Helen Macdonald

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Connecticut

From the New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction, comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world

Vesper Flights

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Wayne Koestenbaum

The lives of people both famous and obscure are filled with scarlet-letter moments when their dirty laundry sees daylight. In these moments we not only witness the reversibility of "success," of prominence, but also come to visceral terms with our own vulnerable selves. We can't stop watching the scene of shame, identifying with it and absorbing its nearness, and relishing our imagined immunity from its stain, even as we acknowledge the universal, embarrassing predicament of living in our own bodies. With an unusual, disarming blend of autobiography and cultural commentary, noted poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum takes us through a spectrum of mortifying circumstances―in history, literature, art, current events, music, film, and his own life. His generous disclosures and brilliant observations go beyond prurience to create a poetics of abasement. Inventive, poignant, erudite, and playful, Humiliation plunges into one of the most disquieting of human experiences, with reflections at once emboldening and humane.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Wayne Koestenbaum considers the meaning of humiliation in this eloquent work of cultural critique and personal reflection. The lives of people both famous and obscure are filled with scarlet-letter moments when their dirty laundry sees daylight. In these moments we not only witness the reversibility of “success,” of prominence, but also come to visceral terms with our own vulnerable selves. We can’t stop watching the scene of shame, identifying with it and absorbing its nearness, and relishing our imagined immunity from its stain, even as we acknowledge the universal, embarrassing predicament of living in our own bodies. With an unusual, disarming blend of autobiography and cultural commentary, noted poet and critic Wayne Koestenbaum takes us through a spectrum of mortifying circumstances—in history, literature, art, current events, music, film, and his own life. His generous disclosures and brilliant observations go beyond prurience to create a poetics of abasement. Inventive, poignant, erudite, and playful, Humiliation plunges into one of the most disquieting of human experiences, with reflections at once emboldening and humane.

Humiliation

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Pablo Neruda

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Bilingual Edition

A career-spanning volume charting the Nobel laureate’s work in the ode form Pablo Neruda was a master of the ode, which he conceived as an homage to just about everything that surrounded him, from an artichoke to the clouds in the sky, from the moon to his own friendship with Federico García Lorca and his favorite places in Chile. He was in his late forties when he committed himself to writing an ode a week, and in the end he produced a total of 225, which are dispersed throughout his varied oeuvre. This bilingual volume, edited by Ilan Stavans, a distinguished translator and scholar of Latin American literature, gathers all Neruda’s odes for the first time in any language. Rendered into English by an assortment of accomplished translators, including Philip Levine, Paul Muldoon, Mark Strand, and Margaret Sayers Peden, collectively they read like the personal diary of a man in search of meaning who sings to life itself, to our connections to one another, and to the place we have in nature and the cosmos. All the Odes is also a lasting statement on the role of poetry as a lightning rod during tumultuous times.

All the Odes

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Sherry Turkle

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

The Power of Talk in a Digital Age

An engaging look at how technology is undermining our creativity and relationships and how face-to-face conversation can help us get it back.

Reclaiming Conversation

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F. Scott Fitzgerald

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

A story of Americans on the French Riviera in the 1930s is a portrait of psychological disintegration as a wealthy couple supports friends and hangers-on financially and emotionally at the cost of their own stability

Tender Is the Night

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Gabriel García Márquez

Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

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W. G. Sebald

Michael Hulse

The four long narratives in The Emigrants appear at first to be the straightforward biographies of four Germans in exile. Sebald reconstructs the lives of a painter, a doctor, an elementary-school teacher, and Great Uncle Ambrose. Following (literally) in their footsteps, the narrator retraces routes of exile which lead from Lithuania to London, from Munich to Manchester, from the South German provinces to Switzerland, France, New York, Constantinople, and Jerusalem. Along with memories, documents, and diaries of the Holocaust, he collects photographs--the enigmatic snapshots which stud The Emigrants and bring to mind family photo albums. Sebald combines precise documentary with fictional motifs, and as he puts the question to realism, the four stories merge into one unfathomable requiem.

The Emigrants

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Oversized Paperback (4 to 6 lbs)

The Alexandria Quartet

The classic book of photographs by Joel Meyerowitz

Cape Light

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Tom McCarthy

A man is severely injured in a mysterious accident, receives an outrageous sum in legal compensation, and has no idea what to do with it.

Then, one night, an ordinary sight sets off a series of bizarre visions he can’t quite place.

How he goes about bringing his visions to life–and what happens afterward–makes for one of the most riveting, complex, and unusual novels in recent memory.

Remainder is about the secret world each of us harbors within, and what might happen if we were granted the power to make it real.

Remainder

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Rick  Steve’s Venice 2013

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Signed book by the national book award nominee. 

No Time Like Now

Alan Rickman

Emma Thompson

Rima Horton

The Diaries of Alan Rickman

Madly, Deeply is a rare invitation into the mind of Alan Rickman--one of the most magnetic, beloved performers of our time.

