V. I. Lenin

Slavoj Zizek

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

California

Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through

One hundred years after the Russian Revolution, Žižek shows why Lenin’s thought is still important today V. I. Lenin’s originality and importance as a revolutionary leader is most often associated with the seizure of power in 1917. But, in this new study and collection of Lenin’s original texts, Slavoj Žižek argues that his true greatness can be better grasped in the last two years of his political life. Russia had survived foreign invasion, embargo and a terrifying civil war, as well as internal revolts such as the one at Kronstadt in 1921. But the new state was exhausted, isolated and disorientated. As the anticipated world revolution receded into the distance, new paths had to be charted if the Soviet state was to survive. With his characteristic brio and provocative insight, Žižek suggests that Lenin’s courage as a thinker can be found in his willingness to face this reality of retreat unflinchingly. In today’s world, characterized by political turbulence, economic crises and geopolitical tensions, we should revisit Lenin’s combination of sober lucidity and revolutionary determination.

Lenin 2017

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Yascha Mounk

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It

"We can no longer assume that liberal democracy is the wave of the future This splendid book is an invaluable contribution to the debate about what ails democracy, and what can be done about it."
-Michael J. Sandel, author of Justice

"Everyone worried about the state of contemporary politics should read this book."
-Anne-Marie Slaughter, President of the New America Foundation

The world is in turmoil. From Russia, Turkey, and Egypt to the United States, authoritarian populists have seized power. As a result, democracy itself may now be at risk.

Two core components of liberal democracy-individual rights and the popular will-are increasingly at war with each other. As the role of money in politics soared and important issues were taken out of public contestation, a system of "rights without democracy" took hold. Populists who rail against this say they want to return power to the people. But in practice they create something just as bad: a system of "democracy without rights." The consequence, as Yascha Mounk shows in this brilliant and timely book, is that trust in politics is dwindling. Citizens are falling out of love with their political system. Democracy is wilting away. Drawing on vivid stories and original research, Mounk identifies three key drivers of voters' discontent: stagnating living standards, fear of multiethnic democracy, and the rise of social media. To reverse the trend, politicians need to enact radical reforms that benefit the many, not the few.

The People vs. Democracy is the first book to describe both how we got here and what we need to do now. For those unwilling to give up either individual rights or the concept of the popular will, Mounk argues that urgent action is needed, as this may be our last chance to save democracy.

The People vs. Democracy

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Frances Richard

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

Physical Poetics

Bringing a poet’s perspective to an artist’s archive, this highly original book examines wordplay in the art and thought of American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978). A pivotal figure in the postminimalist generation who was also the son of a prominent Surrealist, Matta-Clark was a leader in the downtown artists' community in New York in the 1970s, and is widely seen as a pioneer of what has come to be known as social practice art. He is celebrated for his “anarchitectural” environments and performances, and the films, photographs, drawings, and sculptural fragments with which his site-specific work was documented. In studies of his career, the artist’s provocative and vivid language is referenced constantly. Yet the verbal aspect of his practice has not previously been examined in its own right. Blending close readings of Matta-Clark’s visual and verbal creations with reception history and critical biography, this extensively researched study engages with the linguistic and semiotic forms in Matta-Clark’s art, forms that activate what he called the “poetics of psycho-locus” and “total (semiotic) system.” Examining notes, statements, titles, letters, and interviews in light of what they reveal about his work at large, Frances Richard unearths archival, biographical, and historical information, linking Matta-Clark to Conceptualist peers and Surrealist and Dada forebears. Gordon Matta-Clark: Physical Poetics explores the paradoxical durability of Matta-Clark’s language, and its role in an aggressively physical oeuvre whose major works have been destroyed.

Gordon Matta-Clark

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Michael Morpurgo

Trapped on a sandbank by the rising tide, a boy prepares to die as the sea engulfs him. Then he is rescued from the waves by a mysterious old man and the greatest adventure of his life begins. He learns about the legendary King Arthur and the glory, heroism, magic and evil of Camelot.

Arthur, High King of Britain

955a0bb6-358c-4531-a1f1-9b7cbe988f1c-0

Nick Flynn

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Poems

A daring and intimate new book by the poet and memoirist Nick Flynn, "a champion of contemporary American poetry" (Newpages) . . . the take from his bank jobs, all of it will come to me, if I can just get him to draw me a map, if I can find the tree, if I can find the shovel. And the house, the mansion he grew up in, soon a lawyer will pass a key across a walnut desk, but even this lawyer will not be able to tell me where this mansion is. —from "Kafka" In My Feelings, Nick Flynn makes no claims on anyone else's. These poems inhabit a continually shifting sense of selfhood, in the attempt to contain quicksilver realms of emotional energy—from grief and panic to gratitude and understanding.

