Middle Earth Journal Bookshelf

Publisher Comments
Ayn Rand is best known as the author of the perennially bestselling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Altogether, more than 12 million copies of the two novels have been sold in the United States. The books have attracted three generations of readers, shaped the foundation of the Libertarian movement, and influenced White House economic policies throughout the Reagan years and beyond. A passionate advocate of laissez-faire capitalism and individual rights, Rand remains a powerful force in the political perceptions of Americans today. Yet twenty-five years after her death, her readers know little about her life.

In this seminal biography, Anne C. Heller traces the controversial authors life from her childhood in Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution to her years as a screenwriter in Hollywood, the publication of her blockbuster novels, and the rise and fall of the cult that formed around her in the 1950s and 1960s. Throughout, Heller reveals previously unknown facts about Rands history and looks at Rand with new research and a fresh perspective.

Based on original research in Russia, dozens of interviews with Rands acquaintances and former acolytes, and previously unexamined archives of tapes and letters, AYN RAND AND THE WORLD SHE MADE is a comprehensive and eye-opening portrait of one of the most significant and improbable figures of the twentieth century.

Publisher Comments

A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492 — from "a remarkably engaging writer" The New York Times Book Review.

Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man's first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.

Publisher Comments
It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations.

In A Leap in the Dark, John Ferling offers a magisterial new history that surges from the first rumblings of colonial protest to the volcanic election of 1800. Ferling's swift-moving narrative teems with fascinating details. We see Benjamin Franklin trying to decide if his loyalty was to Great Britain or to America, and we meet George Washington when he was a shrewd planter-businessman who discovered personal economic advantages to American independence. We encounter those who supported the war against Great Britain in 1776, but opposed independence because it was a "leap in the dark." Following the war, we hear talk in the North of secession from the United States. The author offers a gripping account of the most dramatic events of our history, showing just how closely fought were the struggle for independence, the adoption of the Constitution, and the later battle between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans. Yet, without slowing the flow of events, he has also produced a landmark study of leadership and ideas. Here is all the erratic brilliance of Hamilton and Jefferson battling to shape the new nation, and here too is the passion and political shrewdness of revolutionaries, such as Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, and their Loyalist counterparts, Joseph Galloway and Thomas Hutchinson. Here as well are activists who are not so well known today, men like Abraham Yates, who battled for democratic change, and Theodore Sedgwick, who fought to preserve the political and social system of the colonial past. Ferling shows that throughout this period the epic political battles often resembled today's politics and the politicians--the founders--played a political hardball attendant with enmities, selfish motivations, and bitterness. The political stakes, this book demonstrates, were extraordinary: first to secure independence, then to determine the meaning of the American Revolution.

John Ferling has shown himself to be an insightful historian of our Revolution, and an unusually skillful writer. A Leap in the Dark is his masterpiece, work that provokes, enlightens, and entertains in full measure.

Publisher Comments
ARIA MINU-SEPEHR was raised in a sheltered world of extraordinary privilege as the son of a major general in the Shahs Imperial Iranian Air Force. It seemed his father could do anything—lead the Golden Crowns in death-defying aerobatic maneuvers; command an air force unit using top American technology; commission a lake to be built on a desert military base, for waterskiing. When Aria was eight, "Baba" built him a dune buggy so he could explore the desert; by ten, the boy handled the controls of a Beechcraft Bonanza while his father napped in the copilots seat. Aria moved easily between the two distinct worlds that existed under his family's roof—a division that mirrored the nations own deep and brooding divide. He was as comfortable at the lavish cocktail parties his parents threw for Iran's elite as he was running amok in the kitchen where his beloved nanny grumbled about the whiskey drinking, French ham, and miniskirts.

The 1970s were the end result of half a century of Westernization in Iran, and Aria's father was the man of the hour. But when the Shah was overthrown and the Ayatollah rose to power in 1979, Aria's idyllic life skidded to a halt. Days spent practicing calligraphy in his fathers embrace, lovingly torturing his nanny, and watching Sesame Street after school were suddenly infused with fears that the militia would invade his home, that he himself could be kidnapped, or that he would have to fire a gun to save Baba's life. As the surreal began to invade the mundane, with family friends disappearing every day and resources growing scarce, Aria found himself torn between being the man of the house and being a much needed source of comic relief. His antics shone a bright light for his family, showing them how to escape, if only momentarily, the grief and horror that a vengeful revolution brought into their lives.

