Bruno Bettelheim

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New Jersey

Art, Music, Drama/Theater

The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales

A famous child psychologist explains how fairy tales educate, support, and liberate the emotions of children.

The Uses of Enchantment

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Albertine Sarrazin

Patsy Southgate

Patti Smith

As if the reader were riding shotgun, this intensely vivid novel captures a life on the lam. "L'astragale" is the French word for the ankle bone Albertine Sarrazin's heroine Anne breaks as she leaps from her jail cell to freedom. As she drags herself down the road, away from the prison walls, she is rescued by Julien, himself a small-time criminal, who keeps her hidden. They fall in love. Fear of capture, memories of her prison cell, claustrophobia in her hideaways: every detail is fiercely felt.

Astragal burst onto the French literary scene in 1965; its fiery and vivacious style was entirely new, and Sarrazin became a celebrity overnight. But as fate would have it, Sarrazin herself kept running into trouble with the law, even as she became a star. 

She died from a botched surgery at the height of her fame. Sarrazin's life and work (her novels are semi-autobiographical) have been the subject of intense fascination in France; a new adaptation of Astragal is currently being filmed. Patti Smith, who brought Astragal to the attention of New Directions, contributes an enthusiastic introduction to one of her favorite writers.  

Astragal

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Erik Satie

Antony Melville

Like new. Don’t think it’s ever been read. 

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

This is the largest selection, in any language, of the writings of Erik Satie. Although he was dismissed as an eccentric by many, Satie has come to be seen as a key influence on modern music. The appeal of his writings, however, go far beyond their musical value. He is revealed as one of the most beguiling of absurdists, in the mode of Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear, but with a strong streak of Dadaism (a movement with which he collaborated).

A Mammals Notebook: the Writings of Erik Satie

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Werner Herzog

Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

One of the most revered filmmakers of our time, Werner Herzog wrote this diary during the making of Fitzcarraldo, the lavish 1982 film that tells the story of a would-be rubber baron who pulls a steamship over a hill in order to access a rich rubber territory. Later, Herzog spoke of his difficulties when making the film, including casting problems, reshoots, language barriers, epic clashes with the star, and the logistics of moving a 320-ton steamship over a hill without the use of special effects. Hailed by critics around the globe, the film went on to win Herzog the 1982 Outstanding Director Prize at Cannes. Conquest of the Useless, Werner Herzog's diary on his fever dream in the Amazon jungle, is an extraordinary glimpse into the mind of a genius during the making of one of his greatest achievements.

Conquest of the Useless

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David Sterritt

Like new except for slight bend in Upper right cover - probably got stuck putting in the shelves. 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Interviews

Some thirty years ago filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard told critic Gene Youngblood, I am trying to change the world. He has pursued his revolution in works ranging from the explosive Breathless to the eloquent Contempt to the controversial Hail Mary and the postmodern Histoire(s) du cinéma, shaking up conventional formulas with boldly innovative ap-proaches to every aspect of cinema and video-including film criticism via provocative essays in Cahiers du Cinéma and interviews dating to the early years of his career. This book presents a varied selection of his conversations with critics, scholars, and journalists, spanning the 1960s to the 1990s and illuminating key facets of his life, work, and ideas. Topics include the seductiveness of cinema (Films are the only things by which to look inside of people, and that's why people are so fond of movies and why they'll never die); film as a blend of truth and beauty (I mix images and sounds like a scientist, I hope. The mystery of the scientific is the same as the mystery of the artist. So is the misery); and the personal realities of aging (Maybe it's that when you get old, in one way you feel younger and younger but still being old-young oldness, if I may say so, which is very. . .comforting). As challenging and evocative as they are quirky and unpredictable, these interviews cast light on Godard's lifelong position as a proudly unclassifiable thinker who feels, as he said in 1980, that a language is obviously made to cross borders. I'm someone whose real country is language, and whose territory is movies. David Sterritt is an associate professor of film at Long Island University and film critic of The Christian Science Monitor.

Jean-Luc Godard

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Peter Graham

Study of French new wave. Collection of articles by Godard, Truffaut, Bazin and others. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Critical Landmarks

A new, expanded edition of a classic anthology on the French New Wave. Original writings by and interviews with filmmakers and critics such as Godard, Truffaut and Bazin, some newly translated for this edition, are accompanied by critical and contextualising commentary by the editors, leading authorities in the field.

The French New Wave

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Hubert I. Cohen

Almost like new except for some minor discoloration. And the inscription :) Note that the person who wrote the inscription and I are still friends… Im just doing a very serious downsizing. 

The Art of Confession

The late Jean Renoir once observed that every film auteur tells and retells essentially one story: his own. In this pathbreaking study of all Bergman's films, Hubert I. Cohen vividly demonstrates how the great director is the quintessential auteur, driven from his earliest efforts by an "almost pathological narcissism: toward self-revelation. Drawing on the numerous interviews Bergman has granted as well as other biographical and critical sources, including the director's autobiography The Magic Lantern, Cohen shows us how Bergman's preoccupation with his own life is the wellspring of his art. Progressing chronologically through Bergman's oeuvre, he finds the films both the product of and commentary on their creator's childhood and youth, loves and beliefs.

