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J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye

MSRP: $15.00

$8.99
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Dermot Bolger (Editor)

The Vintage Book of Contemporary Irish Fiction

MSRP: $18.00

$10.99
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Stephen King

Doctor Sleep

MSRP: $18.00

$12.99
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Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird

MSRP: $14.99

$7.99
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Emily Dickinson

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

MSRP: $7.95

$5.99
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Bertrand Russell

A History of Western Philosophy

$12.00
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Rebecca Skloot

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

MSRP: $17.00

$7.99
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David L. Morton Jr.

Sound Recording: The Life Story of a Technology

MSRP: $26.95

$17.99

Newly Added Books

The Bondage of the Will is fundamental to an understanding of the primary doctrines of the Reformation. In these pages, Luther gives extensive treatment to what he saw as the heart of the gospel.

Free will was no academic question to Luther; the whole gospel of the grace of God, he believed, was bound up with it and stood or fell according to the way one decided it. Luther affirms our total inability to save ourselves and the sovereignty of divine grace in our salvation. He upholds the doctrine of justification by faith and defends predestination as determined by the foreknowledge of God.

This accurate translation by J. I. Packer and O. R. Johnston captures the vitality of Luther's treatise, thereby conveying its relevance to our lives today. The translators write, "Do we not stand in urgent need of such teaching as Luther here gives us—teaching which humbles man, strengthens faith, and glorifies God?" — Quick view Add to Cart

Martin Luther

The Bondage of the Will

MSRP: $16.99

$8.99

The hilarious first novel by the #1 bestselling author of Running with Scissors, Dry, A Wolf at the Table, and You Better Not Cry, Sellevision is Augusten Burrough's darkly funny and vastly entertaining skewering of a very troubled home-shopping channel.

Welcome to the world of Sellevision, America's premier retail broadcasting network. When Max Andrews, the much loved and handsome (that is, lonely and gay) host of a "Toys for Tots" segment, accidentally exposes himself in front of millions of kids, Sellevision faces its first big scandal. As Max struggles to find a new job in television, the popular and perky host Peggy Jean Smythe is receiving sinister emails from a stalker. Popping pills and drinking heavily, she fails to notice that her husband is spending a lot of time with the young babysitter who lives next door. Then there's Leigh, whose affair with married Sellevision boss Howard Toast is going nowhere until she announces their relationship on air. A blistering satire of our overcharged, scandal-obsessed world, Sellevision is "an absolute howl...wicked fun" (New York Daily News). — Quick view Add to Cart

Augusten Burroughs

Sellivision

MSRP: $11.95

$6.99

This Second Edition of a perennial favorite in the Norton Critical Edition series represents an extensive revision of its predecessor.

The text is that of the first edition of the novel, published by Herbert S. Stone in 1899. The annotations, provided by the editor, include translations of French phrases and explanations of references to the New Orleans locales, customs, and lore, the Bayou region, and Creole culture.

The expanded "Biographical and Historical Contexts" section, introduced by a new Editor's Note, presents biographical, historical, and cultural documents; many are contemporary with the novel's publication. Among the new inclusions are an essay by the acclaimed Chopin biographer Emily Toth, "An Etiquette/Advice Book Sampler" with selections from the conduct books of the late nineteenth century, and period fashion plates from Harper's Bazar.

A comprehensive "Criticism" section, introduced by a new Editor's Note, contains expanded sections from the hard-to-find contemporary reviews of the novel: two letters of mysterious origin written in response to the novel; and Chopin's "Retraction" following The Awakening's negative reception. These are followed by twenty-seven interpretive essays, twelve of them new, that provide a variety of perspectives on The Awakening, including pieces by Cynthia Griffin Wolff, Nancy Walker, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Paula A. Treichler, Sandra M. Gilbert, Lee R. Edwards, Patricia S. Yaeger, Elizabeth Ammons, and Elaine Showalter,

A Chronology of Chopin's life and a thoroughly updated Bibliography are included.

