Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

This book is provided with an introduction and notes by Peter Merchant. Canterbury Christ Church College, the tough-mindedness of the social satire in and its air of palpable integrity give this novel a special place in Anthony Trollope's Literary career. Trollope paints a picture as panoramic as his title promises, of the life of 1870s London, the loves of those drawn to and through the city, and the career of... (more)

Predictably Irrational

The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

by Dan Ariely

Why do our headaches persist after taking a one-cent aspirin but disappear when we take a 50-cent aspirin? Why does recalling the Ten Commandments reduce our tendency to lie, even when we couldn't possibly be caught? Why do we splurge on a lavish meal but cut coupons to save twenty-five cents on a can of soup? Why do we go back for second helpings at the unlimited buffet, even when our stomachs... (more)

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns

by Michael B. Horn, Curtis W. Johnson, Clayton M. Christensen

Selected as one of the "Best Books on Innovation, 2008" by BusinessWeek magazine Named the "Best Human-Capital Book of 2008" by Strategy + Business magazine A crash course in the business of learning-from the bestselling author of The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution … "Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America's K-12 education system... (more)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

by Muriel Barbery

The enthralling international bestseller. We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores... (more)

Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture.

Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture.

by Wendell Berry

Berry's assessment of modern agriculture and its relationship to American culture--our health, economy, personal relationships, morals, and spiritual values--is more timely than ever. This new edition of Berry's work presents a a classic testament to the value of the American family farm.

Frankenstein

by Mary Shelley

ENDURING LITERATURE ILLUMINATED BY PRACTICAL SCHOLARSHIP A timeless, terrifying tale of one man's obsession to create life -- and the monster that became his legacy. EACH ENRICHED CLASSIC EDITION INCLUDES: • A concise introduction that gives readers important background information • A chronology of the author's life and work • A timeline of significant events that provides the book's... (more)

Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace

Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace

by Ayelet Waldman

In the tradition of recent hits like The Bitch in the House and Perfect Madness comes a hilarious and controversial book that every woman will have an opinion about, written by America’s most outrageous writer. In our mothers’ day there were good mothers, neglectful mothers, and occasionally great mothers. Today we have only Bad Mothers. If you work, you’re neglectful; if you stay home, you’re... (more)

Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13)

by Lee Child

New York City. Two in the morning. A subway car heading uptown. Jack Reacher, plus five other passengers. Four are okay. The fifth isn’t. In the next few tense seconds Reacher will make a choice–and trigger an electrifying chain of events in this gritty, gripping masterwork of suspense by #1 New York Times bestseller Lee Child. Susan Mark was the fifth passenger. She had a lonely heart, an... (more)

Brooklyn

by Colm Toibin

Hauntingly beautiful and heartbreaking, Colm Tóibín's sixth novel, Brooklyn , is set in Brooklyn and Ireland in the early 1950s, when one young woman crosses the ocean to make a new life for herself. Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the years following World War Two. Though skilled at bookkeeping, she cannot find a job in the miserable Irish economy. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn to... (more)

Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Premier Zhao Ziyang

by Ziyang Zhao

“Zhao may be more dangerous in death than he was in life.” — Time How often can you peek behind the curtains of one of the most secretive governments in the world? Prisoner of the State is the first book to give readers a front row seat to the secret inner workings of China’s government. It is the story of Premier Zhao Ziyang, the man who brought liberal change to that nation and who, at the height of... (more)

Cotton Comes to Harlem

by Chester Himes

American JourneysDon Watson

American Journeys

by Don Watson

Whittaker Chambers : A Biography

by Sam Tanenhaus

Whittaker Chambers is the first biography of this complex and enigmatic figure. Drawing on dozens of interviews and on materials from forty archives in the United States and abroad--including still-classified KGB dossiers--Tanenhaus traces the remarkable journey that led Chambers from a sleepy Long Island village to center stage in America's greatest political trial and then, in his last years, to a unique role... (more)

Persepolis : The Story of a Childhood

by Marjane Satrapi

A New York Times Notable Book A Time Magazine “Best Comix of the Year” A San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times Best-seller Wise, funny, and heartbreaking, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi’s memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow... (more)

Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War

Night Draws Near: Iraq's People in the Shadow of America's War

by Anthony Shadid

Winner of the 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize A Washington Post Book World Top Five Nonfiction Book of the Year A Seattle Times Top Ten Best Book of the Year A New York Times Notable Book of the Year In 2003, The Washington Post 's Anthony Shadid went to war in Iraq, but not as an embedded journalist. Born and raised in Oklahoma, of Lebanese descent, Shadid, a fluent Arabic speaker, has... (more)

The New Biographical Dictionary of Film

by David Thomson

For twenty-five years, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has been not merely “the finest reference book ever written about movies” (Graham Fuller, Interview ), not merely the “desert island book” of art critic David Sylvester, not merely “a great, crazy masterpiece” (Geoff Dyer, The Guardian ), but also “fiendishly seductive” (Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone ). Now it returns, with its old entries... (more)

City: Rediscovering the Center

by William Hollingsworth Whyte

For sixteen years William Whyte walked the streets of New York and other major cities. With a group of young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian behavior, and city dynamics. City: Rediscovering the Center is the result of that research, a humane, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible to... (more)

Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity

Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity

by Neal Gabler

Hailed as the most important and entertaining biography in recent memory, Gabler's account of the life of fast-talking gossip columnist and radio broadcaster Walter Winchell "fuses meticulous research with a deft grasp of the cultural nuances of an era when virtually everyone who mattered paid homage to Winchell" (Time). of photos.

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

by Michael D'Orso, John Lewis

The son of an Alabama sharecropper, and now a sixth-term United States Congressman, John Lewis has led an extraordinary life, one that found him at the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the late '50s and '60s. As Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was present at all the major battlefields of the movement. Arrested more than forty times and severely beaten on several... (more)

Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

by Flannery O'Connor

The collection that established OÂ’ConnorÂ’s reputation as one of the american masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive The Misfit, as well as Â“The Displaced PersonÂ” and eight other stories.

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by Anthony Trollope