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The French Renaissance Court
by Robert Knecht
Yale Univ Pr
Our Price: $45.00
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Alan H. suggests...
I realize this is an unusual book to recommend to the general reader ; it has no dramatic tension or narrative framework, and no more plot than a biography would have. But for those (like me) who love French art and culture but prefer the whiteness and airy grace of the Loire chateaux to the heavy splendors of Versailles, or Clouet to Rigaud, this is simply a must-have book. And if you haven’t had much exposure to this period, its richness may come as a revelation. Knecht’s primary focus is on the achievements of Francis I — an outsize figure who was basically a Gallic version of Henry VIII without the cruel streak or the wives (mistresses instead !). He was, more importantly, one of the greatest patrons of the arts in history and was primarily responsible for bringing the Renaissance north of the Alps to France. I was also pleased by the author’s assessment of the under-appreciated queen mother Catherine de’ Medici, who, in the realm of cultural patronage no less than in the wider world of politics, did more than any other single individual to ensure that at the end of the Wars of Religion there were enough pieces left for Henri IV to put back together at all. This is also, for my money, one of the most lavishly produced and best-designed books of its kind I’ve seen in quite a while (as well as the densest— just heft it to see !).
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Cat and Girl: Volume II
by Dorothy Gambrell
Our Price: $15.95
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Alex M. suggests...
You may remember the "Time Traveler's Convention" sponsored by MIT a few years ago; what you may not know: it was inspired by a Cat and Girl comic. Now in its second volume, Cat and Girl combines idealistic twenty-something angst with the cleverness of an offbeat New Yorker cartoon, and the deadpan tone of a slogan t-shirt (worn ironically, of course). With recurrent references to conspicuous consumption, the peculiarities of the internet, performance artist Joseph Bueys, the artifice that is hipster-ism, David Foster Wallace, and the other minutia Gambrell finds tucked away in the corners of our culture, Cat and Girl takes that liberal arts education off the shelf and gives it something to do.
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Tigerheart
by Peter David
Del Rey
Our Price: $12.00
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Amanda N. suggests...
"What about you? What do you want to be when you grow up?" Paul thought about it and then said, "Myself." She looked at him skeptically. "Well...good luck with that. Pardon my saying, but I think that may be the hardest thing of all."
While Tigerheart is a sort of retelling of Peter Pan, it focuses less on Peter [or The Boy as he's called in this story], and more on the character of Paul, a young boy who simply wants to find a way to stitch his broken family back together. The book does an amazing job of capturing the essence of childhood, how children view adulthood, and the painful transition everyone faces in the process of growing up. I really enjoyed this one.
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Bandido: The Death and Resurrection of Oscar "Zeta" Acosta
by Ilan Stavans
Northwestern Univ Pr
Our Price: $13.95
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Ann M. suggests...
This is the true story of “Dr. Gonzo,” the lawyer character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He is not Samoan. He lived (and possibly is still living) a most inspiring life. The furious nihilism of Fear and Loathing renders most surprising Acosta’s dedication to social justice and his intellectual swagger. This is a fine corrective. Stavans’ musings on biography are also great.
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Change Has Come: An Artist Celebrates Our American Spirit
by Kadir Nelson
Simon & Schuster
Our Price: $12.99
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Ariel R. suggests...
Kadir Nelson was approached by editors at Simon and Schuster just after the election with the idea for Change Has Come. He began work on the sketches included in this book while he was on tour for Abe’s Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, and he completed them in just ten days. Known for his glowing colors and polished paintings, this was the first time I had seen looser sketches by Kadir Nelson. These sketches show all of the skill of his other books, but also have a moving spontaneity. Kadir Nelson captures Obama, as well as the spirit of America at this time, beautifully. Change Has Come is perfect for introducing your child to Barack Obama, or as a gift or keepsake for anyone inspired by this election (and who isn’t?).
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Wall and Piece
by Banksy
Random House UK
Our Price: $22.95
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Ben N. suggests...
Self-effacingly clever and brave, Banksy’s Wall and Piece is—well, it’s different. It’s graffiti, it’s performance art, it’s an essay. Banksy takes aim at social constructions, “normal” ideas, propriety, culture. This book is full of powerful thought. Whether or not you agree with any of the statements Banksy paints into existence and shapes into form, the stuff makes you think (and then re-think).
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Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer
by Tracy Kidder
Random House
Our Price: $14.00
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Carole H. suggests...
Like John McPhee, Kidder can interest me regardless of his topic. Finally he has a subject whose importance matches his considerable talents: Dr. Paul Farmer, infectious-disease expert, anthropologist, winner of a MacArthur grant, founder of Partners in Health, brilliant and tireless worker in brining health care to the world's poorest people. Farmer understands the political economy of disease and poverty, he believes that radical change is possible and he has proved it with his work in Haiti. The story is fascinating -- awe-inspiring, engrossing, funny and yet deadly serious.
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The Last Invisible Boy
by Evan Kuhlman
Ginee Seo Books
Our Price: $16.99
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Carter H. suggests...
For fans of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You’ll fall in love with the narrator and the illustrations. And, you might just fall on the floor laughing.
