A New Yorker, trying not to be jaded, accompanies a cash-strapped pot grower to a “clothing optional resort” in California. A nerdy high-schooler has her first sexual experience at Geology Camp. A college student, on the night of her father’s funeral, watches a video of her bat mitzvah, hypnotized by the image of the girl she used to be . . . Frank and irreverent, Rebecca Schiff’s stories offer a singular view of growing up (or not) and finding love (or not) in today’s ever-uncertain landscape. In its bone-dry humor, its pithy observations, and its thrilling ability to unmask the most revealing moments of human interaction—no matter how fleeting—The Bed Moved announces a new talent to be reckoned with.

    8 pages of illustrations.

    In City of the Soul, William Murray begins to show us why.Growing up in Rome and spending much of his life in the city, William Murray is an expert guide as he takes us on an intimate walking tour of some of Rome’s most glorious achievements, illuminating the history and the mythology that define the city. Murray leads us through the centro, the city’s historic downtown center. He writes about the Villa Borghese, the Piazza di Spagna, and the Trevi Fountain and describes such singular attractions as the Capuchin Church of Santa Maria della Concezione, whose macabre crypt has impressed visitors from Mark Twain to the Marquis de Sade. As he walks, he reveals stories that only a longtime resident would know, capturing the sights, sounds, and flavors that make Rome a combination of the deep past and the ever-sensual present.

    Classics of the environmental imagination—the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring—are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America’s greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of “nature” join ecologists’ memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.

    In the style of Studs Terkel (Working, Hard Times, The Good War) and Dave Isay (Listening Is an Act of Love), Londoners offers up  the stories, the gripes, the memories, and the dreams of those in the great and vibrant British metropolis who “love it, hate it, live it, left it, and long for it,” from a West End rickshaw driver to a Soldier of the Guard at Buckingham Palace to a recovering heroin addict seeing Big Ben for the very first time. Published just in time for the 2012 London Olympic Games, Londoners is a glorious literary celebration of one of the world’s truly great cities.

    The Parisian episode is fascinating for its expose of the kitchens of posh French restaurants, where the narrator works at the bottom of the culinary echelon as dishwasher, or plongeur. In London, while waiting for a job, he experiences the world of tramps, street people, and free lodging houses. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and of society.

    Vowell tackles subjects such as identity, politics, religion, art, and history with a biting humor. She searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears. Vowell has an irresistible voice—caustic and sympathetic, insightful and double-edged—that has attracted a loyal following for her magazine writing and radio monologues on This American Life.

    In the past year, Almond has won a Pushcart Prize and been a finalist for the National Magazine Award.

    Standing on the engine of a train as it rushes past fields of prickly cactus; witnessing his first bullfight in Mexico while high on opium; catching up with the beat night life in New York; burying himself in the snow-capped mountains of north-west America; meditating on a sunlit roof in Tangiers; or falling in love with Montmartre and the huge white basilica of Sacré-Coeur – Kerouac reveals the endless diversity of human life and his own high-spirited philosophy of self-fulfilment.

    In its 720 pages is the core of the black literary heritage of America, ranging from slavery days to the post-Martin Luther King era. It includes fiction, poetry, autobiography and criticism by forty-four men and women who rank among the most talented writers - black or white - that this country has produced. If there is room in your budget for only one anthology of black American literature, BLACK VOICES should be your choice.

    In New York Stories, Gloria Steinem (whose Ms. Magazine was introduced in New York) broaches the subject of women’s liberation; Tom Wolfe coins “The Me Decade”; and Steve Fishman piercingly portrays the unwanted martyrdom of the 9/11 widows. Cutting edge features that invented terms like “brat pack” and “grup”; profiles of defining cultural figures including Joe Namath, Truman Capote, and long-shot presidential candidate Bill Clinton; and reports that inspired the acclaimed movies Saturday Night Fever, GoodFellas, and Grey Gardens–all are included in this one-of-a-kind compilation.The writers who chronicled the times that began with Nixon’s campaign and end with Obama’s are at their best in New York Stories. It’s an irresistible anthology from a magazine that, like the city itself, is still making stars, setting standards, and going strong.

    Born in Montgomery, Alabama, this southern belle turned flapper was talented in dance, painting, and writing but lived in the shadow of her husband's success. Her writing can be experienced on its own terms in Matthew Bruccoli's meticulously edited The Collected Writings of Zelda Fitzgerald.The collection includes Zelda's only published novel, Save Me the Waltz, an autobiographical account of the Fitzgeralds' adventures in Paris and on the Riviera; her celebrated farce, Scandalabra; eleven short stories; twelve articles; and a selection of letters to her husband, written over the span of their marriage, that reveals the couple's loving and turbulent relationship.Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald has long been an American cultural icon. The Collected Writings affirms her place as a writer and as a symbol not only of the Lost Generation but of all generations as she struggled to define herself through her art.

     When the marines -- or "jarheads," as they call themselves -- were sent in 1990 to Saudi Arabia to fight the Iraqis, Swofford was there, with a hundred-pound pack on his shoulders and a sniper's rifle in his hands. It was one misery upon another. He lived in sand for six months, his girlfriend back home betrayed him for a scrawny hotel clerk, he was punished by boredom and fear, he considered suicide, he pulled a gun on one of his fellow marines, and he was shot at by both Iraqis and Americans. At the end of the war, Swofford hiked for miles through a landscape of incinerated Iraqi soldiers and later was nearly killed in a booby-trapped Iraqi bunker. Swofford weaves this experience of war with vivid accounts of boot camp (which included physical abuse by his drill instructor), reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family. As engagement with the Iraqis draws closer, he is forced to consider what it is to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man. Unlike the real-time print and television coverage of the Gulf War, which was highly scripted by the Pentagon, Swofford's account subverts the conventional wisdom that U.S. military interventions are now merely surgical insertions of superior forces that result in few American casualties. Jarhead insists we remember the Americans who are in fact wounded or killed, the fields of smoking enemy corpses left behind, and the continuing difficulty that American soldiers have reentering civilian life. A harrowing yet inspiring portrait of a tormented consciousness struggling for inner peace, Jarhead will elbow for room on that short shelf of American war classics that includes Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War and Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and be admired not only for the raw beauty of its prose but also for the depth of its pained heart.

    It is the inescapable chain of events that has brought me to this point, rather than I who have caused these things to happen. Her life seems haphazard, at the mercy of caprice, but her writings prove otherwise. She did not make decisions; she was impelled to take action. Her nature combined an extraordinary singlness of purpose and an equally powerful nostalgia for the unattainable.--Paul Bowles, preface.One of the strangest human documents that a woman has given the world.--Cecily Mackworth, I Came Out of FranceIsabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904) was an explorer who lived and traveled extensively throughout North Africa. She wrote of her travels in numerous books and French newspapers, including Nouvelles Alg�riennes [Algerian News] (1905), Dans l'Ombre Chaude de l'Islam [In the Hot Shade of Islam] (1906) and Les journaliers [The Day Laborers] (1922).Paul Bowles has taped and translated numerous strange legends and lively stories recounted by Mrabet: Love with a Few Hairs (novel), The Lemon (novel), The Boy Who Set Fire (stories), Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins (stories), The Beach Caf� & Look & Move On (autobiography) and The Big Mirror (novella).

    Taking its place next to Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood on the Modern Library bookshelf is this new and original edition of Capote's most famous short stories: "A Christmas Memory, " "One Christmas, " and "The Thanksgiving Visitor." All three stories are distinguished by Capote's delicate interplay of childhood sensibility and recollective vision, evoking a strong sense of place.