The People Look Like Flowers At Last: New Poems
by Charles Bukowski
Paperback $13.95
In a posthumously published poem, Bukowski says he’s succeeded “If you read this after I am long dead.” By that standard, he is indeed a success: this fifth—and purportedly last—posthumous book published since his death in 1994 offers his still-large audience more of what made Bukowski (1921–1994) and his hard-drinking alter ego Henry Chinaski famous, as chronicled, for example, in the films Barfly and Factotum. Rapid, chatty free verse records his devotion to racehorses, boxing and drinking; his sexual exploits and failures; his contempt for highbrow, hoity-toity literati, and his countervailing yearnings for literary fame. Early on, the poems show unapologetic nostalgia: in “the 1930s,” “the landlord/ only got his rent/ when you had/ it.” Some of the most memorable poems here record the poet’s anxieties and delights while caring for his daughter. The final pages are devoted to fate, last things, old age, mortality and retrospectives on Bukowski’s hard-drinking, prolific career: “we were not put here to/ enjoy easy days and/ nights.” Bukowski’s style did not change in his last years; readers who have already written him off are unlikely to change their minds. Fans, however, may discover one of his strongest, most affecting books.
Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
by Robert Stone
Paperback $13.95
It’s a long, strange trip that’s navigated in this engaging memoir. Novelist Stone (A Hall of Mirrors) recounts his salad days from a stint in the navy in the late 1950s to a desultory trip to Vietnam as a correspondent during the disastrous 1971 invasion of Laos. Stone largely sat out the civil rights and antiwar movements and cops to no ideology beyond “ordinary decency.” His bailiwick was the relatively apolitical counterculture, which dawned for him when he took in Coltrane, Lenny Bruce and peyote in San Francisco in the early ’60s and really kicked in when he entered the circle of literary provocateur and psychedelic guru Ken Kesey, the book’s presiding genius. Memorable encounters with hallucinogens, and the resulting states of heightened awareness and stoned reflection, therefore loom large. But Stone’s story, from a cross-country bus trip in which he ran a gauntlet of antihippie persecution to a stint crafting lurid headlines and freakish fables for sleazy supermarket tabloids, is also a funny, entertaining picaresque. (His big-picture ruminations—say, on the links between the CIA, the drug culture and Silicon Valley—sometimes have a period-authentic muzziness.) But Stone is a born storyteller, with a wonderful feel for place and character that vividly evokes the cultural gulf America crossed in that decade.
A Father’s Law
by Richard Wright
Paperback $14.95
Never before published, the final work of one of America’s greatest writers
A Father’s Law is the novel Richard Wright, acclaimed author of Black Boy and Native Son, never completed. Written during a six-week period near the end of his life, it appears in print for the first time, an important addition to this American master’s body of work, submitted by his daughter and literary executor, Julia, who writes:
It comes from his guts and ends at the hero’s “breaking point.” It explores many themes favored by my father like guilt and innocence, the difficult relationship between the generations, the difficulty of being a black policeman and father, the difficulty of being both those things and suspecting that your own son is the murderer. It intertwines astonishingly modern themes for a novel written in 1960.
Prescient, raw, powerful, and fascinating, A Father’s Law is the final gift from a literary giant.
You Suck: A Love Story
by Christopher Moore
Paperback $13.95
Moore’s latest (after 2006′s A Dirty Job) is a cheerfully perverse, gut-busting tale of young vampires in love. Nineteen-year-old Tommy is a bewildered hipster recently relocated to San Francisco from Incontinence, Ind. His sarcastic redhead (and bloodsucking) girlfriend, Jody, brings him into the fold of the undead (“I wanted us to be together,” she says). Tommy, understandably, has mixed feelings; vampirism has its perks (you can turn to mist, live forever and the sex is awesome), but sunlight is death and blood hunger makes you do some pretty foul things. Also, the duo is hunted by Elijah, the ancient vampire who “turned” Jody and wants her back, and a band of Safeway stock boys/amateur vampire hunters known as the Animals (with whom pre–dark side Tommy once rolled). With the assistance of their devoted minion, goth girl Abby Normal, whose hilarious diary entries form part of the narrative, Tommy and Jody evade their pursuers, feeding at night and conking out at dawn, all the while learning how vampirism complicates love. Moore writes with the jittery energy of a brilliant, charming class clown, mixing sex and gore and a potty mouth with a goofy-sweet sensibility to deliver laughs on nearly every page.