My Feelings

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Donna Brazile

Yolanda Caraway

Leah Daughtry

The four most powerful African American women in politics share the story of their friendship and how it has changed politics in America. The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years—Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore—a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson’s first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Over the years, they’ve filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they’ve worked with those who have shaped our country’s history—US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who’ve worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of “hurrying history” so that every American — regardless of race, gender or religious background — can have a seat at the table. This is their story.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics

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B. A. Shapiro

A Novel

The bestselling author of The Art Forger and The Muralist delivers a page-turning historical thriller of art and revenge, of history and love, that will transport readers to 1920s Paris and America. It’s the summer of 1922, and nineteen-year-old Paulien Mertens finds herself in Paris—broke, disowned, and completely alone. Everyone in Belgium, including her own family, believes she stole millions in a sophisticated con game perpetrated by her then-fiancé, George Everard. To protect herself from the law and the wrath of those who lost everything, she creates a new identity, a Frenchwoman named Vivienne Gregsby, and sets out to recover her father’s art collection, prove her innocence—and exact revenge on George. When the eccentric and wealthy American art collector Edwin Bradley offers Vivienne the perfect job, she is soon caught up in the Parisian world of post-Impressionists and expatriates—including Gertrude Stein and Henri Matisse, with whom Vivienne becomes romantically entwined. As she travels between Paris and Philadelphia, where Bradley is building an art museum, her life becomes even more complicated: George returns with unclear motives . . . and then Vivienne is arrested for Bradley’s murder. B. A. Shapiro has made the historical art thriller her own. In The Collector’s Apprentice, she gives us an unforgettable tale about the lengths to which people will go for their obsession, whether it be art, money, love, or vengeance.

The Collector's Apprentice

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Andrea Rothman

"This sharp debut...sets a bittersweet love story within the cut-throat world of academic research, a great pairing [Rothman] explores with heart, smarts, and a lot of furtive sex." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) A powerful debut novel—a wonderfully engaging infusion of Lab Girl, The Assistants, and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine—that pits the ambition of scientific discovery against the siren call of love. How does smell work? Specifically, how do olfactory sensory neurons reach their targets in the brain, where smell is processed? Justin McKinnon has hired Emily Apell to study that question. What Justin hasn’t told Emily is that two other scientists in the lab, Aeden and Allegra, are working on a very similar topic, and their findings may compete with her research. Emily was born focused and driven. She’s always been more comfortable staring down the barrel of a microscope than making small talk with strangers. Competition doesn’t scare her. Her special place is the lab, where she analyzes DNA sequences, looking for new genes that might be involved in guiding olfactory neurons to their targets. To Emily’s great surprise, her rational mind is unsettled by Aeden. As they shift from competitors to colleagues, and then to something more, Emily allows herself to see a future in which she doesn’t end up alone. But when Aeden decides to leave the lab, it becomes clear to Emily that she must make a choice: follow her research or follow her heart. A sharp, relevant novel that speaks to the ambitions and desires of modern women, The DNA of You and Me explores the evergreen question of career versus family, the irrational sensibility of love, and whether one can be a loner without a diagnostic label.

The DNA of You and Me

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Stephen McCauley

David Hedges's boyfriend, Soren, left him for an older man. His job is exasperating. His weight has reached a new high. Across the country, Julie Fiske's husband Henry left her for a younger woman. Her teenage daughter Mandy refuses to apply for college. And then Mandy stuns Julie by saying she's been working with David Hedges, Mom's first husband from long ago. It's a lie, but when Julie calls David and asks if he'll help Mandy, he says of course. And when Mandy tells David he should come visit them and stay at their B&B. he accepts. And David and Julie pick up where they left off....

My Ex-Life

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Jane Austen

Graphic Arts Books

Inspired by recent current cultural movements (The Women's March, #MeToo), and the new wave of feminism, these new releases of classic books feature strong female protagonists who must navigate difficult situations involving class and power, love and loss, sex and family, independence and societal norms, and more. From the front flap: Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are salty when their dad dies and they're forced to go live with peeps they don't even really know. As awkward as it is though, it's not all downhill when the girls meet up with some guys who seem pretty chill. Elinor's sorta feeling it with Edward Farrars, a man who's got his swag on; but Elinor knows she should watch herself and decides to play it cool. Marianne, on the other hand, just wants to swipe right. Though Colonel Brandon doesn't do it for her, she thinks that John Willoughby looks pretty fine and decides to hit him up. As different as the two are, the Dashwood sisters are tight and just want each other to be happy. But Elinor and Marianne will have to learn to find a good balance between heart and mind if they want to stay lit. Each book is packaged in an eye-catching luxe paperback format to appeal to the Generation Z buyer, though these timeless stories will appeal to anyone interested in the female experience throughout history. Other books in the Z Lit Classics series include: The Scarlet Letter, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Little Women, Tales from the 1001 Nights, , and The Awakening and Other Stories.

