<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:bsbl="http://spiders.com/specs/xml/bsbl/">
<channel>
<title><![CDATA[Cmerva's Wish List]]></title>

<description><![CDATA[]]></description>

<link><![CDATA[http://www.indiebound.org/users/cmerva/wishlist]]></link>

<language><![CDATA[en-us]]></language>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Book of Basketball]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345511768</link>
<description><![CDATA[There is only one writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA.* Bill Simmons, the from-the-womb hoops addict known to millions as ESPN.com’s Sports Guy, is that writer. And The Book of Basketball is that book. Nowhere in the roundball universe will you find another single volume that covers as much in such depth as this wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining look at the past, present, and future of pro basketball.From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens–and then closes, once and for all–every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind, five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball.Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.* More to the point, he’s the only one crazy enough to try to pull it off. ]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Book of Basketball]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Gladwell; Bill Simmons]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[ESPN]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780345511768]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[There is only one writer on the planet who possesses enough basketball knowledge and passion to write the definitive book on the NBA.* Bill Simmons, the from-the-womb hoops addict known to millions as ESPN.com’s Sports Guy, is that writer. And The Book of Basketball is that book. Nowhere in the roundball universe will you find another single volume that covers as much in such depth as this wildly opinionated and thoroughly entertaining look at the past, present, and future of pro basketball.From the age-old question of who actually won the rivalry between Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to the one about which team was truly the best of all time, Simmons opens–and then closes, once and for all–every major pro basketball debate. Then he takes it further by completely reevaluating not only how NBA Hall of Fame inductees should be chosen but how the institution must be reshaped from the ground up, the result being the Pyramid: Simmons’s one-of-a-kind, five-level shrine to the ninety-six greatest players in the history of pro basketball. And ultimately he takes fans to the heart of it all, as he uses a conversation with one NBA great to uncover that coveted thing: The Secret of Basketball.Comprehensive, authoritative, controversial, hilarious, and impossible to put down (even for Celtic-haters), The Book of Basketball offers every hardwood fan a courtside seat beside the game’s finest, funniest, and fiercest chronicler.* More to the point, he’s the only one crazy enough to try to pull it off. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-27T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Uncommon Sense]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780226041018</link>
<description><![CDATA[On December 5, 2004, the still-developing blogosphere took one of its biggest steps toward mainstream credibility, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary S. Becker and renowned jurist and legal scholar Richard A. Posner announced the formation of the Becker-Posner Blog.  In no time, the blog had established a wide readership and reputation as a reliable source of lively, thought-provoking commentary on current events, its pithy and profound weekly essays highlighting the value of economic reasoning when applied to unexpected topics. Uncommon Sense gathers the most important and innovative entries from the blog, arranged by topic, along with updates and even reconsiderations when subsequent events have shed new light on a question. Whether it’s Posner making the economic case for the legalization of gay marriage, Becker arguing in favor of the sale of human organs for transplant, or even the pair of scholars vigorously disagreeing about the utility of collective punishment, the writing is always clear, the interplay energetic, and the resulting discussion deeply informed and intellectually substantial.  To have a single thinker of the stature of a Becker or Posner addressing questions of this nature would make for fascinating reading; to have both, writing and responding to each other, is an exceptionally rare treat. With Uncommon Sense, they invite the adventurous reader to join them on a whirlwind intellectual journey. All they ask is that you leave your preconceptions behind.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Uncommon Sense]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Gary S. Becker; Richard A. Posner]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[University Of Chicago Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780226041018]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[On December 5, 2004, the still-developing blogosphere took one of its biggest steps toward mainstream credibility, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary S. Becker and renowned jurist and legal scholar Richard A. Posner announced the formation of the Becker-Posner Blog.  In no time, the blog had established a wide readership and reputation as a reliable source of lively, thought-provoking commentary on current events, its pithy and profound weekly essays highlighting the value of economic reasoning when applied to unexpected topics. Uncommon Sense gathers the most important and innovative entries from the blog, arranged by topic, along with updates and even reconsiderations when subsequent events have shed new light on a question. Whether it’s Posner making the economic case for the legalization of gay marriage, Becker arguing in favor of the sale of human organs for transplant, or even the pair of scholars vigorously disagreeing about the utility of collective punishment, the writing is always clear, the interplay energetic, and the resulting discussion deeply informed and intellectually substantial.  To have a single thinker of the stature of a Becker or Posner addressing questions of this nature would make for fascinating reading; to have both, writing and responding to each other, is an exceptionally rare treat. With Uncommon Sense, they invite the adventurous reader to join them on a whirlwind intellectual journey. All they ask is that you leave your preconceptions behind.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-11-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Downtown Owl]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781416544180</link>
