Can You See What I See? On a Scary Scary Night: Picture Puzzles to Search and Solve

About the Author Walter Wick is the photographer of the international bestselling I Spy series as well as the author and photographer of the acclaimed Can You See What I See? series. He lives with his wife, Linda, in Miami Beach, Florida.

Kentucky Straight: Stories

From Publishers Weekly The stories in this debut collection share more than a setting in poor and sparsely populated Kentucky; they share a certainty and frankness of language that renders them powerful. When a young boy's grandfather presents himself after an extended absence, the boy wonders if he should believe that he's his grandfather: "Grandfathers whittled a lot and taught their grandsons how to fish. Lije was just old." Offutt's visual imagery is equally strong and direct. After a man loses a leg in a construction accident and is taken to the hospital, one of his colleagues carries the severed limb around for a while, unsure of what to do with it. Many of the stories center on the isolation underlying social relationships. A pool-playing young man who longs to escape the grim hog farm that is his home is distracted from his game only by his seductive sister, who drunkenly visits strange men in their vans. At a poker game held in a smokehouse, an eager gambler stakes a bet on the size of his penis, and wins, but ends up feeling humiliated anyway. Offutt, who grew up in the Kentucky Appalachians, offers taut stories filled with strained relationships and unarticulated desires; his characters deceive themselves into believing that their lives are simpler than they are. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "From the hills and tough as oak, in his best stories Offutt bring to mind D. H. Lawrence, blood-driven and holy. His people have an heroic dignity.”—James Salter   “These are wild, tough, magical stories, often as shocking as real life, and every one a heartbreaker. Chris Offutt plainly loves the English language and knows how to make it do wondrous things.”—Josephine Humphreys From the Inside Flap ten heartbreaking stories that take readers through country that is figuratively and literally unmapped. These stories are set in a nameless community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation. Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award. About the Author Chris Offutt is an award-winning author and screenwriter. He worked on the HBO drama True Blood and the Showtime series Weeds . His books include Kentucky Straight , The Same River Twice , The Good Brother , Out of the Woods , and No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home . His work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Short Stories, and many other anthologies. He lives near Oxford, Mississippi. Read more

Can You See What I See? Christmas Read-and-Seek

2017 Edward Gorey Wall Calendar

Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Germophobia

About the Author The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market--Throne Sitters--and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

From Publishers Weekly In these stories?"haunting in both senses of the word," said PW's starred review?ghosts exact vengeance for lynchings, and slaves use ancient magic to ensure their freedom; historical backdrops run from the Underground Railroad to 1960s activism. Ages 8-up. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "...a stellar collection..."-- School Library Journal , starred review"These original, short and ghostly stories, which come with brief historical introductions placing them in the American South, are grand for reading aloud."-- The New York Times Book Review From the Inside Flap This Newbery Honor- and Coretta Scott King Award-winning book is now available in Knopf Paperback, reformatted to digest size with the complete text and illustrations of the original edition. The Dark-Thirty: Southern Tales of the Supernatural is a collection of ten spine-tingling tales, all with a foundation in African-American culture and history, from the time of slavery through the civil rights era. A Newbery Honor BookA Coretta Scott King Award WinnerAn ALA Notable Children's BookA Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social StudiesAn IRA Teachers' ChoiceA Hungry Mind Review Children's Book of Distinction From the Back Cover When it is neither day nor night, when shadows lurk and play tricks on the mind, storytelling takes on a spectral cast. In that special half hour of twilight -- the dark-thirty -- you'll feel the spine-tingling horror of these tales: -- When a retired Pullman porter hears a ghostly whistle, he knows it's the last train he'll ever ride.-- Phantom pictures appear on a windowpane -- and expose a man's guilt in a lynching.-- An ex-slave reveals how a straw doll and an ancient chant helped him gain his freedom. Haunting and original, these ten stories are inspired by African American history, from the time of slavery to the civil rights era. With her extraordinary gift for suspense, Patricia C. McKissack has created a heart-stopping, award-winning collection. About the Author Patricia C. McKissack lives in St. Louis, Missouri.Brian Pinkney lives in Brooklyn, New York. Read more

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe

Review "A REAL NOVEL AND A GOOD ONE . . . [FROM] THE BUSY BRAIN OF A BORN STORYTELLER."--The New York Times"IT'S VERY GOOD, IN FACT, JUST WONDERFUL."--Los Angeles Times"COURAGEOUS AND WISE."--Houston Chronicle From the Inside Flap Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the now-classic novel of two women in the 1980s: of gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode telling her life story to Evelyn, who is in the sad slump of middle age. The tale she tells is also of two women--of the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth--who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, a Southern kind of Cafe Wobegon offering good barbecue and good coffee and all kinds of love and laughter, even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present--for Evelyn and for us--will never be quite the same again. . . . From the Back Cover "A REAL NOVEL AND A GOOD ONE . . . [FROM] THE BUSY BRAIN OF A BORN STORYTELLER."--The New York Times"IT'S VERY GOOD, IN FACT, JUST WONDERFUL."--Los Angeles Times"COURAGEOUS AND WISE."--Houston Chronicle About the Author Fannie Flagg began writing and producing television specials at age nineteen and went on to distinguish herself as an actress and writer in television, films, and the theater. Her first novel, Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man, was a New York Times bestseller as was Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, which was produced by Universal Pictures as Fried Green Tomatoes. Ms. Flagg's script was nominated for both the Academy and Writers Guild of America Awards and won the highly regarded Scripters Award. Her current acclaimed novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl!, is also a New York Times bestseller. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. THE WEEMS WEEKLY(WHISTLE STOP, ALABAMA'S WEEKLY BULLETIN)June 12, 1929 Cafe Opens The Whistle Stop Cafe opened up last week, right nextdoor to me at the post office, and owners IdgieThreadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has beengood ever since. Idgie says that for people who knowher not to worry about getting poisoned, she is notcooking. All the cooking is being done by two coloredwomen, Sipsey and Onzell, and the barbecue is beingcooked by Big George, who is Onzell's husband.If there is anybody that has not been there yet, Idgiesays that the breakfast hours are from 5:30-7:30, and youcan get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham andred-eye gravy, and coffee for 25 [cts.].For lunch and supper you can have: fried chicken;pork chops and gravy; catfish; chicken and dumplings;or a barbecue plate; and your choice of threevegetables, biscuits or cornbread, and your drink anddessert--for 35 [cts.].She said the vegetables are: creamed corn; fried greentomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyedpeas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.And pie for dessert.My other half, Wilbur, and I ate there the other night,and it was so good he says he might not ever eat at homeagain. Ha. Ha. I wish this were true. I spend all my timecooking for the big lug, and still can't keep him filledup.By the way, Idgie says that one of her hens laid an eggwith a ten-dollar bill in it.... Dot Weems ...ROSE TERRACE NURSING HOMEOLD MONTGOMERY HIGHWAYBIRMINGHAM, ALABAMADECEMBER 15, 1985Evelyn Couch had come to Rose Terrace with her husband, Ed,who was visiting his mother, Big Momma, a recent but reluctantarrival. Evelyn had just escaped them both and had gone into thevisitors' lounge in the back, where she could enjoy her candy bar inpeace and quiet. But the moment she sat down, the old womanbeside her began to talk ..."Now, you ask me the year somebody got married ... who theymarried ... or what the bride's mother wore, and nine times out of tenI can tell you, but for the life of me, I cain't tell you when it was Igot to be so old. It just sorta slipped up on me. The first time Inoticed it was June of this year, when I was in the hospital for mygallbladder, which they still have, or maybe they threw it out bynow ... who knows. That heavyset nurse had just given me anotherone of those Fleet enemas they're so fond of over there when Inoticed what they had on my arm. It was a white band that said:Mrs. Cleo Threadgoode ... an eighty-six-year-old woman.Imagine that!"When I got back home, I told my friend Mrs. Otis, I guess theonly thing left for us to do is to sit around and get ready to croak....She said she preferred the term pass over to theother side. Poor thing, I didn't have the heart to tell her that nomatter what you call it, we're all gonna croak, just the same ..."It's funny, when you're a child you think time will never go by,but when you hit about twenty, time passes like you're on the fasttrain to Memphis. I guess life just slips up on everybody. It suredid on me. One day I was a little girl and the next I was a grownwoman, with bosoms and hair on my private parts. I missed thewhole thing. But then, I never was too smart in school or otherwise ..."Mrs. Otis and I are from Whistle Stop, a little town about tenmiles from here, out by the railroad yards.... She's lived down thestreet from me for the past thirty years or so, and after her husbanddied, her son and daughter-in-law had a fit for her to come and liveat the nursing home, and they asked me to come with her. I toldthem I'd stay with her for a while--she doesn't know it yet, but I'mgoing back home just as soon as she gets settled in good."It's not too bad out here. The other day, we all got Christmascorsages to wear on our coats. Mine had little shiny red Christmasballs on it, and Mrs. Otis had a Santy Claus face on hers. But I wassad to give up my kitty, though."They won't let you have one here, and I miss her. I've alwayshad a kitty or two, my whole life. I gave her to that little girl nextdoor, the one who's been watering my geraniums. I've got me fourcement pots on the front porch, just full of geraniums."My friend Mrs. Otis is only seventy-eight and real sweet, butshe's a nervous kind of person. I had my gallstones in a Mason jarby my bed, and she made me hide them. Said they made herdepressed. Mrs. Otis is just a little bit of somethin', but as you cansee, I'm a big woman. Big bones and all."But I never drove a car ... I've been stranded most all my life.Always stayed close to home. Always had to wait for somebody tocome and carry me to the store or to the doctor or down to thechurch. Years ago, you used to be able to take a trolley toBirmingham, but they stopped running a long timeago. The only thing I'd do different if I could go back would be toget myself a driver's license."You know, it's funny what you'll miss when you're away fromhome. Now me, I miss the smell of coffee ... and bacon frying in themorning. You cain't smell anything they've got cooking out here,and you cain't get a thing that's fried. Everything here is boiled up,with not a piece of salt on it! I wouldn't give you a plugged nickelfor anything boiled, would you?"The old lady didn't wait for an answer ".... I used to lovemy crackers and buttermilk, or my buttermilk and cornbread,in the afternoon. I like to smash it all up in my glass and eatit with a spoon, but you cain't eat in public like you can at home... can you? ... And I miss wood."My house is nothing but just a little old railroad shack of ahouse, with a living room, bedroom, and a kitchen. But it's wood,with pine walls inside. Just what I like. I don't like a plaster wall.They seem ... oh, I don't know, kinda cold and stark-like."I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in aswing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, tohang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked fromthe waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picturefor fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, Idon't think the old men they've got here can see well enough tonotice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, soshe's in the closet with my gallstones."I'll be glad to get home.... Of course, my house is a mess. Ihaven't been able to sweep for a while. I went out and threw mybroom at some old, noisy bluejays that were fighting and, wouldn'tyou know it, my broom stuck up there in the tree. I've got to getsomeone to get it down for me when I get back."Anyway, the other night, when Mrs. Otis's son took us homefrom the Christmas tea they had at the church, he drove us over therailroad tracks, out by where the cafe used to be, and on up FirstStreet, right past the old Threadgoode place. Of course, most of thehouse is all boarded up and falling down now, but when we camedown the street, the headlights hit thewindows in such a way that, just for a minute, that house looked tome just like it had so many of those nights, some seventy yearsago, all lit up and full of fun and noise. I could hear peoplelaughing, and Essie Rue pounding away at the piano in the parlor;`Buffalo Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight' or `The Big Rock CandyMountain,' and I could almost see Idgie Threadgoode sitting in thechinaberry tree, howling like a dog every time Essie Rue tried tosing. She always said that Essie Rue could sing about as well as acow could dance. I guess, driving by that house and me being sohomesick made me go back in my mind ..."I remember it just like it was yesterday, but then I don't thinkthere's anything about the Threadgoode family I don't remember.Good Lord, I should, I've lived right next door to them from the dayI was born, and I married one of the boys."There were nine children, and three of the girls, Essie Rue andthe twins, were more or less my own age, so I was always overthere playing and having spend-the-night parties. My own motherdied of consumption when I was four, and when my daddy died, upin Nashville, I just stayed on for good. I guess you might say thespend-the-night party never ended..." Read more

