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On the Road: The Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
$26.00

Though Jack Kerouac began thinking about the novel that was to become On the Road as early as 1947, it was not until three weeks in April 1951, in an apartment on West Twentieth Street in Manhattan, that he wrote the first full draft that was satisfactory to him. Typed out as one long, single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper that he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll, this document is among the most significant, celebrated, and provocative artifacts in contemporary American literary history.

 

The End of the Earth: An Anthology of the Finest Writing on the Antarctic by Edited by Francis Stuppford
$30.00

The Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves have been an object of obsession for as long as we’ve known they existed. Countless explorers, including such legends as Richard Byrd, Ernest Shackleton, and Robert Falcon Scott, have risked their lives to chart their frozen landscapes. Now, for the first time in human history, we are in legitimate danger of seeing polar ice dramatically shrink, break apart, or even disappear. The Ends of the Earth, a collection of the very best writing on the Arctic and Antarctic, will simultaneously commemorate four centuries of exploring and scientific study, and make the call for preservation.

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Takeover, The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy by Charlie Savage
$26.00

Savage, who won a Pulitzer for his Boston Globe articles about the signing statements George W. Bush used to negate legislation limiting presidential authority, gives that issue a key part in this account of the Bush administration's efforts to increase executive power. Covering constitutional issues as well as the political backgrounds of former White House attorneys like Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo, this detailed report traces their concerted effort, from the moment Bush took office in 2001, to [leave] the presidency in better shape than he [Bush] found it.

 

Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America by Tom Lutz
$14.00

Samuel Johnson identified literary loafers in his periodicalIdler (1758-60), and here Lutz lays sharp-eyed analysis on society's reaction toward those who repudiate regular work. Productively informing his appraisals of the Thoreaus and Kerouacs with his own youthful experiment in communal^B living, Lutz weaves no grand theory of the slacker because he finds that wastrels have been different in every generation. In the late 1700s, a disinclination to work was an aristocratic affectation.

 

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole by Benjamin Barber
$27.00

Barber returns to the clashing models of civilization of his earlier Jihad vs. McWorld, focusing this time on the expanding global culture of market forces he claims will destory not only democracy but even capitalism, if left unchecked. He warns of a totalitarian "ethos of induced childishness" that not only seeks to turn the young into aggressive consumers but to arrest the psychological development of adults as well, "freeing" them to indulge in puerile and narcissistic purchases based on "stupid" brand loyalties. The increasing drive toward privatization compounds the problem, generating a "civic schizophrenia" where everybody wants service but nobody wants to serve. His complaint is so broad that it occasionally edges into crankiness, as he blames infantilization for ruining everything from Hollywood movies to NBA basketball; even other liberal cultural commentators, especially Steven Johnson (Everything Bad Is Good for You), come in for much criticism.

American Movie Critics: An Anthology from the Silents Until Now by Edited by Philip Lopate
$40.00

A provocative and dynamic force in American culture since the early twentieth century, movies have presented several generations of American writers with a new, fascinating, and challenging subject. How writers rose to the challenge, and in the process created an extraordinary body of work-passionate, contentious, restlessly curious-makes for a dazzling and constantly entertaining volume. "I have focused," writes editor Phillip Lopate, "on film criticism as an art in itself-the magnet for strong, elegant, eloquent, enjoyable writing."

Until Proven Innocent: Political Corrections and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case by Stuart Taylor Jr and KC Johnson
$27.00

Guilty until proven innocent was a concept expressed by Duke University's president Richard Brodhead, among others, betraying a stunning misapprehension of America's justice system in the case of the Duke lacrosse players wrongfully indicted for raping a black stripper in 2006. As well reported in detail by respected legal journalist Taylor and Brooklyn College historian Johnson, the facts of the case speak for themselves: rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong willfully disregarded evidence of the boys' innocence; Duke administrators hung the team members out to dry; much of Duke's faculty and the media rushed to assume guilt in the racially charged case (the New York Times comes in for special opprobrium).

The Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke
$14.00

We have a marvelous, almost legendary, image of the circumstances in which the composition of this great poem began. Rilke was staying at a castle (Duino) on the sea near Trieste. One morning he walked out on the battlements and climbed down to where the rocks dropped sharply to the sea. From out of the wind, which was blowing with great force, Rilke seemed to hear a voice: Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen? (If I cried out, who would hear me up there, among the angelic orders?). He wrote these words, the opening of the first Duino Elegy, in his notebook, then went inside to continue what was to be his major work and one of the literary masterpieces of the century.

 

A Swift Pure Cry by Siabhon Dowd
$17.00

Everything's been wrong since 15-year-old Shell's Mam died. Her father forces his kids to say the rosary and then gets drunk. They live from money he skims off donations he collects for the church. Shell is left to take care of her younger brother and sister in their Irish village; her only joy comes in stolen moments with a local lad. Then her guy goes off to America, and though Shell pretends otherwise, she is pregnant. In a scene both graphic and horrific, Shell delivers a stillborn baby girl. The novel could have gone several ways, but perhaps because it is based on a true story, its path is unexpected.

Islam: History, Faith and Politics by Paul Grieve
$14.00

Grieve, a London-based writer and self-styled student and traveler of the Islamic world, puts forward a riveting book on Islam that decries and then corrects the widespread ignorance about the faith and its history. He consistently jolts the reader out of preconceived notions about Islam and Muslims, particularly concerning the Palestinian conflict. Grieve's precise insights into the Muslim worlds, past and present, are astonishingly accurate. He provides the real and surprising backstory on everything from the Crusades and colonialism to Muslim immigration to Europe and women under Islam.

There goes my Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights by Jason Sokol
$16.00

The experiences of white Southerners during the period of the Civil Rights movement have, until now, gone largely unexplored. Sokol, a doctoral candidate in history at UC-Berkeley, traces the process of desegregation by drawing on public records and interviews conducted with white Southerners as they faced the tide of change brought by Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sokol actively resists easy generalizations or stereotypes of the men and women whose rejection of equal rights created the central tension of the Civil Rights movement. Instead of stock characters, Sokol presents individuals—such as Ollie McClung, whose opposition to integration stemmed, at least in part, from a belief in personal liberty—as well as hundreds of voices for whom change meant "their world would never be the same."

 

The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization by Mark London
$26.00

The conventional wisdom is that the Amazon River basin and the unique flora and fauna of its fecund rainforests—half of the remaining forest on earth—are on the brink of ecological disaster. Not necessarily so, say the authors of this combination of wonkish policy paper, astute reporting and firsthand adventure narrative, who revisited Brazil's forested middle provinces 25 years after writing their first book, Amazon. Vast swaths of rainforest have indeed fallen to road development, cattle ranching, soy farming and clear-cut logging (including the decimation of mahogany trees).

America Against the World by Andrew Kohut
$17.00

It has become a media axiom that anti-Americanism is on the rise around the world, and though the foreign policies of George W. Bush are often cited as a motivating factor, it seems reasonable that there must be more to the animosity than one president's actions. Kohut, the director of the Pew Research Center, teams up with NPR commentator Stokes to present the results of an extensive Pew survey that polled more than 91,000 people in 50 nations to come up with an explanation that, when you strip away the extensive charts and tables, boils down to this: they hate us because we're different. But, Kohut and Stokes suggest, we're also misunderstood.

Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
$35.00

Readers beware. The brilliant, breathtaking conclusion to J.K. Rowling's spellbinding series is not for the faint of heart--such revelations, battles, and betrayals await in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that no fan will make it to the end unscathed. Luckily, Rowling has prepped loyal readers for the end of her series by doling out increasingly dark and dangerous tales of magic and mystery, shot through with lessons about honor and contempt, love and loss, and right and wrong. Fear not, you will find no spoilers in our review--to tell the plot would ruin the journey, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is an odyssey the likes of which Rowling's fans have not yet seen, and are not likely to forget. But we would be remiss if we did not offer one small suggestion before you embark on your final adventure with Harry--bring plenty of tissues.