<description><![CDATA[New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Klosterman's First NovelSomewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.  Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met.  Like a colder, Reagan-era version of The Last Picture Show fused with Friday Night Lights, Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a (very real) blizzard, it's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time...but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Downtown Owl]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chuck Klosterman]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Scribner]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781416544180]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Klosterman's First NovelSomewhere in North Dakota, there is a town called Owl that isn't there. Disco is over, but punk never happened. They don't have cable. They don't really have pop culture, unless you count grain prices and alcoholism. People work hard and then they die. They hate the government and impregnate teenage girls. But that's not nearly as awful as it sounds; in fact, sometimes it's perfect.  Mitch Hrlicka lives in Owl. He plays high school football and worries about his weirdness, or lack thereof. Julia Rabia just moved to Owl. She gets free booze and falls in love with a self-loathing bison farmer who listens to Goats Head Soup. Horace Jones has resided in Owl for seventy-three years. He consumes a lot of coffee, thinks about his dead wife, and understands the truth. They all know each other completely, except that they've never met.  Like a colder, Reagan-era version of The Last Picture Show fused with Friday Night Lights, Chuck Klosterman's Downtown Owl is the unpretentious, darkly comedic story of how it feels to exist in a community where rural mythology and violent reality are pretty much the same thing. Loaded with detail and unified by a (very real) blizzard, it's technically about certain people in a certain place at a certain time...but it's really about a problem. And the problem is this: What does it mean to be a normal person? And there is no answer. But in Downtown Owl, what matters more is how you ask the question.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2008-09-16T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Can I Keep My Jersey?]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345491367</link>
<description><![CDATA[He’s been called a journeyman. Even Paul wouldn’t dispute that classification. Regardless, Bill Simmons, ESPN.com’s “The Sports Guy,” has said of Paul Shirley, “We could finally have an answer to the question ‘What would it be like if one of our friends was an NBA player?”There’s no denying that Paul Shirley is the closest thing pro basketball’s got to Odysseus. In Homeric fashion, he has logged time practically everywhere in the roundball universe, from six NBA cities to pro leagues in Spain and Greece to North America’s pro ball Siberia, the minor leagues. Hell, he’s even played in the real Siberia. And in Can I Keep My Jersey?, Shirley finally puts down roots long enough to deliver one of the great locker-room chronicles of the modern age. With sharp elbows and an even sharper wit, Shirley–whose writings have been described as “wildly entertaining” by The Wall Street Journal–drops hilarious commentary, revealing which teams have the best cheerleaders (he’s spent many a time-out watching them ply their trade), why Christ is rapidly becoming every team’s “sixth man,” and even the best ways to get bloodstains out of your game uniform, using only an ordinary bar of soap and a hotel bathroom sink.From sharing the court with Kobe and Shaq to perusing the food court at some mall in a bush-league burg; from taking pregame layups to getting laid out by a stray knee from an NBA power forward; from hopping a limo to the team’s charter jet to dashing to catch the van home from a B-league game in Tijuana, Shirley dishes on what it’s like to try to make it as a professional athlete. Can I Keep My Jersey? is a rollicking, thoughtful, even thought-provoking insider’s look at a pro baller’s life on the fringe. Like Jim Bouton’s Ball Four or John Feinstein’s A Season on the Brink, Shirley’s odyssey deserves to find a home on every sports fan’s bookshelf.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Can I Keep My Jersey?]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Paul Shirley; Chuck Klosterman]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Villard]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780345491367]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[He’s been called a journeyman. Even Paul wouldn’t dispute that classification. Regardless, Bill Simmons, ESPN.com’s “The Sports Guy,” has said of Paul Shirley, “We could finally have an answer to the question ‘What would it be like if one of our friends was an NBA player?”There’s no denying that Paul Shirley is the closest thing pro basketball’s got to Odysseus. In Homeric fashion, he has logged time practically everywhere in the roundball universe, from six NBA cities to pro leagues in Spain and Greece to North America’s pro ball Siberia, the minor leagues. Hell, he’s even played in the real Siberia. And in Can I Keep My Jersey?, Shirley finally puts down roots long enough to deliver one of the great locker-room chronicles of the modern age. With sharp elbows and an even sharper wit, Shirley–whose writings have been described as “wildly entertaining” by The Wall Street Journal–drops hilarious commentary, revealing which teams have the best cheerleaders (he’s spent many a time-out watching them ply their trade), why Christ is rapidly becoming every team’s “sixth man,” and even the best ways to get bloodstains out of your game uniform, using only an ordinary bar of soap and a hotel bathroom sink.From sharing the court with Kobe and Shaq to perusing the food court at some mall in a bush-league burg; from taking pregame layups to getting laid out by a stray knee from an NBA power forward; from hopping a limo to the team’s charter jet to dashing to catch the van home from a B-league game in Tijuana, Shirley dishes on what it’s like to try to make it as a professional athlete. Can I Keep My Jersey? is a rollicking, thoughtful, even thought-provoking insider’s look at a pro baller’s life on the fringe. Like Jim Bouton’s Ball Four or John Feinstein’s A Season on the Brink, Shirley’s odyssey deserves to find a home on every sports fan’s bookshelf.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2007-05-15T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Eating the Dinosaur]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781416544203</link>
<description><![CDATA[A Book of All-New Pop Culture Pieces by Chuck KlostermanChuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming. In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.Q: What is this book about?A: Well, that's difficult to say. I haven't read it yet - I've just clicked on it and casually glanced at this webpage. There clearly isn't a plot. I've heard there's a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don't laugh when they're inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there's a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I'm misinformed.Q: Is there a larger theme?A: Oh, something about reality. "What is reality," maybe? No, that's not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened.Q: Should I read this book?A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana's In Utero? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don't need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who absolutely hate it.