$25.95
20% Off: $20.76

Post-American World
by Fareed Zakaria
(Norton)

"This is a relentlessly intelligent book that eschews simple-minded projections from crisis to collapse. There is certainly plenty to bemoan — from the disappearing dollar to the subprime disaster, from rampant anti-Americanism to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will take years to win. Yet Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the 'rise of the rest.' After all, how can this giant follow Rome and Britain onto the dust heap of empire if it can prosecute two wars at once without much notice at home?." —Josef Joffe, New York Times Book Review

$15.00
20% Off: $12.00

Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time
by Greg Mortenson
(Penguin (Non-Classics))

Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school.

$27.50
20% Off: $22.00

A Voyage Long and Strange
by Tony Horwitz
(Henry Holt)

“Popular history of the most accessible sort… Horwitz knows how to quick cut between historical narrative and a breezy account of his own travels. It’s the same method he used in Confederates in the Attic, deployed with the same success, and unlike many other less journalistic histories, in which the material is displayed at a curator’s remove, it has the immense value of injecting the past into the present – showing us history as an element of contemporary life, something that surrounds us and presses in on us, whether we know it or not.”—New York Times Book Review

$12.95
20% Off: $10.36

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman (Vintage)
by Nora Ephron
(Vintage)

“Long-overdue. . . . Executed with sharpness and panache . . . . [Nora Ephron] retains an uncanny ability to sound like your best friend, whoever you are. . . . It's good to know that Ms. Ephron's wry, knowing X-ray vision is one of them.” —The New York Times

$25.00
20% Off: $20.00

Unaccustomed Earth
by Jhumpa Lahiri
(Knopf)

From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories--longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written--that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers.

$12.00
20% Off: $9.60

The Girl on the Fridge: Stories
by Etgar Keret
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

A birthday-party magician whose hat tricks end in horror and gore; a girl parented by a major household appliance; the possessor of the lowest IQ in the Mossad—such are the denizens of Etgar Keret’s dark and fertile mind. The Girl on the Fridge contains the best of Keret’s first collections, the ones that made him a household name in Israel and the major discovery of this last decade.

$22.95
20% Off: $18.36

The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments
by George Johnson
(Random House)

“Johnson’s book is as elegant as the experiments he features.... The writing here is lively, mixing bits of biography with the experiments themselves, offering the human element that explains the scientists’ motivation as well as the science. Johnson shares personal anecdotes as well as theory in an engaging, compelling style. The result is a little gem of a book, enjoyable to read both as history and science.” -Bookpage

$24.95
20% Off: $19.96

The Complete Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi
(Pantheon)

"A memoir of growing up as a girl in revolutionary Iran, Persepolis provides a unique glimpse into a nearly unknown and unreachable way of life... That Satrapi chose to tell her remarkable story as a gorgeous comic book makes it totally unique and indispensable." -Time

$24.95
20% Off: $19.96

April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America
by Michael Eric Dyson
(Basic Books)

Acclaimed public intellectual and best-selling author Michael Eric Dyson uses the fortieth anniversary of King’s assassination as the occasion for a provocative and fresh examination of how King fought, and faced, his own death, and we should use his death and legacy. Dyson also uses this landmark anniversary as the starting point for a comprehensive reevaluation of the fate of Black America over the four decades that followed King’s death.

$15.00
20% Off: $12.00

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
by Daniel J. Levitin
(Plume)

"How the brain processes all aspects of music is the subject of this book rooted in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the evolution of the brain. Levitin starts with how the ear perceives sound vibrations--signals are processed in the brain's audio cortex--and proceeds to the perception of frequencies, scales, and timbre, coupled with rhythm and tempo, exploring them within cultural context." -Booklist

$24.95
20% Off: $19.96

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
(Riverhead Hardcover)

"Writing in a combustible mix of slang and lyricism, Díaz loops back and forth in time and place, generating sly and lascivious humor in counterpoint to tyranny and sorrow. And his characters—Oscar, the hopeless romantic; Lola, his no-nonsense sister; their heartbroken mother; and the irresistible homeboy narrator—cling to life with the magical strength of superheroes, yet how vibrantly human they are.... Díaz's novel is intrepid and radiant." -Booklist

Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Congratulations to Mr. Diaz.