Ingmar Bergman

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Francois Truffaut

1985 First Touchstone Edition. Paperback. Slight bent corners on front rear covers. Discoloration on edges. See my other listing for other French new wave related and other film books. 

The definitive study of Alfred Hitchcock by François Truffaut

Iconic, groundbreaking interviews of Alfred Hitchcock by film critic François Truffaut--providing insight into the cinematic method, the history of film, and one of the greatest directors of all time.

In Hitchcock, film critic François Truffaut presents fifty hours of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock about the whole of his vast directorial career, from his silent movies in Great Britain to his color films in Hollywood. The result is a portrait of one of the greatest directors the world has ever known, an all-round specialist who masterminded everything, from the screenplay and the photography to the editing and the soundtrack. Hitchcock discusses the inspiration behind his films and the art of creating fear and suspense, as well as giving strikingly honest assessments of his achievements and failures, his doubts and hopes. This peek into the brain of one of cinema's greats is a must-read for all film aficionados.

Hitchcock

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Robert Ingram

Some minor discoloration around edges. 2004 edition. 

The Complete Films

This title, written by Robert Ingram, takes a critical look at the films and work of François Truffaut.

Truffaut

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Deborah Curtis

Some discoloration on edges. My pet bird nibbled on the back cover see pic :(

Tom Curtis and Jay Division

Touching from a Distance

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Yelena Akhtiorskaya

A Novel

"A virtuosic debut [and] a wry look at immigrant life in the global age." --Vogue
 
Having left Odessa for Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, with a sense of finality, the Nasmertov family has discovered that the divide between the old world and the new is not nearly as clear-cut as they had imagined. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, returning is just a matter of a plane ticket, and the Russian-owned shops in their adopted neighborhood stock even the most obscure comforts of home. Pursuing the American Dream once meant giving up everything, but does the dream still work if the past refuses to grow distant and mythical, remaining alarmingly within reach?
 
If the Nasmertov parents can afford only to look forward, learning the rules of aspiration, the family's youngest, Frida, can't help looking back--and asking far too many questions.
 
Yelena Akhtiorskaya's exceptional debut has been hailed not only as the great novel of Brighton Beach but as a "breath of fresh air ... [and] a testament to Akhtiorskaya's wit, generosity, and immense talent as a young American author" (NPR).

Panic in a Suitcase

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Niccolo Machiavelli

In the four and a half centuries since Machiavelli's death, no single and unanimously accepted interpretation of his ideas has succeeded in imposing itself upon the lively debate over the meaning of his works. Yet there has never been any doubt about the fundamental importance of Machiavelli's contribution to Western political theory.The Portable Machiavelli brings together the complete texts of The Prince, Belfagor, and Castruccio Castracani, newly translated by Peter Bondanella and Mark Musa especially for this volume. In addition, the editors include an abridged version of The Discourses; a play, The Mandrake Root, in its entirety; seven private letters; and selections from The Art of War and The History of Florence.

The Portable Machiavelli

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Thomas Moore

Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

A good bit of underlining but in good shape otherwise. 

The Imagination of Sadism

From thousands of pages of the Marquis de Sade's fiction, Moore crystallizes the "Sadeian imagination,' revealing the hidden soul values in the shocking phenomena of sado-masochism.

Dark Eros

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Seishi Yokomizo

Louise Heal Kawai

This was a fun read. I read it in a single sitting which I don’t do often. 

One of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time

In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour - it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village.

Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime?

The Honjin Murders

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Primo Levi

Raymond Rosenthal

An extraordinary work in which each of the 21 chapters takes its title and starting point from one of the elements in the periodic table. Mingling fact and fiction, history and anecdote, Levi uses his training as a chemist and his experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz to illuminate the human condition. "From the Hardcover edition.

The Periodic Table

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Louis de Bernieres

When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them. Despite visiting plagues of laughing fits and giant cats upon the troops, the villagers know that to escape the cruel and unusual tortures planned for them, they must run. Thus they plan to head for the mountains and start a new and convivial civilization. "The War of Don Emmanuel s Nether Parts" is the first novel in a trilogy set in South America. It won a Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1991."

