"This critically acclaimed blockbuster from internationally renowned novelist Robert Littell seamlessly weaves together history and fiction to create a multigenerational, wickedly nostalgic saga of the CIA-known as "the Company" to insiders. Racing across a landscape spanning the legendary Berlin Base of the '50s, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the Bay of Pigs, Afghanistan, and the Gorbachev putsch, The Company tells the thrilling story of agents imprisoned in double lives, fighting an amoral, elusive, formidable enemy-and each other-in an internecine battle within the Company itself. A brilliant, stunningly conceived epic thriller, The Company confirms Littell's place among the genre's elite"--

Inspired by the Robert De Niro film, this story spans three generations of a family of Jewish immigrants to the United States. A gang of friends discover - through trust, hard work and brutality - the true meaning of the American Dream.

Part eulogy, part confession, this novel is an intense exploration of a mother/son relationship. Harry, the narrator, is a young, wealthy and talented pianist. He lives in London and New York and, when his mother is found to have cancer, he lives increasingly in the breached world of his family.

Collection of letters from 1926 to 1981 from the philosopher and author Ayn Rand to a variety of famed authors, journalists, and politicians revealing key moments in her life while offering a look into her thoughts on writing, America, the Soviet Union, politics, and most of all, objectivism, a school of thought she created out of her life's experiences.

The private journals of one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, presented here in chronological order, reveal the progression of Rand's literary and philosophical ideals. 15,000 first printing.

One of America's most versatile writers, author of bestselling biographies such as Steve Jobs and Benjamin Franklin , has assembled a gallery of portraits of (mostly) Americans that celebreate genius, talent, and versatility, and traces his own education as a writer and biographer. In this collection of essays, the brilliant, acclaimed biographer Walter Isaacson reflects on lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and other interesting characters he has chronicled both as biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, but that is not the secret to their success. They had qualities that were even more rare, such as imagination and true curiousity. Isaacson also reflects on how he became a writer, the lessons he learned from various people he met, and the challenges for journalism in the digital age. He also offers loving tributes to his hometown of New Orleans, which offers many of the ingredients for a creative culture, and to the Louisiana novelist Walker Percy, who was an early mentor. In an anecdotal and personal way, Isaacson describes the joys of writing and the way that tales about the lives of fascinating people can enlighten our own lives.

America's leading writer about the law takes a close, incisive look at one of society's most vexing legal issues Scott Turow is known to millions as the author of peerless novels about the troubling regions of experience where law and reality intersect. In "real life," as a respected criminal lawyer, he has been involved with the death penalty for more than a decade, including successfully representing two different men convicted in death-penalty prosecutions. In this vivid account of how his views on the death penalty have evolved, Turow describes his own experiences with capital punishment from his days as an impassioned young prosecutor to his recent service on the Illinois commission which investigated the administration of the death penalty and influenced Governor George Ryan's unprecedented commutation of the sentences of 164 death row inmates on his last day in office. Along the way, he provides a brief history of America's ambivalent relationship with the ultimate punishment, analyzes the potent reasons for and against it, including the role of the victims' survivors, and tells the powerful stories behind the statistics, as he moves from the Governor's Mansion to Illinois' state-of-the art 'super-max' prison and the execution chamber. This gripping, clear-sighted, necessary examination of the principles, the personalities, and the politics of a fundamental dilemma of our democracy has all the drama and intellectual substance of Turow's celebrated fiction.

Bellow's second novel charts the descent into paranoia of Asa Leventhal, sub-editor of a trade magazine. With his wife away visiting her mother, Asa is alone, but not for long. His sister-in-law summons him to Staten Island to help with his sick nephew. Other demands mount, and readers witness a man losing control. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Passionate, insightful, often funny, and exhibiting a linguistic richness few writers have equaled, the novels of Saul Bellow are among the defining achievements of postwar American literature. The Library of America volume Novels 1956–1964 opens with Seize the Day, a tightly wrought novella that, unfolding over the course of a single devastating day, explores the desperate predicament of the failed actor and salesman Tommy Wilhelm. The austere psychological portraiture of Seize the Day is followed by an altogether different book, Henderson the Rain King, the ebullient tale of the irresistible eccentric Eugene Henderson, best characterized by his primal mantra “I want! I want!” Beneath the novel’s comic surface lies an affecting parable of one man’s quest to know himself and come to terms with morality; like Don Quixote, Henderson is, as Bellow later described him, “an absurd seeker of high qualities.” Henderson’s irrepressible vitality is matched by that of Moses Herzog, the eponymous hero of Bellow’s best-selling 1964 novel. His wife having abandoned him for his best friend, Herzog is on the verge of mental collapse and has embarked on a furious letter-writing campaign as an outlet for his all-consuming rage. Bellow’s bravura performance in Herzog launched a new phase of his career, as literary acclaim was now joined by a receptive mass audience in America. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

