A razor-sharp tale of two couples, two marriages, a bar, and a San Francisco start-up from a best-selling, award-winning novelist. This is a story about two marriages. Or is it? It begins with a wedding, held in the small San Francisco forest of Bottle Grove--bestowed by a wealthy patron for the public good, back when people did such things. Here is a cross section of lives, a stretch of urban green where ritzy guests, lustful teenagers, drunken revelers, and forest creatures all wait for the sun to go down. The girl in the corner slugging vodka from a cough-syrup bottle is Padgett--she's keeping something secreted in the woods. The couple at the altar are the newly named Nickels, as the bride is emphatic about changing her name--there is plenty about her old life she is ready to forget. Set in San Francisco as the tech-boom is exploding, Bottle Grove is a sexy, skewering dark comedy about two unions--one forged of love and the other of greed--and about the forces that can drive couples together, into dependence, and then into sinister, even supernatural realms. Add one ominous shape-shifter to the mix, and you get a delightful and strange spectacle: a story of scheming and yearning and foibles and love and what we end up doing for it--and everyone has a secret. Looming over it all is the income disparity between San Francisco's tech community and . . . everyone else.

In this lively book, Pulitzer prize-winning historian Boorstin, author of the widely acclaimed trilogy The Americans, illuminates our everyday concerns with his reflections on the new meaning of technology for America and of America for technology. He gives us a bold new view of the two kinds of revolution - the political and technological - and shows us how and why they are different, and why technological revolutions are irreversible. We are a center from which radiate forces that converge human experience everywhere. Though people around the world may not love one another any more than they did, yet their ways of life tend to become more and more alike. These same overwhelming forces of technology that homogenize the culture of the human race have disrupted the international community of nations; large and small nations become "equal," but each day the word "nation" grows more meaningless. Ideology, tribalism, nationalism, the crusading spirit in religion, bigotry, censorship, racism, persecution, immigration and emigration restriction, tariffs, and chauvinism do interpose barriers. For reasons which we are only beginning to discover, and which Boorstin explores in this controversial book, these barriers will only be temporary. The converging powers of technology will eventually triumph.

Writing the Holocaust provides students and teachers with an accessibly written overview of the key themes and major theoretical developments which continue to inform the nature of historical writing on the Holocaust. Holocaust studies is at a paradox: while historians of the Holocaust defend it as a legitimate and well-defined area of research, they write against a complex political and ideological background that undermines any claim for it as a normative field of historical study. Writing the Holocaust offers a lucid inquiry into this complex field by demonstrating the impact of current theories from the humanities and social sciences upon the treatment of Holocaust studies.

Architect Daniel Libeskind, known for his dynamic, fractured compositions, is also recognized for introducing a new critical discourse to architecture. In an enormous variety of projects around the world—major cultural institutions, convention centers, universities, hotels, commercial centers, and residential work—he has manifested his commitment to expanding the horizons of architecture and urbanism. Counterpoint: Daniel Libeskind is the first comprehensive portrait of the work of Studio Daniel Libeskind, which was established in Berlin in 1989 and moved to New York in 2003 after winning the World Trade Center design competition. Drawn from a series of interviews with celebrated architecture critic Paul Goldberger, Counterpoint exemplifies Libeskind's multidisciplinary approach, which reflects a profound interest in philosophy, art, music, literature, theater, and film. Along with Memory Foundations, the master plan for the World Trade Center site, featured projects include the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Royal Ontario Museum, the extension to the Denver Art Museum, the MGM Mirage CityCenter in Las Vegas, a multi-building complex in Busan, South Korea, and projects in the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Israel, Mexico, Japan, and China.

After Ralph and Sylvia Nebula flee a fat camp ashram to join their friend Mavis at a dude ranch, they help her unite the Western town's factions by preparing for the arrival of an unidentified flying object.

One harmless bet on a horse race starts a chain of events that turns a 12-year-old into one of the world's richest people and a spiritual guru.

Inspired by his tenure at The New Yorker, this collection of comical, revelatory errors foraged from the wilds of everyday English comes with commentary by the author, illustrations by Roz Chast, and a foreword from Billy Collins. During his time at The New Yorker, Daniel Menaker happened across a superb spelling mistake: "The zebras were grazing on the African svelte." Fascinated by the idea of unintentionally meaningful spelling errors, he began to see that these gaffes--neither typos nor auto-corrects--are sometimes more interesting than their straight-laced counterparts. Through examples he has collected over the course of his decades-long career as an editor and writer, he brings us to a new understanding of language--how it's used, what it means, and what fun it can be. Illustrated by the inimitable Roz Chast, with a foreword from former poet laureate Billy Collins, The African Svelte offers thoughtful and intelligent exit Jesus. Menaker glances at familiar fumbles like "for all intensive purposes" and "doggy-dog world," but readers delighted by language will find themselves turning the pages with baited breath to discover fresh howlers that have them laughing off their dairy airs.