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Eating the Dinosaur]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Chuck Klosterman]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Scribner]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781416544203]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[A Book of All-New Pop Culture Pieces by Chuck KlostermanChuck Klosterman has chronicled rock music, film, and sports for almost fifteen years. He's covered extreme metal, extreme nostalgia, disposable art, disposable heroes, life on the road, life through the television, urban uncertainty and small-town weirdness. Through a variety of mediums and with a multitude of motives, he's written about everything he can think of (and a lot that he's forgotten). The world keeps accelerating, but the pop ideas keep coming. In Eating the Dinosaur, Klosterman is more entertaining and incisive than ever. Whether he's dissecting the boredom of voyeurism, the reason why music fan's inevitably hate their favorite band's latest album, or why we love watching can't-miss superstars fail spectacularly, Klosterman remains obsessed with the relationship between expectation, reality, and living history. It's amateur anthropology for the present tense, and sometimes it's incredibly funny.Q: What is this book about?A: Well, that's difficult to say. I haven't read it yet - I've just clicked on it and casually glanced at this webpage. There clearly isn't a plot. I've heard there's a lot of stuff about time travel in this book, and quite a bit about violence and Garth Brooks and why Germans don't laugh when they're inside grocery stores. Ralph Nader and Ralph Sampson play significant roles. I think there are several pages about Rear Window and football and Mad Men and why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women. Supposedly there's a chapter outlining all the things the Unabomber was right about, but perhaps I'm misinformed.Q: Is there a larger theme?A: Oh, something about reality. "What is reality," maybe? No, that's not it. Not exactly. I get the sense that most of the core questions dwell on the way media perception constructs a fake reality that ends up becoming more meaningful than whatever actually happened.Q: Should I read this book?A: Probably. Do you see a clear relationship between the Branch Davidian disaster and the recording of Nirvana's In Utero? Does Barack Obama make you want to drink Pepsi? Does ABBA remind you of AC/DC? If so, you probably don't need to read this book. You probably wrote this book. But I suspect everybody else will totally love it, except for the ones who absolutely hate it.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-20T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Consider the Lobster]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316156110</link>
<description><![CDATA[Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult-video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters. ]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Consider the Lobster]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[David Foster Wallace]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Little, Brown and Company]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780316156110]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult-video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters. ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2005-12-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Thelonious Monk]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780684831909</link>
<description><![CDATA["The piano ain't got no wrong notes!" So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk's hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music.In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as well as on a decade of prodigious research, prize-winning historian Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light a startlingly different Thelonious Monk -- witty, intelligent, generous, politically engaged, brutally honest, and a devoted father and husband. Indeed, Thelonious Monk is essentially a love story. It is a story of familial love, beginning with Monk's enslaved ancestors from whom Thelonious inherited an appreciation for community, freedom, and black traditions of sacred and secular song. It is about a doting mother who scrubbed floors to pay for piano lessons and encouraged her son to follow his dream. It is the story of romance, from Monk's initial heartbreaks to his lifelong commitment to his muse, the extraordinary Nellie Monk. And it is about his unique friendship with the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, a scion of the famous Rothschild family whose relationship with Monk and other jazz musicians has long been the subject of speculation and rumor. Nellie, Nica, and various friends and family sustained Monk during the long periods of joblessness, bipolar episodes, incarceration, health crises, and other tragic and difficult moments.Above all, Thelonious Monk is the gripping saga of an artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz's most original composer.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Thelonious Monk]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Robin Kelley]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Free Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780684831909]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA["The piano ain't got no wrong notes!" So ranted Thelonious Sphere Monk, who proved his point every time he sat down at the keyboard. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers. Yet throughout much of his life, his musical contribution took a backseat to tales of his reputed behavior. Writers tended to obsess over Monk's hats or his proclivity to dance on stage. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. But these labels tell us little about the man or his music.In the first book on Thelonious Monk based on exclusive access to the Monk family papers and private recordings, as well as on a decade of prodigious research, prize-winning historian Robin D. G. Kelley brings to light a startlingly different Thelonious Monk -- witty, intelligent, generous, politically engaged, brutally honest, and a devoted father and husband. Indeed, Thelonious Monk is essentially a love story. It is a story of familial love, beginning with Monk's enslaved ancestors from whom Thelonious inherited an appreciation for community, freedom, and black traditions of sacred and secular song. It is about a doting mother who scrubbed floors to pay for piano lessons and encouraged her son to follow his dream. It is the story of romance, from Monk's initial heartbreaks to his lifelong commitment to his muse, the extraordinary Nellie Monk. And it is about his unique friendship with the Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter, a scion of the famous Rothschild family whose relationship with Monk and other jazz musicians has long been the subject of speculation and rumor. Nellie, Nica, and various friends and family sustained Monk during the long periods of joblessness, bipolar episodes, incarceration, health crises, and other tragic and difficult moments.Above all, Thelonious Monk is the gripping saga of an artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the twentieth century. Elegantly written and rich with humor and pathos, Thelonious Monk is the definitive work on modern jazz's most original composer.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-06T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Nixonland]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780743243032</link>