The Tailypo: A Ghost Story (Paul Galdone Classics) (Paul Galdone Nursery Classic)

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree: An Appalachian Story (Picture Puffin Books)

About the Author Gloria Houston is an internationally known educator and author of  several award-winning, best-selling books for young readers.Barbara Cooney illustrated over 100 books for children.

Meet the Sight Words - Flashcards

The Story of an African Farm (Dover Thrift Editions)

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything: A Halloween Book for Kids

From Publishers Weekly In this just-spooky-enough tale, an old lady puts to good use some animated objects that are trying to frighten her. Ages 3-7. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review “A splendiferous Halloween story. A sure-fire winner with gloriously noisy actions for storytelling and just shivery enough.” — The Horn Book “A great purchase for Halloween or any time of the year.” — School Library Journal (starred review) From the Back Cover Once upon a time, there was a little old lady who was not afraid of anything! But one autumn night, while walking in the woods, the little old lady heard . . . clomp, clomp, shake, shake, clap, clap. And the little old lady who was not afraid of anything had the scare of her life! About the Author Linda Williams is the director of a child development center. The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything is her first book for children. Megan Lloyd has illustrated more than forty books for children, including The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, Thanksgiving at the Tappletons' by Eileen Spinelli, and The Mixed-Up Rooster by Pamela Duncan Edwards. She lives with her husband on a farm in Pennsylvania, where she raises sheep, chickens, and cows. Some of the rabbits from her vegetable garden have even been kind enough to allow Ms. Lloyd to sketch them as models for this book. Read more

Jenny and the Cat Club: A Collection of Favorite Stories about Jenny Linsky (Jenny's Cat Club)

Review "Esther Averill's collection of Jenny Linsky books deserves special mention. ...Told in clear, simple language that will appeal to younger children, all of these stories are delightful and festooned with simple illustrations every few pages that enhance, but never dominate, the melodious text." —The San Francisco Chronicle "Averill colors her stories with abundant flights of clever fancy… But the nonchalance with which she delivers these makes them as real as her grounding details…Children will find Jenny’s lessons about emotions and behavior helpful and reassuring." —Christina Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly "The grace and charm of these little books are not only for children. In wording, illustration, and design they offer to people of all ages a short interview of pure delight." — The Saturday Review "There is a realness about Jenny, as well as a demure charm, that gives these annals of her doings a distinction lacking in many a more pretentious effort." — The New Yorker "In Jenny readers meet the perfect friend—an honest, fun-loving, and loyal playfellow and comrade-in-arms. How good to have Jenny back in print.” —Leonard S. Marcus, author of Storied City: A Children’s Book Walking Tour Guide to New York City From the Inside Flap "Jenny Linsky, the gallant heroine of these perenially endearing tales, pads through life balancing many of the same emotional ups and downs that crowd every schoolchilds day. Being a cat, Jenny does it all with enviable aplomb, and with a keen eye for her surroundings--the colorful back alleys and gardens of Greenwich Village. In Jenny readers meet the perfect friend--an honest, fun-loving, and loyal playfellow and comrade-in-arms. How good to have Jenny back in print--and the august Cat Club back in session again!" --Leonard S. Marcus, author of Storied City: A Childrens Book Walking Tour Guide to New York City About the Author Esther Averill (1902-1992) began her career as a storyteller drawing cartoons for her local newspaper. After graduating from Vassar College in 1923, she moved first to New York City and then to Paris, where she founded her own publishing company. The Domino Press introduced American readers to artists from all over the world, including Feodor Rojankovsky, who later won a Caldecott Award. In 1941, Esther Averill returned to the United States and found a job in the New York Public Library while continuing her work as a publisher. She wrote her first book about the red-scarfed, mild-mannered cat Jenny Linsky in 1944, modeling its heroine on her own shy cat. Esther Averill would eventually write twelve more tales about Miss Linsky and her friends (including the I Can Read Book, The Fire Cat ), each of which was eagerly awaited by children all over the United States (and their parents, too). Read more

Do You Love Me?: An Exploration of Our Relationship With God and Others

About the Author Debbie is currently serving as the Executive Director for the Evangelical Center for Spiritual Wisdom. She enjoys the challenge of casting the vision and focusing the mission of ECSW in the midst of overseeing the day-to-day activities. She serves as the producer and teacher of ECSW’s curriculum Life with God: A Journey of Relationship. Additionally, Debbie writes, speaks, and consults on issues of relational theology and serves as a spiritual director for both individuals and group.

