"Theodore Draper is one of the two or three most cogent and thoughtful social historians in the United States today. Everything he writes merits close attention." -Irving Howe "Theodore Draper is a historian of today's world in a class by himself-formidably equipped with learning and experience, fearless in attacking the naivet of the left and the cruelty of the right." -Alfred Kazin Theodore Draper is one of America's most trenchant and informed critics. A Present of Things Past gathers together ten of his most recent and most powerful selected essays, in which Draper, with his customary acuity and wit, tackles a host of issues that define America's political culture. A Present of Things Past is concerned with a reexamination of the Second World War in both its military and its political aspects; the trajectory of American conservatism as it manifested itself during the Reagan years; the rise of Gorbachev and the history of "reform" in the Soviet Union; the revisionist debate over the origins and history of American communism; and the persistent mystery of a man named Max Eitingon, who was, depending on one's reading of the sources, either an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis or an agent of the Soviet secret police, or both. In "American Hubris," Draper illuminates the assumptions that have guided American foreign policy in the postwar period, and concludes that our costly misadventures-in Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and elsewhere-cannot be considered a string of aberrations. They were, he argues, a consequence of the Truman Doctrine. In "Reagan's Junta," Draper observes: "This is supposed to have been the era of the imperial presidency. It has turned out to be the era of presidencies that have tried to make themselves imperial-and failed." Throughout these compelling essays, Draper demonstrates the uses and abuses to which history has been put by ideologues of both the left and the right. He finds unacceptable, for example, the practice of many journalists of fictionalizing their sources. The New York Times has called Draper "one of the clearer-eyed observers of the issues that torment us." A Present of Things Past enhances that reputation. Theodore Draper is the author of numerous books, including Present History: On Nuclear War, Dtente & Other Controversies and American Communism. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and lives in Princeton, New Jersey. "Is especially recommended for students of political science, the Cold War era, and twentieth century American history as a powerful, thought-provoking view of the people and events that shaped nations, and through nations the world."-- Library Bookwatch

Nobody wants to adopt the Shluffmuffin twins. Wally's feet stink something awful, and Cheyenne is allergic to e verything . Then why are the Mandible sisters so eager to take them home? And what sort of old maids would choose to live in a place called Dripping Fang Forest, where zombies wander the woods singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and ten-foot-long glowing slugs want to suck the feet right off your ankles? Would it seem ungrateful of Wally to point out the Mandible sisters' extra arms? Or to question their all-chocolate, all-the-time menu? Or, um, to venture into the cellar, where the twins have been told to NEVER, EVER, EVER go? Yeah, perhaps that last bit was a mistake. Now there's nothing left for the Shluffmuffins to do but run--run for their lives!

Doomed by a thousand-year-old curse to serve important personages throughout the centuries, George Mills loves and follows various lieges, from a stableboy ancestor in the First Crusade to a modern-day furniture mover. Reprint.

A radio host from San Francisco, his new lover, and a high school kid who does not age are brought together in an illustrated tale of strength and strange foes

Family trauma, race, and the destiny of a nation corrupted by slavery, cast in the light of epic myth: "More than a saga of Black revitalization . . . Part vision, part parable, it is a story for all America." ( The New York Times Book Review ) The Snowdon family stands as a pinnacle of Black excellence in Washington, D.C.: educated, affluent, and influential. John Christopher, the patriarch, saves lives as a heart surgeon and is revered by his students at Howard University. His wife, Camille, governs an elegant house overlooking Rock Creek Park and devotes herself to reading, gardening, and raising their three daughters--Cynthia, Patricia, and Eva--to attend the very best schools and roam the world on a whim. Theirs ought to be a story of success and empowerment, but something is rotten in the house of Snowdon. Years later, when John Christopher's granddaughter Johnnie comes to seek the truth about her own parentage, she unveils a legacy of unspeakable family secrets tangled up in America's original sin. What begins as a quest for identity spirals into an apocalyptic vision of a nation on the brink of ruin. By turns a poetic epic, a ghost story, a historical saga, and a chilling dystopian fable, Thereafter Johnnie is a unique and uniquely American fusion of myth and hard-bitten reality: an erotic, horrifying, and even hopeful reckoning with centuries of injustice.