<description><![CDATA[Told with urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America's turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency.Perlstein's epic account begins in the blood and fire of the 1965 Watts riots, nine months after Lyndon Johnson's historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus in the United States. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon.Between 1965 and 1972, America experienced no less than a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know now was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern, Richard J. Daley, and George Wallace but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Charles Manson, John Lindsay, and Jane Fonda. There are tantalizing glimpses of Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry, and even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove and William Clinton -- and a not so ambitious young man named George W. Bush.Cataclysms tell the story of Nixonland:Angry blacks burning down their neighborhoods in cities across the land as white suburbanites defend home and hearth with shotgunsThe student insurgency over the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic National ConventionThe fissuring of the Democratic Party into warring factions manipulated by the "dirty tricks" of Nixon and his Committee to Re-Elect the PresidentRichard Nixon pledging a new dawn of national unity, governing more divisively than any president before him, then directing a criminal conspiracy, the Watergate cover-up, from the Oval OfficeThen, in November 1972, Nixon, harvesting the bitterness and resentment born of America's turmoil, was reelected in a landslide even bigger than Johnson's 1964 victory, not only setting the stage for his dramatic 1974 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide that characterizes America today.Filled with prodigious research and driven by a powerful narrative, Rick Perlstein's magisterial account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Nixonland]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Rick Perlstein]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Scribner]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780743243032]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Told with urgency and sharp political insight, Nixonland recaptures America's turbulent 1960s and early 1970s and reveals how Richard Nixon rose from the political grave to seize and hold the presidency.Perlstein's epic account begins in the blood and fire of the 1965 Watts riots, nine months after Lyndon Johnson's historic landslide victory over Barry Goldwater appeared to herald a permanent liberal consensus in the United States. Yet the next year, scores of liberals were tossed out of Congress, America was more divided than ever, and a disgraced politician was on his way to a shocking comeback: Richard Nixon.Between 1965 and 1972, America experienced no less than a second civil war. Out of its ashes, the political world we know now was born. It was the era not only of Nixon, Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Hubert H. Humphrey, George McGovern, Richard J. Daley, and George Wallace but Abbie Hoffman, Ronald Reagan, Angela Davis, Ted Kennedy, Charles Manson, John Lindsay, and Jane Fonda. There are tantalizing glimpses of Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Jesse Jackson, John Kerry, and even of two ambitious young men named Karl Rove and William Clinton -- and a not so ambitious young man named George W. Bush.Cataclysms tell the story of Nixonland:Angry blacks burning down their neighborhoods in cities across the land as white suburbanites defend home and hearth with shotgunsThe student insurgency over the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic National ConventionThe fissuring of the Democratic Party into warring factions manipulated by the "dirty tricks" of Nixon and his Committee to Re-Elect the PresidentRichard Nixon pledging a new dawn of national unity, governing more divisively than any president before him, then directing a criminal conspiracy, the Watergate cover-up, from the Oval OfficeThen, in November 1972, Nixon, harvesting the bitterness and resentment born of America's turmoil, was reelected in a landslide even bigger than Johnson's 1964 victory, not only setting the stage for his dramatic 1974 resignation but defining the terms of the ideological divide that characterizes America today.Filled with prodigious research and driven by a powerful narrative, Rick Perlstein's magisterial account of how America divided confirms his place as one of our country's most celebrated historians.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-04-14T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Everything Is Illuminated]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780060529703</link>
<description><![CDATA[With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Everything Is Illuminated]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Safran Foer]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Harper Perennial]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780060529703]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[With only a yellowing photograph in hand, a young man -- also named Jonathan Safran Foer -- sets out to find the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Accompanied by an old man haunted by memories of the war; an amorous dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior; and the unforgettable Alex, a young Ukrainian translator who speaks in a sublimely butchered English, Jonathan is led on a quixotic journey over a devastated landscape and into an unexpected past.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2003-04-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780618711659</link>
<description><![CDATA[Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history.Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Safran Foer]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Mariner Books]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780618711659]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history.Nine-year-old Oskar Schell has embarked on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts on an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2006-04-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[When the Game Was Ours]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780547225470</link>