The Power of the Vote: Electing Presidents, Overthrowing Dictators, and Promoting Democracy Around the World
by Douglas E. Schoen
Paperback $15.95
In The Power of the Vote, Douglas E. Schoen—one of the premier strategists in the history of Democratic politics—offers a never-before-seen glimpse inside the most pivotal campaigns of his storied career, providing an essential primer for understanding the elections of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
From the legendary New York City mayoral race of 1977 to his twenty-year efforts to modernize Israeli politics to Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, Schoen takes you on a fascinating, eye-opening ride across the international political landscape of the past three decades. Demonstrating how politics has evolved and how he has utilized the latest technology to help candidates win the hearts and minds of the public, he also presents a detailed discussion of the strategies and tactics that will shape the future of electoral politics and lead the Democrats back to the White House in 2008.
Mules and Men     *New Edition
by Zora Neale Hurston
Paperback $13.95
Mules and Men is a treasury of black America’s folklore as collected by a famous storyteller and anthropologist who grew up hearing the songs and sermons, sayings and tall tales that have formed an oral history of the South since the time of slavery. Returning to her hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to gather material, Zora Neale Hurston recalls “a hilarious night with a pinch of everything social mixed with the storytelling.” Set intimately within the social context of black life, the stories, “big old lies,” songs, Vodou customs, and superstitions recorded in these pages capture the imagination and bring back to life the humor and wisdom that is the unique heritage of African Americans.
Hell and High Water: The Global Warming Solution
by Joe Romm
Paperback $13.95
Global warming is the story of the twenty-first century. It is the most serious issue facing the future of humankind, but American energy and environmental policy is driving the whole world down a path toward global catastrophe. According to Joseph Romm, we have ten years, at most, to start making sharp cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions, or we will face disastrous consequences. The good news, he writes, is that there is something we can do—but only if the leadership of the U.S. government acts immediately and asserts its influence on the rest of the world.
Hell and High Water is nothing less than a wake-up call to the country. It is a searing critique of American environmental and energy policy, and a passionate call to action by a writer with a unique command of the science and politics of climate change.
Revolution in Mind: The Creation of Psychoanalysis (Hardcover)
by George Makari
Hardcover $32.50 - 10%
A masterful history of one of the most important movements of our time, Revolution in Mind is a brilliant, engaging, and radically new work—the first ever to fully account for the making of psychoanalysis. In a sweeping narrative, George Makari demonstrates how a new way of thinking about inner life coalesced and won followers who spread this body of thought throughout the West. Along the way he introduces the reader to a fascinating array of characters, many of whom have been long ignored or forgotten.
Amid great ferment, Sigmund Freud emerged as a creative, interdisciplinary thinker who devised a riveting new theory of the mind that attracted acolytes from the very fields the Viennese doctor had mined for his synthesis. These allies included Eugen Bleuler, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, all of whom eventually broke away and accused the Freudian community of being unscientific. Makari reveals how in the wake of these crises, innovators like Sándor Ferenczi, Wilhelm Reich, Melanie Klein, and others reformed psychoanalysis, which began to gain wide acceptance only to be banished from the continent and sent into exile due to the rise of fascism.
Groundbreaking, insightful, and compulsively readable, Revolution in Mind goes beyond myth and polemic to give us the story of one of the most controversial intellectual endeavors of the twentieth century.
My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
Edited by Jeffrey Eugenides
Hardcover $24.95 - 10%
It is perhaps only in reading a love story (or in writing one) that we can simultaneously partake of the ecstasy and agony of being in love without paying a crippling emotional price. I offer this book, then, as a cure for lovesickness and an antidote to adultery. Read these love stories in the safety of your single bed. Let everybody else suffer.”-Jeffrey Eugenides, from the introduction to My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead
All proceeds from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead will go directly to fund the free youth writing programs offered by 826 Chicago. 826 Chicago is part of the network of seven writing centers across the United States affiliated with 826 National, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.
A Golden Age: A Novel
by Tahmima Anam
Hardcover $24.95 - 10%
The experiences of a woman drawn into the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence illuminate the conflict’s wider resonances in Anam’s impressive debut, the first installment in a proposed trilogy. Rehana Haque is a widow and university student in Dhaka with two children, 17-year-old daughter Maya and 19-year-old son Soheil. As she follows the daily patterns of domesticity—cooking, visiting the cemetery, marking religious holidays—she is only dimly aware of the growing political unrest until Pakistani tanks arrive and the fighting begins. Suddenly, Rehana’s family is in peril and her children become involved in the rebellion. The elegantly understated restraint with which Anam recounts ensuing events gives credibility to Rehana’s evolution from a devoted mother to a woman who allows her son’s guerrilla comrades to bury guns in her backyard and who shelters a Bengali army major after he is wounded. The reader takes the emotional journey from atmospheric scenes of the marketplace to the mayhem of invasion, the ruin of the city, evidence of the rape and torture of Hindus and Bengali nationalists, and the stench and squalor of a refugee camp. Rehana’s metamorphosis encapsulates her country’s tragedy and makes for an immersive, wrenching narrative.