Edited by Margo Culley — Quick view Add to Cart

Kate Chopin

The Awakening: A Norton Critical Edition, 2nd Edition

$10.00

After reading Leaves of Grass, Robert Louis Stevenson called it "a book which tumbled the world upside down for me." For many others, too, from Whitman's day to ours, this book has come as an epochal experience, as flushed with life and poetic quality now as then. Mark Van Doren's Portable Walt Whitman includes one hundred poems from Leaves of Grass, as well as two of Whitman's prose works in their entirety, Democratic Vistas and his wonderfully rambling reminiscences, Specimen Days. In addition, this volume contains a brief chronology and bibliographical checklist by Whitman biographer Gay Wilson Allen. — Quick view Add to Cart

Mark Van Doren (Editor)

The Portable Walt Whitman

MSRP: $13.95

$5.99

Much-studied and frequently performed, these comedies by the great Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson satirize the greed, mendacity, gullibility, and pretension of seventeenth-century London society. Both plays abound in colorful characters, ingenious plotting, biting wit, and sharp insight into human nature.

In Volpone (1605), a crafty rich man attempts to augment his wealth by feigning a mortal illness. His wealthy neighbors, spying the opportunity for an inheritance, vie with each other in courting the “dying” man’s favor. The Alchemist (1610) comprises a likewise avaricious cast, headed by a butler and prostitute who join forces with a swindler claiming to possess the philosopher's stone. The trio hosts a parade of eager victims whose hypocrisy and greed place them on a moral footing similar to that of the tricksters. Both plays offer sparkling examples of their author's novel approach to satire and his distinctive blend of savagery, humor, moralism, and a powerful sense of the absurd. — Quick view Add to Cart

Ben Jonson

Volpone and The Alchemist

MSRP: $6.00

$3.99

An indispensable source book, "Bettenson, Documents" has won for itself a world-wide reputation since its first publication in 1943. It is also fascinating reading, containing "the hard facts of many disputed questions, the ammunition for controversy, the corrective to loose thinking and idle speech." The second edition has been enlarged to include Christian history through the beginning of the Ecumenical Movement.

The book now spans the periods of the Fathers, the Church in the Roman Empire, the Creeds, Scholasticism, the Reformation, the Churches in Great Britain, and Roman Catholic pronouncements up to the eve of the Second Vatican Council. Documents are also included on the Church of South India and the meetings of the Council of Churches in 1947 and 1961.

Selected and Edited by Henry Bettenson. — Quick view Add to Cart

Henry Bettenson

Documents of the Christian Church

$10.00

James Thurber’s unique ability to convey the vagaries of life in a funny, witty, and often satirical way earned him accolades as one of the finest humorists of the twentieth century. A bestseller upon its initial publication in 1945, The Thurber Carnival captures the depth of his talent and the breadth of his wit. The stories compiled here, almost all of which first appeared in The New Yorker, are from his uproarious and candid collection My World and Welcome to It—including the American classic "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"—as well as from The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bathroom, Men, Women and Dogs. Thurber’s take on life, society, and human nature is timeless and will continue to delight readers even as they recognize a bit of themselves in his brilliant sketches. — Quick view Add to Cart

James Thurber

The Thurber Carnival

MSRP: $15.99

$7.99

From America’s preeminent columnist, named by the Financial Times the most influential commentator in the nation, a must-have collection of Charles Krauthammer’s essential, timeless writings.

A brilliant stylist known for an uncompromising honesty that challenged conventional wisdom at every turn, Krauthammer dazzled readers for decades with his keen insight into politics and government. His weekly column was a must-read in Washington and across the country. Don’t miss the best of Krauthammer’s intelligence, erudition and wit collected in one volume.

Readers will find here not only the country’s leading conservative thinker offering a passionate defense of limited government, but also a highly independent mind whose views—on feminism, evolution and the death penalty, for example—defy ideological convention. Things That Matter also features several of Krauthammer’s major path-breaking essays—on bioethics, on Jewish destiny and on America’s role as the world’s superpower—that have profoundly influenced the nation’s thoughts and policies. And finally, the collection presents a trove of always penetrating, often bemused reflections on everything from border collies to Halley’s Comet, from Woody Allen to Winston Churchill, from the punishing pleasures of speed chess to the elegance of the perfectly thrown outfield assist.

