Reviewed in The Oregonian: January 23
<a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2500.html?p_bkslv">January 16, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2507.html?p_bkslv">January 23, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2516.html?p_bkslv">January 30, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2532.html?p_bkslv">February 6, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2544.html?p_bkslv">February 13, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2551.html?p_bkslv">February 20, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2559.html?p_bkslv">February 27, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2569.html?p_bkslv">March 6, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2583.html?p_bkslv">March 13, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2589.html?p_bkslv">March 20, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2598.html?p_bkslv">March 27, 2011 reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2615.html?p_bkslv">April 3, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2654.html?p_bkslv">April 10, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2655.html?p_bkslv">April 17, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2656.html?p_bkslv">April 24, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2672.html?p_bkslv">May 1, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2673.html?p_bkslv">May 8, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2677.html?p_bkslv">May 15, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2688.html?p_bkslv">May 22, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2690.html?p_bkslv">May 29, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2707.html?p_bkslv">June 5, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2726.html?p_bkslv">June 12, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2731.html?p_bkslv">June 19, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2743.html?p_bkslv">June 26, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2773.html?p_bkslv">July 3, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2799.html?p_bkslv">July 10, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2810.html?p_bkslv">July 17, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2821.html?p_bkslv">July 24, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2834.html?p_bkslv">July 31, 2011, reviews</a> | <a href="http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/partner?partner_id=33887&html=ppbs/33887_2836.html?p_bkslv">August 7, 2011, reviews</a> |
Quiet World Saving Alaskas Wilderness Kingdom 1879 1960 by Douglas Brinkley
Publisher Comments A riveting history of America's most beautiful natural resources, The Quiet World documents the heroic fight waged by the U.S. federal government from 1879 to 1960 to save wild Alaska — Mount McKinley, the Tongass and Chugach national forests, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Lake Clark, and the Coastal Plain of the Beaufort Sea, among other treasured landscapes — from the extraction industries. Award-winning historian Douglas Brinkley traces the wilderness movement in Alaska, from John Muir to Theodore Roosevelt to Aldo Leopold to Dwight D. Eisenhower, with narrative verve. Basing his research on extensive new archival material, Brinkley shows how a colorful band of determined environmentalists created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just before John F. Kennedy became president.
Brinkley introduces a lively gallery of characters influential in preserving Alaska's wilderness resources: the indomitable U.S. Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas, who championed the Brooks Range; charming Ivy League explorer Charles Sheldon, who led the campaign to create Denali National Park; intrepid Bob Marshall, who cofounded The Wilderness Society; hermit illustrator Rockwell Kent, who lived in isolation on Fox Island like a modern Thoreau; nature photographer Ansel Adams, whose image Mount McKinley and Wonder Lake set off a tsunami of public interest in America's tallest peak; and U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist Rachel Carson, who promoted proper ocean stewardship; among many more.
Wildlife fervently comes to life in The Quiet World: Brinkley tells incredible stories about the sea otters in the Aleutians, moose in the Kenai Peninsula, and birdlife across the Yukon Delta expanse while exploring the devastating effects that reckless overfishing, seal slaughter, and aerial wolf hunting have wrought on Alaska's once-abundant fauna. While taking into account Exxon Valdez-like oil spills, The Quiet World mainly celebrates how the U.S. government has preserved many of Alaska's great wonders for future generations to enjoy. Your price $11.95 Used Hardcover
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Lake of Dreams by Kim Edwards
Publisher Comments The highly anticipated new novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Keeper's Daughter With revelations that prove as captivating as the deceptions at the heart of her bestselling phenomenon The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards now gives us the story of a woman's homecoming, a family secret, and the old house that holds the key to the true legacy of a family. At a crossroads in her life, Lucy Jarrett returns home from Japan, only to find herself haunted by her father's unresolved death a decade ago. Old longings stirred up by Keegan Fall, a local glass artist who was once her passionate first love, lead her into the unexpected. Late one night, as she paces the hallways of her family's rambling lakeside house, she discovers, locked in a window seat, a collection of objects that first appear to be useless curiosities, but soon reveal a deeper and more complex family past. As Lucy discovers and explores the traces of her lineage — from an heirloom tapestry and dusty political tracts to a web of allusions depicted in stained-glass windows throughout upstate New York — the family story she has always known is shattered, Lucy's quest for the truth reconfigures her family's history, links her to a unique slice of the suffragette movement, and yields dramatic insights that embolden her to live freely. With surprises at every turn, brimming with vibrant detail, The Lake of Dreams is an arresting saga in which every element emerges as a carefully place piece of the puzzle that's sure to enthrall the millions of readers who loved The Memory Keeper's Daughter. Your price $6.50 Used Hardcover
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Alone Together Why We Expect More from Technology & Less from Each Other by Sherry Turkle