From his breakout role in Die Hard to his outstanding, multifaceted performances in the Harry Potter films, Galaxy Quest, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and more, Alan Rickman cemented his legacy as a world-class actor. His air of dignity, his sonorous voice, and the knowing wit he brought to each role continue to captivate audiences today.

But Rickman's ability to breathe life into projects wasn't confined to just his performances. As you'll find, Rickman's diaries detail the extraordinary and the ordinary, flitting between worldly and witty and gossipy, while remaining utterly candid throughout. He takes us inside his home, on trips with friends across the globe, and on the sets of films and plays ranging from Sense and Sensibility, to Noël Coward's Private Lives, to the final film he directed, A Little Chaos.

Running from 1993 to his death in 2016, the diaries provide singular insight into Rickman's public and private life. Reading them is like listening to Rickman chatting to a close companion. Meet Rickman the consummate professional actor, but also the friend, the traveler, the fan, the director, the enthusiast; in short, the man beyond the icon.

Madly, Deeply features a photo insert, a foreword by Emma Thompson, and an afterword by Rima Horton.

Madly, Deeply

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Arturo Perez-Reverte

Margaret Sayers Peden

Andrés Faulques, a world-renowned war photographer, has retreated to a tower overlooking the Spanish coast, where he paints a vast mural incorporating the indelible images of conflict he’s witnessed in his lifetime.

One night, an unexpected visitor interrupts his solitude. As Faulques struggles to recall the face, the man explains that he was the subject of an iconic photo taken by Faulques in a war zone years ago–a photo that destroyed his life. “And why have you come looking for me?” asks Faulques. The stranger answers, “Because I’m going to kill you.”

So begins a life-or-death exchange in which Faulques is forced to recall a time when he loved a beautiful woman and risked his life daily for art and testimony. Yet as the tense dialogue between Faulques and his would-be killer continues, the stakes grow even higher. What they are grappling with becomes not just Faulques’ fate, but the very nature of love and cruelty itself.

The Painter of Battles

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Dante. Alighieri

Mark Musa

The famed Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s two masterworks—The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova—in one volume A Penguin Classic As a philosopher, he wedded classical methods of inquiry to a Christian faith. As an autobiographer, he looked unsparingly at his own failures to depict universal struggles. As a visionary, he dared draw maps of Hell, with Purgatory and Paradise, and populate all three realms with recognizable human beings. As a passionate lover, he became a poet of bereavement and renunication. As all of these, Dante Alighieri paved the way for modern literature, while creating verse and prose that remain unparalleled for formal elegance, intellectual depth, and emotional grandeur. The Portable Dante captures the scope and fire of Dante’s genius as thoroughly as any single volume can. It contains complete verse translations of The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuova, as well as a bibliography, notes, and an introduction by the eminent scholar and translator Mark Musa. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Portable Dante

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Dante

Robert. Hollander

Jean Hollander

The most cogent English translation of Dante's classic poem in years brings the epic poem of hell into the modern English language with subtle shadings of meaning intact. Reprint.

The Inferno

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Journal of a solitude

Jazmina Barrera

Christina MacSweeney

"This book is a light at the end of the tunnel." --The Paris Review

Far from home, in the confines of a dim New York apartment where the oppressive skyscrapers further isolate her, Jazmina Barrera offers a tour of her lighthouses--those structures whose message is "first and foremost, that human beings are here."

Starting with Robert Louis Stevenson's grandfather, an engineer charged with illuminating the Scottish coastline, On Lighthouses artfully examines lighthouses from the Spanish to the Oregon coasts and those in the works of Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Ingmar Bergman, and many others.

In trying to "collect" lighthouses by obsessively describing them, Barrera begins to question the nature of writing, collecting, and how, by staring so intently at one thing we are only trying to avoid others. Equal parts personal memoir and literary history, On Lighthouses takes the reader on a desperate flight from raging sea to cold stone--from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one--concluding at last in a place of peace: the home of a selfless, guiding light.

On Lighthouses

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Martin Gayford

Travels, Encounters and Revelations

One of our leading art critics and writers, Martin Gayford, recounts his travels and meetings with the world’s greatest artists. In the course of a career thinking and writing about art, critic Martin Gayford has traveled all over the world both to see works of art and to meet artists. Gayford’s journeys, often to fairly inaccessible places, involve frustrations and complications, but also serendipitous encounters and outcomes, which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. In chapters that are by turns humorous, intriguing, and stimulating, Gayford takes us to places as varied as Brancusi’s Endless Column in Romania; prehistoric caves in France; the museum island of Naoshima in Japan; the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas; and an exhibition of Roni Horn’s work in Iceland. Interwoven with these tales are journeys to meet artists—Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris, Marina Abramovic´ in Venice, Robert Rauschenberg in New York—and travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. These encounters not only provide fascinating insights into the way artists approach and think about their art, but reveal the importance of their personal environments. A perceptive, amusing, and knowledgeable companion, in The Pursuit of Art Gayford takes readers on a tour of art that is immensely entertaining, informative, and eminently readable.