War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

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The idyllic world of the Greek island of Cephallonia is forever changed by the inexorable changes of World War II, as the inhabitants struggle to cope with the Axis invasion and occupation

Corelli's Mandolin

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Alan Watts

“Our main object will be to describe one of the most incomparably beautiful myths that has ever flowered from the mind of man, or from the unconscious processes which shape it and which are in some sense more than man.… This is, furthermore, to be a description and not a history of Christian Mythology.… After description, we shall attempt an interpretation of the myth along the general lines of the philosophia perennis, in order to bring out the truly catholic or universal character of the symbols, and to share the delight of discovering a fountain of wisdom in a realm where so many have long ceased to expect anything but a desert of platitudes.” —from the Prologue

Myth and Ritual in Christianity

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Paul Auster

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

* * * Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize * * *

Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review,
NPR, The Globe and Mail, Kirkus Reviews, Huffington Post, and The Spectator UK

"An epic bildungsroman . . . . Original and complex . . . . A monumental assemblage of competing and complementary fictions, a novel that contains multitudes."--Tom Perrotta, The New York Times Book Review

"A stunningly ambitious novel, and a pleasure to read. . . . An incredibly moving, true journey."--NPR

New York Times Bestseller, Los Angeles Times Bestseller, Boston Globe Bestseller, National Indiebound Bestseller

Paul Auster's greatest, most heartbreaking and satisfying novel--a sweeping and surprising story of birthright and possibility, of love and of life itself.

Nearly two weeks early, on March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four identical Fergusons made of the same DNA, four boys who are the same boy, go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives. Family fortunes diverge. Athletic skills and sex lives and friendships and intellectual passions contrast. Each Ferguson falls under the spell of the magnificent Amy Schneiderman, yet each Amy and each Ferguson have a relationship like no other. Meanwhile, readers will take in each Ferguson's pleasures and ache from each Ferguson's pains, as the mortal plot of each Ferguson's life rushes on.

As inventive and dexterously constructed as anything Paul Auster has ever written, yet with a passion for realism and a great tenderness and fierce attachment to history and to life itself that readers have never seen from Auster before. 4 3 2 1 is a marvelous and unforgettably affecting tour de force.

4 3 2 1

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Paul Bowles

The Sheltering Sky

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Sterling Hayden

The autobiography of Sterling Hayden: actor, (Dr. Strangelove, The Godfather, Asphalt Jungle), sailor, officer, writer (Voyage), one-time communist, and constant wanderer.

Wanderer

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S. Muktibodhananda

Some dog eared pages. THE guide to hatha yoga

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

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Robert O. Kurzban

Philosophy

Evolution and the Modular Mind

The evolutionary psychology behind human inconsistency We're all hypocrites. Why? Hypocrisy is the natural state of the human mind. Robert Kurzban shows us that the key to understanding our behavioral inconsistencies lies in understanding the mind's design. The human mind consists of many specialized units designed by the process of evolution by natural selection. While these modules sometimes work together seamlessly, they don't always, resulting in impossibly contradictory beliefs, vacillations between patience and impulsiveness, violations of our supposed moral principles, and overinflated views of ourselves. This modular, evolutionary psychological view of the mind undermines deeply held intuitions about ourselves, as well as a range of scientific theories that require a "self" with consistent beliefs and preferences. Modularity suggests that there is no "I." Instead, each of us is a contentious "we"--a collection of discrete but interacting systems whose constant conflicts shape our interactions with one another and our experience of the world. In clear language, full of wit and rich in examples, Kurzban explains the roots and implications of our inconsistent minds, and why it is perfectly natural to believe that everyone else is a hypocrite.

Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite

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Stendhal

Headstrong and naïve, the young Italian aristocrat Fabrizio del Dongo is determined to defy the wrath of his right-wing father and go to war to fight for Napoleon. He stumbles on the Battle of Waterloo, ill-prepared, yet filled with enthusiasm for war and glory. Finally heeding advice, Fabrizio sneaks back to Milan, only to become embroiled in a series of amorous exploits, fuelled by his impetuous nature and the political chicanery of his aunt Gina and her wily lover. Judged by Balzac to be the most important French novel of its time, The Charterhouse of Parma is a compelling novel of extravagance and daring, blending the intrigues of the Italian court with the romance and excitement of youth.

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.

Browse by categories

Bruno Bettelheim

The Uses of Enchantment

Albertine Sarrazin; Patsy Southgate; Patti Smith

Astragal

Erik Satie; Antony Melville

A Mammals Notebook: the Writings of Erik Satie

Werner Herzog

Conquest of the Useless

David Sterritt

Jean-Luc Godard

Peter Graham

The French New Wave

Hubert I. Cohen

Ingmar Bergman

Francois Truffaut

Hitchcock

Robert Ingram

Truffaut

Deborah Curtis

Touching from a Distance

Yelena Akhtiorskaya

Panic in a Suitcase

Niccolo Machiavelli

The Portable Machiavelli

Thomas Moore; Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

Dark Eros

Seishi Yokomizo; Louise Heal Kawai

The Honjin Murders

Primo Levi; Raymond Rosenthal

The Periodic Table

Louis de Bernieres

War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts

Louis de Bernieres

Corelli's Mandolin

Alan Watts

Myth and Ritual in Christianity

Paul Auster

4 3 2 1

Paul Bowles

The Sheltering Sky

Sterling Hayden

Wanderer

S. Muktibodhananda

Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Robert O. Kurzban

Why Everyone (Else) Is a Hypocrite

Stendhal

The Charterhouse of Parma

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