Service Alert
Delay in delivery of CDs
We are currently experiencing a delay with CD production. CDs are being sent and will be delivered as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
We are currently experiencing a delay with CD production. CDs are being sent and will be delivered as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Showing 1 - 20 of 10989 items
By Alan C. Greenberg, Mark Singer. 2010
Former CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Greenberg, sheds light on his life as one of Wall Street&’s most respected figures…
in this candid and fascinating account of a storied career and its stunning conclusion. On March 16, 2008, Alan Greenberg, former CEO and current chairman of the executive committee of Bear Stearns, found himself in the company&’s offices on a Sunday. More remarkable by far than the fact that he was in the office on a Sunday is what he was doing: participating in a meeting of the board of directors to discuss selling the company he had worked decades to build for a fraction of what it had been worth as little as ten days earlier. In less than a week the value of Bear Stearns had diminished by tens of billions of dollars.As Greenberg recalls, "our most unassailable assumption—that Bear Stearns, an independent investment firm with a proud eighty-five-year history, would be in business tomorrow—had been extinguished. . . . What was it, exactly, that had happened, and how, and why?" This book provides answers to those questions from one of Wall Street&’s most respected figures, the man most closely identified with Bear Stearns&’ decades of success.The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns is Alan Greenberg&’s remarkable story of ascending to the top of one of Wall Street&’s venerable powerhouse financial institutions. After joining Bear Stearns in 1949, Greenberg rose to become formally head of the firm in 1978.No one knows the history of Bear Stearns as he does; no one participated in more key decisions, right into the company&’s final days. Greenberg offers an honest, clear-eyed assessment of how the collapse of the company surprised him and other top executives, and he explains who he thinks was responsible.By Joshua Kurlantzick. 2017
The untold story of how America&’s secret war in Laos in the 1960s transformed the CIA from a loose collection…
of spies into a military operation and a key player in American foreign policy.January, 1961: Laos, a tiny nation few Americans have heard of, is at risk of falling to communism and triggering a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia. This is what President Eisenhower believed when he approved the CIA&’s Operation Momentum, creating an army of ethnic Hmong to fight communist forces there. Largely hidden from the American public—and most of Congress—Momentum became the largest CIA paramilitary operation in the history of the United States. The brutal war lasted more than a decade, left the ground littered with thousands of unexploded bombs, and changed the nature of the CIA forever.With &“revelatory reporting&” and &“lucid prose&” (The Economist), Kurlantzick provides the definitive account of the Laos war, focusing on the four key people who led the operation: the CIA operative whose idea it was, the Hmong general who led the proxy army in the field, the paramilitary specialist who trained the Hmong forces, and the State Department careerist who took control over the war as it grew.Using recently declassified records and extensive interviews, Kurlantzick shows for the first time how the CIA&’s clandestine adventures in one small, Southeast Asian country became the template for how the United States has conducted war ever since—all the way to today&’s war on terrorism.By Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Seanan McGuire. 2015
Collected by the editor of the award-winning Lightspeed magazine, the first, definitive anthology of climate fiction—a cutting-edge genre made popular…
by Margaret Atwood.Is it the end of the world as we know it? Climate Fiction, or Cli-Fi, is exploring the world we live in now—and in the very near future—as the effects of global warming become more evident. Join bestselling, award-winning writers like Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kim Stanley Robinson, Seanan McGuire, and many others at the brink of tomorrow. Loosed Upon the World is so believable, it’s frightening.By Matthew Alexander, John R. Bruning. 2008
Finding Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, had long been the U.S. military's top priority…
-- trumping even the search for Osama bin Laden. No brutality was spared in trying to squeeze intelligence from Zarqawi's suspected associates. But these "force on force" techniques yielded exactly nothing, and, in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, the military rushed a new breed of interrogator to Iraq. Matthew Alexander, a former criminal investigator and head of a handpicked interrogation team, gives us the first inside look at the U.S. military's attempt at more civilized interrogation techniques -- and their astounding success. The intelligence coup that enabled the June 7, 2006, air strike onZarqawi's rural safe house was the result of several keenly strategized interrogations, none of which involved torture or even "control" tactics. Matthew and his team decided instead to get to know their opponents. Who were these monsters? Who were they working for? What were they trying to protect? Every day the "'gators" matched wits with a rogues' gallery of suspects brought in by Special Forces ("door kickers"): egomaniacs, bloodthirsty adolescents, opportunistic stereo repairmen, Sunni clerics horrified by the sectarian bloodbath, Al Qaeda fanatics, and good people in the wrong place at the wrong time. With most prisoners, negotiation was possible and psychological manipulation stunningly effective. But Matthew's commitment to cracking the case with these methods sometimes isolated his superiors and put his own career at risk. This account is an unputdownable thriller -- more of a psychological suspense story than a war memoir. And indeed, the story reaches far past the current conflict in Iraq with a reminder that we don't have to become our enemy to defeat him. Matthew Alexander and his ilk, subtle enough and flexible enough to adapt to the challenges of modern, asymmetrical warfare, have proved to be our best weapons against terrorists all over the world.Bigger, Fancier, and more cutthorat than ever!When Freeman Hall left The Big Fancy to pursue his screenwriting dreams, he thought…