<description><![CDATA[From the moment these two players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA. These were the basketball epics of the 1980s -- Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness  -- together Bird and Johnson collected 8 NBA Championships, and 6 MVP awards and helped save the floundering NBA at its most critical time.  When it started they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends.    With intimate, fly-on- the- wall detail, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS transports readers to this electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting one another.  From the heady days of trading championships to the darker days of injury and illness, we come to understand Larry’s obsessive devotion to winning and how his demons drove him on the court. We hear him talk with candor about playing through chronic pain and its truly exacting toll.  In Magic we see a young, invincible star struggle with the sting of defeat, not just as a player but as a team leader.  We are there the moment he learns he’s contracted HIV and hear in his own words how that devastating news impacted his relationships in basketball and beyond.  But always, in both cases, we see them prevail. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball’s most inimitable duo, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS is a reevaluation of three decades in counterpoint.  It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball’s best times.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[When the Game Was Ours]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Larry Bird; Earvin Johnson; Jackie MacMullan]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Houghton Mifflin Harcourt]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780547225470]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[From the moment these two players took the court on opposing sides, they engaged in a fierce physical and psychological battle. Their uncommonly competitive relationship came to symbolize the most compelling rivalry in the NBA. These were the basketball epics of the 1980s -- Celtics vs Lakers, East vs West, physical vs finesse, Old School vs Showtime, even white vs black. Each pushed the other to greatness  -- together Bird and Johnson collected 8 NBA Championships, and 6 MVP awards and helped save the floundering NBA at its most critical time.  When it started they were bitter rivals, but along the way they became lifelong friends.    With intimate, fly-on- the- wall detail, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS transports readers to this electric era of basketball and reveals for the first time the inner workings of two players dead set on besting one another.  From the heady days of trading championships to the darker days of injury and illness, we come to understand Larry’s obsessive devotion to winning and how his demons drove him on the court. We hear him talk with candor about playing through chronic pain and its truly exacting toll.  In Magic we see a young, invincible star struggle with the sting of defeat, not just as a player but as a team leader.  We are there the moment he learns he’s contracted HIV and hear in his own words how that devastating news impacted his relationships in basketball and beyond.  But always, in both cases, we see them prevail. A compelling, up-close-and-personal portrait of basketball’s most inimitable duo, WHEN THE GAME WAS OURS is a reevaluation of three decades in counterpoint.  It is also a rollicking ride through professional basketball’s best times.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-11-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Mason & Dixon]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780312423209</link>
<description><![CDATA[Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair--one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic--from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.                                                                               Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner (a collection of stories), and Vineland. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. He lives in New York.                     A New York Times Best Book of the YearA Time Magazine Best Book of the YearCharles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as told by the celebrated contemporary novelist Thomas Pynchon, in an updated 18th-century saga featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies both erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse.Unreflectively entangled in crimes of demarcation, Mason and Dixon take us along on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America, and back to England; into the shadowy yet redemptive turns of their later lives; through incongruities in conscience, parallaxes of personality, and tales of questionable altitude told and intimated by voices clamoring not to be lost.Along the way they encounter a plentiful cast of characters, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Samuel Johnson, as well as a Chinese feng shui master, a Swedish irredentist, a talking dog, and a robot duck. The quarrelsome, daring, wholly mismatched pair—Mason as melancholy and Gothic as Dixon is cheerful and pre-Romantic—pursue a linear narrative of irregular lives, observing (and managing to participate in) the many and varied occasions of madness presented them by the Age of Reason.          "A novel that is as moving as it is cerebral, as poignant as it is daring . . . A book that testifies to Pynchon’s powers of invention and his sheer power as a storyteller."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"A dazzling work of imaginative re-creation, a marvel-filled historical novel . . . Exceptionally funny."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World "The style is playful, a pastiche redolent of the musty journal and the capitalomania of the day, bumptiously Fieldingesque, and yet as pumped-up and heightened and chock-full of late-20th-century references as the dernier cri from the street. It is wonderfully subversive. In fact, almost all the book's humor is balanced on the razor edge of anachronism, creating a rich stew of accepted and invented history, anecdote, myth and hyperbole. There are precedents here—John Barth, Robert Coover, Günter Grass, Gabriel García Márquez, E.L. Doctorow and, of course, the Thomas Pynchon of Gravity's Rainbow and V."—T. Coraghessan Boyle, The New York Times Book Review"Pynchon always has been wildly inventive, and gorgeously funny when he surpasses himself: the marvels of this book are extravagant and unexpected."—Harold Bloom, Bostonia "It is the vision itself that one takes away from this remarkable book: a wilderness America, peopled as much by European hopes and longings as by the interlocking kingdoms of the indigenous; a virgin, undivided land. Until, one morning, two ordinary men appear, charged with cutting a perfectly straight line, eight yards wide, westward into its heart . . . It is a moment of surpassing beauty and sadness, a glimpse of something whose sense we can never take for granted or be lastingly done with—even when, as here, it has occasioned a masterpiece."—Ted Mooney, Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review"With Mason & Dixon we're again in the generous hands of one of American literature's true masters."—Rick Moody, The Atlantic Monthly "An astonishing and wonderful book."—The New York Review of Books"Splendid . . . Mason & Dixon—like Huckleberry Finn, like Ulysses—is one of the great novels about friendship in anybody's literature."—John Leonard, The Nation"Mason & Dixon is an amazing achievement, certainly the novel of the year, possibly the novel of our time."—Robert L. McLaughlin, Review of Contemporary Fiction"Awash with light and charm, rich with suggestion and idea, stuffed with the minutiae of another time and world. Mason & Dixon is less a book to read through than to read in, to savor paragraph by paragraph."—Paul Skenazy, San Francisco Chronicle "Mason & Dixon will make you want to curse American history, then turn around and bless it, because nowhere else but America would you find a zany literary genius like Thomas Pynchon."