Hollywood Story The Ultimate Guide To BATMAN 80th anniversary special

Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity

From the Publisher Announcing a new book from Apress: Read Joel Spolsky's unique and humourous insights. About the Author Joel Spolsky is a globally recognized expert on the software development process. His web site Joel on Software (JoelonSoftware.com) is popular with software developers around the world and has been translated into over 30 languages. As the founder of Fog Creek Software in New York City, he created FogBugz, a popular project management system for software teams. Joel has worked at Microsoft, where he designed Visual Basic for Applications as a member of the Excel team, and at Juno Online Services, developing an Internet client used by millions. He has written two books: User Interface Design for Programmers (Apress, 2001) and Joel on Software (Apress, 2004). Joel holds a bachelor's of science degree in computer science from Yale University. Before college, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces as a paratrooper, and he was one of the founders of Kibbutz Hanaton.


DAD, I WANT TO TELL YOU./DAILY MESSAGES TO DAD/FATHER'S DAY JOURNAL/FATHER'S DAY GIFT/BIRTHDAY GIFT FOR DAD/KEEPSAKE FOR DADS

TENNIS PLAYBOOK/FOR COACHES,PLAYERS,AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION TEACHERS/GIFT FOR WOMEN, KIDS AND MEN/GIFT FOR COACHES,PLAYERS,AND PHYSICAL EDUCATION ... TOTAL SCORE, NOTES, DAY, DATE, LOCATION, TIME

CLASS OF 2023 GUESTBOOK/GRADUATION GUESTBOOK/GIFT FOR WOMEN, MEN, TEENS AND KIDS/GIFT FOR GRADUATES/KEEPSAKE MEMORY BOOK/GRADUATION GIFT/FOR ELEMENTARY, HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE STUDENTS

FATHER''S DAY NOTEBOOK/GIFT FOR DADS OF ALL AGES/USE FOR SCHOOL|HOME|OFFICE/FATHER''S DAY JOURNAL/FATHER'S DAY THEMED BOOK/FATHER''S DAY GIFT/NOTEBOOK FOR DADS

GRADUATION GUEST BOOK/GIFT FOR WOMEN, MEN, TEENS AND KIDS/GIFT FOR GRADUATES/KEEPSAKE MEMORY BOOK/GRADUATION GIFT/INTRODUCTION PAGE/PROMPTS FOR ... ELEMENTARY, HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE STUDENTS

Like a Bat Out of Hell: The Larger Than Life Story of Meat Loaf

From Fiber to Fabric: The Essential Guide to Quiltmaking Textiles

From Library Journal This book is based on the author's popular "Stretching Traditions" workshop, during which she guides students in manipulating traditional quilt blocks to create striking and innovative variations. A gallery of more than 200 color illustrations demonstrates how "playing with blocks" by rotating, staggering, squeezing, blending, and merging elements can resulting in gorgeous quilts that build on their classic origins. Quilting teachers using this work as a resource for quilting classes will appreciate the "Activities and Extended Learning" sections at the end of each chapter. Recommended for quilting collections.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review An abundance of books on how to quilt are available, and Hargrave starts an interesting new thread, with this guide to textiles. Written for those already involved in home sewing and quilting, the guide provides extensive details on every aspect of the world of fabric. You'll learn about the history of textiles, how fabrics are manufactured, prepared, and dyed; and how they are printed and finished. Particularly useful for the careful and cost-conscious consumer is the information on the pros and cons of pre-washing and how to test fabric. Indeed, the book offers numerous tests to help you determine the quality and consistency of your purchase, thus avoiding such problems as fabric shrinkage and color changes. You'll also learn about different types of threads, how to avoid stitching problems, and how batting is made, and how to care for your finished quilts. -- From Independent Publisher