the horrors of working in a handbag department were finally over. But instead of fame and fortune, he found himself stuck behind a wall of script-killing rewrites, unable to make a living.In Return to the Big Fancy, Freeman shares his wildly entertaining journey back through the fiery gates of Retail Hell. He thought he had seen it all in his day, but with the bar set higher than ever before, employees are now graciously bowing before Corporate as they climb over fellow salespeople, and even friends, to earn enough transactions and commissions to actually survive. As he learns more of the wretchedness that has befallen the sales floor, he realizes that The Big Fancy has its customers and its employees on a short leash. But leave it to Freeman and the threat of disappearing commissions to rally the retail slaves and show Corporate who's really in charge!By Larry McMurtry. 2000
Larry McMurtry, the preeminent chronicler of the American West, celebrates the best of contemporary Western short fiction, introducing a stellar…
collection of twenty stories that represent, in various ways, the coming-of-age of the legendary American frontier.Featuring a veritable Who's Who of the century's most distinctive writers, this collection effectively departs from the standard superstars of the Western genre. McMurtry has chosen a refreshing range of work that, when taken as a whole, depicts the evolution and maturation of Western writing over several decades. The featured tales are not so concerned with the American West of history and geography as they are with the American West of the imagination—one that is alternately comic, gritty, individual, searing, and complex. Including authors such as Jack Kerouac, Wallace Stegner, Raymond Carver, Annie Proulx, and Diana Ossana, this collection captures the real Western canon like no other.By H. G Wells. 2023
The world of young Mr. Lewisham is one day turned upside down when he meets and falls in love with…
Ethel Henderson, a young woman from London who is visiting relatives in Sussex. Their brief and innocent rendezvous has significant implications when Lewisham's job is threatened. Some time later, Lewisham moves to London, where he decides to go search of Ethel, but finding her proves to be more complicated than expected ... This book is said to closely resemble events in H. G. Wells's own lifeBy Louis L'Amour, Elmer Kelton. 2005
A thrilling collection of twelve powerful and action-packed stories that celebrate the legendary Texas Rangers from Louis L&’Amour, the world&’s…
greatest Western storyteller, Rod Miller, and many more. Explore the proud heritage of the elite Texas Rangers in these exhilarating, white-knuckled stories. From historical tales of outlaws and rustlers to modern thrillers of tracking serial killers with the latest technology, Lone Star Law is an outstanding collection of stories about delivering justice the Texan way.By Steve Russell. 2011
From retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Steve Russell comes a compelling firsthand account of the blow-by-blow plays of the actual…
raids that led to the capture of Saddam Hussein in 2003.When U.S. forces exterminated Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on May 1, 2011, the world witnessed a brilliantly fruitful example of history repeating itself; less than a decade earlier, the capture of Saddam Hussein, a triumph of military strategy in and of itself, opened the door for the more recent and essential victory in the War on Terror. At the center of the six-month manhunt were Lt. Col. Steve Russell and his men of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division. With his extensive journal notes, combat reports, and painstaking research, Russell has preserved the story as only someone who lived the experience can do. His narrative chronicles the daily successes and dead ends, and describes, blow-by-blow, the actual raids that netted Saddam, culminating in the electrifying quote heard around the globe, &“We Got Him!&”By Bruce Fulton. 2023
‘An ever-surprising and stylistically diverse anthology that will surely stand as the touchstone collection of Korean literature for decades to…
come’ Literary ReviewThis eclectic, moving and wonderfully enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea's dramatic twentieth century, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between North and South and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of Korea's vibrant short-story tradition.Here are peddlers and donkeys travelling across moonlit fields; artists drinking and debating in the tea-houses of 1920s Seoul; soldiers fighting for survival; exiles from the war who can never go home again; and lonely men and women searching for connection in the dizzying modern city. The collection features stories by some of Korea's greatest writers, including Pak Wanso, O Chonghui and Cho Chongnae, as well as many brilliant contemporary voices, such as P'yon Hyeyong, Han Yujoo and Kim Aeran. Curated by Bruce Fulton, this is a volume that will surprise, unsettle and delight.Edited by Bruce FultonWith an introduction by Kwon YoungminBy Robin Tudge. 2011
