You’ve eaten too much candy at Christmas…but have you ever eaten the face off a six-footstuffed Santa? You’ve seen gingerbread houses…but have you ever made your own gingerbread tenement? You’ve woken up with a hangover…but have you ever woken up next to Kris Kringle himself? Augusten Burroughs has, and in this caustically funny, nostalgic, poignant, and moving collection he recounts Christmases past and present—as only he could. With gimleteyed wit and illuminated prose, Augusten shows how the holidays bring out the worst in us and sometimes, just sometimes, the very, very best.

Omnibus of novels and short stories revealing the brutal battles which transformed Commissar Yarrick from a mere man into a legend of the Imperium.

Yarrick: once just a name, but now a legend, forged from the blood of the Imperium’s enemies. Time after time, Commissar Sebastian Yarrick has fearlessly led Imperial forces to victory beneath black banners of vengeance, even when defeat seemed inevitable. From his early campaigns as a newly blooded officer from the schola progenium ranks, to the brutal battles of the Second and Third Wars for Armageddon, one thing has never changed: Yarrick will not fail. No world will fall to Chaos, heresy or xenos while under his protection. This gripping omnibus contains all of author David Annandale's stories about the famed commissar, and includes two novels - Imperial Creed and Pyres of Armageddon - along with the novella Chains of Golgotha and seven short stories, each revealing the bloody battles that helped forge a legend.

Offering an alternative to other methods, the Xtreme series is exciting, modern, and inspirational. It features core lessons, true stories, superstar tips, top tens, and a style guru. Not only an introduction to the techniques needed to play each instrument or learn a skill, Xtreme is designed to inspire a passion for music that will transcend many young adults' fads. The reader will be guided through each area in a humorous and informative way. A CD is included with each book. 

In Xtreme Electric Guitar, resident axe master Marshall guides you through a ten-lesson program that covers everything from strumming patterns and barre chords to mastering techniques such as hammer-ons and pull-offs. Xtreme Electric Guitar will arm wannabe rock guitarists with all they will need to reel out those rocking riffs in no time.

Men Loving Men: 6 Sexy Romantic Adventures Crammed with Heart.

Book 1: The Handyman Can – Jake loves landscaping almost as much as he loves his kid sister. Cory is a successful real-estate tycoon devoted to family. Sparks fly when the two hunks meet and build something fit for a home makeover TV show.

Book 2: Wrestling with Love – Sometimes you have to give it your all and let yourself fall in love so hard it hurts. Enemies turn friends. Eric and Quin compete at wrestling but grapple with an attraction to each other that they struggle to understand. All in love is fair until their secret is revealed, and they have to fight to keep love alive.

Book 3: Never Kiss – Out of work, Tony turns to the Internet porn to pay the bills. When a seemingly, straight Clark Kent lookalike wanders into his life, Tony falls for Superman. Will the hero agree to being filmed? Could a “straight-bait” video further something between the two?

Book 4: Four-Wheel Flying – Trevor dreams of joining the Air Force and flying planes for a living. His friend Pete likes to ride ATVs and struggles to get by. Small-town Tennessee and narrow-minded families hold both hot rednecks back. Off-road explorations release pent-up desires, and a friendship buds into something more. Can they escape the town?

Book 5: Waiting for Dartmouth – Tommy has had his eye on the family landscaper Chris for some time. On a sweltering day a week before heading off for Dartmouth, Tommy invites the weed-whacking man into the house. The boys let off steam and get an education even Dartmouth couldn’t offer. Could a budding romance change Tommy’s plans for a white-collar life?

Bonus: Pet Monster – Richie, a bookish and sheltered kid, is so ashamed of his oversized manhood that it’s held him back from having relations. When the virgin goes away to college and joins the basketball team, he discovers straight-but-fluid mates who show him the ropes. This brawny nerd learns he’s not a monster after all and pines for more with eyes on the hunky school librarian.

Working-Class Men in Love involves bi-curious men coming to grips with their sexuality and discovering first-time gay love. Discover how these stories intertwine with repeat characters, settings, and more.

• "Forget the sex, the emotions portrayed with a delicacy that weeps off the page!" says author C. Puccia.
• An Amazon Top Reviewer describes Sexton's work as, “sophisticated, informed and creative.”

This box set includes the entire Working-Class Man series...

• Two chart-topping novels (The Handyman Can and Wrestling with Love),
• The story Never Kiss that you can't get anywhere,
• Two NEW novellas Four-Wheel Flying and Waiting for Dartmouth,
• Plus, the BONUS story Pet Monster.

Over 175,000 words. 100+ five-star reviews. Find out why thousands of readers have fallen for Dan Sexton’s sexy series.

Imagine a former French major getting vocabulary tips from her young children! That was the experience of Kristin Espinasse, an American who fell in love with a Frenchman and moved to his country to marry him and start a family. When her children began speaking the language, she found herself falling in love with it all over again. To relate the stories of her sometimes bumpy, often comic, and always poignant assimilation, she created a blog called "French Word a Day," drawing more admirers than she ever could have imagined.