Open City features a dynamic mix of prominent writers, undiscovered aspirants, and lost treasures from writers of past eras. Including fiction, essays, poetry, and artwork by an exciting range of talents, Open City has presented new works by Michael Cunningham, Deborah Garrison, Rick Moody, David Foster Wallace, Geoffrey O'Brien, Sam Lipsyte, Meghan Daum, David Berman, and previously unpublished work by Delmore Schwartz, Richard Yates, Edvard Munch, and Ford Madox Ford. Praised in the pages of publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Library Journal, and The New York Times, Open City is today's most important literary journal. Open City #14 includes John Seabrook on ancestor hunting; Arthur Nersessian, from Fuck-Up to makeup; new fiction by Betsy Bern and Martha McPhee; and the original treatment for the improvised cult-classic film Waiting for Guffman.

What do the South Vietnamese government, the Shah and Ferdinand Marcos have in common? All were allied to the United States; all defied democratic and liberal norms; and all three fell in a blaze, creating problems for the United States. These three cases - and another eighteen more - are the subject of Friendly Tyrants, the first study ever to survey the contentious, persistent problem of U.S. government relations with pro-American authoritarian rulers.

Daniel Pipes has collected some of his sharpest and most prescient writings from the quarter century 1989-2014. In them, he addresses a range of current topics, from the origins of the civil war in Syria to denying the Islamic factor in terrorism, to the way to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Pipes pursues two themes in particular: the internal instability of Muslim-majority countries, in which nothing abides, and the expression of Muslims' drive to apply Islamic law. Pipes' interests concentrate on the Middle East as understood from a historical point of view and on the role of Islam in politics. Divided into five thematic sections, this work addresses the Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle Eastern politics, Islam in modern life, Islam in the West, and individuals connected to American Islam. Pipes' deep knowledge, gained over forty-five years of study, combined with incisive writing and a well-regarded courage to speak out on controversial topics make Nothing Abides a compelling read for Middle East specialists, students, and the interested public.

Throughout history, numerous famous and infamous men and women have contributed in their sometimes perverted but always intriguing ways to the world of gastronomy. The stories of those people--their culinary habits and the dishes created by them, named after them or cherished by them--are the subject of this book. Kings and queens, dukes and duchesses, chefs and restaurateurs, novelists and composers, generals and courtesans--all have had dishes named after them. Follow the fortunes and discover the recipes of almost seventy rogues, writers, and whores, from Apicius to Zola, or if you prefer chronologically, Lucullus through Hemingway.

"In our age of seemingly irreconcilable differences, argument is increasingly seen as a plague to be avoided or a contest to be won. Daniel Taub, an experienced peace negotiator and diplomat, argues that ancient Jewish wisdom offers a third way. Drawing from this tradition, and from his own experience at the heart of some of the world's toughest negotiations, he makes the case for a radically different approach to help us come closer to truth and to each other. This approach sees argument not as a combat zone but as a joint enterprise, and its disputants not as jealous custodians of competing truths, but collaborative explorers. It seeks to create safe spaces not by outlawing controversial opinions but by welcoming them, and it offers a set of practical tools to rethink our own preconceptions. In fractious times it charts a way to build communities and societies that are resilient enough to face new and challenging ideas without fear. Weaving ancient insights with contemporary research in conflict resolution, as well as behind-the-scenes personal stories of diplomacy and negotiations, Beyond Dispute is a passionate call to rediscover and harness the vital and surprising power of a good argument".

Despite their increasing importance, there is little theoretical understanding of why nation-states initiate economic sanctions, or what determines their success. This 1999 book argues that both imposers and targets of economic coercion incorporate expectations of future conflict as well as the short-run opportunity costs of coercion into their behaviour. Drezner argues that conflict expectations have a paradoxical effect. Adversaries will impose sanctions frequently, but rarely secure concessions. Allies will be reluctant to use coercion, but once sanctions are used, they can result in significant concessions. Ironically, the most favourable distribution of payoffs is likely to result when the imposer cares the least about its reputation or the distribution of gains. The book's argument is pursued using game theory and statistical analysis, and detailed case studies of Russia's relations with newly-independent states, and US efforts to halt nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula.

"Now in its fifth edition, The Italian City Republics illustrates how, from the eleventh century onwards, many Italian towns achieved independence as political entities, unhindered by any centralising power. Until the fourteenth century, when the regimes of individual 'tyrants' took over in most towns, these communes were the scene of a precocious, and very well-documented, experiment in republican self-government. In this new edition, Trevor Dean has expanded the book's treatment of women and gender, the early history of the communes and the lives of non-élites. Focusing on the typical medium-sized towns rather than the better-known cities, the authors draw on a rich variety of contemporary material, both documentary and literary, to portray the world of the communes, illustrating the patriotism and public spirit as well as the equally characteristic factional strife which was to tear them apart. Discussion of the artistic and social lives of the inhabitants shows how these towns were the seedbed of the cultural achievements of the early Renaissance. The bibliography has been updated with the latest scholarship for students to continue their studies. Both students and the general reader interested in Italian history, literature and art will find this accessible book a rewarding and fascinating read"--

The Great American Belly Dance

Book by Dannie Abse

A Strong Dose of Myself

PB G+.