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Abc3d
by Marion Battaile
Roaring Brook
Our Price: $19.95
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Churchill P. suggests...
My first contact with this book was when my graphic designer wife sent me a video of it. You know a pop-up book is something special not only when it has a YouTube video but when that video has over 650,000 views. This book is elegant and whimsical and it's construction elevates it from being a ABC pop-up book into the world of sculpture and design. And at the same time it brings me back to a time before letters had connotation and meaning. A time when they were simple forms both beautiful and mysterious.
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The Heirloom Tomato
by Amy Goldman
Bloomsbury
Our Price: $35.00
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Clare M. suggests...
The seeds for the German Johnson Pink tomatoes I'm growing were brought to Iowa from Bremen, Germany in 1883 by Michael Ott. A year after his death, Ott's grandchildren founded the Seed Saver's Exchange in order to preserve heirloom variety seeds in the U.S. The German Johnson Pink became SSE's Tomato No. 1 out of a collection of nearly 6,000 tomatoes. Until The Heirloom Tomato, I was completely ignorant of the history I held in my hands when the seed packet was purchased last spring. Amy Goldman captures the manifold shapes, colors and tastes that heirloom tomatoes can acquire in bewitching photographs and phenomenal recipes (fried green tomatoes!). Goldman's tomato genealogies reveal the many reasons why growing heirloom variety plants and vegetables is crucial in the age of big box grocery chains (with their tasteless, bland greenhouse tomatoes) and genetically modified foods.
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Dinosaur vs. Bedtime
by Bob Shea
Hyperion
Our Price: $15.99
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Frances H. suggests...
I read this aloud to a room full of adults who collapsed into giggles and started yelling "RAWR RAWR RAWR!" along with me; Imagine what will ensue when you read it to actual children! Bright pictures and a fun refrain, what more could you ask for from classy literature?
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Vacation
by Deb Olin Unferth
Pubilshers Group West
Our Price: $22.00
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Jane D. suggests...
Vacation is told in a voice I hadn't read before, and one that kept me up all night reading. It's a mystery why these characters are following each other around their neighborhoods and all over the world and how Deb Olin Unferth can show us familiar things through alien eyes, make us see, somewhat objectively, the bizarre world we're used to. It's funny and sad and you can't tell which is which. I loved every minute of it.
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The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author
by Richard Dawkins
Oxford University Press, USA
Our Price: $15.95
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Jen C. suggests...
"It is, in my view, the best work of popular science ever written." -- H. Allen Orr, New York Review of Books. "This book should be read, can be read, by almost everyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution."--W. D. Hamilton, Science. Reading The Selfish Gene inspired a good friend of mine, when she was only in middle school, to pursue a career in biology. She is now a grad student in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. After reading the book, I could see why. Dawkins is an clear, compelling writer, and the book is easy for a lay reader to understand (no knowledge of biology is assumed). The central thesis of the book is basic unit of evolution is not the species, nor the individual, but the gene. Dawkins explains, with fascinating turns of logic and examples from the animal world, how the apparently blind, self-propelling process of Darwinian natural selection can account for physiology as the human eye or the wings of birds, or how the "selfish" gene is, in fact, the engine that drives apparently selfless behaviors such as altruism. Recently re-released for its 30th anniversary, The Selfish Gene is still a classic and a must-read for both biologists and any member of the general public who is interested in science.
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The Bible: A Biography
by Karen Armstrong
Grove Press
Our Price: $13.00
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Julia M. suggests...
This book is readable and fascinating. The Judeo-Christian Bible is possibly the text (in all its forms) that has caused the most joy and also the most devastation of any book ever to exist. Armstrong's treatise examines the development of Judaism and eventually Christianity and how individuals and groups have constructed, interpreted and reinterpreted the Bible over the 3,000-odd years of its life. Understanding this history is essential to understanding our Christian-influenced country/world.
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Bones of Faerie
by Janni Lee Simner
Random House
Our Price: $16.99
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Kari P. suggests...
When I finished reading The Bones of Faerie, I flipped back to the beginning and started re-reading; it’s just that good. Janni Lee Simner has combined all the elements of the classic fairy tale quest and coming-of-age novel into a tightly-written, post-apocalyptic journey through the ruins of suburban St. Louis. This is one powerful stand-alone fantasy novel, a species I had thought extinct.
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Personal Days
by Ed Park
Random House Inc
Our Price: $13.00
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Katherine C. suggests...
Fans of workplace humor such as the TV series The Office or the recent National Book Award winner Then We Came To The End will enjoy Ed Park’s Personal Days. It recounts the misadventures of the disgruntled employees of a dysfunctional office, regarding email goofs, inter-cubicle romances, quirky coworkers, and a mysterious series of firings. An amusing and surprising portrait of the self-contained, fluorescent-lit world within an office’s four walls.
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Big Box Reuse
by Julia Christensen
Mit Pr
Our Price: $29.95
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Katie L. suggests...