With an approach that is as charming as it is practical, Espinasse shares her story through the everyday French words and phrases that never seem to make it to American classrooms. "Comptoir" ("counter") is a piece about the intricacies of grocery shopping in France, and "Linge" ("laundry") swoons over the wonderful scent the laundry has after being hung out in the French countryside while "Toquade" ("crush") tells of Espinasse's young son, who begins piling gel onto his hair before school each morning when he becomes smitten with a girl in class.

Steeped in French culture but experienced through American eyes, Words in a French Life will delight armchair travelers, Francophiles, and mothers everywhere.

All essays, poems, parables, and stories are handwritten and edited by the author. All artwork is hand-drawn by the author. The book is dedicated to seeking greater self understanding and growth of spiritual awareness.

A collection of powerful essays in spoken word form remembering September 11, 2001, by high school students who witnessed the tragedy unfold.

A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

“Profound.” —Booklist

“Moving.” —Publishers Weekly

“Rings with authenticity and resonates with power.” —School Library Journal

Tuesday, September 11, started off like any other day at Stuyvesant High School, located only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.

The semester was just beginning, and the students, faculty, and staff were ready to start a new year. But within a few hours on that Tuesday morning, they would share an experience that would transform their lives—and the lives of all Americans.

These powerful essays by the students of Stuyvesant High School remember those who were lost and those who were forced to witness this tragedy. Here, in their own words, are the firsthand stories of a day we will never forget.

A collection of powerful essays in spoken word form remembering September 11, 2001, by high school students who witnessed the tragedy unfold.

A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age

“Profound.” —Booklist

“Moving.” —Publishers Weekly

“Rings with authenticity and resonates with power.” —School Library Journal

Tuesday, September 11, started off like any other day at Stuyvesant High School, located only a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.

The semester was just beginning, and the students, faculty, and staff were ready to start a new year. But within a few hours on that Tuesday morning, they would share an experience that would transform their lives—and the lives of all Americans.

These powerful essays by the students of Stuyvesant High School remember those who were lost and those who were forced to witness this tragedy. Here, in their own words, are the firsthand stories of a day we will never forget.

This is a look at American history dating back to the time of the Revolution.

About the Publisher

International News Books & Gifts publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books.

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. International News Books & Gifts uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

"WHAT HAPPENED THIS AFTERNOON IS TOO TERRIBLE TO WRITE. . . . PLEASE, GOD, LET WILL LIVE. AND, PLEASE, GOD, FORGIVE ME." 

All Will Ames ever wanted to do was farm. But when he's injured in a farm accident, Will is left without a leg -- and without his future. 

There's no place on a farm for a cripple. And so, after a long winter of healing, Will and his sister Cassie, who blames herself for the accident, go to stay in town with their older sister and her husband. There, as Maine becomes a state, Will learns that perhaps even without his leg, there's another, brighter future in store for him. And Cassie, too, learns that maybe, in the changing world of 1820, Will isn't the only one with the chance at a different, exciting future. . . .

"Perfectly crafted. . . . [These] stories expand of their own accord, lingering in the mind the way intense light lingers in the retina."  --Los Angeles Times

"Animals and landscapes have not had this weight, this precision, in American fiction since Hemingway's young heroes were fishing the streams of upper Michigan and Spain." --San Francisco Chronicle

A flock of great blue herons descending through a snowstorm to the streets of New York. . . . A river in Nebraska disappearing mysteriously. . . . A ghostly herd of buffalo that sings a song of death. . . . A mystic who raises constellations of stones from the desert floor. . . . All these are to be found in Winter Count, the exquisite and rapturous collection by the National Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams.

In these resonant and unpredictable stories Barry Lopez proves that he is one of the most important and original writers at work in America today. With breathtaking skill and a few deft strokes he produces painfully beautiful scenes. Combining the real with the wondrous, he offers us a pure vision of people alive to the immediacy and spiritual truth of nature.

"Powerful. . . . [Lopez] can steal your breath away." --Minneapolis Tribune

"Richly allusive, moving, compassionate, these stories celebrate the web of nature that holds the world together." --The Philadelphia Inquirer

Winesburg, Ohio, gave birth to the American story cycle, for which William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and later writers were forever indebted. Defying the prudish sensibilities of his time, Anderson never omitted anything adult, harsh, or shocking; instead he embraced frankness, truth, and the hidden depths everyone possesses. Here we meet young George Willard, a newspaper reporter with dreams; Kate Swift, the schoolteacher who attempts to seduce him; Wing Biddlebaum, a berry picker whose hands are the source of both his renown and shame; Alice Hindman, who has one last adventure; and all the other complex human beings whose portraits brought American literature into the modern age. Their stories make up a classic and place its author alongside the best of American writers.   

With an Introduction by Irving Howe and an Afterword by Dean Koontz.