Spying, once solely the domain of the KGB, CIA, CSIS, and MI5, has become part of everyday life. Governments routinely…
trawl our emails, closed-circuit security cameras follow us in malls, office buildings, and on street corners, while databases of our DNA and other personal details become larger all the time. This No-Nonsense Guide provides a well-researched look into the history of surveillance and how the process is carried out today with the aid of technology and often, lack of express consent.By Sonny Rollins. 2024
An illuminating selection of writings on a wide variety of topics—everything from technique, music theory, and daily routine to spirituality…
and systemic racism—from the personal journals of Sonny Rollins, master of the tenor saxophone and &“jazz&’s greatest living improviser&” (The New York Times).Sonny Rollins is one of the towering masters of American music, a virtuoso of the saxophone, and an unequaled improviser whose live performances are legendary and who has reshaped modern jazz time and time again over the course of a career lasting more than sixty years. A turning point in that legendary career came in 1959, when Rollins stepped back from performing and recording to begin a new regime of musical exploration, which saw him practicing for hours, sometimes all through the night, on the Williamsburg Bridge. This was also the moment when he started the notebook that would become a trusted companion in years to come—not a diary so much as a place to ponder art and life and his own search for meaning in words and in images.At once quotidian and aphoristic, the notebooks mingle lists of chores and rehearsal routines with ruminations on nightclub culture, racism, and the conundrums of the inner life. And always there is the music—questions of embouchure, fingering, and technique; of harmony and dissonance; of his own and others&’ art and the art of jazz. &“Any definition,&” Rollins insists, &“which seeks to separate Johann Sebastian Bach from Miles Davis is defeating its own purpose of clarification. . . .The Musings of Miles is then the Bouncing of Bach both played against each other.&” Edited and introduced by the critic and jazz scholar Sam V.H. Reese, The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins provides an unequaled glimpse into the mind and workshop of a musical titan, as well as a wealth of insight and inspiration to readers.By Gail Jones. 2022
Macedonia,1917. The great city of Salonika is engulfed by fire as all of Europe is ravaged by war. Amid the…
destruction are those who have come to the frontlines to heal: surgeons, ambulance drivers, nurses, orderlies and other volunteers. Four of them – Stella, Olive, Grace and Stanley – are at the centre of Gail Jones’s new novel, which takes its inspiration from the wartime experiences of Australians Miles Franklin and Olive King, and British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer. In Jones’s imagination these four lives intertwine and change, each compelled by the desire to create something meaningful in the ruins of a broken world.By Angela O'Keeffe. 2023
Paris, 2020. A writer is confined to her hotel room during the early days of the pandemic, struggling to finish…
a novel about Hortense Cezanne, wife and sometime muse of the famous painter. Dead for more than a century, Hortense has been reawakened by this creative endeavour, and now shadows the writer through the locked-down city. But Hortense, always subject to the gaze of others, is increasingly intrigued by the woman before her. Who is she and what event hides in her past?By Alex Miller. 2022
From the bustling streets of China, to the ominous Cell 16 in an old asylum building, to the familiar sounds…
and sight of galahs flying over a Victorian farm, A Brief Affair is a tender love story. On the face of it, Dr Frances Egan is a woman who has it all - a loving family and a fine career - until a brief, perfect affair reveals to her an imaginative dimension to her life that is wholly her own. Fran finds the courage and the inspiration to risk everything and change her direction at the age of forty-two. This newfound understanding of herself is fortified by the discovery of a long-forgotten diary from the asylum and the story it reveals.By Joseph Epstein. 2024
A collection of personal essays from America&’s most revered essay writer, Joseph Epstein.America&’s greatest living essayist writes about life and…
aging and being all too nicely out of it. In these personal pieces, he takes on topics as varied as grieving for a dead son, learning Latin late in life, and the pleasures of living with cats. Epstein gives us a &“bonfire of his own vanities,&” his thoughts about why watching sports is so impossibly seductive, what it is like to be short, and why he misses smoking even decades as a health-obsessed non-smoker. Above all, he writes about the literary life and the endless joys that reading and writing have brought to a self-confessed &“lucky man.&”By Adam Moss. 2024
From former editor of New York magazine Adam Moss, a collection of illuminating conversations examining the very personal, rigorous, complex,…