This text attempts to shape definitions of the American science fiction film, studying the connection between the films and social preconceptions. It covers many classic films and discusses their import, seeking to rescue the genre from the neglect of film theorists. The book should appeal to both film buff and fans of science fiction.

If the new generation is not told accurate information, then not only will the new generation and the generations that follow be misguided but, more importantly, the policy makers of the future will be making decisions based on mis-assessments. There are three areas in which the truth of the past has been tragically misrepresented: The actions of the President, the role of the media, and the buried legacy of the South Vietnamese, the Laotians, the Cambodians and, of course, the Americans who gave their lives for the liberty of others. There is no higher morality than dying for the well-being of a stranger, and that is what they did. Their enemies were not only on the battlefield: many of their enemies are still revising the history of those days, either to justify their past actions, or to cloak their consciences, or they simply don't know the truth because they have been bombarded by those who rejected it. Their recorded words and fictionalized images are, at best, what they think is true, and at worst, are meant to deceive you.

Includes 12 science fiction stories that comprise various genres, from mystery to science fiction to autobiographical fiction. This book contains a Sherlock Holmesian mystery, a Walter Mitty-like escape into the world of software, and a Cthulhu Mythos tale in the Lovecraft tradition.

Stanley G. Weinbaum's classic horror novel, originally entitled "The Mad Brain". When an unassuming man's personality changes dramatically toward the sinister, the woman he loves seeks help from a psychologist, leading to a disturbing discovery.

Product Description Welcome to Mark Leyner’s America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and anabolic steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe where the locals include a speech pathologist with a waterbug fetish, a kamikaze airline pilot, and the lead singer for Brazil’s most notoriously nihilistic samba band. From Publishers Weekly These 17 loosely linked short stories are intelligent, funny and incredibly bizarre. Though not all are science fiction, each displays a supercharged cyberpunk writing style jam-packed with elements of tabloid journalism, bits of advertising slogans, references to kung fu films, literary allusions, television trivia, deadpan non sequiturs, puns and poetry. The fiercely imaginative Leyner ( I Smell Esther Williams ) announces: "Dad was in the basement centrifuging mouse spleen hybridoma, when I informed him that I'd enrolled at the Wilford Military Academy of Beauty." He also discusses the difficulty of finding a haberdashery near the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries shipyard and speculates on a televised encounter between Tennessee's youngest member of the House of Representatives and 17th-century metaphysician Baruch Spinoza. Squads of displaced, armed and dangerous combatants inhabit a young boy's bedroom in the marvelous "In the Kingdom of Boredom, I Wear the Royal Sweatpants." It's an exuberant, adventurous and audacious collection. Some of the pieces were originally published in Esquire, Harper's and Fiction International , among other magazines. Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. Review "I really, really liked it. It's like nothing else. I laughed out loud in the bathroom." -- David Byrne Welcome to Mark Leyner's America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe where the locals include a speech pathologist with a waterbug fetish, a kamikaze airline pilot, and the lead singer for Brazil's most notoriously nihilistic samba band. My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist is fiction the brain can dance to, by one of the funniest and most subversive young writers of this or any other decade. "Most current fiction is as well made and exciting as floral wallpaper; but here is a writer willing to decorate the room with the contents of his own dynamited head." -- Entertainment Weekly "Reading this is like fishing in some hallucinated lake of the subconscious. No telling what term, idea, or thing you'll pull up next." -- Houston Post From the Back Cover This book is fiction the brain can dance to, by one of the funniest and most subversive young writers of this or any other decade. About the Author Mark Leyner is the author of two novels, Et Tu, Babe and The Tetherballs of Bougainville; two collections of stories , I Smell Esther Williams and Other Stories and My Cousin, My Gastroenterologist; and a collection of fiction, plays, and journalism, Tooth Imprints on a Corn Dog. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The New Republic, George, and Harper’s.

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