"After eight disastrous years, George W. Bush leaves office as one of the most unpopular presidents in American history. Russ Baker asks the question that lingers even as this benighted administration winds down: Who really wanted this man at the helm of the country, and why did his backers promote him despite his obvious liabilities and limitations? This book goes deep behind the scenes..."

"In this bleak and thrilling novel, the fifth from Booker Prize-nominee Galgut, the author creates an antipastoral, postapartheid noir that centers around Adam Napier, a depressed poet who retreats to a rural South African town to write. Rather than write, Adam drinks and wallows in depression. The story accelerates once he meets Canning, a former schoolmate who regards Adam as a personal hero even though Adam cannot..."

"Written with exceptional clarity, and illustrated by more than a thousand original pictures, this seminal book allows scientists and non-scientists alike to participate in what promises to be a major intellectual revolution."

"With the publication of "The Overcoat" in 1842, Nicolai Gogol (1809-1852) inaugurated a new chapter in Russian literature, in which the underdog and social misfit is treated not as a figure of fun or an object of charity, but as a human being with as much right to happiness as anybody else."

"In 1966, everyone who was anyone wanted an invitation to Truman Capote's "Black and White Dance" in New York, and guests included Frank Sinatra, Norman Mailer, C. Z. Guest, Kennedys, Rockefellers, and more. Lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings of the guests, this portrait of revelry at the height of the swirling, swinging sixties is a must for anyone interested in American popular culture and the..."

"The inventor-heroes of "Makers" take technology to its conclusion: They figure out a way to use three-dimensional printers to produce copies of machines and most anything else at close to no cost. This sparks "New Work," with geeky investment bankers scouring the country to fund promising artisans who use the technology to build things cheaply. The heroes also run a series of entertainment rides across the country in abandoned Wal-Marts, until Disney unleashes its lawyers on them."

"Cheverell Manor is a lovely old house in deepest Dorset, now a private clinic belonging to the famous plastic surgeon George Chandler-Powell. When investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn arrived there one late autumn afternoon, scheduled to have a disfiguring and long-standing facial scar removed, she had every expectation of a successful operation and a pleasant week recuperating."

"Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a ground breaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor..."

"Kaeleigh and Raeanne are 16-year-old identical twins, the daughters of a district court judge father and politician mother running for Congress. Everything on the surface of their lives seems Norman Rockwell perfect, but underneath run deep and damaging secrets.  Kaeleigh is the good girl-her father's perfect flower, something she has tried so hard to be since she was nine and he started ..."

"To mark the centenary of its foundation, the British Security Service, MI5, has opened its archives to an independent historian, the first time any of the world’s leading intelligence or security services has taken such a step. The Defence of the Realm, the book which results, is an unprecedented publication. It reveals the..."

"Are you up to your neck in blood sucking vampire stories?  Tired of those tales about dentally enhanced dark lords?  Before I wrote this book I thought all vampires were night-stalking, fangpopping, blood sucking fiends. Then I met Morning McCobb. He’s a vegan vampire who drinks a soy-blood substitute called Blood Lite. He believes..."

"Contains abstracts of 133 authors and books important in world literature. Entries include the works of such notables as Homer, Sophocles, Confucius, Plato, Omar Khayyam, Dante Aligheri, Niccolo Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Galileo, Johnathan Swift, Goethe, Jane Austen, Alexis de Tocqueville, the Brontê sisters, Karl Marx..." ~ by Book News, Inc., Portland, Oregon

"Recently divorced Tallulah Jones is mortified when she's stuck scooping sundaes for her two-timing ex-husband-and his bodacious new girlfriend, Brittanie-at his company luau.  But when Brittanie drops dead, Tally is suddenly the prime suspect in her murder investigation. To catch the killer, Tally will have to..."