Sense and Sensibility

ec5f290b-612d-4052-9e97-bfbbea613818-1

Melinda Gates

How Empowering Women Changes the World

A timely call to action for women's empowerment by the influential co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation identifies the link between women's equality and societal health, sharing uplifting insights by international advocates in the fight against gender bias. --Publisher

The Moment of Lift

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Maria Semple

Slight wear on back cover. Otherwise perfect.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom. Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic. To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

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Dan Rather

Elliot Kirschner

Reflections on Patriotism

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “I find myself thinking deeply about what it means to love America, as I surely do.” —Dan Rather At a moment of crisis over our national identity, venerated journalist Dan Rather has emerged as a voice of reason and integrity, reflecting on—and writing passionately about—what it means to be an American. Now, with this collection of original essays, he reminds us of the principles upon which the United States was founded. Looking at the freedoms that define us, from the vote to the press; the values that have transformed us, from empathy to inclusion to service; the institutions that sustain us, such as public education; and the traits that helped form our young country, such as the audacity to take on daunting challenges in science and medicine, Rather brings to bear his decades of experience on the frontlines of the world’s biggest stories. As a living witness to historical change, he offers up an intimate view of history, tracing where we have been in order to help us chart a way forward and heal our bitter divisions. With a fundamental sense of hope, What Unites Us is the book to inspire conversation and listening, and to remind us all how we are, finally, one.

What Unites Us

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Téa Obreht

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Spectacular . . . [Téa Obreht] spins a tale of such marvel and magic in a literary voice so enchanting that the mesmerized reader wants her never to stop.”—Entertainment Weekly Look for Téa Obreht’s second novel, Inland, now available. NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times • Entertainment Weekly • The Christian Science Monitor • The Kansas City Star • Library Journal Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation. In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Book and the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Wall Street Journal • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Economist • Vogue • Slate • Chicago Tribune • The Seattle Times • Dayton Daily News • Publishers Weekly • Alan Cheuse, NPR’s All Things Considered “Stunning . . . a richly textured and searing novel.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “[Obreht] has a talent for subtle plotting that eludes most writers twice her age, and her descriptive powers suggest a kind of channeled genius. . . . No novel [this year] has been more satisfying.”—The Wall Street Journal “Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, The Tiger’s Wife is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination.”—The New York Times Book Review “That The Tiger’s Wife never slips entirely into magical realism is part of its magic. . . . Its graceful commingling of contemporary realism and village legend seems even more absorbing.”—The Washington Post

The Tiger's Wife

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Julian Barnes

"From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Sense of an Ending, a novel about a young man on the cusp of adulthood and a woman who is already there, a love story shot through with sheer beauty, profound sadness, and deep truth. Most of us have only one story to tell. I don't mean that only one thing happens to us in our lives: there are countless events, which we turn into countless stories. But there's only one that matters, only one finally worth telling. This is mine. One summer in the sixties, in a staid suburb south of London, Paul comes home from university, aged nineteen, and is urged by his mother to join the tennis club. In the mixed-doubles tournament he's partnered with Susan Mcleod, a fine player who's forty-eight, confident, ironic, and married, with two nearly adult daughters. She is also a warm companion, their bond immediate. And they soon, inevitably, are lovers. Clinging to each other as though their lives depend on it, they then set up house in London to escape his parents and the abusive Mr. Mcleod. Decades later, with Susan now dead, Paul looks back at how they fell in love, how he freed her from a sterile marriage, and how -- gradually, relentlessly -- everything falling apart, as she succumbed to depression and worse while he struggled to understand the intricacy and depth of the human heart. It's a piercing account of helpless devotion, and of how memory can confound us and fail us and surprise us (sometimes all at once), of how, as Paul puts it, "first love fixes a life forever"--

The Only Story

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Andrew Delbanco

Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America's Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

"The ... story of how fugitive slaves drove the nation to Civil War"--]cProvided by publisher.

The War Before the War

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Thu Doan

Thu Doan

@thu678170

Books Listed

Following

Followers

V. I. Lenin; Slavoj Zizek

Lenin 2017

Yascha Mounk

The People vs. Democracy

Frances Richard

Gordon Matta-Clark

Michael Morpurgo

Arthur, High King of Britain

Nick Flynn

My Feelings

Donna Brazile; Yolanda Caraway; Leah Daughtry

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics

B. A. Shapiro

The Collector's Apprentice

Andrea Rothman

The DNA of You and Me

Stephen McCauley

My Ex-Life

Jane Austen; Graphic Arts Books

Sense and Sensibility

Melinda Gates

The Moment of Lift

Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Dan Rather; Elliot Kirschner

What Unites Us

Téa Obreht

The Tiger's Wife

Julian Barnes

The Only Story

Andrew Delbanco

The War Before the War

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Browse by categories

V. I. Lenin; Slavoj Zizek

Lenin 2017

Yascha Mounk

The People vs. Democracy

Frances Richard

Gordon Matta-Clark

Michael Morpurgo

Arthur, High King of Britain

Nick Flynn

My Feelings

Donna Brazile; Yolanda Caraway; Leah Daughtry

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics

B. A. Shapiro

The Collector's Apprentice

Andrea Rothman

The DNA of You and Me

Stephen McCauley

My Ex-Life

Jane Austen; Graphic Arts Books

Sense and Sensibility

Melinda Gates

The Moment of Lift

Maria Semple

Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Dan Rather; Elliot Kirschner

What Unites Us

Téa Obreht

The Tiger's Wife

Julian Barnes

The Only Story

Andrew Delbanco

The War Before the War

Get The App