Books related to American domestic & foreign policy and politics.

Joseph J. Ellis

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Vermont

The Revolutionary Generation

The introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your reading group's discussion of Joseph Ellis's Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation . We hope they will enrich your experience of this Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington.

Founding Brothers

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Wes Moore

Clean, like-new copy. Has some very light edge wear, as pictured. 

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One Name, Two Fates

The Other Wes Moore

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American Policy & Politics

Fascinating books for animal lovers, allies, and advocates.

Jane Goodall

Phillip Berman

Clean, tight copy, cover just very slightly worn. 

A Spiritual Journey

From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the new National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a poignant memoir about her spiritual epiphany and an appeal for why everyone can find a reason for hope.

Dr. Jane Goodall's revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe preserve forever altered the very, definition of humanity. Now, in a poignant and insightful memoir, Jane Goodall explores her extraordinary life and personal spiritual odyssey, with observations as profound as the knowledge she has brought back from the forest.

Reason for Hope

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Farley Mowat

Older copy, page edges slightly discolored, but discoloration does not reach the pages.

By enquiring into the puzzle of sibling relations, Frank J. Sulloway pioneers a new view of how family affects individual development. He shows that birth-order is so fundamental to the family that it transcends gender, class and nationality.

Never Cry Wolf

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Dion Leonard

A Little Dog with a Very Big Heart

A man, a dog, and the lengths to which love will go to sacrifice for its companion. Finding Gobi is the miraculous tale of Dion Leonard, a seasoned ultramarathon runner who crosses paths with a stray dog while competing in a 150-mile race through the Gobi Desert in China. The lovable pup, who would later earn the name Gobi, proved that what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in heart, as she went step for step with Dion over the Tian Shan Mountains, across massive sand dunes, through yurt villages and the black sands of the Gobi Desert, keeping pace with him for nearly 80 miles. As Dion witnessed the incredible determination and heart of this small animal, he found his own heart undergoing a change as well. Whereas in the past these races were all about winning and being the best, his goal now was to make sure he and Gobi's friendship continued well after the finish line. He found himself letting Gobi sleep in his tent at night, giving her food and water out of his own limited supply, and carrying her across numerous rivers, even when he knew it would mean putting him behind in the race, or worse, prevent him from finishing at all. Although Dion did not cross the finish line first, he felt he had won something even greater - a new outlook on life and a new friend that he planned on bringing home as soon as arrangements were made. However, before he could take her home, Gobi went missing in the sprawling Chinese city where she was being kept. Dion, with the help of strangers and a viral outpouring of assistance on the internet, set out to track her down, and reunite forever with the amazing animal that changed his life and proved to him and the world that miracles are possible.

Finding Gobi

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Animal Lovers Shelf

Books that are beloved by readers across the country and/or the world.

Jeanne Birdsall

Edges are slightly yellowed, but the book is structurally sound and in great shape. With the original cover!

A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy

While vacationing with their widowed father in the Berkshire Mountains, four young sisters, ages four through twelve, share adventures with a local boy, much to the dismay of his snobbish mother.

The Penderwicks

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John Gardner

Like-new except for some light wear to the spine, some very light edge wear, and a few spots of light discoloration on pageblock. Binding is tight and pages themselves are clean and bright, free of marks. Clearly never read.

The Beowulf story retold from the monster's point of view reveals the darker side of human nature and values

Grendel

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John J. Murphy

Willa Cather

Older edition in great shape with a little light edgewear and some faint pageblock discoloration, as pictured. Woodcut images sprinkled throughout.

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Willa Cather's My Ántonia is considered one of the most significant American novels of the twentieth century. Set during the great migration west to settle the plains of the North American continent, the narrative follows Antonia Shimerda, a pioneer who comes to Nebraska as a child and grows with the country, inspiring a childhood friend, Jim Burden, to write her life story. The novel is important both for its literary aesthetic and as a portrayal of important aspects of American social ideals and history, particularly the centrality of migration to American culture. 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.

My Ántonia

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Beloved Stories

Beloved books that support emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

Maggie Callanan

Patricia Kelley

Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying

Five years after its first publication, with more than 150,000 copies in print, Final Gifts has become a classic. In this moving and compassionate book, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years experience tending the terminally ill.

Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share.

Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

Final Gifts

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Joe Dispenza

Clean, like-new copy with some very light edge wear, as pictured.

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Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New One

You are not doomed by your genes and hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of your life. A new science is emerging that empowers all human beings to create the reality they choose. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, renowned author, speaker, researcher, and chiropractor Dr. Joe Dispenza combines the fields of quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics to show you what is truly possible. Not only will you be given the necessary knowledge to change any aspect of yourself, but you will be taught the step-by-step tools to apply what you learn in order to make measurable changes in any area of your life. Dr. Joe demystifies ancient understandings and bridges the gap between science and spirituality. Through his powerful workshops and lectures, thousands of people in 24 different countries have used these principles to change from the inside out. Once you break the habit of being yourself and truly change your mind, your life will never be the same!

Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself

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Ilana Wiles

Some light corner wear (pictured), but brand-new and perfect condition otherwise.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A blogger presents a humorous view of parenting, using her own personal experiences to celebrate the challenges and joys of motherhood.

The Mommy Shorts Guide to Remarkably Average Parenting

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Books for Better Living

Books for creative support, encouragement, and inspiration.

Griffin Dunne

Lovely, like-new copy with some very light edge wear, as pictured. 

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A Family Memoir

Griffin Dunne’s first three decades of growing up among a family of larger-than-life characters and cultural forces in Hollywood and Manhattan were filled with extraordinary incident At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary L.A. party for the publication of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good. In his early 20s, he shared an apartment in Manhattan’s Hotel Des Artistes with his best friend and soulmate Carrie Fisher, while she was filming some sci-fi movie called Star Wars and he was a struggling actor working as a popcorn concessionaire at Radio City Music Hall. A few years later, he produced and starred in the now-iconic film After Hours, directed by Martin Scorsese. In the midst of it all, Griffin’s 22-year-old sister Dominique, a rising star in Hollywood, was brutally strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, leading to one of the most infamous public trials of the 1980s, which ended in a travesty of justice that also somehow marked the beginning of their father Dominick Dunne’s career as a bestselling author of true crime narratives. And yet, for all its bold-face cast of characters and jaw-dropping scenes, The Friday Afternoon Club is no celebrity memoir. It is, down to its bones, a family story that brilliantly embraces the poignant absurdities and best and worst efforts of its loveable, infuriating, funny, and moving characters—its author most of all—finding wicked, self-deprecating humor and glints of surprising light in even the most harrowing and painful of circumstances.

The Friday Afternoon Club

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Chuck Klosterman

A Low Culture Manifesto

Explores a range of modern cultural phenomenon, including Internet pornography, tribute bands, baseball rivalries, and reality television.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

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Mindy Kaling

Never read. Some light edge and corner wear and very light page edge discoloration (pictured).

The writer and actress from "The Office" shares observations on topics ranging from favorite male archetypes and her hatred of dieting to her relationship with her mother and the haphazard creative process on the show.

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and Other Concerns)

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Books for Creatives!

Books about creativity and writing/creative practice, craft, and/or process.

Lynne Truss

Very minor wear top right corner of front cover, otherwise perfect.

The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

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David Mamet

"Essays in direct line from Stanislavsky, Chekhov, Shaw, and Brecht"
--Mike Nichols

A collection of essays from Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet adressing many issues in contemporary American theater

Temporarily putting aside his role as playwright, director, and screen-writer, David Mamet digs deep and delivers thirty outrageously diverse vignettes. On subjects ranging from the vanishing American pool hall, family vacations, and the art of being a bitch, to the role of today's actor, his celebrated contemporaries and predecessors, and his undying commitment to the theater, David Mamet's concise style, lean dialogue, and gut-wrenching honesty give us a unique view of the world as he sees it.

Writing in Restaurants

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Books for Writers

Some writers and/or books I highly recommend!

Thich Nhat Hanh

Some very light discoloration top page edge (pictured).