"In February 1942, intelligence officer Victor Jones erected 150 tents behind British lines in North Africa. "Hiding tanks in Bedouin tents was an old British trick," writes Nicholas Rankin; German general Erwin Rommel not only knew of the ploy, but had copied it himself. Jones knew that Rommel knew. In fact, he counted on it--for these tents were empty."

"A bomb couldn't kill Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel—but his convalescence at the Avalon Clinic in the quaint seaside resort of Sandytown ("Home of the Healthy Holiday") just might. Sneaking out to the local pub provides Fat Andy with a bit of necessary diversion, allowing him a pint or two on the sly, plus an update on the world of trouble outside the clinic—including the very different plans of a pair of powerful landowners for..."

"Here’s the straight (and not so straight) scoop that every Elton John fan has been waiting for—from the addictions, toupees, affairs and scandals to the triumphant later years. Elton John has sold over 200 million records and has more than 56 top-40 singles. He has won five Grammy awards, an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a Tony. Rolling Stone ranks him #49 on their list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. Yet no book published in the U.S. has so successfully captured..."

"Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Some smart, talented writer was going to figure out what Joycean possibilities for wordplay Tourette's syndrome affords, and I'm so glad Lethem got there before David Foster Wallace. This book is on the (very) surface an affectionate literary updating of the noir novel, but its genius lies in its depiction of its central character—Lionel Essrog..."

"'A Very Brief History of Eternity is vintage Eire: erudite and witty, profound and written with a light touch. Eire compellingly narrates the ways in which complex beliefs about eternity are intertwined with the way life is lived in time. It is an invitation to reflect on how eternity, even when it is absent from view, can make, as he puts it, 'a hell of a difference.'"--Miroslav Volf, Yale University Divinity School"

"A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?"

"In this shocking and ground breaking new book, economic historian Burton W. Folsom exposes the idyllic legend of Franklin D. Roosevelt as a myth of epic proportions. With questionable moral character and a vendetta against the business elite, Roosevelt created New Deal programs marked by inconsistent planning, wasteful spending, and opportunity for political gain..."

"Renegade ex-Scientology employee Marc Headley discusses his traumatic experiences living and working within the confines of the controversial religion, and the abusive treatment of staff members."

"One of the very finest, and darkest, London novels, Angel Pavement is a devastating portrait of the city. Its blend of drudgery and wasted passion represents a muted English response to Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, published five years earlier. Priestley’s book may be less epic and more seedy, yet it is recognisably a product of the same era..."

"It is commonly believed that the Great Depression that began in 1929 resulted from a confluence of events beyond any one person's or government's control. In fact, as Liaquat Ahamed reveals, it was the decisions made by a small number of central bankers that were the primary cause of that economic meltdown, the effects of which set the stage for World War II and..."

"When Ayn Rand addressed a meeting of her publisher's sales staff shortly before the appearance of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, one of the salesmen asked her to summarise her philosophy while standing, as Rabbi Hillel had done to explain the Torah, on one leg. She did so: 'Metaphysics: objective reality. Epistemology: reason. Ethics: self-interest. Politics: capitalism.' Anne Heller tells us that the sales staff applauded, and so have many..."

"Bestselling author and columnist Carl Hiaasen returns with another hysterical mystery for kids set in Florida's Everglades.  Bunny Starch, the most feared biology teacher ever, is missing. She disappeared after a school field trip to Black Vine Swamp. And, to be honest, the kids in her class are relieved.  But when the principal tries..."

"A secular Jew, Berlinski nonetheless delivers a biting defense of religious thought. An acclaimed author who has spent his career writing about mathematics and the sciences, he turns the scientific community’s cherished skepticism back on itself, daring to ask and answer some rather embarrassing questions: Has anyone provided a proof of God’s inexistence?"

"With wit, humor, and an infectious love of astronomy that could win over even the science-phobic, this fun and fascinating book reminds us that outer space is anything but remote. The scientist behind the popular website badastronomy.com, Philip Plait presents some of the most fearsome end-of-the-world calamities (for instance, incoming asteroids and planet-swallowing black holes), demystifies the..."