Publisher Comments Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But, as MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle argues, this relentless connection leads to a new solitude. As technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Alone Together is the result of Turkle's nearly fifteen-year exploration of our lives on the digital terrain. Based on hundreds of interviews, it describes new unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, parents, and children, and new instabilities in how we understand privacy and community, intimacy, and solitude. Your price $12.95 Used Hardcover
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Cup of Friendship by Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher Comments From the author of the “bighearted...inspiring” ( Vogue) memoir Kabul Beauty School comes a fiction debut as compelling as real life: the story of a remarkable coffee shop in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there — thrown together by circumstance, bonded by secrets, and united in an extraordinary friendship. After hard luck and some bad choices, Sunny has finally found a place to call home — it just happens to be in the middle of a war zone. The thirty-eight-year-old American’s pride and joy is the Kabul Coffee House, where she brings hospitality to the expatriates, misfits, missionaries, and mercenaries who stroll through its doors. She’s especially grateful that the busy days allow her to forget Tommy, the love of her life, who left her in pursuit of money and adventure. Working alongside Sunny is the maternal Halajan, who vividly recalls the days before the Taliban and now must hide a modern romance from her ultratraditional son — who, unbeknownst to her, is facing his own religious doubts. Into the café come Isabel, a British journalist on the trail of a risky story; Jack, who left his family back home in Michigan to earn “danger pay” as a consultant; and Candace, a wealthy and well-connected American whose desire to help threatens to cloud her judgment. When Yazmina, a young Afghan from a remote village, is kidnapped and left on a city street pregnant and alone, Sunny welcomes her into the café and gives her a home — but Yazmina hides a secret that could put all their lives in jeopardy. As this group of men and women discover that there’s more to one another than meets the eye, they’ll form an unlikely friendship that will change not only their own lives but the lives of an entire country. Brimming with Deborah Rodriguez’s remarkable gift for depicting the nuances of life in Kabul, and filled with vibrant characters that readers will truly care about, A Cup of Friendship is the best kind of fiction — full of heart yet smart and thought-provoking. Your price $12.95 Used Hardcover
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You Know When the Men Are Gone by Siobhan Fallon
Publisher Comments An explosive new voice in fiction emerges from Iraq in this blistering debut by perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive” (The Guardian) The first major literary work about the Iraq War from an Iraqi perspective, The Corpse Exhibition shows us the war as we have never seen it before. Here is a world not only of soldiers and assassins, hostages and car bombers, refugees and terrorists, but also of madmen and prophets, angels and djinni, sorcerers and spirits. Blending shocking realism with flights of fantasy, Hassan Blasim offers us a pageant of horrors, as haunting as the photos of Abu Ghraib and as difficult to look away from, but shot through with a gallows humor that yields an unflinching comedy of the macabre. Gripping and hallucinatory, this is a new kind of storytelling forged in the crucible of war. Your price $7.95 Used Hardcover
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Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces by David Biespiel
Publisher Comments Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces cracks open the creative process and invites readers to take a fresh look at the mysterious pathways of the imagination. Failure is the engine of creativity writes poet and critic David Biespiel in this provocative book based on his 2009 lecture at the Rainier Writers' Workshop. Biespiel candidly tracks his own development as a writer and challenges traditional assumptions about writing that can stifle creativity. The liberating message: Working past the brink of failure — being free to try and discard and try again — is what allows the creative process to playfully flourish, keeping the spirit open to unexpected discoveries.
Both beginning and experienced writers — as well as artists, musicians, dancers, and anyone else on a creative path — will benefit from this elegant, surprising, and fresh perspective based on methods developed exclusively at the Attic, the unique literary studio Biespiel founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1999.
Every Writer Has a Thousand Faces will revolutionize the way readers look at their own creative process. It is a rich and rewarding book, a captivating glimpse into the inner life of some gifted writers and painters — and above all, a guide to a lifetime of discovery. Trade Paperback
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J D Salinger A Life by Kenneth Slawenski
Publisher Comments One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, author of the classic Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now comes a new biography that Peter Ackroyd in The Times of London calls “energetic and magnificently researched”—a book from which “a true picture of Salinger emerges.” Filled with new information and revelations—garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records— J. D. Salinger presents an extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. Kenneth Slawenski explores Salinger’s privileged youth, long obscured by misrepresentation and rumor, revealing the brilliant, sarcastic, vulnerable son of a disapproving father and doting mother and his entrance into a social world where Gloria Vanderbilt dismissively referred to him as “a Jewish boy from New York.” Here too are accounts of Salinger’s first broken heart—Eugene O’Neill’s daughter, Oona, left him for the much older Charlie Chaplin—and the devastating World War II service (“a living hell”) of which he never spoke and which haunted him forever. J. D. Salinger features all the dazzle of this author’s early writing successes, his dramatic encounters with luminaries from Ernest Hemingway to Laurence Olivier to Elia Kazan, his surprising office intrigues with famous New Yorker editors and writers, and the stunning triumph of The Catcher in the Rye, which would both make him world-famous and hasten his retreat into the hills of New Hampshire. Whether it’s revealing the facts of his hasty, short-lived first marriage or his lifelong commitment to Eastern religion, which would dictate his attitudes toward sex, nutrition, solitude, and creativity, J. D. Salinger is this unique author’s unforgettable story in full—one that no lover of literature can afford to miss. Your price $10.98 Used Hardcover
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