Three-Martini Lunch

From Publishers Weekly In Rindell's second novel (after The Other Typist), the lives of three young people intersect over literature and ambition during the height of the beatnik era in Greenwich Village. Cliff Nelson, the son of a powerful New York editor, wants to be a famous writer but spends less time writing than emulating Hemingway's drinking. Eden Katz, a transplant from Indiana who remakes herself in the style of Holly Golightly, has her sights set on being an editor at a big New York publishing house. After Eden is hired as a secretary to Cliff's father, she and Cliff secretly elope. Meanwhile, the literary ambitions of Miles Tillman, a quiet, gay, black Columbia graduate from Harlem, are repeatedly tested by personal and societal road blocks. After Miles is attacked at a party hosted by Cliff and Eden, he heads to San Francisco, where he finds his father's WWII journal. The journalâalong with his relationship with the man who helped him find itâprovides Miles with plenty of fodder for writing, but he becomes inexorably tangled in Cliff and Eden's struggles for literary success. With its vivid historical setting and the narrators' distinct voices, this ambitious novel is both an homage to the beatnik generation and its literature, as well as an evocative story of the price one pays for going after one's dreams. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents. (Apr.)\n Review Praise for Three-Martini Lunch “Think of it as the publishing industry’s take on Mad Men : a gripping fictional dispatch from the world of talented writers and editors with big dreams, secrets, and booze bills.”— Entertainment Weekly “Packed with narrative surprises... Rindell keeps the suspense strong as we wonder if Eden and Cliff and Miles are fated for success or doomed to failure.”— CT Post “A rollicking period piece that builds to a magnificent crescendo. With an excellent ear for the patter and cadence of the time, Rindell expertly brings a bygone era to life, though the struggles of her trio feel anything but dated. While blackmail and backstabbing keep things suitably scandalous, Rindell also explores deeper issues of race, sexuality, class and gender in ways that feel vital and timely. The end result is a moving novel that proves provocative in more ways than one.”— BookPage “Sprawling across more than 500 pages, the new novel Three-Martini Lunch captures the excesses as well as the inhibitions of New York City in 1958, from the eponymous meals of the big Manhattan publishing houses, to wild drinking-and-drug bouts in Greenwich Village, to the lingering paranoia of McCarthyism, to the casual racism, sexism, homophobia and anti-Semitism among the professional class. ”—New York Journal of Books “Compulsively readable melodrama about life in the Manhattan publishing world of the 1950s… [Rindell] does it with such high style and draped in such alluring, gin-soaked detail that we overcome our critical selves and root like hell for Eden to become an editor, for Miles to accept his love for Joey, and for Cliff to quit being a jerk.” — Booklist “[ Three-Martini Lunch ] offers a captivating look into the vibrancy of mid-20th-century New York City through the eyes of three flawed and therefore, fascinating young characters.”— Library Journal “With its vivid historical setting and the narrators' distinct voices, this ambitious novel is both an homage to the beatnik generation and its literature, as well as an evocative story of the price one pays for going after one's dreams.” — Publishers Weekly “Suzanne Rindell’s latest novel is a riveting account of three young adults struggling to define themselves against issues of family, race, and sexual identity in the intolerant world of the '50s. Three-Martini Lunch is a gripping study of the ways in which people betray others and themselves in an effort to carve out places for themselves in a competitive and unforgiving world.”—Sara Gruen, New York Times -bestselling author of Water for Elephants and At the Water’s Edge “Set in New York City's Beat Generation, a skillfully crafted story of three young professionals trying to make it big in publishing: This is Three-Martini Lunch .  Their choices and sacrifices ripple out from the pages and shake our hearts. A gripping read.”—Sarah McCoy, New York Times -bestselling author of The Mapmaker's Children “ Three-Martini Lunch does for publishing what Mad Men did for advertising. It takes you back in time and then proceeds to etch in a whole world, stroke by stroke. This fast-moving novel is rich with incident and wonderfully conflicted characters.”—James Magnuson, author of Famous Writers I Have Known About the Author Suzanne Rindell is the author of two novels, The Other Typist and Three-Martini Lunch .  Rindell spent most of her life in Northern California (Sacramento and San Francisco), but currently lives in New York City, where she is at work on a third novel. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof***Copyright © 2016 Suzanne Rindell Cliff 1 Greenwich Village in ‘58 was a madman’s paradise.  In those days a bunch of us went aroundtogether drinking too much coffee and smoking too much cannabis and talking allthe time about poetry and Nietzsche and bebop. I had been running around with the same guys I knew from Columbia – giveor take a colored jazz musician here or a benny addict there – and together wewould get good and stoned and ride the subway down to Washington Square.  I guess you could say I liked my Columbiabuddies all right.  They were swellenough guys but when you really got down to it they were a pack of poserwannabe-poets in tweed and I knew it was only a matter of time before I outgrewthem.  Their fathers were bankers andlawyers and once their fascination with poetic manifestos wore off they wouldsettle down and become bankers and lawyers, too, and marry a nicedebutante.  I was different from theseguys because even before I went to college I knew I was meant to be an artist,even if I didn’t know just yet exactly what form I wanted my creativity totake.  As far as I was concerned academiawas for the birds anyhow, and the more I spent time below 14thStreet, the more I realized that the Village was my true education. When I finally threw in the towel and dropped my last classat Columbia, My Old Man came poking around my apartment in MorningsideHeights.  He ahemmed quietly to himself and fingered the waxy leaves of theplants in the window and finally sat with his rump covering a water-stain on ahand-me-down Louis XVI sofa my great-aunt had deemed too ugly to keep in herown apartment.  Together we drank acouple of fingers of bourbon neat, and then he shook my hand in a dignified wayand informed me the best lesson he could teach me at this point in my life was self-reliance .  His plan mainly involved cutting me off fromthe family fortune and making long speeches on the superior quality of earned pleasures . Once My Old Man broke the news about how I was going tohave to pave my own road it was all over pretty quickly after that.  I threw a couple of loud parties and didn’tpay my rent and then the landlord had me out lickety-split and I had to golooking for a new place. Which is how, as I entered into mystudy of the relative value of earned pleasures, I found myself renting aone-room studio in the Village with no hot water and a toilet down thehall.  The lid was missing on the tank ofthat toilet and I remember the worst thing I ever did to my fellow hall-mateswas to get sick after coming home drunk one night and mistake the open tank forthe open bowl.  But even without mywhiskey-induced embellishments the building was a dump.  It was a pretty crummy apartment and when itrained the paint on the walls bubbled something awful, but I liked being nearthe basement cafés where people were passionate about trying out new thingswith the spoken word, which was still pretty exciting to me at the time.  In those days you could walk the streets allaround Washington Square and plunge down a narrow stairway here and there tofind a room painted all black with red light bulbs screwed into the fixturesand there’d be someone standing in front of a crowd telling America to go tohell or maybe acting out the birth of a sacred cow in India.  It was all kind of bananas and you were neversure what you were going to see, but after a while you started to come acrossthe same people mostly. I had seen Miles, Swish, Bobby, and Pal around theVillage, of course, and they had seen me, too. We were friendly enough with one another, all of us being artytypes.  I knew their faces and I knewtheir names but the night I really entered the picture I was in such a sorrystate it was a real act of mercy on their part. I was slated to read my poems for the first time ever at a place calledThe Sweet Spot. Earlier that afternoon I had been looking over my pages when itsuddenly struck me they were no good. The discovery had me seized me up with fear until my whole body wasparalyzed and I sensed I was rank with the stench of my impending failure.  The poems were bad and that was the truth ofit.  My solution was whiskey, and by sixo’clock I had managed to put down half a bottle before the poems finallystarted to look better than they had at three p.m.  In my foolish state I decided finishing theother half of the bottle would be the key to gaining at least a few moreincrements of poetic improvement.  By thetime I took the stage I could barely hold myself upright.  Somehow I managed to get off two poems… moreor less… before I heard the wooden stool next to me clatter to the ground as itfell over and I felt the cold sticky black-painted floor rise up like aswelling wave to my hip and shoulder and, seconds later, my face. When I came to I was lying on a couch in Swish’s apartmentwith the whole gang sitting around the kitchen table talking in loud voicesabout Charlie Parker while a seminal record of his spun on a turntable near myhead.  After a few minutes Pal came overand handed me a cool washcloth for my bruised face.  Then Bobby whistled and commented that I had“ some kind of madman style” in anadmiring tone of voice that made me think perhaps the two poems I couldremember getting off hadn’t been so bad after all and maybe it was even truethat in getting wasted I had actually made the truest choice an artist couldmake, like Van Gogh and his absinthe.  Icould see they were all deciding whether I was a hack or a genius and the factthey might be open to the second possibility being true fortified me and filledme with a kind of dopey pride.  ThenSwish boiled some coffee on the stove and brought it over to me.  He told me his religion was coffee and hecouldn’t abide his guests adding milk or sugar and so I shouldn’t ever expecthim to offer any of that stuff.  Thecoffee was so thick you could have set a spoon in the center of the mug and itwould’ve stood up straight and never touched the sides.  Later when I learned more about Swish he toldme that was how you made it when you were on the road and once you’d had yourcoffee like that everything else tasted like water.  I guess some of Swish’s romantic passionabout cowboy coffee wore off on me, because after that night I sneered atanything someone brought me that happened to have a creamy shade or sweetenedtaste. Swish’s given name was Stewart and he was nicknamed Swishbecause he was always in a hurry.  He wasone of those wiry, nervous guys with energy to spare.   After I’d taken a few sips of Swish’s coffeeand managed to work my forehead over some more with the washcloth I was feelingwell enough to join them at the kitchen table and dive into the talk aboutDizzy Gilespie and Charlie Parker, and all of a sudden it was like I had alwayshad a seat at that table and had just never known it.  The frenzied tempo of their chatter wascontagious.  They conversed likemusicians improvising jazz and I hoped some of this would find its way into mywriting.  Between the five of us wefinished off a pot of coffee and two packs of cigarettes and fourteen bottlesof beer and shared the dim awareness that a small but sturdy union had beenformed. Swish regaled us with his adventures riding the railsacross America like a hobo and about the year he’d spent in the MerchantMarines.  Even though he’d never finishedhigh school he had still managed to feed his mind all sorts of good solid stuffand in talking to Swish I realized all those guys at Columbia who thought theyhad the edge over you because they went to Exeter or Andover were all prettymuch full of horseshit because here was Swish and he was better-read thananybody and his education had been entirely loaned out to him from the publiclibrary for no money at all.  There was amoment when I worried that maybe I’d offended Swish because I said something toset him off and he went on to give a big argumentative lecture all about JohnLocke and Mikhail Bakunin and about Thoreau. But my worries about having offended him were unfounded because I laterrealized Swish was one of those guys with a naturally combative disposition. After he’d finished harping on old Mikhail’s theoriesabout anarchy I asked Swish what he did for a living now his hobo days wereover. “Bicycle messenger,” he replied.  “Miles here is, too.” I regarded Miles, who seemed like an odd fit for thisgroup.  He was a slender,athletic-looking Negro with sharp cheekbones that would’ve made him appearhaughty if they had not been offset by his brooding eyes.  He wore the kind of horn-rimmed glasses thatwere popular all over the Village just then. He nodded but didn’t comment further and I gathered that being a bicyclemessenger wasn’t his primary passion and figured him for a jazz musician.  He had the name and the look for it, afterall. Anyway, the topic of conversation turned to me and what myambitions were and sitting there at the table I already felt so comfortable andeverything seemed so familiar I found myself confessing to the fact I’drecently come to the conclusion that I’d decided to become a writer.  Only problem was, ever since I’d arrived atthis decision, I’d been having a spell of writer’s block. “I’ll tell you what you do,” Swish said, his wiry bodytensing up with conviction. “You hop on the next boxcar and ride until you’refull up with so many ideas you feel your fingers twitching in your sleep.” “Well, I for one think a good old-fashioned roll in thehay would do the trick,” Bobby chimed in. “It’s important to keep the juices flowing.” “Says the fella who’s so busy balling two girls at once hecan’t make it to any of his auditions,” said Swish.  I asked them what they meant.  It turned out Bobby wanted to be an actor buthis great obstacle in achieving this ambition was his overwhelming beauty.  Under ordinary circumstances this wouldn’t bea problem for an actor but in Bobby’s case it kept him far too busy to getonstage much.  Wherever he wentloud-shrieking girls and soft-spoken men alike tried their best to bed him andbecause Bobby liked to make everyone happy he went along with all of it and wasloath to turn anyone down.  He waspresently keeping two girls in particular happy.  One girl lived with a roommate over on MortonStreet and the other lived in the Albert Hotel on East 11th and this left Bobbyconstantly hustling from one side of the Village to the other. Bobby’s recommendation that I ought to ball a girl (or twoor three) to get over my writer’s block appeared to disturb Pal’s sense ofchivalry and make him shy: He shifted in his chair and set about studying thelabel on his beer.  He was by far thequietest and most difficult guy to read of the pack.  Later I found out Pal’s real name was Eugeneand he was named after the town in Oregon where he was born and as far as firstimpressions go he often struck people as something of a gentle giant.  He was a couple of inches over six feet andhad the sleepy blue eyes of a child just woken up from a nap and when he readpoetry or even when he just spoke his voice was always full of a kind ofreverence that made you think he was paying closer attention to the world thanyou were. “How ‘bout it, Miles?” Swish said, continuing theconversation.  “What do you think helpswith writer’s block?” I didn’t know why Swish had directed the question toMiles.  It unnerved me that after Imentioned dropping out of Columbia, Bobby had let it slip that Miles was due tograduate from that very institution come June. The lenses of Miles’s glasses flashed white at us as he looked up insurprise. “Well,” he said, considering carefully, “I suppose readingalways helps.  They say in order to writeanything good, you ought to read much more than you write.” “Oh, I don’t know about all that,” I said.  I was suddenly in an ornery, contrarymood.  The way he had spoken withauthority on the subject antagonized me somehow.  “The most important thing a writer’s gotta dois stay true to his own ideas and write. I don’t read other people’s books when I try to write, I just read myown stuff over and over and I think that’s the way the real heavyweight authorsdo it.” Miles didn’t reply to this except to tighten his mouth andnod.  It was a polite nod and I sensedthere was a difference of opinion behind it and I was suddenly annoyed. “Anyway, fellas, I think I’ve given you the wrong ideaabout me because I’m not really all that stuck,” I said, deciding it was timefor a change of topic.  “I’ve writtenpiles and piles of stuff and I’m always getting new ideas.” This was mostly true, and the more I thought about it nowthe more I began to think perhaps it wasn’t writer’s block at all but more acase of my energies needing to build up in order to reach a kind of criticalmass.  Back then everyone in theneighborhood was talking about a certain famous hipster who had written anentire novel in three weeks on nothing but coffee and bennies and about how hehad let it build up until it had just come pouring out of him and about how theresult had been published by an actual publisher and I thought maybe that washow it might work for me, too.  If I justsoaked up the nervous energy of my generation and let it accumulate inside meuntil it spilled over the top I was sure eventually a great flood wouldcome.  Swish and Bobby and Pal all seemedlike part of this process and I was very glad they had inducted me into thegroup.  Even Miles was all right in theway that a rival can push you to do better work.  Perhaps it was the mixture of the whiskey andcoffee and beer and bennies but I suddenly had that high feeling you get whenyou sense you are in the middle of some kind of important nerve center.  I closed my eyes and felt the pulse of theVillage thundering through my veins and all at once I was very confident aboutall I was destined to accomplish. 2 Looking back on it now, I see that New York in the 50’smade for a unique scene.  If you lived inManhattan during that time you experienced the uniqueness in the colors andflavors of the city that were more defined and more distinct from one anotherthan they were in other cities or other times. If you ask me, I think it was the war that had made things thisway.  All the energy of the war effortwas now poured into the manufacture of neon signs, shiny chrome bumpers, brightplastic things and that meant all of a sudden there was a violent shade ofFormica to match every desire.  All of itwas for sale and people had lots of dough to spend and to top it off the atombomb was constantly hovering in the back of all our minds, its bright whiteflash and the shadow of its mushroom cloud casting a kind of imaginary yeturgent light over everything that surrounded us. Shortly after the fellas revived me at Swish’s apartment,I fell in regularly with the gang and soon enough I found out Miles was awriter, too.  I should’ve known all alongbecause everyone who was young and hip and living in New York at that time allwanted to do the same thing and that was to try and become a writer.  Years later they would want to become folkmusicians or else potters who threw odd-shaped clay vases but in ’58 everyonestill wanted to be a writer and in particular they wanted to write somethingtruer and purer than everything that had come before. There were a lot of different opinions as to what it tookto make yourself a good writer.  Thepeople in the city were always looking to get out and go West and the peopleout West were always looking to get into the city.  Everybody felt like they were on the outsidelooking in all the time when really it was just that the hipster scene tendedto turn everything inside out and the whole idea was that we were all outsiderstogether. I had always scribbled here and there but I didn’t try towrite in earnest until I left Columbia and got cut off and moved to the Villageand this was maybe a little ironic because My Old Man was an editor at a bigpublishing house.  He had wanted to be awriter himself but had gone a different way with that and had become an editorinstead, although he never said it that way to people who came for dinner.  When people came over for dinner he mostlyjust told jokes about writers.  It turnsout there are lots of jokes you can tell about writers. I had a lot of funny feelings about My Old Man.  On the one hand, there was some pretty lousybusiness he’d gotten into in Brooklyn that he didn’t think I knew about.  But on the other hand he was one of thoselarger-than-life types you can’t help but look up to in spite of yourself.  He had a magnetic personality.  Back in those days My Old Man was king ofwhat they called the three-martini lunch.  This meant that in dimly lit steakhouses all over Manhattan my fathermade bold, impetuous deals over gin and oysters.  That was how it was done.  Publishing was a place for men with ferocityand an appetite for life.  Sure, the shy,tweedy types survived in the business all right but it was the garrulous bon vivants who really thrived and lefttheir mark on the world.  Lunches werelong, expense accounts were generous, and the martinis often fueled tremendousquantities of flattery and praise.  Ofcourse all that booze fueled injuries too and the workday wasn’t really overuntil someone had been insulted by Norman Mailer or pulled out the old boxinggloves in one way or another. I was passionate about being a writer and My Old Man waspassionate about being an editor and you would think between the two of us this would make for a bang-upcombination, but my big problem was that My Old Man and I had our issues and Ihadn’t exactly told him about my latest ambitions.  He’d always expressed disappointment over mylackluster performance in school and now that I’d dropped out was spending allmy time in the Village he thought I was a jazz-crazed drunkard.  His idea of good jazz was Glenn Miller and itwas his personal belief that if you listened to any other kind you were adope-fiend of some sort. But whether or not My Old Man ever helped me out, I wasdetermined to make it as a writer.  Infact, sometimes it was more satisfying to think about becoming a writer withoutMy Old Man even knowing.  I’d written acouple of short stories that, in my eyes, were very good and it was onlylogical that in time I would write a novel and that would be good, too.  I thought a lot about what it would be likeonce I made it, the swell reviews I would get in the Times and the Herald Tribune aboutmy novel, the awards I’d probably win, and how all the newspaper men would wantto interview me over martinis at the 21 Club. But the problem with this is sometimes I got so caught up in my headwriting imaginary drafts of the good reviews I was bound to receive it made itdifficult to write the actual novel. On days when I was having trouble punching the typewriterI began to find little errands to run in the evenings that usually involved goingdown to the cafés in order to tell Swish and Bobby and Pal something importantI had discovered that day about writing and being and existence.  After I had delivered this message of courseit was necessary to stay and enjoy a beer together and toast the fact we hadbeen born to be philosophers and therefore understood what it was to really be . Sometimes Miles was there and sometimes he was not and I didn’t alwaysnotice the difference because he was so reserved and only hung around our groupin a peripheral way. But Miles was there one afternoon when I went to a café to write.  I had decided my crummy studio apartment waspartly to blame for my writer’s block and that I ought to try writing in acafé.  After all, Hemingway had writtenin cafés when he was just starting out in Paris and if that method had workedfor Hemingway then I supposed it was good enough for me.  The café I happened to choose was verycrowded that day and the tables were all taken when I got there but I spiedMiles at a cozy little table in the far corner of the room and just as Ispotted him he looked up and saw me too. “Miserable day outside,” I said, referring to therain. “Yes.” Miles and I had never spent time together on our own andnaturally now that were alone there was an awkwardness between us and it dawnedon both of us how little we truly knew each other.  I squinted at the items on the table in anattempt to surmise what he had been up to before I had come in. “Are you writing something too?” I asked, seeing thenotebook and the telltale ink stain on his thumb and forefinger. “I’m only fooling around,” Miles answered, but I couldtell this was a lie because peeking out of his notebook were a few typewrittenpages, which meant whatever Miles was working on he cared about enough to takethe trouble to type it up. “I see you own a typewriter,” I said, pointing to thepages. “The library does,” he said, looking embarrassed.  I couldn’t tell whether the embarrassment wasdue to the fact he was too poor to own a typewriter or because it was obvioushe took his writing more seriously than he’d wanted to let on. “They charge you for that?” I asked, trying to makeconversation. He nodded.  “Tencents a half hour.  It’s not toobad.  I’ve taught myself to type at a fairlygood speed now.” “That’s swell,” I said. “Say, do you mind if I settle in here and do a little scribbling of myown?” I asked, finally getting to my point. “Of course not,” Miles said, pushing a coffee mug and somepapers out of the way on the table.  Hehad a very polite, formal way about him and it was difficult to tell whether hetruly minded.  But whether he did or notdidn’t matter because after all he’d said yes and I needed to write and therereally weren’t any other tables and I wasn’t going to go look for another cafébecause by then it was really coming down cats and dogs outside.  I pulled out my composition book and fountainpen and set to work staring at the thin blue lines that ran across the whitepaper.  About ten or so minutes passedand I had made a very good study of the blank page.  Then my nose started to itch and my kneebegan to bounce under the table.  Ilooked up at Miles and watched him scrawling frantically in his notebook.  I was curious what it was that had gotten himworked up in a torrent like that.  He wasso absorbed in his writing he didn’t notice me staring at him.  Finally, I asked him what he was working on.  The first time I asked he did not hear me soI cleared my throat and asked again, more loudly.  He jumped as if I’d woken him out of a tranceand blinked at me. “It’s a short story, I suppose…” he said.  This was news to me because, like I said,nobody had bothered to tell me Miles wrote anything at all, let alonefiction.  Between his attending Columbiaand writing, I was beginning to feel a little unsettled by all the things wehad in common.  Something about Miles wasmaking me itchy around the collar. “I don’t know if it’s any good,” he said. “Say, why don’t you let me have a look at it?” I replied,catching him off guard and reaching for the notebook before he could put up afight.  “I know good fiction.  My Old Man is an editor at Bonwright.”  His eyes widened at this and I knew it hadtemporarily shut him up.  I flipped thenotebook open and moved my eyes over the tidy cursive on the page. It wasn’t terrible. Miles was a decent enough writer, all right – save for the fact that hewrote in a careful, old-fashioned voice, and that was probably on account ofhim being an educated Negro.  All theeducated Negroes I’d ever known were always a little stiff and took theireducations a little too seriously in my opinion.  But all and all, I could see he had a waywith words and it wasn’t half-bad.  I hadto admit I liked the story okay.  It wasabout two boys on the warfront who discover they’re half-brothers but they’vealways been competitors and don’t like each other.  When they get into a real bad scrape one hasthe option to let the other die and be off the hook for the death, but hehesitates. “How are you going to end it?” I said, coming to the placewhere the cursive trailed off.  Milesshrugged. “Maybe just like that,” he said.  “It was the hesitation that interestedme.” I shook my head. “He should hesitate all right,” I said. “And decide against his better sense to save his brother.  But then when he does, the other fellowshoots him with the dead German’s gun, like the sucker he is.”  Miles looked at me with raised eyebrows.  I could see my suggestion was unexpected. “I suppose that would… make quite a statement.” “Exactly,” I said, feeling magnanimous for loaning out mysuperior creativity, “It’s not worth writing if it doesn’t make astatement.”  Miles looked at me and Icould already see he wasn’t going to write it the way I suggested, which was amistake.  It was a good twist and I hadmade a nice gift out of it for him and it was awfully annoying that he wasn’tgoing to take the wonderful gift I had just bestowed upon him. “Well, anyway,” I said, “suit yourself with theending.” I handed the journal back to him and attempted to get backto work.  Miles sat there a momentlooking at me with a wary expression on his face.  Then he turned back to his own work.  We were silent together and all at once thewords started coming and I found I could write and for several minutes the onlysound you could hear at our table came from the scratching of our duelingfountain pens. But it was no good. I had helped Miles along with his plot and now I couldn’t get it out ofmy head.  I was off and running andwriting something but soon enough I realized I was just writing his story allover again, but better.  The thing thatreally got to me as I wrote was that it really ought to have been my story in the first place.  You shouldalways write what you know and I was something of an authority on unwantedrelatives, but of course Miles couldn’t know that.  Now that he had started writing that story Icouldn’t go and write anything similar, even if he was going to botch the ending. “How’d you come up with the idea for that story anyway?” Iasked, feeling irritated that I hadn’t thought of it first.  Miles looked up. “I was trying to remember some of my father’s storiesabout the Battle of the Marne; that’s why I picked the setting.  And the idea of brothers and all the rest ofit…” he shrugged, “…just came out of my imagination.  Like I said, I’m not sure it’s any good.  I usually can’t tell about my own work untilseveral drafts and a few months later.” “Well, it has potential. I wouldn’t take it too hard,” I said. “You strike me as a guy who workspretty hard at it, and that’s what counts, right?” Miles looked at me, not saying anything. “Say, I’m thirsty,” I said.  “Why don’t we order up something strongerthan coffee?” After a brief bout of resistance he could see I wasn’tgoing to take no for an answer.  We spentthe afternoon drinking and talking about the Pulitzer and the Nobel and thedifferences between French writers and Russian writers and to tell the truth Ihad a decent enough time talking to Miles. I decided it would be fine if we ran into each other on our own again,so long as I didn’t have to sit across from him as he scribbled away in hisnotebook, writing the kind of stories I should’ve been writing but with all the wrong endings. Read more