Wisdom for Cooling the Flames

"[Thich Nhat Hanh] shows us the connection between personal, inner peace and peace on earth." –His Holiness The Dalai Lama Nominated by Martin Luther King, Jr. for a Nobel Peace Prize, Thich Nhat Hanh is one of today’s leading sources of wisdom, peace, compassion and comfort. It was under the bodhi tree in India twenty-five centuries ago that Buddha achieved the insight that three states of mind were the source of all our unhappiness: wrong knowing, obsessive desire, and anger. All are difficult, but in one instant of anger—one of the most powerful emotions—lives can be ruined, and health and spiritual development can be destroyed. With exquisite simplicity, Buddhist monk and Vietnam refugee Thich Nhat Hanh gives tools and advice for transforming relationships, focusing energy, and rejuvenating those parts of ourselves that have been laid waste by anger. His extraordinary wisdom can transform your life and the lives of the people you love, and in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, can give each reader the power "to change everything."

Anger

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Michael Buckley

The Sisters Grimm: the Fairy-Tale Detective - #1

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Bookseller Recommends

Books that are current or former indie bookstore bestsellers.

Paul Harding

Clean, like-new condition with some very light edge wear and faint pageblock discoloration, as pictured. Never read.

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On his deathbed, surrounded by his family, George Washington Crosby's throughts drift back to his childhood and the father who abandoned him when he was twelve.

Tinkers

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Leslie Jamison

Essays

A collection of essays explores empathy, using topics ranging from street violence and incarceration to reality television and literary sentimentality to ask questions about people's understanding of and relationships with others.

The Empathy Exams

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Bookstore Bestsellers

Books that push (or pushed for their time) against the conventional boundaries and expectations for their topic and/or genre.

Philip K. Dick

Lovely, like-new, unread copy with some very light, barely discernible pageblock discoloration, as pictured.

"I have never seen [its] theme handled with greater technical dexterity or given more psychological meaning."--Fantasy and Science Fiction

When a routine tour of a particle accelerator goes awry, Jack Hamilton and the rest of his tour group find themselves in a world ruled by Old Testament morality, where the smallest infraction can bring about a plague of locusts. Escape from that world is not the end, though, as they plunge into a Communist dystopia and a world where everything is an enemy.

Philip K. Dick was aggressively individualistic and no worldview is safe from his acerbic and hilarious take downs. Eye in the Sky blends the thrills and the jokes to craft a startling morality lesson hidden inside a comedy.

Eye in the Sky

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Alan Lightman

Young Albert Einstein's dreams are imagined in a book that joins science and art to ponder such questions as the viscosity and flexibility of time. Reissue.

Einstein's Dreams

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Boundary-Pushing Books

Coleman Barks

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart





Originally released in 2007, "Year of Rumi," to coincide with the poet's 800th birthday, by the pre-eminent Rumi poet Coleman Barks.

In Rumi: Bridge to the Soul, Coleman Barks--who holds an honorary doctorate in Persian language and literature by the University of Tehran for his decades-long translations of Rumi--has collected and translated ninety new poems, most of them never published before in any form. The "bridge" in the title is a reference to the Khajou Bridge in Isphahan, Iran, which Barks visited with Robert Bly in May of 2006--a trip that in many ways prompted this book. The "soul bridge" also suggests Rumi himself, who crosses cultures and religions and brings us all together to listen to his words, regardless of origin or creed.

Open this book and let Rumi's poetry carry you into the interior silence and joy of the spirit, the place that unites conscious knowing with a deeper, more soulful understanding.

Rumi: Bridge to the Soul

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Doris Lessing

Excellent condition with some very light page discoloration and a bit of (non-sticky) sticker residue on front cover (pictured). 

Perennial Classics Edition

Anna is a writer, author of one very successful novel, who now keeps four notebooks. In one, with a black cover, she reviews the African experience of her earlier year. In a red one she records her political life, her disillusionment with communism. In a yellow one she writes a novel in which the heroine reviles part of her own experience. And in the blue one she keeps a personal diary. Finally, in love with an American writer and threatened with insanity, Anna tries to bring the threads of all four books together in a golden notebook.

The Golden Notebook

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Elizabeth Bishop

Poems

Whether writing about waiting as a child in a dentist's office, viewing a city from a plane high above, or losing items ranging from door keys to one's lover in the masterfully restrained "One Art," Elizabeth Bishop somehow conveyed both large and small emotional truths in language of stunning exactitude and even more astonishing resonance. As John Ashbery has written,"The private self . . . melts imperceptibly into the large utterance, the grandeur of poetry, which, because it remains rooted in everyday particulars, never sounds 'grand,' but is as quietly convincing as everyday speech."

Geography III

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Classics

Books that are generally considered modern classics in their genre.