—Malcolm Jones, Jr., Newsweek "As a fellow-novelist I could only envy it and the culture that permits the creation and success of such intricate masterpieces. This almost feels like the last great fiction of our dying era. Though I'm sure it won't be, I must admire its sense of the bright farewell, the clear passing overseas of the torch that Peacock, Dickens, Lawrence, and Conrad bore. You'll not find a better, this next time around."—John Fowles, The Spectator 0"A contemporary Don Quixote or Canterbury Tales or more accurately the Iliad and Odyssey, with heavy splashes of Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers. Pynchon's not only back, but he's left us all in the dust again, with only the sound of his laughter echoing far in front of us."—Jim Knipfel, New York Press  "Pynchon, an elusive, erudite, and manic satirist, has weighed in with another big book, another romp through the wild frontier of his imagination. As he did in his most celebrated work, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and in Vineland (1990), Pynchon explores the paradoxes of a transitional era, this time harking back to the mid-eighteenth century and the so-called Age of Reason. His heroes are the English astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the men responsible for establishing the Mason-Dixon line, and who, in his magic-making hands, embody their time's eager devotion to logic and precision even in the face of life's daunting chaos. As Pynchon chronicles their cultural and scientific adventures from their first meeting in London through their journey to Sumatra and the arduous surveying of the famous boundary line that carries their names, he considers such complex issues as colonization, slavery, the massacre of American Indians, and the conflicts between religion and science. But he also has fun, gleefully improvising on the assertive language of the time, taking sly liberties with the]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Mason & Dixon]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Thomas Pynchon]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Picador]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780312423209]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Charles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as re-imagined by Thomas Pynchon, featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse. We follow the mismatched pair--one rollicking, the other depressive; one Gothic, the other pre-Romantic--from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America and back, through the strange yet redemptive turns of fortune in their later lives, on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, as they observe and participate in the many opportunities for insanity presented them by the Age of Reason.                                                                               Thomas Pynchon is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner (a collection of stories), and Vineland. He received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974. He lives in New York.                     A New York Times Best Book of the YearA Time Magazine Best Book of the YearCharles Mason (1728-1786) and Jeremiah Dixon (1733-1779) were the British surveyors best remembered for running the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland that we know today as the Mason-Dixon Line. Here is their story as told by the celebrated contemporary novelist Thomas Pynchon, in an updated 18th-century saga featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, conspiracies both erotic and political, and major caffeine abuse.Unreflectively entangled in crimes of demarcation, Mason and Dixon take us along on a grand tour of the Enlightenment's dark hemisphere, from their first journey together to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-Revolutionary America, and back to England; into the shadowy yet redemptive turns of their later lives; through incongruities in conscience, parallaxes of personality, and tales of questionable altitude told and intimated by voices clamoring not to be lost.Along the way they encounter a plentiful cast of characters, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Samuel Johnson, as well as a Chinese feng shui master, a Swedish irredentist, a talking dog, and a robot duck. The quarrelsome, daring, wholly mismatched pair—Mason as melancholy and Gothic as Dixon is cheerful and pre-Romantic—pursue a linear narrative of irregular lives, observing (and managing to participate in) the many and varied occasions of madness presented them by the Age of Reason.          "A novel that is as moving as it is cerebral, as poignant as it is daring . . . A book that testifies to Pynchon’s powers of invention and his sheer power as a storyteller."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times"A dazzling work of imaginative re-creation, a marvel-filled historical novel . . . Exceptionally funny."—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World "The style is playful, a pastiche redolent of the musty journal and the capitalomania of the day, bumptiously Fieldingesque, and yet as pumped-up and heightened and chock-full of late-20th-century references as the dernier cri from the street. It is wonderfully subversive. In fact, almost all the book's humor is balanced on the razor edge of anachronism, creating a rich stew of accepted and invented history, anecdote, myth and hyperbole. There are precedents here—John Barth, Robert Coover, Günter Grass, Gabriel García Márquez, E.L. Doctorow and, of course, the Thomas Pynchon of Gravity's Rainbow and V."—T. Coraghessan Boyle, The New York Times Book Review"Pynchon always has been wildly inventive, and gorgeously funny when he surpasses himself: the marvels of this book are extravagant and unexpected."—Harold Bloom, Bostonia "It is the vision itself that one takes away from this remarkable book: a wilderness America, peopled as much by European hopes and longings as by the interlocking kingdoms of the indigenous; a virgin, undivided land. Until, one morning, two ordinary men appear, charged with cutting a perfectly straight line, eight yards wide, westward into its heart . . . It is a moment of surpassing beauty and sadness, a glimpse of something whose sense we can never take for granted or be lastingly done with—even when, as here, it has occasioned a masterpiece."—Ted Mooney, Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review"With Mason & Dixon we're again in the generous hands of one of American literature's true masters."—Rick Moody, The Atlantic Monthly "An astonishing and wonderful book."—The New York Review of Books"Splendid . . . Mason & Dixon—like Huckleberry Finn, like Ulysses—is one of the great novels about friendship in anybody's literature."—John Leonard, The Nation"Mason & Dixon is an amazing achievement, certainly the novel of the year, possibly the novel of our time."—Robert L. McLaughlin, Review of Contemporary Fiction"Awash with light and charm, rich with suggestion and idea, stuffed with the minutiae of another time and world. Mason & Dixon is less a book to read through than to read in, to savor paragraph by paragraph."—Paul Skenazy, San Francisco Chronicle "Mason & Dixon will make you want to curse American history, then turn around and bless it, because nowhere else but America would you find a zany literary genius like Thomas Pynchon."