It’s a particular thrill to receive a present that shows the giver knows you well. When a friend gave me this one, it was like she had conjured it out of my psyche. Converting abandoned Wal-Marts into civic centers? Sign me up! But when I sat down with Christensen’s brilliant documentary project, I realized that poetic justice, made material, is only one of many facets to this surprising, timely portrait of America’s landscapes: how corporations have shaped them, and how regular people are reclaiming them. Its multi-dimensionality (including gorgeous, haunting photographs) gives Big Box Reuse broad appeal, making it a wonderful gift for anyone who gets a kick out of: (a) community building (b) environmentalism (c) architecture (d) politics (e) alternative economics (f) sociology (g) beauty (h) inspiration (i) books (j) goodness
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American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry
by Cole Swensen
W W Norton & Co Inc
Our Price: $25.95
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Leah F. suggests...
What, another contemporary poetry anthology? But this one is different. Founded on the idea of a conversation instead of a canon, it asks an old question: is American poetry best represented by the traditional or the experimental? And then a new one: is it perhaps true that the most interesting poets reading and writing today do so with mixed influences from both ‘camps’? Swensen and St. John, established and innovative poets themselves, don’t lionize their selections, and leave the conversation open for continuation. Some of my old and new favorites in the volume include: Stacy Doris, Charles Wright, Lynn Emanuel, Forrest Gander, Fanny Howe, and Paul Hoover. Thumb through with the idea of reopening, rather than sealing off, your conception of American poetry in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Crazy for God
by Frank Schaeffer
Da Capo Pr
Our Price: $16.00
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Lizzy G. suggests...
Of the many scholarly works detailing the rise of the Religious Right and its parasitical relationship with the GOP, few have been privileged to include a more personal perspective. As the once heir-apparent to his parents’ conservative Christian empire, Frank Schaeffer – now better known as a novelist – presents a nuanced encounter with a group of family, friends, and lovers that, though religiously and socially conventional, led some pretty unorthodox lives. Reading this first-hand account of our American religious history from a man who has lived to straddle both sides of the divide adds another layer onto what can too often be either a dull or overly polarized subject.
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Cheever: A Life
by Blake Bailey
Knopf
Our Price: $35.00
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Mark L. suggests...
This terrific book goes immediately to my top shelf of literary biographies. John Cheever lived in endless turmoil with his contradictions—the erudite high school dropout; the closeted bisexual who despised gay men, guilt-ridden, manipulative and rampant in his pursuits; the snob most at ease with workers; a man who idealized husband-and-fatherhood, and an alcoholic compulsively unkind to his children and estranged from his wife. Given a lesser biographer all this could be merely lurid, but Bailey’s clean, low-key style and generous insights tease out the strands of harsh judgment and emollient self-deception in Cheever’s journals, and convincingly trace them into the effort and effect in his stories and novels. I don’t expect to read anything better this year. Brilliant.
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The Elusive Quest for Growth
by William Easterly
Mit Pr
Our Price: $24.95
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Meagan P. suggests...
Required reading for my favorite ECON course, this book serves as an enlightening overview of development theory so far. Easterly offers an honest critique of recent financial aid mechanisms and employs economics to explain why these attempts have failed; it is the theory itself and the lending institutions he finds problematic, not simply corruptable third world leaders (not to say that this does not occur). I think this book is phenomenal and consider it a fieldguide to development economics. This book is also a great place to start if you are newly interested in such things.
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The Ten Commandments of Typograpy
by Paul Felton
Merrell
Our Price: $22.95
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Megan K. suggests...
A beautifully done and really fun book on typography and the battle between the "right" & "wrong" way of designing and setting type. Plus a list // graph of those who followed, created and broke the rules.
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Seven Days in the Art World
by Sarah Thornton
W W Norton
Our Price: $24.95
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Megan S. suggests...
I knew that the art world wasn’t all paint, charcoal, and inspiration, but it took Thornton’s illuminating book to give me such a well rounded portrait. Approaching the task from a sociological point of view, she follows seven different aspects of the art world: the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the Basel Art Fair, behind the scenes at Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, a crit session at the California Institute of the Arts, and the Venice Biennale. Thornton spent 5 years researching and writing this book and though it might seem slim to the casual eye, it’s erudite, well-written, and most importantly a fascinating read.
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The House of Widows: A Novel
by Askold Melnyczuk
Graywolf Press
Our Price: $16.00
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Mike C. suggests...
Sometimes you don’t realize at first how much you like a book. I first read The House of Widows when it was published last winter, and the story of James Pak’s journey through Cold War Europe after his father’s suicide in search of his family’s secret history made for a provocative page-turner. Nine months later, I still occasionally think of James and the dark truths he discovered. A book that stays with you is one worth reading. So, I recommend it to you.
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Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
by Paul Lockhart
Bellevue Literary Pr
Our Price: $12.95
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Rachel C. suggests...
We all know how mind-numbing high school math classes can be, so Lockhart's book is a refreshing reminder of what is beautiful and interesting about mathematics. He treats it at an art form to be explored creatively, allowing students to discover results on their own rather than being forced to learn everything by rote with no historical or philosophical context. His ideas on overhauling the public school math curriculum are certainly not all practical, but anyone interested in educating children not to hate the subject would be well served to inject their approach with a little of his point of view.
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