Alison Bechdel

Like-new, never- read copy with small initials on first page in pen (see last picture). No other markings on or in book whatsoever. 

A Family Tragicomic

A memoir done in the form of a graphic novel by a cult favorite comic artist offers a darkly funny family portrait that details her relationship with her father--a funeral home director, high school English teacher, and closeted homosexual.

Fun Home

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Edward Abbey

Douglas Brinkley

Excellent condition with some very light edge wear, as pictured. 

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Edward Abbey called The Monkey Wrench Gang a "comic extravaganza," which it is, although one with a clear, serious message: to protect the American wilderness from the forces of commercial enterprise. The story centers on George Hayduke, an ex-Green Beret and Vietnam vet, who returns to the Southwestern desert after the war to find his beloved canyons and rivers threatened by industrial development. On a whitewater rafting trip down the Colorado River, Hayduke joins forces with three others who share his indignation and want to do something about it: feminist saboteur and Bronx exile Bonnie Abzug, wilderness guide and outcast Mormon Seldom Seen Smith, and libertarian billboard torcher Doc Sarvis, M.D. Together they venture off to become eco-raiders, waging war on the strip miners, clear-cutters, and the highway, dam, and bridge builders who are turning their natural habitat into a wasteland. The misadventures of this motley group make for an uproarious blend of chaos, conflict, and comedy.

The Monkey Wrench Gang

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Contemporary Classics

Jodi Bager

Jenny Lass

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

Rediscover the joy of eating with delicious, easy-to-digest recipes and meal-planning tips. Everyday Grain-Free Gourmet provides delectable, easy-to-digest dishes that appeal to family and guests who have food limitations which simply must be accommodated. Unlike other gluten-free cookbooks, this one offers traditional favorites in whole-foods, low-lactose, refined-sugar-free versions. Moreover, this book is ideal for anyone who wants or needs to improve their health through diet, including those with lactose intolerance, celiac disease, Crohn's disease and irritable bowel syndrome. The benefits of a whole-foods diet are addressed in special sections of the book. The authors also include important information on kitchen tools and equipment, food storage and menu-planning, plus a list of health-related resources. Some of the mouthwatering recipes are: Brie and apple crêpes Caesar salad with ginger aïoli vinaigrette Vegetable quiche Curry risotto Cannelloni Osso bucco Heavenly hazelnut ice cream. Every breakfast, lunch and dinner dish is great for the entire family, yet meets the strict limitations and standards of grain-restricted diets.

Everyday Grain-Free Gourmet

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Georgeanne Brennan

Dana Jacobi

Annabel Langbein

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

For Maximum Health -  A New Way to Improve Your Diet - 150 Dlicious Ways to Expand Your Palate

An innovative new cookbook from the experts at Williams-Sonoma offers a fresh approach to healthy eating that uses six color food groups as a foundation, explaining how to select one ingredient from each of the food groups to provide maximum daily nutritional benefits and furnishing 150 tempting and healthful recipes.

Eating by Color

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Mimi Kirk

Mia Kirk White

The Easy, 21-Day Raw Food Diet

Catch the wave of health and good living with this easy and delicious 21-day raw food plan. Mimi Kirk and her daughter, Mia Kirk White, developed the plan when they decided to team up and remind themselves of the benefits of eating all raw, all the time.They needed a plan that would work with their busy schedules, with meals that would fit into a set menu, but still allow them to mix and match foods. These recipes are so good, you'll make them again and again. Raw-Vitalize includes shopping lists, make-ahead prep ideas, and tips for eating on the go.

Raw-Vitalize

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Cooking & Foods

Great books with uniquely interesting and standout covers! You actually kind of CAN judge them by it…

Nina Riggs

Beautiful copy, never read. Deckled edge.

A Memoir of Living and Dying

"Built on her wildly popular Modern Love column, 'When a Couch is More Than a Couch' (9/23/2016), a breathtaking memoir of living meaningfully with 'death in the room' by the 38 year old great-great-great granddaughter of Ralph Waldo Emerson, mother to two young boys, wife of 16 years, after her terminal cancer diagnosis"--

The Bright Hour

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Richard Powers

Like-new, never read. Nearly perfect condition, pretty much brand-new.

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

A Novel

The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of--and paean to--the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours--vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

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