Book picks similar to
Limits of Reason by Modris Eksteins


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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 Eighth Circle


Stanley Ellin - 1958
    When he's asked to act for a young policeman accused of bribery, because he knows something about police corruption in New York City, he isn't too keen. He just can't see the profit - until he meets the man's fiancee. And then Kirk's motives become uncomfortably confused, and he finds himself descending swiftly into a grey world of bookmakers, gangsters, grafters and corrupt politicians, a world where setting up an honest cop is all in a day's work...

Fog Heart


Thomas Tessier - 1997
    Is her gift real, or is it the sign of a consuming madness? Can she lead them all to important truths, or will they be trapped in the tightening web of terror and death?Fog Heart was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly, and awarded the International Horror Guild's honors for Best Novel.

Law in America: A Short History


Lawrence M. Friedman - 2002
    They embody our society’s genetic code. In the masterful hands of the subject’s greatest living historian, the story of the evolution of our laws serves to lay bare the deciding struggles over power and justice that have shaped this country from its birth pangs to the present. Law in America is a supreme example of the historian’s art, its brevity a testament to the great elegance and wit of its composition.From the Hardcover edition.

Blizzard of One


Mark Strand - 1998
    It is a place created by a voice that moves with unerring ease between the commonplace and the sublime. The poems are filled with "the weather of leavetaking," but they are also unexpectedly funny. The erasure of self and the depredations of time are seen as sources of sorrow, but also as grounds for celebration. This is one of the difficult truths these poems dramatize with stoicism and wit. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Blizzard of One is an extraordinary book--the summation of the work of a lifetime by one of our very few true masters of the art of poetry.

Meanwhile There Are Letters: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and Ross Macdonald


Suzanne Marrs - 2015
    Though separated by background, geography, genre, and his marriage, the two authors shared their lives in witty, wry, tender, and at times profoundly romantic letters, each drawing on the other for inspiration, comfort, and strength. They brought their literary talents to bear on a wide range of topics, discussing each others' publications, the process of translating life into fiction, the nature of the writer’s block each encountered, books they were reading, and friends and colleagues they cherished. They also discussed the world around them, the Vietnam War, the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan presidencies, and the environmental threats facing the nation. The letters reveal the impact each had on the other’s work, and they show the personal support Welty provided when Alzheimer’s destroyed Macdonald’s ability to communicate and write.The editors of this collection, who are the definitive biographers of these two literary figures, have provided extensive commentary and an introduction. They also include Welty’s story fragment “Henry,” which addresses Macdonald’s disease. With its mixture of correspondence and narrative, Meanwhile There Are Letters provides a singular reading experience: a prose portrait of two remarkable artists and one unforgettable relationship.

Borderlands 3


Thomas F. MonteleoneMarthayn Pelegrimas - 1991
    Yet the fiction books in the Borealis imprint certainly belong to a world other than our own. This line encompasses our science fiction, fantasy and horror novels and anthologies.

The Lost Detective: Becoming Dashiell Hammett


Nathan Ward - 2015
    Born in 1894 into a poor Maryland family, Hammett left school at fourteen and held several jobs before joining the Pinkerton National Detective Agency as an operative in 1915 and, with time off in 1918 to serve at the end of World War I, he remained with the agency until 1922, participating alike in the banal and dramatic action of an operative. The tuberculosis he contracted during the war forced him to leave the Pinkertons--but it may well have prompted one of America's most acclaimed writing careers.While Hammett's life on center stage has been well-documented, the question of how he got there has not. That largely overlooked phase is the subject of Nathan Ward's enthralling The Lost Detective. Hammett's childhood, his life in San Francisco, and especially his experience as a detective deeply informed his writing and his characters, from the nameless Continental Op, hero of his stories and early novels, to Sam Spade and Nick Charles. The success of his many stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask following his departure from the Pinkertons led him to novels; he would write five between 1929 and 1934, two of them (The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man) now American classics. Though he inspired generations of writers, from Chandler to Connelly and all in between, after The Thin Man he never finished another book, a painful silence for his devoted readers; and his popular image has long been shaped by the remembrance of Hellman, who knew him after his literary reputation had been made. Based on original research across the country, The Lost Detective is the first book to illuminate Hammett's transformation from real detective to great American detective writer, throwing brilliant new light on one of America's most celebrated and remembered novelists and his world.

Perilous Dreams


Andre Norton - 1976
    Until she had dreamed for Lord Starrex and plunged them both into such a venture as she could not control. Somehow she had brought them here, to new identities, new adventure, and doubtless, new dangers.But there was Kas, who had striven to put an end to both in two times, two worlds, and who must also have been wrenched with the into this, though not in her company?She was to find out, and the doing was to bring her into the alien laws and unmapped lands of yet a third world, and eventually a fourth and a fifth . . .For Tamisan, or Tam-sin, or whatever her name in whatever world, dreamed true—and in so doing altered continually the writing of the histories of the stars.

The Day I Wore My Panties Inside Out


Jen Tucker - 2011
    Have you ever had one of those days where you felt like you just could not catch a break? Author Jen Tucker had one of those and shares every bit of it in her new memoir, The Day I Wore my Panties Inside Out with humor and a bit of sass.

The Keeper: A Life of Saving Goals and Achieving Them


Tim Howard - 2014
    As fiercely protective about his privacy as he is guarding the goal on the field, Howard opens up for the first time about how a hyperactive kid from New Jersey with Tourette’s syndrome defied the odds to become one of the world’s premier goalkeepers.The Keeper recalls his childhood, being raised by a single mother who instilled in him a love of sports and a devout Christian faith that helped him cope when he was diagnosed with Tourette’s in the fifth grade. He looks back over his fifteen-year professional career—from becoming the youngest player to win MLS Goalkeeper of the Year to his storied move to the English Premier League with Manchester United and his current team, Liverpool’s Everton, to becoming an overnight star after his record-making performance with the United States Men’s National Team. He also talks about the things closest to his heart—the importance of family and the Christian beliefs that guide him.Told in his thoughtful and articulate voice, The Keeper is an illuminating look at a remarkable man who is an inspirational role model for all of us.The Keeper is illustrated with two 8-page color photo inserts.

Collected Short Stories


Aldous Huxley - 1957
    Twenty-one pieces are here, including "The Gioconda Smile," "Little Mexican," "Young Archimedes," and "Chawdron." Together they offer a complete view of Huxley's work in the genre, in which he established himself as an acknowledged master.

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").

The Rainy Season


Amy Wilentz - 1989
    In the tradition of Joan Didion and Paul Theroux, this highly acclaimed writer/reporter offers a vivid portrait of today's Haiti--where during the day the streets are filled with bustling markets while at night they are filled with gunfire.

Man from the Other Side


Uri Orlev - 1988
    Even then, he does not truly understand what it means to be isolated, persecuted, and faced with almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis. Then Marek meets a Jewish man on the run--and, in helping him, is thrust into the middle of an uprising."From the first page, this grabs you like a thriller."--Booklist, starred review"Subtle, beautifully crafted, altogether compelling."--Kirkus Reviews, pointer reviewThis is a story of individual bravery and national shame that highlights just how hopeless was the fate of the Warsaw Jews as they fought alone and heroically against the Nazi war machine. --School Library Journal, starred review