What started as a friendly conversation between a young girl, Theresa Longworth, and an army officer, William Charles Yelverton, on a steamer bound from France to England in 1852 would culminate nearly a decade later in one of the biggest public scandals the era had witnessed, with enormous implications for society at large. Seized upon by the Victorian press, the trials to legitimize Longworth's marriage to Yelverton before the law courts of Ireland, Scotland, and England brought to the fore several of the most disconcerting matters in the Victorian era: the inadequacies of female education, prejudice against single women, and problems with marriage law.

When Theresa Yelverton emerged victorious from her legal battles, she was paraded through Dublin's streets like a queen. Her victory, though, was short-lived, as she learned that life as a single woman--even the life of a well-known writer and traveler, as she became--would always be hard. Theresa Yelverton became an unwitting harbinger of the turmoil of her era and evoked timeless fears and fascinations: the fantasy of romance, the grip of obsession, the plight of unrequited love, the fear of abandonment. Chloe Schama brilliantly recaptures an ordinary woman caught up in an extraordinary affair, catapulted into fame and notoriety, forcing her society to confront some of its most unsettling issues.

A classic in its field. Why Nations Go to War engages readers in a dialogue about the human truth behind the mechanistic forces of war. Stoessinger examines the characters and personalities of leaders who have taken their countries into battle, showing how misjudgments and misperceptions affected the course of history. The seven case studies provide a solid historical background on twentieth-century warfare, while the compelling narrative keeps the readers involved. The seventh edition has been thoroughly updated and includes a new case study on Bosnia and the war over the remains of Yugoslavia.

About the Author

Dr. John G. Stoessinger is an internationally recognized political analyst and a prize-winning author of ten leading books on world politics. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard and has taught at Harvard, M.I.T., Columbia and Princeton. From 1967-1974, he served as acting director of the political affairs division at the United Nations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and lectures extensively throughout the world. On the eve of World War II, Dr. Stoessinger fled from Nazi-occupied Austria to Czechoslovakia. Three years later, he fled again via Siberia to China, where he lived for seven years in Shanghai. He has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the Bancroft Prize. He presently serves as Distinguished Professor of Global Diplomacy at the University of San Diego, and has been listed in WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA and WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD since 2002 to the present.

The New York Times Bestseller, with a new preface from the author

“This estimable book rides into the summer doldrums like rural electrification. . . . It deals in the truths that matter.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

“White Trash will change the way we think about our past and present.”
—T. J. Stiles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Custer’s Trials

In her groundbreaking  bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg, #4 on the 2016 Politico 50 list, takes on our comforting myths about equality, uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash.

“When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters that put Trump in the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg.

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds.

Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity.

We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well.

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner
New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of the Year
A Boston Globe Best Book of 2016
A Chicago Review of Books Best Nonfiction Book of 2016

From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America--now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson.

As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as “black rage,” historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in The Washington Post suggesting that this was, instead, "white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames," she argued, "everyone had ignored the kindling."

Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America's first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal.

Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.

Past and present collide as Special Agent Pendergast uncovers mysterious connections between a string of 19th century bear attacks in a Colorado mining town, a fabled, long-lost Sherlock Holmes story, and a deadly present-day arsonist.

In 1876, in a mining camp called Roaring Fork in the Colorado Rockies, eleven miners were killed by a rogue grizzly bear. Corrie Swanson has arranged to examine the miners' remains. When she makes a shocking discovery, town leaders try to stop her from exposing their community's dark and bloody past.

Just as Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI arrives to rescue his protege, the town comes under siege by a murderous arsonist who-with brutal precision-begins burning down multimillion-dollar mansions with the families locked inside. Drawn deeper into the investigation, Pendergast discovers a long-lost Sherlock Holmes story that may be the key to solving both the mystery of the long-dead miners and the modern-day killings as well.

Now, with the ski resort snowed in and under savage attack-and Corrie's life suddenly in grave danger-Pendergast must solve the enigma of the past before the town of the present goes up in flames.

That was the last thing Klaus had to say before we left J.C.' s diner to go our separate ways. On my way home, I decided I would drive by my grandparents' home. Every once in a while I'll do that, even though it's very painful to realize that they're gone now and that house belongs to someone else- a total stranger. When I come to the house, I park in front and just sit there, recalling that during the Prohibition Era this house was a blind pig and my grandmother was the proprietress. As a young boy, I would walk the three miles from my house just to sit on the front porch with "ma" so I could listen to her tell stories about the "old days". It's been thirty years since I've been inside that house, which was a second home to me when I was growing up. I have a feeling that if I were to go inside now, that my grandfather would still be sitting there in his favorite chair wearing nothing but his BVDs (the kind with the back flap that buttons up) reading "True Detective" or "Field and Stream." I am tempted to walk up the front steps and ring the doorbell, but I don't dare. 