"When Ernest Hemingway died on July 2, 1961, Mary Hemingway asked the Hemingway's good friend, journalist Leonard Lyons, to announce the death of the Nobel Prize-winner to stunned readers and admirer everywhere. Both Hemingways admired Lyons for his fidelity to the truth, that "he would get the story right." (As it turns out the "truth" was not quite what it seemed, since Mary initially denied that her husband's death was suicide.) This memoir recounts the quarter-century long friendship between Hemingway and Leonard Lyons, which eventually came to include Lyons's wife and three sons. In this short book Jeffrey Lyons recounts visits to Hemingway in Cuba (where "Papa" first taught him how to shoot a gun) as well as nights out with the great writer at such popular New York watering holes as the Stork Club and Toots Shor's. Throughout the book Hemingway comes across as a hard-working, generous, and thoughtful man of letters, and not the gruff, hard drinking beast perpetually looking for a fight that he was often perceived as. This is a book about friendship, loyalty, and trust between a famed novelist and a working journalist and his family"--

As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh reveals the inner life of Susan Sontag.Providing a unique insight into the mind of one of the leading intellectuals of the modern age, Susan Sontag's As Conscious is Harnessed to Flesh chronicles the cultural, moral, and political journeys of this renowned critic and artist at the height of her powers.As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh follows Sontag through the turbulent years of the late 1960s - from her trip to Hanoi at the peak of the Vietnam War to her time making films in Sweden - up to 1980, just before the beginning of the Reagan era. This is an invaluable record of the inner workings of one of the most inquisitive and analytical thinkers of the twentieth century at the height of her power. It is also a remarkable document of on individual's political and moral awakening.'More true to life, both intellectual and emotional, than the most artful novel or careful biography' Sunday Telegraph'Gold dust' Sunday Times'A powerful self-portrait emerges. In its fragmentation . . . and passion, its combination of the erudite and the everyday, it is more true to life, both intellectual and emotional, than the most artful novel or careful biography. It may well be that Sontag's diaries will come to be seen as just as brilliant and important as anything she wrote' Sunday Telegraph'Mesmerising, fascinating' Guardian'Express the fullness and diversity of her intellectual curiosity. Revelatory in the most profound sense: they are existential fragments, self-selected thoughts, emotions, reactions . . . arising in one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century' The TimesOne of America's best-known and most admired writers, Susan Sontag was also a leading commentator on contemporary culture until her death in December 2004. Her books include four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, among them Regarding the Pain of Others, On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, At the Same Time, Against Interpretation and Other Essays and Reborn: Early Diaries 1947-1963, all of which are published by Penguin. A further eight books, including the collections of essays Under the Sign of Saturn and Where the Stress Falls, and the novels The Volcano Lover and The Benefactor, are available from Penguin Modern Classics.

In Stagestruck noted novelist and outspoken critic Sarah Schulman offers an account of her growing awareness of the startling similarities between her novel People in Trouble and the smash Broadway hit Rent . Written with a powerful and personal voice, Schulman's book is part gossipy narrative, part behind-the-scenes glimpse into the New York theater culture, and part polemic on how mainstream artists co-opt the work of "marginal" artists to give an air of diversity and authenticity to their own work. Rising above the details of her own case, Schulman boldly uses her suspicions of copyright infringement as an opportunity to initiate a larger conversation on how AIDS and gay experience are being represented in American art and commerce. Closely recounting her discovery of the ways in which Rent took materials from her own novel, Schulman takes us on her riveting and infuriating journey through the power structures of New York theater and media, a journey she pursued to seek legal restitution and make her voice heard. Then, to provide a cultural context for the emergence of Rent-- which Schulman experienced first-hand as a weekly theater critic for the New York Press at the time of Rent 's premiere--she reveals in rich detail the off- and off-off-Broadway theater scene of the time. She argues that these often neglected works and performances provide more nuanced and accurate depictions of the lives of gay men, Latinos, blacks, lesbians and people with AIDS than popular works seen in full houses on Broadway stages. Schulman brings her discussion full circle with an incisive look at how gay and lesbian culture has become rapidly commodified, not only by mainstream theater productions such as Rent but also by its reduction into a mere demographic made palatable for niche marketing. Ultimately, Schulman argues, American art and culture has made acceptable a representation of "the homosexual" that undermines, if not completely erases, the actual experiences of people who continue to suffer from discrimination or disease. Stagestruck 's message is sure to incite discussion and raise the level of debate about cultural politics in America today.