We Heard the Heavens Then is a deeply moving story told from two vantage points: a boy growing up faster than any child should, observing and recoiling in the moment, and the adult who is dedicated to a measured assessment of the events that shaped him. In this tightly focused memoir, Aria Minu- Sepehr takes us back through his explosive youth, into the heart of the revolution when a boys hero, held up as the nations pride, became a hunted man.

Publisher Comments
"Magnificently and heartbreakingly told. . . . [Hudson] shows vividly that really filthy, face-to-face fraud and hard-sell bullying . . . brought the economy down around our ears."—The Boston Globe

In this page-turning, true-crime exposé, award-winning reporter Michael W. Hudson reveals the story of the rise and fall of the biggest subprime lender and Wall Street's biggest patron of subprime: Ameriquest and Lehman Brothers. They did more than any other institutions to produce the biggest financial scandal in American history.

It's a tale populated by a remarkable cast of characters: a shadowy billionaire who created the subprime industry out of the ashes of the 1980s S&L scandal; insatiable Wall Street executives; ensnared home owners; investigators who tried to expose the fraud; politicians who turned a blind eye; and, most of all, the drug-snorting, high-living salesman who tell all about the money they made, the lies they told, the deals they closed.

Provocative and gripping, The Monster is a searing look at the bottom-feeding fraud and top-down greed that fueled the financial collapse.

Publisher Comments
Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2,000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses.

Publisher Comments

Grove ORourke, the unforgettable hero of Norb Vonneguts smash hit Top Producer, is back—with a vengeance—in a  “Fast and furiouS” (Kirkus Reviews) read that will keep readers breathlessly turning the pages.

One sultry morning in Charleston, South Carolina, real-estate magnate Palmer Kincaids body washes ashore, the apparent victim of an accidental drowning. His daughter asks Grove ORourke for help getting the familys affairs in order. An easy decision—Palmer was Groves client and mentor. He steps in as interim head of the Palmetto Foundation, an organization Palmer created to encourage philanthropy. Its a tough role, full of emotional politics. But when Grove authorizes a $25 million transfer to a Filipino orphanage, requested by a Catholic priest and endorsed by the family, he discovers something has gone terribly wrong.

“If anybody can turn international finance into a riveting thriller, its Norb Vonnegut.”—JeffERy Deaver

Biscuit Hughes, a small-time lawyer, notifies Grove that the money may be supporting a sex superstore outside Fayetteville, North Carolina.  Grove and Biscuit join forces to investigate. But the deeper they dig, the worse things get. Palmers widow disappears, and the FBI starts breathing down their necks. Grove finds himself in a desperate race to identify a shadowy figure whos pulling the strings and who will stop at nothing to wrest another $40 million from the Palmetto Foundation.

Publisher Comments

Publisher Comments
On January 1, 1925, thirty-five-year-old Edwin Hubble announced the observation that ultimately established that our universe was a thousand trillion times larger than previously believed, filled with myriad galaxies like our own. This discovery dramatically reshaped how humans understood their place in the cosmos, and once and for all laid to rest the idea that the Milky Way galaxy was alone in the universe. Six years later, continuing research by Hubble and others forced Albert Einstein to renounce his own cosmic model and finally accept the astonishing fact that the universe was not immobile but instead expanding.

The fascinating story of these interwoven discoveries includes battles of will, clever insights, and wrong turns made by the early investigators in this great twentieth-century pursuit. It is a story of science in the making that shows how these discoveries were not the work of a lone genius but the combined efforts of many talented scientists and researchers toiling away behind the scenes. The intriguing characters include Henrietta Leavitt, who discovered the means to measure the vast dimensions of the cosmos . . . Vesto Slipher, the first and unheralded discoverer of the universes expansion . . . Georges Lemaître, the Jesuit priest who correctly interpreted Einsteins theories in relation to the universe . . . Milton Humason, who, with only an eighth-grade education, became a world-renowned expert on galaxy motions . . . and Harlow Shapley, Hubbles nemesis, whose flawed vision of the universe delayed the discovery of its true nature and startling size for more than a decade.

Here is a watershed moment in the history of astronomy, brought about by the exceptional combination of human curiosity, intelligence, and enterprise, and vividly told by acclaimed science writer Marcia Bartusiak.