Not far here was a little pond and a garbage dump. In the summers of my childhood, I'd go down to the pond and catch tadpoles and pollywogs, or I'd walk over to the dump and scrounge around for hidden treasures amidst the trash. Say, what's happening to me? Maybe I'm dying. No? Then why is my whole life- beginning with my earliest memories- suddenly passing before my eyes? 

It's my birthday, I'm five-years-old old and I'm sitting on a wooden pony on the fifth floor of Hudson's Department Store in downtown Detroit where I'll be getting my first professional haircut. Later that same day, my mother takes me to Sanders for a Hot Fudge Sunday. Cut to that little pond I mentioned. I've been catching pollywogs with a strainer and putting them in a jar when a big kid comes up to me and orders me to leave. I refuse and he wrestles me to the ground, demanding that I say uncle. When I refuse to say uncle, he gives me a good pounding, then takes that jar of mine and empties its contents back into the pond. I don't cry, but holding back the tears, I vow to myself that I'll get him back some day. But I never do. 

So many things from my childhood have disappeared, like that pond, for instance, which is no longer there, and the garbage dump, and the creek where we fished for carp and the bridge that spanned it- all of that's been gone for years. Gone, too, are the vacant lots where we played pick up baseball in the summer, and the woods where we had bonfires in the fall, roasting marshmallows over the fire while warming ourselves. Now that I think of it, my grade school is gone- torn down years ago to make way for a Farmer Jack's. And the schoolyard where we held our marble tournaments before and after school (knuckles down, no hunching) and played kick ball and dodge ball- that schoolyard where I had so much fun- buried and paved-over into a parking lot- gone. Gone the way of the sheeny-man who came into our neighborhood riding an antique horse that clop, clop clopped down our street pulling a wagon full of junk while the sheeny blew his shrill-sounding horn to let the neighborhood know that he had arrived. Gone too, the ice man who carried big blocks of ice with silver tongs for our ice box; and gone- the man who delivered the coal that went rumbling down the coal shoot and into the coal bin, a fascinating place in its own right when you're still young enough to appreciate such things as coal bins All that's gone. 

Within walking distance of my grandmother's house is the movie theater. I'm six and I'm standing in a long line with all the other kids holding a quarter in my hand: the price of admission back then. For a mere twenty-five cents you've gained entrance to that darkened theater to watch three movies, a newsreel, a serial, (Flash Gordon was my favorite.), cartoons and coming attractions. Seven years later, in that same theater, I sit down next to a strange girl and ask her if she would like to neck with me, and she consents, taking my hand in hers and leaning her head on my shoulder. (Necking wasn't really allowed, and if you weren't careful, a very official-looking usherette, who wore a uniform with gold buttons down the front and epaulettes on the shoulders, would shine her flashlight on you.) The last time I drove by the Lincoln Park Show it was advertising itself on the marquee as Adult Entertainment. 

The Depression having ended by the time I was born, my earliest memories begin around the time of World War II. My mother is sitting down at the kitchen table placing little green stamps in her ration book. Once the book is full, she'll go to a redemption center and have the stamps redeemed for money to buy food with. That was the year we planted a victory garden in the vacant lot next to our house. In a similar vein, the kids on our my block had paper drives and collected scrap metal. It was all part of the war effort, for as young boys we were learning how to be patriotic and to love the flag and "the country for which it stands"- America. As a matter of fact, my very first lesson in patriotism came in the form of a warning from the big kids on my block never to let the American flag touch the ground or I'd have to burn it- just one of a number of taboos I learned as a child similar to, but nowhere near as fearful as, "step on a crack and break you mother's back'. 

Where are they now?- my comic book collection and those hundreds and hundreds of matchbooks that I picked out of gutters and found in empty fields on the way home from school. And why? Because, as a kid of nine, I found the endless variety of match covers fascinating. What happened to my Lionel train- the one I woke up to find underneath the Christmas tree, my Red Ryder be-be gun and my American Flyer bike?- where are they now? 

At that age, my indoor world was a world of tinker toys, erector sets, and games- all kinds of games: hockey, basketball, football and my favorite, APBA baseball,- and the radio. Every Sunday, after church, my dad would buy a paper from the paperboy, and when we got home, I would do is spread out the comic section on the living room floor, then turn on the radio and listen to the Sunday comics being read over the air. During the week, when I get home from school, the first thing I do is turn on the radio and listen to my favorite programs: Jack Armstrong, All-American boy, Captain Midnight, (I wear my Captain Midnight decoder ring that glows in the dark), Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, and broadcast from WXYZ, our very own Lone Ranger. Hi-o Silver, away. In the evening was Baby Snooks, The Great Gildersleeve, Inner Sanctum, Lights Out, My Friend Irma, Bulldog Drummond, The Shadow, Mr. Keane, Tracer of Lost Persons, Name that Tune, Mr. I.Q., Life with Luigi, and another local favorite, The Green Hornet. 