With a special, highly autobiographical introduction in which Krauthammer reflects on the events that shaped his career and political philosophy, this indispensible chronicle takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the fashions and follies, the tragedies and triumphs, of the last three decades of American life. — Quick view Add to Cart

Charles Krauthammer

Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics

MSRP: $16.00

$9.99

Mrs. Dalloway is the portrait of a single day in a woman's life. Mrs. Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party preparation--fresh flower shopping, new dress buying, and festive room decorating. As she readies her house for friends and neighbors, memories flood her mind, and she is awash in the sensations of faraway times. Clarissa blissfully relives her carefree youth and early loves, stoically witnesses the approach and retreat of war's grinding realities, carefully reexamines the solid reasons behind her practical marriage, and hesitantly looks ahead to the unfamiliar work of growing old. In this revelatory and experimental novel, the past, the present, and visions of the future melt together in each and every moment. Heralded as Virginia Woolf's greatest work of fiction, Mrs. Dalloway is not only a detailed rendering of a vivid human life, it is the outline on paper of human consciousness.

With a Foreword by Maureen Howard — Quick view Add to Cart

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

MSRP: $14.99

$7.99

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was the first great English political philosopher, and his book Leviathan was one of the first truly modern works of philosophy. He has long had the reputation of being a pessimistic atheist, who saw human nature as inevitably evil, and proposed a totalitarian state to subdue human failings. In this study, Richard Tuck shows that while Hobbes may indeed have been an atheist, he was far from pessimistic about human nature, nor did he advocate totalitarianism. By locating him against the context of his age, Dr. Tuck reveals Hobbes to have been passionately concerned with the refutation of scepticism in both sciences and ethics, and to have developed a theory of knowledge which rivalled that of Descartes in its importance for the formation of modern philosophy. — Quick view Add to Cart

Richard Tuck

Hobbes

MSRP: $9.95

$4.99

In Life in a Medieval Village, acclaimed historians Frances and Joseph Gies reveal what life was actually like in the Middle Ages. Focusing on the village of Elton, in the English East Midlands, the Gieses detail the agricultural advances that made communal living possible and the social and economic divisions that separated lord from serf that made life so difficult for so many. Life in a Medieval Village takes modern readers through every aspect of day-to-day life, describing the villagers’ diet (centered around a bland stew called pottage lacking in nutrients), how they harvested crops, and the central role of the church in maintaining social harmony. We learn the clothes villagers wore, their (sometimes lacking) standards of personal hygiene, and the bizarre treatments they devised for a variety of medical maladies. But it wasn’t all bad: the medieval village was one of the first functional modern societies, and its surprisingly advanced legal system and code of conduct helped lay the groundwork for contemporary civilization.

Though the main focus is on Elton, circa 1300, the Gieses supply general historical context for the origin, development, and decline of the European village. Meticulously researched and vividly told, Life in a Medieval Village illustrates the captivating world of the Middle Ages and demonstrates what life was like during a fascinating—and often misunderstood—era. — Quick view Add to Cart

Frances Gies

Life in a Medieval Village

$8.99

"We who are old know that age is more than a disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high. If it is a long defeat it is also a victory...." The playwright and Jungian analyst Florida Scott-Maxwell was in her eighties when she wrote these lines, which begin one of the most extraordinary documents of any stage of life. With a candid introspection that recalls the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, Maxwell assess the special predicament of old age: when one feels both cut off from the past and out of step with the present; when the body rebels at activity, but the mind becomes more passionate than ever.

But this predicament also affords her a panoramic vision of the issues that haunt us throughout our lives: how to reconcile our impulses toward good and evil; how to attain individuality in a mass society; and how to emerge--out of suffering, loss, and limitation--with something approaching wisdom.

Maxwell's incredible wisdom, humanity, and dignity make The Measure of My Days both timeless and timely an important contribution to the literature of aging, and of living. — Quick view Add to Cart

Florida Scott-Maxwell

The Measure of My Days

MSRP: $12.99

$6.99