—Malcolm Jones, Jr., Newsweek "As a fellow-novelist I could only envy it and the culture that permits the creation and success of such intricate masterpieces. This almost feels like the last great fiction of our dying era. Though I'm sure it won't be, I must admire its sense of the bright farewell, the clear passing overseas of the torch that Peacock, Dickens, Lawrence, and Conrad bore. You'll not find a better, this next time around."—John Fowles, The Spectator 0"A contemporary Don Quixote or Canterbury Tales or more accurately the Iliad and Odyssey, with heavy splashes of Woody Allen and the Marx Brothers. Pynchon's not only back, but he's left us all in the dust again, with only the sound of his laughter echoing far in front of us."—Jim Knipfel, New York Press  "Pynchon, an elusive, erudite, and manic satirist, has weighed in with another big book, another romp through the wild frontier of his imagination. As he did in his most celebrated work, Gravity's Rainbow (1973), and in Vineland (1990), Pynchon explores the paradoxes of a transitional era, this time harking back to the mid-eighteenth century and the so-called Age of Reason. His heroes are the English astronomers Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the men responsible for establishing the Mason-Dixon line, and who, in his magic-making hands, embody their time's eager devotion to logic and precision even in the face of life's daunting chaos. As Pynchon chronicles their cultural and scientific adventures from their first meeting in London through their journey to Sumatra and the arduous surveying of the famous boundary line that carries their names, he considers such complex issues as colonization, slavery, the massacre of American Indians, and the conflicts between religion and science. But he also has fun, gleefully improvising on the assertive language of the time, taking sly liberties with the]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2004-01-01T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Boys Will Be Boys]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780061256806</link>
<description><![CDATA[They were America's Team—the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.  In similar fashion to his New York Times bestseller The Bad Guys Won!, about the 1986 New York Mets, in Boys Will Be Boys, award-winning writer Jeff Pearlman chronicles the outrageous antics and dazzling talent of a team fueled by ego, sex, drugs—and unrivaled greatness. Rising from the ashes of a 1?15 season in 1989 to capture three Super Bowl trophies in four years, the Dallas Cowboys were guided by a swashbuckling, skirt-chasing, power-hungry owner, Jerry Jones, and his two eccentric, hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Together the three built a juggernaut that America loved and loathed. But for a team that was so dominant on Sundays, the Cowboys were often a dysfunctional circus the rest of the week. Irvin, nicknamed "The Playmaker," battled dual addictions to drugs and women. Charles Haley, the defensive colossus, presided over the team's infamous "White House," where the parties lasted late into the night and a steady stream of long-legged groupies came and went. And then there were Smith and Sanders, whose Texas-sized egos were eclipsed only by their record-breaking on-field perfomances. With an unforgettable cast of characters and a narrative as hard-hitting and fast-paced as the team itself, Boys Will Be Boys immortalizes the most beloved—and despised—dynasty in NFL history.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Boys Will Be Boys]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jeff Pearlman]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Harper]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780061256806]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[They were America's Team—the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties.  In similar fashion to his New York Times bestseller The Bad Guys Won!, about the 1986 New York Mets, in Boys Will Be Boys, award-winning writer Jeff Pearlman chronicles the outrageous antics and dazzling talent of a team fueled by ego, sex, drugs—and unrivaled greatness. Rising from the ashes of a 1?15 season in 1989 to capture three Super Bowl trophies in four years, the Dallas Cowboys were guided by a swashbuckling, skirt-chasing, power-hungry owner, Jerry Jones, and his two eccentric, hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Together the three built a juggernaut that America loved and loathed. But for a team that was so dominant on Sundays, the Cowboys were often a dysfunctional circus the rest of the week. Irvin, nicknamed "The Playmaker," battled dual addictions to drugs and women. Charles Haley, the defensive colossus, presided over the team's infamous "White House," where the parties lasted late into the night and a steady stream of long-legged groupies came and went. And then there were Smith and Sanders, whose Texas-sized egos were eclipsed only by their record-breaking on-field perfomances. With an unforgettable cast of characters and a narrative as hard-hitting and fast-paced as the team itself, Boys Will Be Boys immortalizes the most beloved—and despised—dynasty in NFL history.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2008-09-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[American Pastoral]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780375701429</link>
<description><![CDATA[As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order,  and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longer-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[American Pastoral]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Philip Roth]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Vintage]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780375701429]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[As the American century draws to an uneasy close, Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our century's promises of prosperity, civic order,  and domestic bliss. Roth's protagonist is Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.For Swede's adored daughter, Merry, has grown from a loving, quick-witted girl into a sullen, fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longer-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable, propelled by sorrow, rage, and a deep compassion for its characters, this is Roth's masterpiece.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>1998-02-03T00:00:00-05:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Human Stain]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780375726347</link>
<description><![CDATA[It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist.  The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman.  It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled.  And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal,  "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Human Stain]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Philip Roth]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Vintage]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780375726347]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist.  The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would have astonished even his most virulent accuser.Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman.  It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk's secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled.  And to understand also how Silk's astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal,  "magnificently" interwoven with "the larger public history of modern America."]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2001-05-08T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Brother West]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781401921897</link>