$15.00
20% Off: $12.00

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert
(Penguin (Non-Classics))

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. 

$25.00
20% Off: $20.00

The Thirteen American Arguments
by Howard Fineman
(Random House)

“With a marvelous command of the past and a keen grasp of the present, Howard Fineman expertly details one of the great truths about our country: that we are a nation built on arguments, and our capacity to summon what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature’ lies in undertaking those debates with civility and mutual respect. Few people understand politics as well as Fineman does, and this work is an indispensable guide not only to the battles of the moment, but to the wars that will go on long after this news cycle is long forgotten.” –Jon Meacham (Franklin and Winston)

$14.00
20% Off: $11.20

The Gathering
by Anne Enright
(Grove Press, Black Cat)

"Reckless intelligence, savage humor, slow revelation, no consolation: Anne Enright’s fiction is jet dark — but how it glitters," began the New York Times review of The Gathering back in September, before Ms. Enright's fourth novel won 2007's Man Booker Prize.

“Abrasively honest and toweringly moving, it grabs and shakes you, rabbiting on in a manic monologue, comical, tragic, lost and profound.” -The Scotsman

$17.99
20% Off: $14.39

The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 4)
by Rick Riordan
(Hyperion)

Percy Jackson isn't expecting freshman orientation to be any fun, but when a mysterious mortal acquaintance appears, pursued by demon cheerleaders, things quickly go from bad to worse. "The fourth and penultimate volume of Percy Jackson and the Olympians is the best one yet." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

$14.95
20% Off: $11.96

Stumbling on Happiness
by Daniel Gilbert
(Vintage)

"Citing the research of scientists and philosophers through the ages and incorporating facts and theories from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert discusses the science of happiness, the shortcomings of imagination as well as the illusions of foresight. And far from being a dry tome, the book is a sly, irresistible romp down, or through, memory lane--past, present, and future. It is not only wildly entertaining but also hilarious (if David Sedaris were a psychologist, he very well might write like this) and yet full of startling insight, imaginative conclusions, and even bits of wisdom." -Booklist

$26.95
20% Off: $21.56

The Sum of Our Days: A Memoir
by Isabel Allende
(Harper)

"In this deeply revealing second memoir, after Paula, novelist Allende (The House of Spirits) utilizes her family and the complex network of their relationships as the linchpin of the narrative. While weaving in her candid opinions on love and marriage, friendship, drug addiction, the writing life and religious fanaticism, Allende continues to work through the grief over her daughter's death.... This is a book to savor." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

$13.99
20% Off: $11.19

Free Food for Millionaires
by Min Jin Lee
(Grand Central Publishing)

"In her noteworthy debut, Lee filters through a lively postfeminist perspective a tale of first-generation immigrants stuck between stodgy parents and the hip new world. Lee's heroine, 22-year-old Casey Han, graduates magna cum laude in economics from Princeton with a taste for expensive clothes and an 'enviable golf handicap,' but hasn't found a 'real' job yet, so her father kicks her out of his house. She heads to her white boyfriend's apartment only to find him in bed with two sorority girls. Next stop: running up her credit card at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City.... Lee's take on contemporary intergenerational cultural friction is wide-ranging, sympathetic and well worth reading." -Publishers Weekly

$12.95
20% Off: $10.36

101 Things I Learned in Architecture School
by Matthew Frederick
(The MIT Press)

This is a book that students of architecture will want to keep in the studio and in their backpacks. It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom.

$14.95
20% Off: $11.96

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama
(Three Rivers Press)

In this lyrical and unsentimental memoir written when he was thirty three, present presidential phenom Obama, the son of a black African father and a white American mother, searched for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.

“Fluidly, calmly, insightfully, Obama guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race.” —Washington Post Book World 

$21.95
20% Off: $17.56

The Last Lecture
by Randy Pausch
(Hyperion Books)

When Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think").