My outdoor world was the streets, the vacant lots, the fields and the alleys of my neighborhood. In the street we played hockey in the winter and touch football in the fall; in fields and vacant lots we played pick up baseball and built our underground fort where we slept out on hot summer nights playing Hearts and Crazy Eights by candlelight, or we climbed up the rope ladder to our tree house where, with our binoculars, we could spy on all our neighbors. Alleys were for alley-picking and for war games played with cap pistols, be-be guns, and sling shots. We made walkie-talkies out of old tin cans and string, kites using clothes line, parachutes, and model airplanes. In the vacant lot next to my house we played cork ball- if you ask me, the greatest game ever invented. You could play cork ball using a large bobber or an ordinary bottle cork for a ball and a broomstick handle for a bat. A ball that landed in the alley was a triple, on the other side of the alley, a home run.. 

Item: our alleys were paved with cinders back then. The White Street gang lines up on one side, the Garfield Street gang on the other. There's going to be a rock fight. Before you know what's happening, the sky is filled with rocks. You throw, you duck, you throw another rock and then you duck and then something happens- your face is burning and throbbing. You've been hit. My god, you could have lost your eye. You could cry, but you don't. You are a casualty in a rock fight and you will carry a scar beneath your eye for the rest of your life, and you didn't cry- you are a hero. That night, after your father comes home from work, you get your first good licking. In bed that night, you pull the covers over your head and listen to your favorite radio programs before you fall asleep. 

I'm back in the real world again, saddened by the sight of my grandmother's house. Whoever lives there now has let in fall into disrepair. No, I wouldn't want to go inside; it would depress me to see how everything would be different. No, I'll go now. I turn on the engine and head for home. I wonder as I drive past the familiar landmarks of my youth how time has changed so much, transforming Main Street into block after block of blighted buildings. Where there was once an ice cream parlor, a barbershop, and a shoe repair, there are now ugly abandoned or boarded-up buildings. Our two dime stores: Niesner's and Woolworth's, and Winkleman's, a classy women's clothing store, are now a dumpy-looking Dollar Store, a Temporary Jobs Office, and windowless Community Mental Health Center. Cunningham's, with its lunch counter where you could sit and have a chicken salad sandwich and a cup of coffee while you waited for your bus, is gone, and Sanders closed its doors ten years ago. 

Last week I went with J.C. on a delivery run down near the docks in River Rouge and saw the Columbia, one of the two Bob-Lo boats, in dry dock. It's being restored. All the same, there will be no more picnics on the island because Bob-Lo Island, with its roller coaster, its dance hall and its many amusement rides, was sold to private developers and everything was torn down. At one time we had four such amusement parks; now there are none. Gone are the penny arcades of my youth, the slots where for a penny you could get sepia-colored pictures of ballplayers and boxers, movie stars, wrestlers and cowboys. All that's gone. But most tragic was the demolition of Hudson's, as thousands lined-up to watch the spectacle of this great landmark implode into a huge pile of rubble. 

When I think of all that's been lost, I am saddened. One magnificent railway station demolished, the other, Michigan Central, an empty hulk. Now that all of its windows have been busted out, it's nothing more than a vacant shell of a building. And those lavish movie palaces of a bygone era, almost all them gone- closed or destroyed. The great burlesque houses, like the famous Gayety and The Esquire- they, too, have vanished, as have those magnificent ballrooms, the Grande and the Vanity; those proud hotels, the Sheraton Cadillac and the Fort Shelby; and finally, the Vernors' plant- the first one, the one located at the foot of Woodward Avenue where you caught the Bob-Lo boat way back when. I believe it's been more than fifty years since they tore it down. A local product, Vernor's has the distinction of being the first soda pop in America. Today, it is owned by one of America's largest conglomerates: the Pepsi Cola Company. 

I remember the day the carnival came to town and seeing the boy with webbed feet, the bearded lady and the man who had a baby growing out of his stomach. Until the day I die, I'll never forget that man with the baby. Of all the freak shows I've seen, that's the one I'll never forget. How on earth, this six-year-old wondered (as he stood inside that stuffy tent with the smell of sawdust in his nostrils, holding on to his daddy's hand) could a man have a baby growing out of his stomach? How did it happen? That was in the city of Ecorse some fifty years ago on the fourth of July. I remember it well, especially watching the fireworks from atop the Ferris wheel, a burst of sound- boom- then splashes of color lighting up the sky, appearing in an instant, lingering for a moment, then fading away into the dark 

A light goes on inside the house. I turn on my engine and drive off, but before going directly home, I take the overpass that connects suburbia with Detroit. Reaching the highest point of the overpass, I look out at the cityscape, all aglow and spread out like a magic carpet of light. Directly below- the refinery, with its eternal flame; then farther out, the Ambassador Bridge with its colorful beads of light, strung along the bridge from one side- the American side- to the other- the Canadian side; and then, at the farthest point of vision, the mills and factories bordering the river, their myriad lights; candles glowing in the dark, their smoke stacks; vertical canons, sending up ghostly wisps of smoke into the night sky -light to ward-off the coming darkness of a fascistic America ruled by powerful and impersonal corporations in league with a government indifferent to the dreams and aspirations of its people, the working people of America. We cannot let this happen; this relentless juggernaut has to be stopped. If we don't stop it and stop it soon, before it is too late (if it's not already too late), the lights will go out all across America and darkness will cover the land.