"Before the sun dies and the Earth's core cools, before the zombies tear down the skyscrapers and all the pages are ripped from the library books, our species may already have long withered away in a virtual dystopia of failing beauty, faux terrors, and digitally-rendered hopes. Or if not all mankind, at least Manhattan. Such is the bleak path Jonathan Lethem lustrously figures in Chronic City."

"Death of a River Guide was called "haunting and ambitious" by The New York Times Book Review and "a remarkable achievement" by The Washington Post Book World. It confirms Richard Flanagan's place among the world's most remarkable voices. Aljaz Cosini is leading a group of tourists on a raft tour down Tasmania's wild Franklin River when his greatest fear is realized..."

"In 1954, in the cookhouse of a logging and sawmill settlement in northern New Hampshire, an anxious twelve-year-old boy mistakes the local constable's girlfriend for a bear. Both the twelve-year-old and his father become fugitives, forced to run from Coos County—to Boston, to southern Vermont, to Toronto—pursued by the implacable..."

"Set during the sanctimonious culture wars of the 1990s, The Human Stain concludes Philip Roth's eloquent trilogy (American Pastoral, I Married a Communist) of postwar America with the story of an eminent, respected college professor whose life, career, and very identity unravel in the wake of a politically correct academic bushwhacking."

"For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, 'Yes, you can raise the perfect dog!' It all starts with..."

"This eagerly awaited graphic work retells the first book of the Bible in a profoundly honest way. Peeling away the theological and scholarly interpretations that have often obscured its most dramatic stories, R. Crumb—using the actual text word for word—has imagined the Bible as it really was."

"An unparalleled exploration of the mysteries underlying women’s sexuality that rivals the culture-shifting Kinsey Report, from two of America’s leading research psychologists.   Do women have sex simply to reproduce or display their affection? When University of Texas at Austin clinical psychologist Cindy M. Meston and evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss joined forces to investigate the underlying sexual motivations of women, what they found astonished them."

"An attraction to danger prompts Ella de Vries, a stunning obsidian-eyed beauty who dances with the Royal Ballet, to fall in love with Donny McLeod, the Dionysiac rebel and free spirit who 'believes in nothing'. It is the 1970s. They move into a household of political radicals and become casually drawn into extremism. Special Branch infiltration leads to a violent crime that sends Ella into self-imposed exile in Brazil. Donny goes wandering. Over thirty years later..."

"The New York Times called Sir Edward Feathers one of the most memorable characters in modern literature. A lyrical novel that recalls his fully lived life, Old Filth has been acclaimed as Jane Gardam's masterpiece, a book where life and art merge. And now that beautiful, haunting novel has been joined by a companion that also bursts with humor and wisdom: The Man in the Wooden Hat.   Old Filth was Eddie's story. The Man in the Wooden Hat is the history of his marriage told from the perspective of his wife, Betty, a character as vivid and enchanting as Filth himself."

"Somewhere around the age of 30, George Washington turned himself to stone.   Not all at once, and not completely. But so much so that by the time he rode into Philadelphia in 1775 for the Second Continental Congress, at the age of 43, his reputation was permanently fixed: a man of grave, stately bearing, with a "Soldier-like Air," as a fellow delegate observed, "and a...hard countenance." 'As awful as a god,' added Abigail Adams. 'A heart not warm in its affections,' said Thomas Jefferson carefully..."

"Ralph Stanley, the hillbilly (his term) musician best known for his 2002 Grammy-winning rendition of O Death in the Coen brothers movie   O Brother Where Art Thou?, may be 82 years old and play songs nearly as ancient as the southwest Virginia hills where he was born (and still lives). But after all these years his tongue is still sharp, as he shows in "Man of Constant Sorrow," a memoir that may send some cowboy hats spinning..."