$17.00
20% Off: $13.60

People's History of American Empire
by Howard Zinn
(Henry Holt)

Since its landmark publication in 1980, A People’s History of the United States has had six new editions, sold more than 1.7 million copies, become required classroom reading throughout the country, and been turned into an acclaimed play.  
Now Zinn, historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki have collaborated to retell, in vibrant comics form, a most immediate and relevant chapter of A People’s History: the centuries-long story of America’s actions in the world. Narrated by Zinn, this version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq. 

$35.00
20% Off: $28.00

Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
by Max Hastings
(Knopf)

Hailed in Britain as “Spectacular.... Searingly powerful. Hastings makes important points about the war in the East that have been all too rarely heard” (The Sunday Telegraph). Retribution is a riveting, impeccably informed chronicle of the final year of the Pacific war. In his critically acclaimed Armageddon, Hastings detailed the last twelve months of the struggle for Germany. Here, in what can be considered a companion volume, he covers the horrific story of the war against Japan.

$16.00
20% Off: $12.80

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
by Michael Pollan
(Penguin)

We are indeed what we eat — and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century in his latest book.

$21.95
20% Off: $17.56

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
by Michael Pollan
(Penguin Press HC, The)

Writing In Defense of Food, and affirming the joy of eating, Pollan suggests that if we would pay more for better, well-grown food, but buy less of it, we'll benefit ourselves, our communities, and the environment at large. Taking a clear-eyed look at what science does and does not know about the links between diet and health, he proposes a new way to think about the question of what to eat that is informed by ecology and tradition rather than by the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient approach.

$12.95
20% Off: $10.36

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death
by Jean-Dominique Bauby
(Vintage)

"Was it Hemingway who defined grace under pressure? No matter who said it, the words have never been more pertinent than in speaking of this heroic book, dictated against the worst imaginable adversities. Although every word cost the author a superhuman effort, the prose is not sickbed telegraphese but rather as light as the sprightliest humor, as pungent as the taste of cooking apricots, as vigorous as the step of a young man setting out on a first date. Read this book and fall back in love with life." -Edmund White (Hotel de Dream)

$29.95
20% Off: $23.96

Audition: A Memoir
by Barbara Walters
(Knopf)

After more than forty years of interviewing heads of state, world leaders, movie stars, criminals, murderers, inspirational figures, and celebrities of all kinds, Barbara Walters has turned her gift for examination onto herself to reveal the forces that shaped her extraordinary life. Walters has spent a lifetime auditioning: for her bosses at the TV networks, for millions of viewers, for the most famous people in the world, and even for her own daughter, with whom she has had a difficult but ultimately quite wonderful and moving relationship. This book, in some ways, is her final audition, as she fully opens up both her private and public lives. In doing so, she has given us a story that is heartbreaking and honest, surprising and fun, sometimes startling, and always fascinating.

$12.00
20% Off: $9.60

The Nimrod Flipout: Stories
by Etgar Keret
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

"Keret, an Israeli writer who also writes children's books and collaborates with illustrators on graphic stories and novels, specializes in brainteasing short short stories reminiscent of the 'Shouts and Murmurs' section of the New Yorker—30 are packed in this thin volume.... Like French surrealist Marcel Aymé, Keret keeps his stories one dimensional, but it's a dimension he has mastered, one that peels away the borderlines of normalcy." -Publishers Weekly

$27.95
20% Off: $22.36

Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation
by Sheila Weller
(Atria)

Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation — a female version — but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written — until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs.

$16.95
20% Off: $13.56

The Architecture of Happiness
by Alain de Botton
(Random House)

"With this entertaining and stimulating book, de Botton (How Proust Can Change Your Life) examines the ways architecture speaks to us, evoking associations that, if we are alive to them, can put us in touch with our true selves and influence how we conduct our lives. Because of this, he contends, it's the architect's task to design buildings that contribute to happiness by embodying ennobling values.... The strength of his book is that it encourages us to open our eyes and really look at the buildings in which we live and work. A three-part series of the same title will air on PBS this fall." -Publishers Weekly