Instant New York Times Bestseller
#1 Wall Street Journal Business Bestseller
Instant Washington Post Bestseller

"Brims with a surprising amount of insight and practical advice." --The Wall Street Journal

Daniel H. Pink, the #1 bestselling author of Drive and To Sell Is Human, unlocks the scientific secrets to good timing to help you flourish at work, at school, and at home.

Everyone knows that timing is everything. But we don't know much about timing itself. Our lives are a never-ending stream of "when" decisions: when to start a business, schedule a class, get serious about a person. Yet we make those decisions based on intuition and guesswork.

Timing, it's often assumed, is an art. In When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, Pink shows that timing is really a science.

Drawing on a rich trove of research from psychology, biology, and economics, Pink reveals how best to live, work, and succeed. How can we use the hidden patterns of the day to build the ideal schedule? Why do certain breaks dramatically improve student test scores? How can we turn a stumbling beginning into a fresh start? Why should we avoid going to the hospital in the afternoon? Why is singing in time with other people as good for you as exercise? And what is the ideal time to quit a job, switch careers, or get married?

In When, Pink distills cutting-edge research and data on timing and synthesizes them into a fascinating, readable narrative packed with irresistible stories and practical takeaways that give readers compelling insights into how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

The #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of A Patriot's History of the United States examines ten current challenges.

America is at a crossroads. We face two options: continue our descent toward big government, higher taxes, less individual liberty, and more debt or pull our country back on the path our Founding Fathers planned for us. But that path isn't always so easy to see.

Following the success of his previous books, conservative historian Larry Schweikart tackles some of the key issues confronting our nation today: education, government bailouts, gun control, health care, the environment, and more. For each he asks, "What would the founders say?" and sets out to explore our history and offer wisdom to help us get back on track. What would really be compatible with the vision that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and the other founders had for America?

Written in Schweikart's informal yet informative style, What Would the Founders Say? is sure to delight his fans and anyone looking for a little clarity on tough issues.

In this, his first collection of short stories, Hardy sought to record the legends, superstitions, local customs, and lore of a Wessex that was rapidly passing out of memory. But these tales also portray the social and economic stresses of 1880s Dorset, and reveal Hardy's growing scepticism about the possibility of achieving personal and sexual satisfaction in the modern world. By turns humorous, ironic, macabre, and elegiac, these seven stories show the range of Hardy's story-telling genius.

The critically established text, the first to be based on detailed study of all revised texts, presents manuscript readings which have never before appeared in print.

The stories include The Three Strangers; A Tradition of Eighteen Hundred and Four; The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion; The Withered Arm; Fellow-Townsmen; Interlopers at the Knap; The Distracted Preacher

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

In these “urgently relevant essays,”* the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me “reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath”*—including the election of Donald Trump.

New York Times Bestseller • One of Time’s Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of the Year • One of USA Today’s top 10 books of the year • A New York Times Notable Book

“We were eight years in power” was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s “first white president.”

“Essential . . . Coates’s probing essays about race, politics, and history became necessary ballast for this nation’s gravity-defying moment.” —The Boston Globe

But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period—and the effects of the persistent, haunting shadow of our nation’s old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective—the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president.

“Ta-Nehisi Coates has published a collection of the major magazine essays he wrote throughout the Obama years. . . . But Coates adds an unexpected element that renders We Were Eight Years in Power both new and revealing. Interspersed among the essays are introductory personal reflections. . . . Together, these introspections are the inside story of a writer at work, with all the fears, insecurities, influences, insights and blind spots that the craft demands. . . . I would have continued reading Coates during a Hillary Clinton administration, hoping in particular that he’d finally write the great Civil War history already scattered throughout his work. Yet reading him now feels more urgent, with the bar set higher.”—Carlos Lozada, The Washington Post

We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates’s iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including “Fear of a Black President,” “The Case for Reparations,” and “The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration,” along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates’s own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era. We Were Eight Years in Power is a vital account of modern America, from one of the definitive voices of this historic moment.

“Essential . . . Coates’s probing essays about race, politics, and history became necessary ballast for this nation’s gravity-defying moment.”—The Boston Globe 

“Biting cultural and political analysis from the award-winning journalist . . . [Ta-Nehisi Coates] reflects on race, Barack Obama’s presidency and its jarring aftermath, and his own evolution as a writer in eight stunningly incisive essays. . . . He contextualizes each piece with candid personal revelations, making the volume a melding of memoir and critique. . . . Emotionally charged, deftly crafted, and urgently relevant.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About the Author

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His book Between the World and Me won the National Book Award in 2015. Coates is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

In an alternate world where the mere presence of American superheroes changed history, the US won the Vietnam War, Nixon is still president, and the cold war is in full effect!

