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Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 1: 1884-1933


Blanche Wiesen Cook - 1992
    This volume begins with her harrowing childhood, describes the difficulties of her marriage & explains how she persuaded Franklin to make the reforms that would make him famous.

Emily the Strange


Rob Reger - 2001
    Famous for her barbed commentary and independent spirit, this rebel-child in black has spawned an Internet and merchandising phenomenon (Emily's Web site gets 35,000 hits per month!). Emily the Strange, her first book, captures the quintessential Emily, featuring her most beloved quips and a host of new ones. Anarchist, heroine, survivor, this little girl with a big personality appeals to the odd child in us all.

It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us


Hillary Rodham Clinton - 1995
    Her long experience with children -- not only through her personal roles as mother, daughter, sister, and wife but also as advocate, legal expert, and public servant -- has strengthened her conviction that how children develop and what they need to succeed are inextricably entwined with the society in which they live and how well it sustains and supports its families and individuals. In other words, it takes a village to raise a child.This book chronicles her quest -- both deeply personal and, in the truest sense, public -- to discover how we can make our society into the kind of village that enables children to grow into able, caring, resilient adults. It is time, Mrs. Clinton believes, to acknowledge that we have to make some changes for our children's sake. Advances in technology and the global economy along with other developments society have brought us much good, but they have also strained the fabric of family life, leaving us and our children poorer in many ways -- physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.She doesn't believe that we should, or can, turn back the clock to "the good old days." False nostalgia for "family values" is no solution. Nor is it useful to make an all-purpose bogeyman or savior of "government." But by looking honestly at the condition of our children, by understanding the wealth of new information research offers us about them, and, most important, by listening to the children themselves, we can begin a more fruitful discussion about their needs. And by sifting the past for clues to the structures that once bound us together, bylooking with an open mind at what other countries and cultures do for their children that we do not, and by identifying places where our "village" is flourishing -- in families, schools, churches, businesses, civic organizations, even in cyberspace -- we can begin to create for our children the better tomorrow they deserve.

Roman Fever and Other Stories


Edith Wharton - 1934
    These short works display Wharton's talent as a satirist "skilled at dissecting the elements of emotional subtleties, moral ambiguities, and the implications of social constrictions" (Cythina Griffin Wolfe, from the Introduction).Roman fever (1934)Xingu (1911)The other two (1904)Souls belated (1899)The angel at the grave (1901)The last asset (1904)After Holbein (1928)Autres temps (1911)

Freaky Friday


Mary Rodgers - 1972
    If she were a grown-up, she could do whatever she wanted! Then one morning she wakes up to find she’s turned into her mother…and she soon discovers it’s not as easy as it looks!

An American Tragedy


Theodore Dreiser - 1925
    On a deeper, more profound level, it is the masterful portrayal of the society whose values both shape Clyde's ambitions and seal his fate; it is an unsurpassed depiction of the harsh realities of American life and of the dark side of the American dream. Extraordinary in scope and power, vivid in its sense of wholesale human waste, unceasing in its rich compassion, 'An American Tragedy' stands as Theodore Dreiser's supreme achievement.Based on an actual criminal case, 'An American Tragedy' was the inspiration for the film 'A Place in the Sun', which won six Academy Awards and starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Cliff.

Peyton Place


Grace Metalious - 1956
    At the centre of the novel are three women, each with a secret to hide: Constance MacKenzie, the original desperate housewife; her daughter Allison, whose dreams are stifled by small-town small-mindedness; and Selena Cross, her gypsy-eyed friend from the wrong side of the tracks.

The Portable Nietzsche


Friedrich Nietzsche - 1954
    As Walter Kaufmann, one of the world's leading authorities on Nietzsche, notes in his introduction, "Few writers in any age were so full of ideas," and few writers have been so consistently misinterpreted. The Portable Nietzsche includes Kaufmann's definitive translations of the complete and unabridged texts of Nietzsche's four major works: Twilight of the Idols, The Antichrist, Nietzsche Contra Wagner and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In addition, Kaufmann brings together selections from his other books, notes, and letters, to give a full picture of Nietzsche's development, versatility, and inexhaustibly. "In this volume, one may very conveniently have a rich review of one of the most sensitive, passionate, and misunderstood writers in Western, or any, literature." -Newsweek

The Miracle Worker: A Play


William Gibson - 1956
    Born deaf, blind, and mute, with no way to express herself or comprehend those around her, she flew into primal rages against anyone who tried to help her, fighting tooth and nail with a strength born of furious, unknowing desperation. Then Annie Sullivan came. Half-blind herself, but possessing an almost fanatical determination, she would begin a frightening and incredibly moving struggle to tame the wild girl no one could reach, and bring Helen into the world at last....

The New Way Things Work


David Macaulay - 1998
    To help make sense of the computer age, David Macaulay brings us The New Way Things Work. This completely updated and expanded edition describes twelve new machines and includes more than seventy new pages detailing the latest innovations. With an entirely new section that guides us through the complicated world of digital machinery, where masses of electronic information can be squeezed onto a single tiny microchip, this revised edition embraces all of the newest developments, from cars to watches. Each scientific principle is brilliantly explained--with the help of a charming, if rather slow-witted, woolly mammoth.

Old School


Tobias Wolff - 2003
    He is an outsider who has learned to mimic the negligent manner of his more privileged classmates. Like many of them, he wants more than anything on earth to become a writer. But to do that he must first learn to tell the truth about himself.The agency of revelation is the school literary contest, whose winner will be awarded an audience with the most legendary writer of his time. As the fever of competition infects the boy and his classmates, fraying alliances, exposing weaknesses, Old School explores the ensuing deceptions and betrayals with an unblinking eye and a bottomless store of empathy. The result is further evidence that Wolff is an authentic American master.

Property


Valerie Martin - 2003
    The year is 1828, the setting a Louisiana sugar plantation where Manon Gaudet, pretty, bitterly intelligent, and monstrously self-absorbed, seethes under the dominion of her boorish husband. In particular his relationship with her slave Sarah, who is both his victim and his mistress.Exploring the permutations of Manon’s own obsession with Sarah against the backdrop of an impending slave rebellion, Property unfolds with the speed and menace of heat lightning, casting a startling light from the past upon the assumptions we still make about the powerful and powerful.From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Complete Poems


Anne Sexton - 1981
    This book comprises Sexton's ten volumes of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Live or Die, as well as seven poems from her last years.

Sanctuary


William Faulkner - 1931
    From Popeye, a moonshining racketeer with no conscience and Temple Drake, beautiful, bored and vulnerable, to Harace Benbow, a lawyer of honor and decency wishing for more in his life, and Gowan Stevens, college student with a weakness for drink, Faulkner writes of changing social values and order. A sinister cast peppered with social outcasts and perverts perform abduction, murder, and mayhem in this harsh and brutal story of sensational and motiveless evil. Students of Faulkner have found an allegorical interpretation of "Sanctuary" as a comment on the degradation of old South's social order by progressive modernism and materialistic exploitation. Popeye and his co-horts represent this hurling change that is corrupting the historic traditions of the South, symbolized by Horace Stevens, which are no longer able to protect the victimized Negro and poor white trash due to middle-class apathy and inbred violence.

The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters


Elisabeth Robinson - 2004
    Telling the story of two sisters-Olivia, a hotshot Hollywood producer whose life is unraveling, and Maddie, an unflaggingly optimistic, seriously ill midwesterner whose idealism has always driven Olivia crazy-The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters offers a startlingly poignant reminder of how hope can grow in even the darkest places.