The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World
by Larry Diamond
Hardcover $28.00 - 10%
One of America’s preeminent experts on democracy charts the future prospects for freedom around the world in the aftermath of Iraq and deepening authoritarianism Over three decades, the world was transformed. In 1974, nearly three-quarters of all countries were dictatorships; today, more than half are democracies. Yet recent efforts to promote democracy have stumbled, and many democratic governments are faltering. In this bold and sweeping vision for advancing freedom around the world, social scientist Larry Diamond examines how and why democracy progresses. He demonstrates that the desire for democracy runs deep, even in very poor countries, and that seemingly entrenched regimes like Iran and China could become democracies within a generation. He also dissects the causes of the ‘democratic recession’ in critical states, including the crime-infested oligarchy in Russia and the strong-armed populism of Venezuela. Diamond cautions that arrogance and inconsistency have undermined America’s aspirations to promote democracy. To spur a renewed democratic boom, he urges vigorous support of good governance-the rule of law, security, protection of individual rights, and shared economic prosperity-and free civic organizations. Only then will the spirit of democracy be secured.
J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography
by Rick Geary
Hardcover $16.95 - 10%
In the hands of gifted cartoonist Rick Geary, J. Edgar Hoover’s life becomes a timely and pointed guide to eight presidents—from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon—and everything from Prohibition to cold war espionage. From a nascent FBI’s headlinegrabbing tracking down of Dillinger and Machine Gun Kelly in the 1930s to Hoover’s increasingly paranoid post-WWII authorizing of illegal wiretaps, blackmail, and circumvention of Supreme Court decisions, J. Edgar Hoover: A Graphic Biography provides a special window into the life of an outsized American and a bird’seye view on the twentieth century.
You Must Be This Happy to Enter
by Elizabeth Crane
Paperback $14.95
Whether breathlessly enthusiastic, serenely calm, or really concentrating right now on their personal zombie issues, Elizabeth Crane’s happy cast explores the complexities behind personal satisfaction.
Elizabeth Crane is the author of two previous story collections, When the Messenger is Hot and All This Heavenly Glory. Her work has also been featured in numerous publications, including Chicago Reader and The Believer, as well as several anthologies, including McSweeney’s Future Dictionary of America and The Best Underground Fiction. A winner of the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, Crane teaches creative writing at Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies, The School of the Art Institute, and The University of Chicago. She lives in Chicago.
Delusion
by Michèle Roberts
Paperback $12.95
“On the narrative level alone, this is a compelling combination of Victorian pastiche and psychological thriller, fully and vividly imagined and often very funny. Rarely has the creative interaction of past and present been so suggestively and entertainingly conveyed.”-The Independent on Sunday
“On the surface a gripping mystery story, the novel is a challenging exploration of women’s friendships, history, sensuality and passion. Four main characters spanning three moments in history-ancient Egypt, Victorian England, contemporary London-unravel an ambivalent tale of birth, death, exploitation, closeness and betrayal.”-Guardian
Voices, auras, materializations. Is she a mere trickster, a charlatan who plays on the anguish of the bereaved, or perhaps a hysteric who suffers delusions? No matter, in the shabby brick precincts of East London, the sances have won the pretty, blond medium Flora Milk local acclaim, and soon she will find herself more comfortably situated in the Victorian household of Sir William Preston, a researcher of some renown in psychic phenomena. Indeed, his wife Minny, who is still grieving the loss of her infant daughter, will embrace the gifted sixteen-year-old as her “protge.”
At once a ghost story and a psychological thriller, this elegant novel again demonstrates that Michele Roberts is a literary talent of the highest order.
Michele Roberts is the author of eleven novels, including Daughters of the House, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the WHSmith Literary Award, and Reader, I Married Him, also published by Pegasus Books. She lives in England.
I Could Tell You but Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagons Black World
by Trevor Paglen
Hardcover $22.95 - 10%
Shown here for the first time, these seventy-five patches reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon, where classified projects are known by peculiar names (“Goat Suckers,” “None of Your Fucking Business,” “Tastes Like Chicken”) and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. Although the actual projects represented here (such as the notorious Area 51) are classified, these patches-which are worn by military units working on classified missions-are precisely photographed, strangely hinting at a world about which little is known.
By submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, the author has also assembled an extensive and readable guide to the patches included here, making this volume the best available survey of the military’s black world-a $27 billion industry that has quietly grown by almost 50 percent since 9/11.
Trevor Paglen is a geographer by training, and an expert on clandestine military installations. He leads expeditions to the secret bases of the American West and is the author, with A.C. Thompson, of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA’s Rendition Flights, which TheNew York Times praised as “the real thing . . . and not on the evening news.”
Men and Gods: MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS
by Rex Warner (Author), Edward Gorey (Illustrator)
Hardcover $16.95 - 10%
This outstanding collection brings together the novelist and scholar Rex Warner’s knack for spellbinding storytelling with Edward Gorey’s inimitable talent as an illustrator in a memorable modern recounting of the most beloved myths of ancient Greece.
Writing in a relaxed and winning colloquial style, Warner vividly recreates the classic stories of Jason and the Argonauts and Theseus and the Minotaur, among many others, while Gorey’s quirky pen-and-ink sketches offer a visual interpretation of these great myths in the understated but brilliantly suggestive style that has gained him admirers throughout the world. These tales cover the range of Greek mythology, including the creation story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the heroic adventures of Perseus, the fall of Icarus, Cupid and Psyche’s tale of love, and the tragic history of Oedipus and Thebes. Men and Gods is an essential and delightful book with which to discover some of the key stories of world literature.
The View from Castle Rock
by Alice Munro
Paperback $14.95
Alice Munro mines her rich family background, melding it with her own experiences and the transforming power of her brilliant imagination, to create perhaps her most powerful and personal collection yet.
A young boy, taken to Edinburgh’s Castle Rock to look across the sea to America, catches a glimpse of his father’s dream. Scottish immigrants experience love and loss on a journey that leads them to rural Ontario. Wives, mothers, fathers, and children move through uncertainty, ambivalence, and contemplation in these stories of hopes, adversity, and wonder. The View from Castle Rock reveals what is most essential in Munro’s art: her compassionate understanding of ordinary lives.
Black Hole
by Charles Burns
Paperback $17.95
The first issues of Charles Burns’s comics series Black Hole began appearing in 1995, and long before it was completed a decade later, readers and fellow artists were speaking of it in tones of awe and comparing it to recent classics of the form like Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World. Burns is the sort of meticulous, uncompromising artist whom other artists speak of with envy and reverence, and we asked Ware and Clowes to comment on their admiration for Black Hole:
“I think I probably learned the most about clarity, composition, and efficiency from looking at Charles’s pages spread out on my drawing table than from anyone’s; his was always at the level of lucidity of Nancy, but with this odd, metallic tinge to it that left you feeling very unsettled, especially if you were an aspiring cartoonist, because it was clear you’d never be half as good as he was. There’s an almost metaphysical intensity to his pinprick-like inkline that catches you somewhere in the back of the throat, a paper-thin blade of a fine jeweler’s saw tracing the outline of these thick, clay-like human figures that somehow seem to “move,” but are also inevitably oddly frozen in eternal, awkward poses … it’s an unlikely combination of feelings, and it all adds up to something unmistakably his own.
“I must have been one of the first customers to arrive at the comic shop when I heard the first issue of Black Hole was out 10 years ago, and my excitement didn’t change over the years as he completed it. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that better captures the details, feelings, anxieties, smells, and cringing horror of my own teenage years better than Black Hole, and I’m 15 years younger than Charles is. Black Hole is so redolently affecting one almost has to put the book down for air every once in a while. By the book’s end, one ends up feeling so deeply for the main character it’s all one can do not to turn the book over and start reading again.” -Chris Ware
“Charles Burns is one of the greats of modern comics. His comics are beautiful on so many levels. Somehow he has managed to capture the essential electricity of comic-book pop-art iconography, dragging it from the clutches of Fine Art back to the service of his perfect, precise-but-elusive narratives in a way that is both universal in its instant appeal and deeply personal.” -Dan Clowes
McSweeney’s Issue 25
by Dave Eggers
Hardcover $22.00 - 10%
If issues were anniversaries, this one would have to be printed on silver plates. You could melt it in some sort of forge and then pound it on an anvil until you had a set of earrings. Instead, it’s a hardcover book with stories by a few old favorites—Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Padgett Powell—and more than half a dozen others, investigating everything from ape men to unlucky island-hoppers to what happens when Canadians go AWOL in Bosnia. Pound this one on an anvil and it’ll pound you right back.