"WATCHMEN is peerless."—Rolling Stone

Watchmen begins as a murder-mystery, but soon unfolds into a planet-altering conspiracy. As the resolution comes to a head, the unlikely group of reunited heroes--Rorschach, Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias--have to test the limits of their convictions and ask themselves where the true line is between good and evil.

"Groundbreaking."—USA Today

In the mid-eighties, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created Watchmen, changing the course of comics' history and essentially remaking how popular culture perceived the genre. Popularly cited as the point where comics came of age, Watchmen's sophisticated take on superheroes has been universally acclaimed for its psychological depth and realism.

"The greatest piece of popular fiction ever produced."—LOST co-creator Damon Lindelof

Watchmen is collected here in deluxe hardcover, with sketches, extra bonus material and a new introduction by series artist Dave Gibbons.

From the bestselling author of Falling Leaves, a remarkable book of wisdom and spirit.

Somewhere it is written that every Chinese wears a Confucian thinking cap, a Taoist robe, and Buddhist sandals. In Watching the Tree, Adeline Yen Mah brings together the many influences on her life as a child of the East and as a student and adult in the West. Conveying a wealth of insight and experience, Adeline illuminates major aspects of Chinese customs and culture while weaving in stories of personal struggle triumph throughout her life.

Taking a step beyond her previous book, Falling Leaves, a powerful memoir set against the backdrop of political and cultural upheaval in China, Adeline explores the centuries-old Chinese traditions and their legacy in modern-day China and the West. With Adeline’s provocative essays on Buddhism, the I Ching, Tao, Confucius, and their role in shaping Chinese thought, Watching the Tree inspires as it uplifts the soul, giving readers an unusual glimpse inside a culture that remains mysterious and often misunderstood.

In her sharp observations on Chinese food and medicine, yin and yang, Zen, and feng shui, Adeline enlightens readers with the mundane—an approach to healing an illness you might find at a Chinese grocery store—to the larger questions in life surrounding true happiness, health, and spirituality. Bridging the cultural divide between the East and West, these stories reveal the strength and peace of mind that comes from opening one’s heart and mind to the wisdom and experience of our combined histories.

For anyone looking for a clearer understanding of Chinese culture and for inspiring personal stories that embody a life lived in the wake of Chinese tradition, Watching the Tree opens the door into a world of calm reflection, knowledge, and spirituality.

In this series renowned historical illustrator Peter Dennis breathes life into the 19th Century paper soldier and invites the reader to re-fight the wars that surged across the nation of Britain. All the artwork needed to make historically- accurate armies is presented in a source-book format, copyright free for personal use. In this first title, the Horse, Foot and Dragoons of King and Parliament, along with period buildings can be made, using traditional skills with scissors and glue. Simple 'one sheet' rules by veteran wargamer Andy Callan enable the maker to stage battles limited only by the size of the player's available table-space.

“ … Another wargame book filled with beautifully painted troops… Highly recommended for anyone teaching, or contemplating wargaming, the struggle for the English throne in 1066.” --Wargames Illustrated

“ … looks like a great way to quickly build playable, good looking armies for the tabletop … I think you could build an impressive army very quickly.” --miniaturewargaming.com

Space Marines from multiple Chapters unite alongside Titan Legions and the Astra Militarum to defend the world of Armageddon from ork warlord Ghazghkull Thraka.

In the bleak 41st millennium, the planet Armageddon is on the cusp of annihilation. The strategically vital hive world has captured the attention of infamous ork warlord Ghazghkull Thraka, and when the Astra Militarum and whole Titan Legions prove unable to halt the invasion, it is feared that both the planet and the wider sector will be lost to the greenskins. But the Imperium refuses to succumb and unleashes the Space Marines - genetically engineered warriors who thirst for naught but blood and victory. But can even this alliance of mankind's greatest warriors hope to turn the tide against Ghazghkull and his endless ork horde? This high-octane omnibus contains the classic novel Helsreach by New York Times bestselling author Aaron Dembski-Bowden, alongside four novellas and a host of short stories by some of Black Library best-known authors, including Guy Haley, Nick Kyme, Chris Wraight and Josh Reynolds.

According to The Waiter, eighty percent of customers are nice people just looking for something to eat. The remaining twenty percent, however, are socially maladjusted psychopaths. Waiter Rant offers the server's unique point of view, replete with tales of customer stupidity, arrogant misbehavior, and unseen bits of human grace transpiring in the most unlikely places. Through outrageous stories, The Waiter reveals the secrets to getting good service, proper tipping etiquette, and how to keep him from spitting in your food. The Waiter also shares his ongoing struggle, at age thirty-eight, to figure out if he can finally leave the first job at which he's truly thrived.

David Kessler, one of the most renowned experts on death and grief, takes on three uniquely shared experiences that challenge our ability to explain and fully understand the mystery of our final days. The first is “visions.” As the dying lose sight of this world, some people appear to be looking into the world to come.

