Eric Schlosser

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

California

Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal.

"A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating." --Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine

"Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety." --San Francisco Chronicle

A myth-shattering exposé of America's nuclear weapons

Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved--and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten.

Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can't be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America's nuclear age.


Command and Control

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Jill Lepore

A History of the United States

A "sweeping, sobering account" (New York Times Book Review) from one of our leading historians, These Truths "is nothing short of a masterpiece of American history" (NPR).

The challenge of retelling five hundred years of American history in a single volume has been so daunting that hardly any historian has attempted it in decades.

When Jill Lepore's New York Times best-selling These Truths appeared in 2018, critics quickly hailed it as a classic―appealing not only to academics, but to thousands of astonished general readers. Picking up the book out of a feeling of civic duty, they opened its pages to discover a different kind of writing, and what the Washington Post called "an honest reckoning with America's past"―a story filled with women and men and people of every color and religion, one that wrestles with the state of American politics, the legacy of slavery, the persistence of inequality, and the nature of technological change.

With These Truths, Harvard historian and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore has produced a book that will shape our view of American history for decades to come.

70 illustrations

These Truths

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Katherine Dunn

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

A Novel

Aloysious and Lillian Binewski, the proprietors of a traveling carnival, attempt to reduce overhead by breeding their own freak show, with tragic results, in a new edition of the acclaimed cult classic. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

Geek Love

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Patton Oswalt

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Sci fi Memoir

Prepare yourself for a journey through the world of Patton Oswalt, one of the most creative, insightful, and hysterical voices on the entertain­ment scene today. Widely known for his roles in the films Big Fan and Ratatouille, as well as the television hit The King of Queens, Patton Oswalt—a staple of Comedy Central—has been amusing audiences for decades. Now, with Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, he offers a fascinating look into his most unusual, and lovable, mindscape. Oswalt combines memoir with uproarious humor, from snow forts to Dungeons & Dragons to gifts from Grandma that had to be explained. He remem­bers his teen summers spent working in a movie Cineplex and his early years doing stand-up. Readers are also treated to several graphic elements, includ­ing a vampire tale for the rest of us and some greeting cards with a special touch. Then there’s the book’s centerpiece, which posits that before all young creative minds have anything to write about, they will home in on one of three story lines: zom­bies, spaceships, or wastelands. Oswalt chose wastelands, and ever since he has been mining our society’s wasteland for perversion and excess, pop culture and fatty foods, indie rock and single-malt scotch. Zombie Spaceship Wasteland is an inventive account of the evolution of Patton Oswalt’s wildly insightful worldview, sure to indulge his legion of fans and lure many new admirers to his very entertaining “wasteland.”

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

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Taylor Harrison

Sarah Projansky

Kent A. Ono

Elyce Rae Helford

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Critical Positions on Star Trek

Can you imagine a world without Star Trek —without warp drive, phasers, photon torpedoes, tricorders, communicators, and transporters? After six Hollywood movies and twenty-five years of nonstop television presence, Star Trek is, indeed, a pervasive cultural phenomenon! This is the first critical, scholarly look at the mysteries, hidden meanings, and complex issues of the text known as Star Trek. Looking at the original Spock-Kirk Star Trek, the contributors ask and answer questions such as: What are the cultural conditions surrounding the homoerotic relationship between Kirk and Spock? How does the show depict gender relations while simultaneously recreating the cultural conditions under which women continue to experience sexual aggression and violence? They also explore Star Trek: The Next Generation, raising issues such as: Was Data a battlefield on which the struggle for human rights was waged? Did militarism and warring versions of masculinity intersect at Worf?Readers will discover the unique charges of cultural studies scholarship and how it enables us to designate a powerful pop-cultural phenomenon such as Star Trek into a legitimate site of study. The thirteen essayists address the very real and necessary topics of hegemony, utopias, militarism, colonialism, gender, violence, race, class, sexuality, and liminality, analyzing individual episodes and overarching themes of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Their insights on how Star Trek affects what we understand our culture to be, how it represents the social and political order, and how it reproduces pleasure and pain in its televisual texts, will fascinate scholars, students, and Trekkers alike.

Enterprise Zones

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William Gibson

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

From the author of virtual light

In a story set in twenty-first century Tokyo, a singer pursues a beautiful media superstar--called an idoru--who does not really exist

Idoru

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Ann Patchett

A New York Times Notable Book

"As resonant as a blues song. . . . Expect miracles when you read Ann Patchett's fiction."--New York Times Book Review

An ex-jazz drummer wants nothing more than to be a good father in this moving family novel by the New York Times best-selling author of The Dutch House.

When John Nickel's lover takes away his son, Nickel is left only with his Beale Street bar in Memphis. He hires a young waitress named Fay Taft, who brings with her a desperate, dangerous brother, Carl, and the possibility of new intimacy. Nickel finds himself consumed with Fay and Carl's dead father--Taft--obsessing over and reconstructing the life of a man he never met.

A stunning artistic achievement, Taft confirms Ann Patchett's standing as one of the most gifted writers of her generation and reminds us of our deepest instincts to protect the people we love.

Taft

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joe sikoryak

joe sikoryak

@joe153244

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Eric Schlosser

Command and Control

Jill Lepore

These Truths

Katherine Dunn

Geek Love

Patton Oswalt

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

Taylor Harrison; Sarah Projansky; Kent A. Ono; Elyce Rae Helford

Enterprise Zones

William Gibson

Idoru

Ann Patchett

Taft

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Eric Schlosser

Command and Control

Jill Lepore

These Truths

Katherine Dunn

Geek Love

Patton Oswalt

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

Taylor Harrison; Sarah Projansky; Kent A. Ono; Elyce Rae Helford

Enterprise Zones

William Gibson

Idoru

Ann Patchett

Taft

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