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POWELLS.COM INTERVIEWS: ELIZABETH GILBERT
At age seventeen, Eustace Conway moved out of his house to live off the land, in a teepee of his own design. In the twenty-plus years since, he's crossed America on horseback (in record time), taught college students how to skin and cook roadkill, and established a thousand-acre wilderness in the Appalachians where he lives and mentors young apprentices. Brilliant but tormented, stunningly successful and entirely unfulfilled, Conway is "the last of some great epic kind we used to see — or that we like to think we used to see — in this country." As award-winning author Elizabeth Gilbert explains in The Last American Man, Eustace is not like any man you've ever met.

SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS: THE LAST AMERICAN MAN
"Wickedly well-written," gushed The New York Times Book Review. "A first-rate work of reportage," Kirkus Reviews raved. "A masterly portrait," The Christian Science Monitor concluded. Order signed first editions of The Last American Man while they last.

KIDS' BOOKS: TWO FOR ONE
Order How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found by Sara Nickerson and we'll throw in Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography for free. Or choose Big Mouth and Ugly Girl by Joyce Carol Oates and receive Knocked Out by My Nunga-Nungas by Louise Rennison at no additional charge. Picture books, middle readers, and books for young adults; Jerry Spinelli, Walter Dean Myers, and two great kids' anthologies — our experts have paired four special Double Deals to delight young readers. Grab yours while quantities last.

GREAT DEALS (FOR GROWN-UPS)
Publishers Weekly calls Black House, last year's collaboration between Stephen King and Peter Straub, "a high point in both the King and Straub canons." Also new to our Great Deals shelves: Seamus Heaney's celebrated translation of Beowulf (the 1999 Whitbread Book of the Year), Karen Armstrong's biography of Muhammad, and the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Hunter S. Thompson's classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, featuring Ralph Steadman's original drawings and three companion pieces selected by the author. Save 40-80% on these and sixteen more staff favorites.

ANOTHER VOICE: SATIREWIRE.COM
Office of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge upped the country's alert status from yellow to bridal white earlier this week, saying terrorists were now attempting to marry U.S. Forest Service workers in hopes of eventually burning down the United States acre by acre. Get the full story from our new host in the Humor section, SatireWire.com, and find nine funny books they recommend.

Georgie made up this month's contest. Find her as long as the heat wave lasts, wading in our inflatable pool.

SPLASH ALL SUMMER LONG: WIN DRY BOOKS
In the hot summer months the likelihood of moisture ruining your books grows exponentially. Once wetted by the salty sea or chlorinated pool water — or even a melted ice cube — a book's pages curl and ripple, then swell to twice the size. There's nothing left to do but replace them. Of course, the easiest, least expensive way to do that is to win $250 in free books from Powells.com. So go ahead and enter — then splash till your heart's content.

BIBLIOLATRY IN SPURS
Cowboy Carlisle? Yeah, right. In the June edition of Bibliolatry, the columnist claims that he spent his youth in spit-shined boots roping dogies. Decide for yourself. Or skip the column altogether and head straight for our editors' excellent list of seven recommended books, old and new, about the American West.

PUNCTUATION QUOTA UPDATE
Powell's Books, an independent bookseller in Portland, Oregon, in voluntary accordance with the guidelines adopted at 1998's International Grammar Summit, hereby reaffirms its effort to find a significant role for exclamation points in future editions of our newsletter — understanding, of course, that only so much punctuation can be employed in a sentence and admitting that unresolved questions abound. Will the excitement seem forced? Will semicolons (which during the last six months have been used at a rate far exceeding suggested quotas) see less action in future editions? Will we increase our output by introducing those upside-down exclamation marks so popular with our neighbors to the south? (And if so, is that cheating?) Stay tuned as the drama unfolds.

eBOOKS
Available in all three eBook formats, a Powell's favorite, Numbered Account by Christopher Reich. "Forget sex," Mike Irwin raves, "nothing titillates like money. And this slam-bam-gimme-the-cash-ma'am roller-coaster ride through international banking delivers on every dollar." More new electronic releases include Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, The Mile High Club by Kinky Friedman, The Paris Option by Robert Ludlum, and The Doctor's House by Ann Beattie. Save 20% and up.

EVENTS CALENDAR
Create the perfect country garden with Sunniva Harte. Let Brian Parrott, Eddie Basinski, and Artie Wilson introduce you to the Lords of Baseball. Spend 21 Dog Years at Amazon.com with Mike Daisey. Also at Powell's in the next two weeks, Jonathan Ames, Will Ferguson, One Page Wonders, and the introduction of Powell's Press. Check the calendar for details.

FUP. STORE CAT.
You might never fall as far as the water, that's what Fup is thinking. If the wind threatening to push her off the bridge were to pry her paws loose from their hold on the guard rail, it might simply toss her small body back and forth (like that piece of wax paper above), not send her crashing down into the river (because this isn't about gravity, she reasons, it's about wind). In fact she might somehow ride a gust to the far shore, leaning left and right, steering, until the hard surface of river a hundred feet below were of no greater concern than the clouds.

Will the drawbridge never go down? That's what else she's thinking. How long will they be stranded out over the water?

Bear clings to the rail behind Fup while Zooey, all ninety pounds of him, stands alongside, trying without much success to break the roaring wind. Then suddenly Zooey is gone.

When Fup turns she sees Bear jumping into the open door of a car. Zooey is already inside, sitting up on the back seat, panting.

The red lights cease flashing, the white bar blocking traffic begins to rise, and cars inch anxiously forward. It all happens so quickly what choice does Fup have? She lets go of the rail, staggers low into the wind across the curb, and leaps into the car, joining whom she knows not, headed who knows where.

TOP TEN
1. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells (Literature)
2. Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (American Studies)
3. The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan (Gardening)
4. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (Literature)
5. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (Popular Fiction)
6. Stupid White Men by Michael Moore (Politics)
7. Back When We Were Grownups by Anne Tyler (Literature)
8. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich (American Studies)
9. Please Don't Kill the Freshman by Zoe Trope (Small Press)
10. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (Literature)

ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
"By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old, he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree. By the time he was ten, he could hit a running squirrel at fifty feet with a bow and arrow. When he turned twelve, he went out into the woods, alone and empty-handed, built himself a shelter, and survived off the land for a week. When he turned seventeen, he moved out of his family's home altogether and headed into the mountains, where he lived in a teepee of his own design, made fire by rubbing two sticks together, bathed in icy streams, and dressed in the skins of the animals he had hunted and eaten. This move occurred in 1977, by the way. Which was the same year Star Wars was released."
— from The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert (read the first chapter)

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