     The second shared experience is getting ready for a “trip.” The phenomenon of preparing oneself for a journey isn’t new or unusual. In fact, during our loved ones’ last hours, they may often think of their impending death as a transition or journey. These trips may seem to us to be all about leaving, but for the dying, they may be more about arriving.

     Finally, the third phenomenon is “crowded rooms.” The dying often talk about seeing a room full of people, as they constantly repeat the word crowded. In truth, we never die alone. Just as loving hands greeted us when we were born, so will loving arms embrace us when we die.

     In the tapestry of life and death, we may begin to see connections to the past that we missed in life. While death may look like a loss to the living, the last hours of a dying person may be filled with fullness rather than emptiness. In this fascinating book, which includes a new Afterword, Kessler brings us stunning stories from the bedsides of the dying that will educate, enlighten, and comfort us all.

In ten stories that read like parables, Meera Nair depicts contemporary Indian life with fierce precision and an irresistible blend of humor, wit, and pathos, firmly establishing herself as a striking new voice in Indian fiction.

An American porn flick wreaks havoc on the life of an Indian man, much to the dismay of his wife. A young man’s uncanny gift for sculpting statues out of sand makes the women of his village swoon–until the men plot to put a stop to it. A small town of “utter inconsequence” prepares excitedly for a visit from President Clinton. This stunning debut collection offers brilliant snapshots of life’s small reversals and a broad-stroke portrait of our times.

Meera Nair was born in India and grew up in five different states before moving to the US in 1997. Her first collection, Video (NY: Pantheon 2003) won the Sixth Annual Asian-American Literary Award for Fiction and was named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and a Notable Book by the Kiriyama Prize. She wrote her middle-grade children's book, "Maya Saves the Day" because when she was growing up, children's books in India didn't feature any children from India.
A recipient of fellowships from the NY Times, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Queens Council for the Arts and MacDowell Colony, her work has appeared on National Public Radio's Selected Shorts, the Washington Post, the New York Times magazine and The Hindu among other places.

Sarah Bodman has two equally exotic professions: Certified Video Specialist, and balloon pilot. Called to an assignment in a Louisiana prison, Sarah finds herself in a tiny, closely guarded prison room with two federal lawyers. The lawyers will be questioning a man in the witness protection program whose sworn deposition Sarah will film, a witness who is key to the prosecution of notorious gangland boss Vinnie Scalio.

Despite every precaution, the witness is murdered, along with one of the lawyers. Scalio, determined to eradicate every trace of evidence against him, employs all of his resources to track down Margaret Paige, the other lawyer, as well as Sarah and her filmed deposition.

Fleeing, the two women crash-land in Louisiana's Manchac swamp. Even this deadly landscape provides little cover from Scalio's planes and guns, and offers up its own formidable challenges to their survival.

The fireworks between Sarah and Margaret are as hot as the danger they are in. And Margaret is keeping her own secret. A secret that may well be as insurmountable a problem as Scalio.

The arrival of two newcomers in the quiet village of Mellstock arouses a bitter feud and leaves a convoluted love affair in its wake. While the Reverend Maybold creates a furore among the village's musicians with his decision to abolish the church's traditional "string choir" and replace it with a modern mechanical organ, the new schoolteacher, Fancy Day, causes an upheaval of a more romantic nature, winning the hearts of three very different men—a local farmer, a church musician and Maybold himself. Under the Greenwood Tree follows the ensuing maze of intrigue and passion with gentle humour and sympathy, deftly evoking the richness of village life, yet tinged with melancholy for a rural world that Hardy saw fast disappearing.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About the Author

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) immortalized the site of his birth—Egdon Heath, in Dorset, near Dorchester—in his writing. Delicate as a child, he was taught at home by his mother before he attended grammar school. At sixteen, Hardy was apprenticed to an architect, and for many years, architecture was his profession; in his spare time, he pursued his first and last literary love, poetry. Finally convinced that he could earn his living as an author, he retired from architecture, married, and devoted himself to writing. An extremely productive novelist, Hardy published an important book every year or two. In 1896, disturbed by the public outcry over the unconventional subjects of his two greatest novels—Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure—he announced that he was giving up fiction and afterward produced only poetry. In later years, he received many honors. He was buried in Poet’s Corner, in Westminster Abbey. It was as a poet that he wished to be remembered, but today critics regard his novels as his most memorable contribution to English literature for their psychological insight, decisive delineation of character, and profound presentation of tragedy.

Patricia Ingham is a Senior Research Fellow and Reader at St Anne's College, Oxford. She has written on the Victorian novel and on Hardy in particular. she is the General Editor of all of Hardy's fiction in the Penguin Classics and has edited Gaskell's North and South for the series.

Uncle Wiggily and Granddaddy Longlegs Ten (10) Stories Paperback 1943 by Howard R. Garis & Illustrated by Mary & Wallace Stover