10 Books Recommended
The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first publication, the essential portrait of America— particularly California—in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.
You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. This is The Elements of Style, the classic style manual, now in a fourth edition.The revisions to the new edition are purposely kept minimal in order to retain the book's unique tone, wit, and charm. A new Glossary of the grammatical terms used in the book provides a convenient reference for readers. The discussion of pronoun use is revised to reflect the contemporary concern with sexist language. In addition, there are numerous slight revisions in the book itself which implement this advice. A new Foreword by Roger Angell reminds readers that the advice of Strunk & White is as valuable today as when it was first offered.This book has conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use the fourth edition of “the little book” to make a big impact with writing.FeaturesHow to cut deadwood out of your sentences.How enliven your prose with the active voice.How to put statements in the positive form.New to this EditionA new Glossary of grammatical terms.A new Foreword by Roger Angell.The classic principles of English style.
First published in 1979, Joan Didion's The White Album records indelibly the upheavals and aftermaths of the 1960s. Examining key events, figures, and trends of the era—including Charles Manson, the Black Panthers, and the shopping mall—through the lens of her own spiritual confusion, Joan Didion helped to define mass culture as we now understand it. Written with a commanding sureness of tone and linguistic precision, The White Album is a central text of American reportage and a classic of American autobiography.
"Perhaps the greatest testament of personal devotion published in this century." — The New York Times A powerful journal of poems and spiritual meditations recorded over several decades by a universally known and admired peacemaker. A dramatic account of spiritual struggle, Markings has inspired hundreds of thousands of readers since it was first published in 1964. Markings is distinctive, as W.H. Auden remarks in his foreword, as a record of "the attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the via activa and the via contemplativa ." It reflects its author's efforts to live his creed, his belief that all men are equally the children of God and that faith and love require of him a life of selfless service to others. For Hammarskjöld, "the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action." Markings is not only a fascinating glimpse of the mind of a great man, but also a moving spiritual classic that has left its mark on generations of readers.
A “very vivid and entertaining tale of fair play and poetic justice,”* The Araboolies of Liberty Street by writer Sam Swope and illustrator Barry Root is the story of a family overcoming neighborhood prejudice.The General and Mrs. Pinch have always prided themselves on the character of those living on Liberty Street. But when the Araboolies move in, the rigid conformity stifling the neighbors is shattered by the newcomers’ joyous and eccentric behavior.Now, the General has called in the army to reestablish order―only to find resistance from the children of Liberty Street determined to ensure the freedom of their newfound friends, the Araboolies.“Even on a street named for freedom itself, people conform and are terrified by bullies, by killjoys…Enter the Araboolies, an irrepressible extended family of multicolored vagabonds [with] rollicking, nonconformist behavior.”―* The New York Times Book Review“The crisp text and autumn-muted, full-color paintings are a triumph of energy, enthusiasm, and design.”― Booklist (starred review)
A spaceship captain determined to gather a cupful of the sun. . .a nubile young witch who yearns to taste human love. . .an expedition that hunts dinosaurs across the fragile and dangerous chasm of time. . . These strange and wonderful tales of beauty and terror will transport you from the begininng of time to the outermost limits of the future. Selected from his best-selling collections "The Golden Apples Of The Sun" and "R Is For Rocket," here are thirty-two superb stories from one of the master fantastics of our age--the inimitable Ray Bradbury.CONTENTS1 • The Fog Horn • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury10 • The April Witch • [The Elliott Family] • (1952) • short story by Ray Bradbury21 • The Wilderness • [The Martian Chronicles] • (1952) • short story by Ray Bradbury31 • The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl • non-genre • (1948) • short story by Ray Bradbury43 • The Flying Machine • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury49 • The Murderer • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury58 • The Golden Kite, the Silver Wind • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury63 • I See You Never • non-genre • (1947) • short story by Ray Bradbury67 • Embroidery • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury71 • The Big Black and White Game • (1945) • short story by Ray Bradbury83 • The Great Wide World Over There • (1952) • short story by Ray Bradbury96 • Powerhouse • (1948) • short story by Ray Bradbury106 • En la Noche • (1952) • short story by Ray Bradbury111 • Sun and Shadow • non-genre • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury119 • The Meadow • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury135 • The Garbage Collector • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury141 • The Great Fire • [Green Town] • (1949) • short story by Ray Bradbury148 • The Golden Apples of the Sun • (1953) • short story by Ray Bradbury157 • R Is for Rocket • (1943) • short story by Ray Bradbury174 • The End of the Beginning • (1956) • short story by Ray Bradbury180 • The Rocket • (1950) • short story by Ray Bradbury191 • The Rocket Man • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury203 • A Sound of Thunder • (1952) • short story by Ray Bradbury216 • The Long Rain • (1950) • short story by Ray Bradbury231 • The Exiles • (1949) • short story by Ray Bradbury246 • Here There Be Tygers • (1951) • short story by Ray Bradbury260 • The Strawberry Window • (1955) • short story by Ray Bradbury269 • The Dragon • (1955) • short story by Ray Bradbury273 • Frost and Fire • (1946) • novella by Ray Bradbury316 • Uncle Einar • [The Elliott Family] • (1947) • short story by Ray Bradbury324 • The Time Machine • [Dandelion Wine] • (1955) • short story by Ray Bradbury332 • The Sound of Summer Running • [Dandelion Wine] • (1956) • short story by Ray Bradbury
The story of The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare The Trial and the rest of his papers for publication.
Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.
New York Times and Wall Street Journal BestsellerA New York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic story of Uber, the Silicon Valley startup at the center of one of the great venture capital power struggles of our time. In June 2017, Travis Kalanick, the hard-charging CEO of Uber, was ousted in a boardroom coup that capped a brutal year for the transportation giant. Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world, yet for many came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley. Award-winning New York Times technology correspondent Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against an era of rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley. Backed by billions in venture capital dollars and led by a brash and ambitious founder, Uber promised to revolutionize the way we move people and goods through the world. A near instant “unicorn,” Uber seemed poised to take its place next to Amazon, Apple, and Google as a technology giant. What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong. Isaac recounts Uber’s pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company’s toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. With billions of dollars at stake, Isaac shows how venture capitalists asserted their power and seized control of the startup as it fought its way toward its fateful IPO. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former Uber employees, along with previously unpublished documents, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history.
Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.