"An original and hilarious memoir by an ex-greeting card writer, virgin fundamentalist, and This American Life contributor that chronicles how, in the belly of the "social expression" industry, he learned to love, thrive, and finally feel comfortable in his own skin..."

"The Nazis had other ways of running things and could not wait to jettison all diplomats, including their own, as soon as they had enough power. But in 1939 they were still obligated to go through the old ritualised dances: the ultimatums, the declarations of war."

"Beset by enemies on every side and torn by internal divisions, the crusader kingdoms were a hotbed of intrigue, where your greatest ally might be your natural enemy. Because lives and kingdoms often rested on the edge of a sword blade, it was a time when a bold heart and a steady hand would see you far—so long as you..."

"During the Cold War, world superpowers amassed nuclear arsenals containing the explosive power of one million Hiroshimas. The Soviet Union secretly plotted to create the “Dead Hand,” a system designed to launch an automatic retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States, and developed a fearsome biological warfare machine..."

"In the early 1970s, Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, becomes a yard boy on the grand estate of the powerful Metarey family. Soon, through the family’s generosity, he is a student at a private boarding school and an aide to the great New York senator Henry Bonwiller, who is running for president. Before long, Corey finds himself involved with..."

"[I]n this true story of an epic courtroom showdown, two of the nation's largest corporations stand accused of causing the deaths of children. Representing the bereaved parents, the unlikeliest of heroes emerges: a young, flamboyant Porsche-driving lawyer who hopes to win millions of dollars and ends up nearly losing everything, including his sanity. A searing, compelling tale of a legal system gone awry—one in which greed and power fight an ..."

"On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother, Thomas, entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut, public library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable..."

"In this title, a Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet - then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death. A woman leaves her middle-class family in Calcutta, and her job in a jute factory, only to find..."

"A heart-pounding tale-part historical suspense, part medical thriller-set in the final months of World War II.   As the secret countdown to the Normandy invasion gets under way, a fishing boat runs aground on British shores with a hold full of passengers all dead from a mysterious illness. American doctor Frank Brink, who has been working..."

"Laurie Sandell grew up in awe (and sometimes in terror) of her larger-than-life father, who told jaw-dropping tales of a privileged childhood in Buenos Aires, academic triumphs, heroism during Vietnam, friendships with Kissinger and the Pope. As a young woman, Laurie unconsciously mirrors her dad, trying on several outsized personalities (Tokyo stripper, lesbian seductress, Ambien addict). Later, she lucks into the perfect job--interviewing celebrities for a top women's magazine. Growing up with her extraordinary father has given Laurie..."

"In The Looting of America, Leopold debunks the prevailing media myths that blame low-income home buyers who got in over their heads, people who ran up too much credit-card debt, and government interference with free markets. Instead, readers will discover how Wall Street undermined itself and the rest of the economy by playing and losing at a highly lucrative and dangerous game of fantasy finance..."

" Jaci Wright has been running from the Falladay twins, Chase and Cam, for seven years now. Fears of the desires they arouse in her, and the knowledge of the relationship they wanted with her, spurred her to run, to find a life that kept her traveling the globe and out of their reach. But now life has come full circle. A new job has placed Jaci in..."

"[N]ow Helprin gets his revenge with a splenetic riposte that veers from a passionate defense of authors' rights and the power of the individual voice to a misanthropic attack on a debased America populated by "Slurpee-sucking geeks," "beer-drinking dufuses" and "mouth-breathing morons in backwards baseball caps and pants that fall down." We're treated to his views on everything from tax policy and airport security to the self-regard of academic literary critics. Drowning in this ocean of bile is a defense of authors' right to control their work and defend..."

"Glen David Gold obviously has no problem embracing the big picture. His meaty historical fiction Sunnyside takes in World War I and the concurrent rise of commercial Hollywood, the interlocking strands of capitalism and communism, entrepreneurship both legal and illegal, and the illusory nature of romance as seen through the episodic travails of a slew of protagonists, including..."