and elusive work of making artWhat is the work of art? In this guided tour inside the artist&’s head, Adam Moss traces the evolution of transcendent novels, paintings, jokes, movies, songs, and more. Weaving conversations with some of the most accomplished artists of our time together with the journal entries, napkin doodles, and sketches that were their tools, Moss breaks down the work—the tortuous paths and artistic decisions—that led to great art. From first glimmers to second thoughts, roads not taken, crises, breakthroughs, on to one triumphant finish after another.Featuring: Kara Walker, Tony Kushner, Roz Chast, Michael Cunningham, Moses Sumney, Sofia Coppola, Stephen Sondheim, Susan Meiselas, Louise Glück, Maria de Los Angeles, Nico Muhly, Thomas Bartlett, Twyla Tharp, John Derian, Barbara Kruger, David Mandel, Gregory Crewdson, Marie Howe, Gay Talese, Cheryl Pope, Samin Nosrat, Joanna Quinn & Les Mills, Wesley Morris, Amy Sillman, Andrew Jarecki, Rostam, Ira Glass, Simphiwe Ndzube, Dean Baquet & Tom Bodkin, Max Porter, Elizabeth Diller, Ian Adelman / Calvin Seibert, Tyler Hobbs, Marc Jacobs, Grady West (Dina Martina), Will Shortz, Sheila Heti, Gerald Lovell, Jody Williams & Rita Sodi, Taylor Mac & Machine Dazzle, David Simon, George Saunders, Suzan-Lori ParksBy Kate Douglas, Ashley Barnwell. 2019
This collection of short essays provides a rigorous, rich, collaborative space in which scholars and practitioners debate the value of…
different methodological approaches to the study of life narratives and explore a diverse range of interdisciplinary methods. Auto/biography studies has been one of the most vibrant sub-disciplines to emerge in the humanities and social sciences in the past decade, providing significant links between disciplines including literary studies, languages, linguistics, digital humanities, medical humanities, creative writing, history, gender studies, education, sociology, and anthropology.The essays in this collection position auto/biography as a key discipline for modelling interdisciplinary approaches to methodology and ask: what original and important thinking can auto/biography studies bring to discussions of methodology for literary studies and beyond? And how does the diversity of methodological interventions in auto/biography studies build a strong and diverse research discipline? In including some of auto/biography’s leading international scholars alongside emerging scholars, and exploring key subgenres and practices, this collection showcases knowledge about what we do when engaging in auto/biographical research. Research Methodologies for Auto/biography Studies offers a series of case studies that explore the research practices, reflective behaviours, and ethical considerations that inform auto/biographical research.By Godfrey Garner, Maeghin Alarid-Hughes. 2021
Origins of Terrorism: The Rise of the World’s Most Formidable Terrorist Groups examines the roots of Islamic terrorism, it’s history,…
and some of the foundational figures in prominent terrorist organizations. Throughout, the book also addresses the use of terrorism, the "hows" and "whys" of terrorists’ goals, and their modus operandi.Historically, insurgency operations have formed the basis of a number of terrorist groups—resistance to western powers, particularly the United States, and what is viewed as their unwanted interference in regional affairs. Sections are devoted to individual terror organizations, including some of the most well-known and resilient global movements—Al Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, and Boko Haram, among others. Coverage details where and how they originated, who the principal organizers were, how these individuals worked—or didn’t work—together. In this, the authors look at the circumstances that allowed for these leaders, and their groups’, development and success. In this, the authors expose interesting, little-known stories and facts about the specific upbringing, family life, and personal narrative around these organizations’ founders, as well as ties to other terrorist founders and organizations. For example, the relationship between individuals such as Osama bin Laden and Musab al Zarkawi (aka Ahmad al-Khalayleh)—the founder of ‘Al Qaeda in Iraq’ (AQI), which became ISIS—is examined in detail, providing readers with some of the "stories behind the stories" to understand the prominent figures and underpinnings of major terrorist organizations’ philosophies, formation, and elements that have led to their staying power.Origins of Terrorism will be a valuable resource for security and intelligence professionals, terrorism researchers, and students, providing a unique perspective to understand terrorism and terror movements in considering counterterror efforts.The oldest and most prestigious children’s literature award, the Newbery Medal has since 1922 been granted annually by the American…
Library Association to the children’s book it deems "most distinguished." Medal books enjoy an outsized influence on American children’s literature, figuring perennially on publishers’ lists, on library and bookstore shelves, and in school curricula. As such, they offer a compelling window into the history of US children’s literature and publishing, as well as into changing societal attitudes about which books are "best" for America’s schoolchildren. Yet literary scholars have disproportionately ignored the Medal winners in their research. This volume provides a critically- and historically-grounded scholarly analysis of representative but understudied Newbery Medal books from the 1920s through the 2010s, interrogating the disjunction between the books’ omnipresence and influence, on the one hand, and the critical silence surrounding them, on the other. Dust Off the Gold Medal makes a case for closing these scholarly gaps by revealing neglected texts’ insights into the politics of children’s literature prizing and by demonstrating how neglected titles illuminate critical debates currently central to the field of children’s literature. In particular, the essays shed light on the hidden elements of diversity apparent in the neglected Newbery canon while illustrating how the books respond—sometimes in quite subtle ways—to contemporaneous concerns around race, class, gender, disability, nationalism, and globalism.