A Very Long Engagement

War and Revolution in Russia, 1914-22: The Collapse of Tsarism and the Establishment of Soviet Power (European History in Perspective)

How Russia Shaped the Modern World: From Art to Anti-Semitism, Ballet to Bolshevism (Princeton Paperbacks)

Review "[Marks] examines the way that Russian ideas, social models and political programs have spread across the wider world. . . . The coverage is broad: from Marx to Marks, so to speak. The book is clear, often understated and always unpretentious; it contains several refreshingly sane and lucid accounts of complex and emotive subjects. It also managed not to be bland." ---Stephen Lovell, Times Literary Supplement "A valuable, accessible, and comprehensive guide. . . . A rich example of the capacity of intellectual history to carry us across borders and over centuries. . . . It is highly recommended for a broad readership." ---Anne Gorsuch, History Today "A scholarly and thought-provoking book." ― Choice "A number of books have explored the West's long and controversial influence on Russia. Few, however, have explored the reverse flow of ideas, and none better than this concise, graceful, amazingly wide-ranging book." ---Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs "An extraordinarily wide-ranging and exhaustively researched study of Russia's influence on the world from the 1880s to the present. . . . [A] fascinating, complex, and rich text that makes compelling arguments about Russia's influence upon the world. This work should be of interest not only to many Russianists, but also to a more general audience with little or no background in Russia." ---Rebecca Epstein Matveyev, Slavic and East European Journal "This is an imaginative, synthetic, and stimulating exploration of one of the major phenomena of our world, the Russian contribution to the revolt against the modern west. . . . [It] is a marvelous introduction to that antimodern revolution for the general reader, the student, and even the specialist." ---Robert C. Williams, Slavic Review Review "Deep, perceptive, and thought provoking, this is a work of breathtaking sweep and imagination, massive learning, and unflagging interest. It is also beautifully written―flowing and full of intellectual excitement." ―Richard Stites, Georgetown University "This is an astonishingly broad and ambitious project, one that at first seems impossible but then slowly grows on the reader―in plausibility, synthesizing intelligence, and explanatory power. Marks seems to know the contours of everything relating to Russian ideas, their politics as well as their expression through literature, visual art, dance, theater, both in domestic contexts and around the world. His thesis will cause a stir. But Russian culture has rarely appeared as monumentally integrated and influential as within the pages of this book." ―Caryl Emerson, Princeton University From the Back Cover "Deep, perceptive, and thought provoking, this is a work of breathtaking sweep and imagination, massive learning, and unflagging interest. It is also beautifully written--flowing and full of intellectual excitement." --Richard Stites, Georgetown University "This is an astonishingly broad and ambitious project, one that at first seems impossible but then slowly grows on the reader--in plausibility, synthesizing intelligence, and explanatory power. Marks seems to know the contours of everything relating to Russian ideas, their politics as well as their expression through literature, visual art, dance, theater, both in domestic contexts and around the world. His thesis will cause a stir. But Russian culture has rarely appeared as monumentally integrated and influential as within the pages of this book." --Caryl Emerson, Princeton University About the Author Steven G. Marks is Professor of History at Clemson University and the author of Road to Power: The Trans-Siberian Railroad and the Colonization of Asian Russia, 1850 -1917 . Read more