"By sixth grade, Miranda and her best friend, Sal, know how to navigate their New York City neighborhood. They know where it’s safe to go, like the local grocery store, and they know whom to avoid, like the crazy guy on the corner.  But things start to unravel. Sal gets punched by a new kid for what seems like no reason, and he shuts Miranda out of his life. The apartment key that Miranda’s mom keeps hidden for emergencies is stolen. And then Miranda finds a mysterious note scrawled on a tiny slip of paper..."

"After witnessing a mob hit, surgeon Jack Francisco is put into protective custody to keep him safe until he can testify. A hitman known only as D is blackmailed into killing Jack, but when he tracks him down, his weary conscience won't allow him to murder an innocent man. Finding in each other an unlikely ally, Jack and D are soon on the run from..."

"In 1953, six-year-old Bobby Greenlease, the son of a wealthy Kansas City automobile dealer and his wife, was kidnapped from his Roman Catholic elementary school by a woman named Bonnie Heady, a well-scrubbed prostitute who was posing as one of his distant aunts. Her accomplice, Carl Austin Hall, a former playboy who had run through his inheritance and was just out of the Missouri State Penitentiary, was waiting in the getaway car with a gun, a length of rope and a plastic tarp. The two grifters thought they had a plan that would put them on the road to Easy Street; but, actually, they were on a..."

"Richard Russo gives us the story of a marriage, and of all the other ties that bind, from parents and in-laws to children and the promises of youth.  Griffin has been tooling around for nearly a year with his father’s ashes in the trunk, but his mother is very much alive and not shy about calling on his cell phone. She does so as he drives down to Cape Cod, where he and his wife, Joy, will celebrate the marriage of their daughter Laura’s best friend. For Griffin this is akin to driving into the past, since he took ..."

"Seattle investigator J. P. Beaumont is working a series of murders in which six young women have been wrapped in tarps, doused with gasoline, and set on fire. Their charred remains have been creating a grisly pattern of death across western Washington. At the same time, in the Arizona desert, Cochise County sheriff Joanna Brady is looking into a homicide in which the elderly caretaker of an ATV park was run over and left to die. Was he a victim of..."

"A tautly paced investigation of one the 20th century's most audacious art frauds, which generated hundreds of forgeries—many of them still hanging in prominent museums and private collections today   Provenance is the extraordinary narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate deceptions in art history. Investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo brilliantly recount the tale of a great con man and unforgettable villain, John Drewe, and his sometimes unwitting accomplices."

"A TV western star quits his successful series and returns to Dallas to make a documentary film that reveals the truth about his home town. His quest forces him to learn if he is capable of using his six-gun for real as he moves from booze and radical politics in oil men's palaces into the..."

"Drawing from the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, Rapt illuminates attention's essential function: transforming the vast, chaotic world into your own orderly, user-friendly personal version. Your brain's selective gatekeeper, it's involved in virtually every aspect of life-learning and memory, thought and emotion, work and relationships. As the expression "paying attention" suggests, you have a limited store of this cognitive currency, which you..."

"Every single one of these honestly drawn and heartsinkingly recognisable characters – from the frustrated sister-in-law, right down to the evil Jack Russell puppy with his “pink trembling groin” and “nervous squirts of urine” – gave me real, cackling pleasure. Particularly wonderful is Thomas’s impulsive, entrepreneurial older brother Howard-..."

"The sensational story of a woman whose enduring spirit encapsulates one of the most dynamic periods of modern European history. Drawing on a detailed memoir and boxes of letters, historian and biographer Moorehead (Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees, 2005, etc.) re-creates the tumultuous life of Lucie Dillon. Raised by her unhappy and spiteful grandmother, Lucie quickly developed into a resourceful, level-headed girl. These qualities would prove..."

"[w]ho describes consulting as 'the most improbable business on earth' and who goes on to ask: 'Can you think of anything less ­improbable [sic] than taking the world’s most ­successful firms, leaders in their businesses, and ­hiring people just fresh out of school and telling them how to run their ­businesses, and they are willing to pay ­millions of dollars for their ­advice?'"