Lara Vapnyar, author of the prizewinning story collection There Are Jews in My House, brings us a poignant and comic first novel about a delightfully sincere modern-day muse. We meet Tanya as a typical Russian girl, living with her bookish professor mother in a drab Soviet apartment. As a teenager, Tanya becomes obsessed with Dostoevsky and settles on her life’s she will be the companion to a great writer. Her memoirs tell of her immigration to New York after college, the stifling expectations of her Brighton Beach cousins, and the crucial moment in a bookshop on the Upper West Side, where Tanya attends a reading by Mark Schneider, a Significant New York Novelist. Tanya soon moves in with Mark, ready to dazzle in bed, to serve and inspire . . . if only he would spend a little more time writing and a little less time at the gym, the shrink, and the literary soirees where she feels hopelessly unglamorous and out of place. But as she gradually learns to read English—struggling to better understand Mark’s work and her true role as Muse—Tanya also learns more than she expected about the destiny she has imagined for herself. Animated by Vapnyar’s beguiling grace and vividness—with a narrative richness reflecting the great tradition of Russian realism to which she is a natural heir— Memoirs of a Muse is an altogether wonderful novel. It is a lively meditation on female capabilities and happiness, on the mysteries of artistic inspiration (and the absurdities of artistic life), and, perhaps most movingly, on the pain and wonder of the immigrant experience in New York City.

In this collection of short stories, originally published in 1974, Grace Paley "makes the novel as a form seem virtually redundant" (Angela Carter, London Review of Books ). Her stories here capture "the itch of the city, love between parents and children" and "the cutting edge of combat" (Lis Harris, The New York Times Book Review ). In this collection of seventeen stories, she creates a "solid and vital fictional world, cross-referenced and dense with life" (Walter Clemons, Newsweek ).

This collection brings together in one volume three of Howard Fast's famous novels of the American Revolution: Conceived in Liberty, The Proud and the Free, and The Unvanquished. With a new introduction by the author.

"Is he the real deal... or did she truly summon a golem? Faye Kaplan used to be engaged. She also used to have a successful legal practice. But she much prefers her new life as a potter in Woodstock, New York. The only thing missing is the perfect guy. Not that she needs one. She's definitely happy alone. That is, until she finds her town papered with anti-Semitic flyers after yet another failed singles event at the synagogue. Desperate for comfort, Faye drunkenly turns to the only thing guaranteed to soothe her--pottery. A golem protector is just what her town needs... and adding all the little details to make him her ideal man can't hurt, right? When a seriously hot stranger mysteriously turns up the next day, Greg seems too good to be true--if you ignore the fact that Faye hit him with her bike. And that he subsequently lost his memory... But otherwise, the man checks Every. Single. Box. Causing Faye to wonder if Greg's sudden and spicy appearance might be anything but a coincidence"-- Back cover.

Winner of the Prix de Rome and the National Jewish Book Award, these ten stories and the title novella, "Ellis Island," exhibit tremendous range and versatility of style and technique, yet are closely unified in their beauty and in their concern with enduring and universal questions.

During her college years, Renee Feuer, the product of a strict Orthodox Jewish household, works at liberating herself from the prohibitions of her upbringing, seeking freedom of the body and mind, and eventually marries Noah Himmel, a mathematical genius

"Following the catastrophes of the twenty-first century--the pandemics, the environmental disaster, the end of oil, the ensuing chaos--people are doing whatever they can to get by and pursuing a simpler and sometimes happier existence. In little Union Grove, the townspeople are preparing for Christmas. Without the consumerist shopping frenzy that dogged the holidays of the previous age, the season has become a time to focus on family and loved ones. It is a stormy Christmas Eve when Robert Earle's son Daniel arrives back from his two years of sojourning throughout what is left of the United States. He collapses from exhaustion and illness, but as he recovers tells the story of the break-up of the nation into three uneasy independent regions and his journey into the dark heart of the New Foxfire Republic centered in Tennessee and led by the female evangelical despot, Loving Morrow. In the background, Union Grove has been shocked by the Christmas Eve double murder by a young mother, in the throes of illness, of her husband and infant son. Town magistrate Stephen Bullock is in a hanging mood"--

From New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley, Detective Easy Rawlins’ latest client sends him down a warren of memory and nostalgia―blinding him to reason and risk. January 1970 finds Ezekiel “Easy” Rawlins, LA’s premier Black detective, at 50 years of age despite all expectations. He has a loving family, a beautiful home, and a thriving investigation agency. All is right with the world ... and then Amethystine Stoller, his own personal Helen of Troy, arrives. Her ex-husband is missing. A simple enough case. But even as Easy takes his first step in the investigation he trips. He falls into the memory of things past. Little things, like loss, love, a world war, and a hunger that has eaten at him since he was a Black boy on his own on the streets of Fifth Ward, Houston, Texas. The missing ex, a young white man named Curt Fields, is found dead. Easy’s only real friend in the LAPD, Melvin Suggs, has gone into hiding rather than allow his femme fatale wife to go to the gas chamber. And that’s only the beginning. Easy finds himself pressed into a reckoning. All of his success cannot succor his heart. The 1970’s have ushered in new expectations of men and women, Black and White, and Easy has to make a choice that will almost certainly hasten a permanent descent, one that might sunder his soul. Shamus Award Finalist for Best Hardcover PI Novel