Crows of the Desert: The Memoirs of Levon Yotnakhparian

Occupational Therapy: The First 30 Years 1900 to 1930

Healing the Nation: Prisoners of War, Medicine and Nationalism in Turkey, 1914-1939

Review 'Weaved together in a comprehensive work with inquisitive reasoning and clever writing style, [ Healing the Nation ] deserves a warm welcome to historiography.' -- Sanem Güvenç Salgırlı, Insight Turkey 'This is a fascinating study, readable, always interesting, well written and set out and based on extensive primary research in the Ottoman archives, in the Public Record Office, in the US national archives, in the camp newspapers and drawing on a host of other material. As a study of the health consequences of war, Healing the Nation should appeal to doctors and psychiatrists as well as students of late Ottoman and early republican Turkish history.' -- Jeremy Salt, Bilkent University, Social History of Medicine, vol 27, no 3 'Yanikdag (Univ. of Richmond) has written a fascinating book about Ottoman prisoners of war during WW I and the development of the Republic of Turkey and Turkish identity...A very valuable study for all interested in military and medical history as well as the development of nation-states.' -- R. W. Zens Le Moyne College, Choice 'The original sources and new insights offered by Healing the Nation gives scholars of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and the modern Middle East much to consider. Few, if any, works preceding this study have considered the history and legacy of wartime internment, thus adding considerably to the breadth of our understanding of World War I.' -- Ryan Gingeras, The American Historical Review Review This highly original and impeccably researched study helps us understand not only the workings of the Ottoman military establishment but also the state formation in the late Ottoman Empire and the influence of German theories of medicine, psychiatry and eugenics in this complex process. -- M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Princeton University From the Back Cover ‘This highly original and impeccably researched study helps us understand not only the workings of the Ottoman military establishment but also the state formation in the late Ottoman Empire and the influence of German theories of medicine, psychiatry and eugenics in this complex process.’ M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs, Near Eastern Studies Department, Princeton University Unique sources reveal how the Great War and its psychological fallout influenced the construction of Turkish identity and nationalism What did Ottoman prisoners of war imprisoned in Russia and Egypt during the Great War understand of nation, culture and Islam? And what role did science play in the imagined future of the nation for the Ottoman-Turkish psychiatrists who diagnosed prisoners following post-war repatriation? Doctors’ interpretation of prisoners’ health issues led to far-reaching questions about the relationship between the prisoners’ physical bodies and mental states on the one hand, and the body politic and collective mentality of the Turkish Republic during the interwar period, on the other. During the interwar years, when the military’s vigour was still taken to be a reflection of the nation's health, doctors projected the worrisome picture of the shattered nerves of both prisoner and non-prisoner alike onto the nation at large. The Great War revealed the poor health of the nation and gave medical men the chance to regenerate it through eugenics. Just as officer prisoners in the camps excluded ignorant peasants from their discursive construction of the nation, the psychiatrists disqualified those seen to threaten the nation’s body. Key Features • Uses previously untapped sources to reveal a new story of prisoners, medicine and nationalism • Broadens the discussion of nationalism to include both ideological and biological factors • Explores the social, demographic, psychological and medical impact of the Great War on the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey Yücel Yanıkdağ is Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond. Cover image: Vaveyla, Prisoner of War newspaper masthead, hand-drawn image, Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, image courtesy of Library of the Turkish Parliament (TBMM), Ankara. The Campaign in Mesopotamia during the First World War: a group of Turkish prisoners captured during the action of Tuz Khurmatli, Varges Ariel, catalogue number: Q 24659 © Imperial War Museum. Cover design: [EUP logo] www.euppublishing.com About the Author Yücel Yanıkdağ is Associate Professor of History at the University of Richmond. Born in Istanbul, he received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. A Fulbright-Hays scholar, his research interests include: social and cultural history of the Great War, social history of medicine, and Turkish nationalism. His articles have appeared in Journal of Contemporary History, Middle Eastern Studies, and The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Mediterranean. Read more

War's Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America

Review “Beth Linker has deftly and expertly woven together numerous historical strands to produce an important book deserving of a wide readership. Basing her work on a review of official government documents, popular literature, professional medical and military journals, and, where possible, the voices of soldier-patients themselves, Linker presents a thoughtful and balanced account of the origin, development, and legacies of army rehabilitation policies, practices, and programs. Because of its broad historical scope coupled with its probing scholarly analysis, War’s Waste ought to be rewarding for medical and military historians; historians of disability studies, gender, and technology; health and welfare policy analysts; American Studies scholars (especially those focused on the Progressive Era); and physical rehabilitation specialists—along with orthopedic surgeons and physiatrists who may be interested in the vocational roots of their respective professions.” -- J. T. H. Connor ― Isis “In an erudite and gracefully written first book entitled War’s Waste , Beth Linker explores the cultural, political, and medical meanings ascribed to the rehabilitation of disabled soldiers and veterans during the World War I era. . . . Deftly wielding insights from the history of medicine, gender analysis, and historical institutionalism . . . War’s Waste will be standard reading for those interested in many different fields of historical analysis: modern medicine, the Progressive Era, disability, and the veterans’ welfare system. At a time when thousands of American veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with disability and rehabilitation, the cultural, political, and institutional foundations of their care—and its inadequacies—deserve this special attention.” -- Stephen R. Ortiz ― Journal of American History “ War’s Waste is a well researched and deeply rewarding history of soldiers’ rehabilitation, noteworthy for both the clarity of the author’s prose and the persuasiveness of her arguments. . . . Beth Linker has written an invaluable and all too timely study, one that will interest historians of medicine, policy historians and disability scholars.” -- John M. Kinder, Oklahoma State University ― Social History of Medicine “Reading Beth Linker’s excellent book on rehabilitation of American soldiers disabled in World War I is a thrilling experience.” -- Leo van Bergen ― Medicine, Conflict, and Survival “This pathbreaking study opens up exciting avenues for future research.” -- Jennifer D. Keene, Chapman University ― American Historical Review “Recommended.” -- R. D. Arcari, University of Connecticut School of Medicine ― Choice “[A] compelling study. . . . War’s Waste offers important insights into the developments of the ethic of rehabilitation in the Progressive Era and would be useful to any historian of the period.” -- Kathleen Brian ― H-Net “A useful addition to the work undertaken in the study of disability as it relates to the First World War. Linker’s book is timely. It not only reveals a little-known area of history and war, but also highlights historical continuities surrounding concerns over the levels of support of those who were sent away to fight and returned maimed.” -- Julie Anderson, University of Kent ― Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era “ War’s Waste is a fine book. Linker has laid down her marker as an important scholar of keen ability and judgment in the field of medical history.” -- Christine Hallett, University of Manchester ― Nursing History Review “The rich and important history presented in War’s Waste is relevant to readers wishing to understand the roots of the specialty of rehabilitation medicine but more broadly will likewise be relevant to those interested in the influence of social and political factors on medical practices.” -- Elliot J. Roth, Northwestern University ― Journal of the American Medical Association “This book is not merely the latest contribution to the ever-growing body of scholarship on disabled soldiers and their rehabilitation. It is one of the most important and readable studies to appear in recent years. . . . War’s Waste plainly deserves to become core reading among scholars and to be read by a wider, nonacademic audience interested in learning about the social and cultural history of America during the Great War.” ― Bulletin of the History of Medicine “Wounded and dismembered soldiers have always excited anxieties among citizens, as well as governmental officials. Beth Linker’s history of the rehabilitation of American men wounded during World War I focuses on the politics of rehabilitation. Reconstructing men’s sense of their own manliness turns out to be as important as ensuring that they remain useful as workers and patriots. War’s Waste is a persuasive and eloquent account of personal and political struggles in the aftermath of war. A must-read for anyone curious about what happens when mutilated soldiers return home.” -- Joanna Bourke, Birkbeck, University of London“Carefully researched and compellingly argued, this is an important contribution to our understanding of the complicated relationships among public policy, orthopedic and rehabilitative medicine, and social values. Its relevance to today’s challenging realities makes Linker’s penetrating study of an earlier war relevant to a wide spectrum of potential readers.” -- Charles E. Rosenberg, Harvard University “ War’s Waste describes the transformation of America’s veterans’ policy from pensions to rehabilitation. Beth Linker convincingly argues that the rise of orthopedics, physiotherapy, prosthetics, and the modern army hospital during World War I were all part of an ideological and policy backlash against the Civil War veterans pension system, and aimed to turn wounded soldiers into productive members of the labor force. Combining sophisticated analysis with highly readable prose, War’s Waste will appeal to historians and scholars of medicine, policy, disability, the body, gender studies, and World War I and military history.” -- Beatrix Hoffman, Northern Illinois University“This thoughtful, provocative, deeply researched and beautifully written study shows how the US government took responsibility for soldiers who were physically injured and maimed in World War I, and why there was support for government intervention. Linker’s answer, superbly dissected and presented, is that there was a brew of intersecting motives: from American ideals of masculinity, modernity, and militarism to work and self-reliance.” -- Rosemary A. Stevens, Weill Cornell Medical College“ War’s Waste is far more than a work of medical history. It is also an important contribution to the political and social history of the United States. Linker’s account combines larger political and cultural issues with a careful description and analysis of day-to-day medical practices.” -- Thomas Schlich, author of The Origins of Organ Transplantation Surgery and Laboratory Science, 1880–1930“ War’s Waste connects the history of medicine to the historical experience of disability. Beth Linker shows that World War I doctors developed new rehabilitation technologies they hoped would cure disability in response to the vast human and economic costs of the war’s new technologies of mass carnage. But soldiers with disabilities also played a key role in this medicalization. They rejected claims that rehabilitation produced quick cures, and they demanded additional medical and nursing treatment. Linker’s sensitive and moving examples bring to life the economic, gender, and race conflicts that shaped the first generation to experience twentieth-century rehabilitation.” -- Martin S. Pernick, University of Michigan About the Author Beth Linker is associate professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality (Modern War Studies (Hardcover))