"As the book progresses…Mr. Queenan gradually finds a more nuanced voice, capable of expressing not just fury and condescension but also humor, irony and melancholy. His tortured relationship with his father slowly gains in depth and chiaroscuro, and his portraits of friends, relatives and teachers evolve into Dickensian character studies even as they immerse us in the gritty Philadelphia neighborhoods he knew as a boy."

"Memoir of an undercover cop who posed as a hit man. A three-time winner of Police Officer of the Year, Ballentine began his unusual specialty soon after joining the Phoenix PD. "Within a couple years I was whisked off to a sting operation where I made a living undercover buying stolen property from burglars, thieves, and fences," he writes. "Then came the murder-for-hire business." He developed physical bulk and a repertoire of underworld identities, including "biker-gang warlord, Mafia hit man, soldier of fortune, disgruntled Vietnam vet, and..."

"This provocative and illuminating book charts the persistence of a cultural phenomenon. Tales of alien abduction, chronic fatigue syndrome, Gulf War syndrome, and the resurgence of repressed memories in psychotherapy are just a few of the signs that we live in an age of hysterical epidemics.  As Elaine Showalter demonstrates, the triumphs of the therapeutic society have not been able to prevent the..."

"Years ago, Cliona—strong, proud and practical—sailed for Boston, determined to one day come home. But when the time came to return to Inis Muruch, her daughter Grace—fierce, beautiful, and brazenly sexual—relented her mother's isolated, unfamiliar world. Though entranced by the sea and its healing powers, Grace became desperate to..."

"In his latest investigative book Michael Baigent takes us to the assembly hall of the UN, the boardrooms of major businesses and powerful lobbying groups, the cabinet meetings of world leaders, the ranches of cattle breeders, the churches of the faithful, and the narrow winding streets of modern Jerusalem, revealing to us the many diverse, public, and clandestine figures behind a perilous messianic agenda.   By unveiling truly bizarre alliances, revisiting centuries-old ghostly events still haunting the birthplaces of religion, unraveling complex threads of history to ..."

"Originally published to wide critical acclaim in France, where it elicited comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's wise, funny, and heartbreaking memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story..."

"Among all the great discoveries and inventions of the nineteenth century, few offer us a more fascinating insight into Victorian society than the discovery of anesthesia. Now considered to be one of the greatest inventions for humanity since the printing press, anesthesia offered pain-free operations, childbirth with reduced suffering, and instant access to the world beyond consciousness."

"For decades, Mazzucchelli has been a master without a masterpiece. Now he has one. His long-awaited graphic novel is a huge, knotty marvel, the comics equivalent of a Pynchon or Gaddis novel, and radically different from anything he's done before. Asterios Polyp, its arrogant, prickly protagonist, is an award-winning architect who's never built an actual building, and a pedant in the midst of a spiritual crisis. After the structure of his own life falls apart, he runs away to..."

"Drawing on previously unexamined diaries and letters, The Other Half marvelously re-creates the moving story of Jacob Riis, the legendary Progressive reformer and muckraking photographer. Born in 1849 in rural Denmark, Riis immigrated to America in 1870 following a devastating romantic breakup. Penniless and starving, Riis stumbled into journalism..."

"When Marilyn Monroe became famous in the 1950s, the world was told that her mother was either dead or simply not a part of her life. However, that was not true. In fact, her mentally ill mother was very much present in Marilyn's world and the complex family dynamic that unfolded behind the scenes is a story that has never before been told...until now. In this ground-breaking book, Taraborrelli draws complex and sympathetic portraits of the women so influential..."

"Each of Lara Vapnyar's six stories invites us into a world where food and love intersect, along with the overlapping pleasures and frustrations of Vapnyar's uniquely captivating characters. Meet Nina, a recent arrival from Russia, for whom colorful vegetables represent her own fresh hopes and dreams..."