<description><![CDATA[New York Times­ best-selling author Cornel West is one of America’s most provocative and admired public intellectuals. Whether in the classroom, the streets, the prisons, or the church, Dr. West’s penetrating brilliance has been a bright beacon shining through the darkness for decades. Yet, as he points out in this new memoir, “I’ve never taken the time to focus on the inner dynamics of the dark precincts of my soul.” That is, until now. Brother West is like its author: brilliant, unapologetic, full of passion yet cool. This poignant memoir traces West’s transformation from a schoolyard Robin Hood into a progressive cultural icon. From his youthful investigation of the “death shudder” to why he embraced his calling of teaching over preaching, from his three marriages and his two precious children to his near-fatal bout with prostate cancer, West illuminates what it means to live as “an aspiring bluesman in a world of ideas and a jazzman in the life of the mind.” Woven together with the fibers of his lifelong commitment to the prophetic Christian tradition that began in Sacramento’s Shiloh Baptist Church, Brother West is a tale of a man courageous enough to be fully human, living and loving out loud.  ]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Brother West]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cornel West; David Ritz]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Smiley Books]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9781401921897]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[New York Times­ best-selling author Cornel West is one of America’s most provocative and admired public intellectuals. Whether in the classroom, the streets, the prisons, or the church, Dr. West’s penetrating brilliance has been a bright beacon shining through the darkness for decades. Yet, as he points out in this new memoir, “I’ve never taken the time to focus on the inner dynamics of the dark precincts of my soul.” That is, until now. Brother West is like its author: brilliant, unapologetic, full of passion yet cool. This poignant memoir traces West’s transformation from a schoolyard Robin Hood into a progressive cultural icon. From his youthful investigation of the “death shudder” to why he embraced his calling of teaching over preaching, from his three marriages and his two precious children to his near-fatal bout with prostate cancer, West illuminates what it means to live as “an aspiring bluesman in a world of ideas and a jazzman in the life of the mind.” Woven together with the fibers of his lifelong commitment to the prophetic Christian tradition that began in Sacramento’s Shiloh Baptist Church, Brother West is a tale of a man courageous enough to be fully human, living and loving out loud.  ]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Hardcover]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[Democracy Matters]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780143035831</link>
<description><![CDATA[Praised by the New York Times for his "ferocious moral vision," Cornel West returns to the analysis of what he calls the arrested development of democracy with a masterful diagnosis. Pointing to the rise of three antidemocratic dogmas that are rendering the energy of American democracy impotent--a callous free-market fundamentalism, an aggressive militarism, and an insidious authoritarianism--West argues that racism and imperial bullying have gone hand in hand in our country's inexorable drive toward world dominance, including our current militaristic excesses. This impassioned and empowering call for the revitalization of America's democracy, by one of our most distinctive and compelling social critics, will reshape the raging national debate about America's role in today's troubled world.]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[Democracy Matters]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cornell  West]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Penguin (Non-Classics)]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780143035831]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA[Praised by the New York Times for his "ferocious moral vision," Cornel West returns to the analysis of what he calls the arrested development of democracy with a masterful diagnosis. Pointing to the rise of three antidemocratic dogmas that are rendering the energy of American democracy impotent--a callous free-market fundamentalism, an aggressive militarism, and an insidious authoritarianism--West argues that racism and imperial bullying have gone hand in hand in our country's inexorable drive toward world dominance, including our current militaristic excesses. This impassioned and empowering call for the revitalization of America's democracy, by one of our most distinctive and compelling social critics, will reshape the raging national debate about America's role in today's troubled world.]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>2005-09-01T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

<item>
<title><![CDATA[The Future of American Progressivism]]></title>
<link>http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780807043271</link>
<description><![CDATA["A bold political analysis that should inspire public life." ?Kirkus Reviews   Seizing the quintessentially American idea that everything is possible, Unger and West argue that we can stimulate economic growth and guarantee opportunity and sufficient resources for all citizens. They propose specific reforms in business, taxation, so cial security, and education, and their program is an image of American political and civic life as a vital, evolving, and hopeful arena for solving our collective problems. Theirs is an all-inclusive, bipartisan, business-friendly vision.  "A thin volume packed with solutions to our nation's inequities."  ?Ebony]]></description>
<dc:title><![CDATA[The Future of American Progressivism]]></dc:title>
<dc:creator><![CDATA[Cornel West; Roberto Mangabeira Unger]]></dc:creator>
<dc:publisher><![CDATA[Beacon Press]]></dc:publisher>
<dc:identifier><![CDATA[9780807043271]]></dc:identifier>
<dc:description><![CDATA["A bold political analysis that should inspire public life." ?Kirkus Reviews   Seizing the quintessentially American idea that everything is possible, Unger and West argue that we can stimulate economic growth and guarantee opportunity and sufficient resources for all citizens. They propose specific reforms in business, taxation, so cial security, and education, and their program is an image of American political and civic life as a vital, evolving, and hopeful arena for solving our collective problems. Theirs is an all-inclusive, bipartisan, business-friendly vision.  "A thin volume packed with solutions to our nation's inequities."  ?Ebony]]></dc:description>
<dc:format><![CDATA[Paperback]]></dc:format>
<dc:date>1999-09-05T00:00:00-04:00</dc:date>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>