Review "The single most comprehensive and scholarly account of the 369th Infantry Regiment to date and covers the unit's creation, wartime service, and postwar attempts at recognition. . . . brings a welcome and much needed clarity to the suffering, sacrifices, and heroics of some of America's finest military men."-- Journal of African American History "As the centennial of World War I continues, much more is being written about that horrific conflict, and this book reminds us of the significant but often forgotten African American contributions to Allied victory."-- On Point "An outstanding work."-- New York Military Affairs Symposium "This book is the definitive history of the 369th Regiment in World War I, an outstanding black infantry regiment comprised of 3,000 men led by a white command element. It is the most complete, scholarly, and fully documented account of this famous (and underpublicized) unit, unlikely to be superseded. The authors, both prominent historians, are renowned experts in their fields."-- Joint Force Quarterly "A book that readers of military history will cherish and general readers and lovers of history will find informative. It is both a reference book and an important historical narrative that lays the ground for the civil rights movement."-- New World Review "The authors mesh the military history of the regiment with the social history of the general movement for African-American equality. They analyze nonfiction and fictional works that tell the story of the regiment in such a way as to convey a vision of the African-American struggle for true freedom."-- Key Reporter "Belongs on the shelf of any serious student of the 15th/369th Regiment, American involvement in World War I, race relations in the early twentieth century, and African American history."-- Journal of Military History "Librarians need to make room for Sammons and Morrow's study because their work delves quite deeply into the background of the regiment's formation, the culture of the early-20th-century Harlem, and the complex issues surrounding the formation of an African American fighting unit in an era when Jim Crow was a dominant feature of the US and supported by the federal government from its president on down. Essential."-- Choice "From a literary viewpoint, [the book] is a masterpiece of scholarly research. . . . A pleasurable read. Like a vintage wine, Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War is a reading experience to be savored."-- African American Golfer's Digest "A thoroughly researched, carefully argued, and lucidly written history. By examining the challenges faced by this African American regiment on World War battlefields and in the arenas of political power in New York City, Albany, and Washington, D.C., the authors provide important insights not only into the black experience but also into the military history of the nation. This is undoubtedly one of the best books published in recent years on American military history."-- Robert A. Doughty , author of Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War "The history of the 369th Infantry Regiment has finally been told. Jeffrey T. Sammons and John H. Morrow, Jr., with this remarkable work of collaborative scholarship and meticulous research, have produced the definitive account of the most famous African American fighting unit in World War I."-- Chad Williams , author of Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era About the Author Jeffrey T. Sammons is professor in the Department of History at New York University and the author of Beyond the Ring: The Role of Boxing in American Society. John H. Morrow, Jr., Franklin Professor of History at the University of Georgia, is the author of several books, including The Great War: An Imperial History.

Over Here: The First World War and American Society

Review "Kennedy analyzes American' bitter domestic fight "for the character of American economic, social, and political life." Wars on the American homefront haven't received their proper historical treatment, but Kennedy's seminal work begins to fill that void." -- Chronicles About the Author David Kennedy is Donald J. MacLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Freedom From Fear , a volume in the Oxford History of the United States series.

Glass

About the Author Ellen Hopkins is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fourteen young adult novels, as well as the adult novels Triangles, Collateral , and Love Lies Beneath . She lives with her family in Carson City, Nevada, where she has founded Ventana Sierra, a nonprofit youth housing and resource initiative. Visit her at EllenHopkins.com and on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter at @EllenHopkinsLit.

Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting Documents of the Magisterium

About the Author Rev. Francis A. Sullivan, S.J. taught ecclesiology at the Gregorian University in Rome for 35 years until 1993. Since then he has taught in the Theology Department at Boston College. His other books include 'Creative Fidelity', 'Charisms and Charismatic Renewal', 'The Church We Believe In' (Paulist Press), and 'From Apostles to Bishops' (Paulist Press).

Confessions of a Surgeon: The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated...Life Behind the O.R. Doors

From Booklist The life of a general surgeon is more guts than glamour. Often sleep-deprived and standing on his feet for hours, this physician-author navigates anatomical intricacies and deals with unexpected bleeding. Not to mention the pressure of a full bladder midway through an operation or worrying about a potential malpractice lawsuit. The job requirements of his profession include good judgment, an ability to think and act quickly, self-reliance, and a fondness for using one’s hands. The job description sounds stringent: “Show me where the problem is so I can fix it, remove it, rearrange it, drain it, or pass you on to someone else.” Yet in a series of sentimental clinical vignettes, the doctor divulges a wide range of feelings: pride, guilt, humility, regrets, failure, and, ultimately, burnout. His patients teach him many lessons. Trust makes the physician-patient relationship work. Detachment can be difficult. Imperfection is inevitable. Survival (of patients as well as the doctor) is the bottom line. Honest and angry, this cutting memoir by a midcareer surgeon feels like an act of penitence. --Tony Miksanek About the Author Paul A. Ruggieri, M.D. , is a practicing board-certified general/laparoscopic surgeon who has been operating for over 20 years. Dr. Ruggieri performed his surgical training at the world-renowned Washington University School of Medicine, Barnes Hospital, in St. Louis. He then spent three years as an active duty general surgeon in the U.S. Army. Currently, he is former chief of the department of surgery at a large community hospital in Fall River, Massachusetts, the very hospital he helped build as an ironworker before attending medical school nearly 30 years ago. Dr. Ruggieri has written several books for patients. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife and three stepsons. Visit his website at www.paulruggieri.com.