"Quarantine is an imaginative and powerful retelling of Christ's fabled forty-day fast in the desert. In Jim Crace's account, Jesus travels to a cluster of arid caves, where he crosses paths with a small group of exiles and changes their lives in unexpected ways. Evoking the strangeness and beauty of the desert landscape, Crace provocatively interprets one of our most important stories."

"Climate, sea level, and ice sheets have always changed, and the changes observed today are less than those of the past. Climate changes are cyclical and are driven by the Earth's position in the galaxy, the sun, wobbles in the Earth's orbit, ocean currents, and plate tectonics. In previous times, atmospheric carbon dioxide was far higher than at present but did not drive climate change. No runaway greenhouse effect or acid oceans occurred during times of excessively high carbon dioxide. During past glaciations, carbon dioxide was higher than it is today."

"Michelle Wie couldn’t miss. No way. Big success? It was only a matter of time. At four she could drive a golf ball a hundred yards. At ten she was outdriving adult male golfers in her Honolulu hometown–from the back tees. At thirteen she won the Women’s Amateur Public Links, becoming the youngest person ever to win a USGA championship. The next year she was playing in LPGA and PGA Tour tournaments. At sixteen she was earning eight figures in endorsements. Yet by the time she turned eighteen..."

"One of the most striking aspects of Mr. Thuesen's narrative is the depth of animosity between people of faith on opposing sides of the controversies. As the book progresses, squabbling Church Fathers are succeeded by squabbling Reformers, who, having crossed the Atlantic with their fights, are succeeded in turn by squabbling Lutherans, Presbyterians and Baptists."

"Completed in 1930 while the author was living in Paris—imbibing and boxing with James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway*—this novel has violence at its core. The story opens with the hanging of an ex-World War I soldier for involuntary murder. First and foremost, though, it is a story of love—a love haunted by that hanging."
(* = it is rumored that Mr. Callaghan also beat-up Ernest in a boxing match that Ernest expected to win)

I read this book years ago and have since wondered why this 100% proven-felon (who knowingly left a young lady to suffocate and drown in the car he was driving) was re-elected again and again by the voters of Massachusetts. They are either incredibly ignorant, or they honestly believe that there is a class of folks, almost 100% white & wealthy, who cannot be held to the same rules of comportment the rest of us are.

"They are 'the Family' -- soldiers in the army of God, waging spiritual war in the halls of American power. Their base is a quiet, leafy estate along the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia, and Jeff Sharlet is the only journalist to have reported from inside its walls. His experience with fundamentalist Christianity’s elite corps launched him into a deeper examination of the movement’s roots in American history, and its surprising allies past and present, including..."

"On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. In this extensively researched account of that epic achievement, former publishing executive and prize-winning author Nelson (The First Heroes) moves seamlessly between Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, their nervous families and the equally nervous NASA ground crew..."

"Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: happy parents and a twin sister that meant the world to him. But Alyssa went missing a year ago, stolen off the side of a lonely street with only one witness to the crime. His family shattered, his sister presumed dead, Johnny risks everything to..."

"On 2 August 1944, in the wake of the complete destruction of the German Army Group Centre in Belorussia, Winston Churchill mocked Adolf Hitler in the House of Commons by the rank he had reached in the First World War. ‘Russian success has been somewhat aided by the strategy of Herr Hitler, of Corporal Hitler,’ Churchill jibed. ‘Even military idiots find it difficult not to see some faults in his actions'..."

"Barcelona, 1945—A great world city lies shrouded in secrets after the war, and a boy mourning the loss of his mother finds solace in his love for an extraordinary book called The Shadow of the Wind, by an author named Julian Carax. When the boy searches for Carax's other books, it begins to dawn on him, to his horror, that someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book the man has ever written. Soon the boy realizes that The Shadow of the Wind is as dangerous to own as it..."