the system of military justice was flawed, it suffered less from merciless zeal, or political partisanship, than from inefficiency and the friction and complexities of modern war. Informed by a deep understanding of a unique period in American history, this incisive book takes a comprehensive look at the issues of civil liberties during Lincoln's administration, placing them firmly in the political context of the time. Written with keen insight and an intimate grasp of the original sources, The Fate of Liberty offers a vivid picture of the crises and chaos of a nation at war with itself, changing our understanding of this president and his most controversial policies.

    Dick was a hugely influential writer who drew upon his own life to address the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences of all kinds. He was a prolific author and many of his books were turned into popular films such as Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Total Recall, and Minority Report. This book has been written with the cooperation of several close acquaintances and looks to examine his work as well as the socio-political-cultural environment in which he lived. It will be of great interest to any fan of Philip K. Dick or science fiction in general, as well as anyone who grew up the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.

    Nevertheless, it has exerted a more powerful hold on international popular music than any nation besides England and America. From Prince Buster to Burning Spear, Lee "Scratch" Perry to Yellowman, Bob Marley to Shabba Ranks, reggae music is one of the most dynamic and powerful musical forms of the twentieth century. And, as Lloyd Bradley shows in his deft, definitive, and always entertaining book, it is and always has been the people's music. Born in the sound systems of the Kingston slums, reggae was the first music poor Jamaicans could call their own, and as it spread throughout the world, it always remained fluid, challenging, and distinctly Jamaican. Based on six years of research -- original interviews with most of reggae's key producers, musicians, and international players -- and a lifelong enthusiasm for one of the most remarkable of the world's musics, This Is Reggae Music is the definitive history of reggae.

    With more than 250 projects of many different types and levels of difficulty, this bestselling, encyclopedic work contains traditional and modern paper-folding methods, and includes folds for the beginner and works calculated to challenge the experts.

    With extensive treatment of the heart of epidemiology-from study designs to descriptive epidemiology to quantitative measures-this reader-friendly text is accessible and interesting to a wide range of beginning students in all health-related disciplines. A unique focus is given to real-world applications of epidemiology and the development of skills that students can apply in subsequent course work and in the field. The text is also accompanied by a complete package of instructor and student resources available through a companion Web site.