The Pursuit of Art

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Hazel Harrison

A complete guide to artists' techniques & materials. Sections on drawing, watercolor, oil, acrylic, & pastel. Perfect both for beginner & more advanced artist Includes up-to-date information on all the latest techniques, materials, & equipment. Packed with practical guidance on how to treat the classical subjects - portraits, figures, buildings, landscapes, & flowers - in the most popular mediums. At-a-glance, step-by-step photographs show clearly how to achieve successful results. A comprehensive arists' manial that includes examples of many different styles & treatments

A Complete Course on Practical and Creative Techniques

Divided into four parts, this book is a comprehensive guide to artists' techniques and materials for drawing, watercolor, oil, acrylic and pastel. Features up-to-date information on all the latest techniques, with step-by-step photographs and practical guidance on how to treat the classical subjects--portraits, figures, buildings, landscapes and flowers.

How to Paint and Draw

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Judy Martin

A Complete Course in 40 Lessons

Improve and develop your drawing skills! Sketching is a vital artistic skill. Learn to use sketches as the basis for finished paintings and how to create sketches that are visual statements in their own right. Mastering Sketching offers 40 carefully planned lessons complete with projects devised to help artists put theory into practice. Judy Martin guides you along the path of becoming a comfortable sketch artist with exercises to help you get started and to progress through various sketching materials and subjects. Filled with encouraging examples, along with practical and easy-to-follow advice and demonstrations from leading artists, you will be inspired to practice your sketching. Mastering Sketching will be an indispensable resource for any artist.

Mastering Sketching

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Brian Curtis

Perceptual drawing, in which one renders the physical world as it appears to an observer, is the focus of this new text for the introductory drawing course. With an emphasis on progressive skill development, Drawing from Observation offers a balanced mix of hands-on technique and perceptual theory while making a compelling argument for the long-term value of studying perception-based drawing.

An Introduction to Perceptual Drawing

Perceptual drawing, in which one renders the physical world as it appears to an observer, is the focus of this new text for the introductory drawing course. With an emphasis on progressive skill development, "Drawing from Observation" offers a balanced mix of hands-on technique and perceptual theory while making a compelling argument for the long-term value of studying perception-based drawing.

Drawing from Observation

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David duChemin

Simply having a certain camera or lens isn’t going to make you a better photographer. So, what will? Understanding your camera. Thinking differently. Studying photographs and knowing what they provoke in you, and why. Giving the craft time to grow. Looking to painters, designers, and others who work in two dimensions and learning from them. Relentlessly looking for light, lines, and moments. Making photographs–thousands and thousands of photographs. There’s no magic bullet to achieving success, but in these pages you will learn the value of studying, practice, and remembering that your most important assets as an artist are imagination, passion, patience, receptivity, curiosity, and a dogged refusal to follow the rules.



THE VISUAL TOOLBOX is photographer David duChemin’s curriculum for learning not just how to use a camera–but how to make stronger photographs. He has developed 60 lessons, each one a stepping stone to becoming more proficient with the tools of this art, and the means to create deeper visual experiences with your images. 

David introduces you to the technical side of the craft but quickly moves on to composition, the creative process, and the principles that have always been responsible for making great photographs; he shows you these principles and invites you to play with them, turn them on their heads, and try a different approach to create beautiful, compelling images with your camera.

Features action-oriented micro-chapters designed to improve your photography immediately

Includes explanations of 60 concepts with an assignment for nearly every chapter
Covers such topics as balance, using negative space, exploring color contrast, waiting for the moment, learning to incorporate mood and motion, and much more


60 Lessons for Stronger Photographs

"The Visual Toolbox is photographer David duChemin's curriculum for learning not just how to use a camera--but how to make stronger photographs. He has developed 60 lessons, each one a stepping stone to becoming more proficient with the tools of this art, and the means to create deeper visual experiences with your images. David introduces you to the technical side of the craft but quickly moves on to composition, the creative process, and the principles that have always been responsible for making great photographs; he shows you these principles and invites you to play with them, turn them on their heads, and try a different approach to create beautiful, compelling images with your camera."--Publisher's description.

The Visual Toolbox

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Phil Metzger

From À la poup Ée to Zinc White and everything in between, more than one thousand art definitions and descriptions are detailed here for the reader's benefit. Every art term, technique and material used by the practicing artist is included. Packed with hundreds of photographs, paintings, mini-demos, black & white diagrams and drawings, this is the most comprehensive and visually explicit artist's reference available. Artists will also find sidebars about specific entries and charts for a wealth of interrelated information in one convenient listing. For example, art movement, includes both the definition and a comprehensive chart listing each individual movement, style and school along with their approximate time periods and insightful descriptions. The Artist's Illustrated Encyclopedia will quickly become the artist's most prized reference--supplying the illustrated world of art in one easy-to-reference volume. * A must have reference for every artist, beginner to advanced * Entries are laid out in a fashion that's easy to access and understand Phil Metzger is the author of six art instruction books including Perspective Without Pain, and The North Light Artist's Guide to Materials & Techniques. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.

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