About this product: Nineteenth-century African American businessman, activist, and educator Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery is one of the greatest American autobiographies ever written. Its mantras of black economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of black leaders, including Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. In rags-to-riches fashion, Washington recounts his ascendance from early life as a mulatto slave in Virginia to a 34-year term as president of the influential, agriculturally based Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From that position, Washington reigned as the most important leader of his people, with slogans like "cast down your buckets," which emphasized vocational merit rather than the academic and political excellence championed by his contemporary rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Though many considered him too accommodating to segregationists, Washington, as he said in his historic "Atlanta Compromise" speech of 1895, believed that "political agitation alone would not save [the Negro]," and that "property, industry, skill, intelligence, and character" would prove necessary to black Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive today in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of black American society.
About this product: Nineteenth-century African American businessman, activist, and educator Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up from Slavery is one of the greatest American autobiographies ever written. Its mantras of black economic empowerment, land ownership, and self-help inspired generations of black leaders, including Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Louis Farrakhan. In rags-to-riches fashion, Washington recounts his ascendance from early life as a mulatto slave in Virginia to a 34-year term as president of the influential, agriculturally based Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. From that position, Washington reigned as the most important leader of his people, with slogans like "cast down your buckets," which emphasized vocational merit rather than the academic and political excellence championed by his contemporary rival W.E.B. Du Bois. Though many considered him too accommodating to segregationists, Washington, as he said in his historic "Atlanta Compromise" speech of 1895, believed that "political agitation alone would not save [the Negro]," and that "property, industry, skill, intelligence, and character" would prove necessary to black Americans' success. The potency of his philosophies are alive today in the nationalist and conservative camps that compose the complex quilt of black American society.
About this product: From the coauthor of the million-copy bestseller The Last Lecture comes a moving tribute to female friendships, with the inspiring story of eleven girls and the ten women they became.
Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa. As young women, they moved to eight different states, yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them through college and careers, marriage and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child's illness and the mysterious death of one member of their group. Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges -- and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.
The girls, now in their forties, have a lifetime of memories in common, some evocative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend. Photograph by photograph, recollection by recollection, occasionally with tears and often with great laughter, their sweeping and moving story is shared by Jeffrey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal columnist, as he attempts to define the matchless bonds of female friendship. It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women's lives - their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters - and reveals how such friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them.
The Girls from Ames is the story of a group of ordinary women who built an extraordinary friendship. With both universal insights and deeply personal moments, it is a book that every woman will relate to and be inspired by.
About this product: Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magicians' secrets are unveiled. We get a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, their pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money. A dry and boring subject? Just wait! You'll be hooked in five minutes. Reads like a detective story — which it really is. But it's all true. This book is about the most blatant scam of all history. It's all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Creature from Jekyll Island will change the way you view the world, politics, and money. Your world view will definitely change. You'll never trust a politician again — or a banker.
About this product: For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of "dead white men."
As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin.
A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.
About this product: New in the “addicting” New York Times bestselling series featuring Sookie Stackhouse.
After the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the manmade explosion at the vampire summit, everyone—human and otherwise—is stressed, including Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who is trying to cope with the fact that her boyfriend Quinn has gone missing.
It’s clear that things are changing—whether the weres and vamps of her corner of Louisiana like it or not. And Sookie—Friend to the Pack and blood-bonded to Eric Northman, leader of the local vampire community—is caught up in the changes.
In the ensuing battles, Sookie faces danger, death, and once more, betrayal by someone she loves. And when the fur has finished flying and the cold blood finished flowing, her world will be forever altered.
About this product: David Baldacci-the #1 bestselling author of The Whole Truth and First Family-returns with his most surprising, heart-stopping, and timely thriller to date . . .
DELIVER US FROM EVIL
Evan Waller is a monster. He has built a fortune from his willingness to buy and sell anything . . . and anyone. In search of new opportunities, Waller has just begun a new business venture: one that could lead to millions of deaths all over the globe.
On Waller's trail is Shaw, the mysterious operative from The Whole Truth, who must prevent Waller from closing his latest deal. Shaw's one chance to bring him down will come in the most unlikely of places: a serene, bucolic village in Provence.
But Waller's depravity and ruthlessness go deeper than Shaw knows. And now, there is someone else pursuing Waller in Provence-Reggie Campion, an agent for a secret vigilante group headquartered in a musty old English estate-and she has an agenda of her own.
Hunting the same man and unaware of each other's mission, Shaw and Reggie will be caught in a deadly duel of nerve and wits. Hitchcockian in its intimate buildup of suspense and filled with the remarkable characters, breathtaking plot turns, and blockbuster finale that are David Baldacci's hallmarks, DELIVER US FROM EVIL will be one of the most gripping thrillers of the year.
About this product: In the tradition of The Truth About Chuck Norris, PostSecret, and I Can Has Cheezburger?, Texts from Last Night celebrates the funniest and most outrageous text messages from the instantly popular website
There are few forms of communication that are more entertaining, appalling, and laugh-out-loud hilarious than the text message-especially when it's received in the wee hours of the morning from a friend who has had one too many shots of tequila. Texts from Last Night is a celebration of the best, worst, and weirdest text messages that have ever been sent, such as:
•Before i could say "i'm not the kind of girl," i was
•I got us kicked out of the bar because the waitress found me in the kitchen trying to make spaghetti
•The ticket read "found nude in a tree"
Texts from Last Night is chock full of LOL and WTF moments and will make any thumb-typer :) in recognition.
About this product: Amazon Exclusive: Karl Marlantes Reviews The Man from Saigon
A graduate of Yale University and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, Karl Marlantes served as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation Medals for valor, two Purple Hearts, and ten air medals. His debut novel, Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War, will be published in April 2010. Read his exclusive guest review of The Man from Saigon:
This novel is one of the great examples of artistic imagination. Marti Leimbach was just starting grammar school at the time in which she set The Man from Saigon. She wasn’t there--but if you read this book, you will be.
Writers are always told in writing classes to write about what you know. What Leimbach knows and writes about superbly is the human heart, its relationship with others, and its conflicts with duty, fear, and ambition. This is the primary focus of the novel. A young woman is assigned to cover the Vietnam War for her women’s magazine. "Women’s interests... orphans, hospitals, brave young GIs, gallant doctors...” Once there, however, she learns about the deadly fascination of war, and is constantly getting herself into scrapes that terrify her and make her fervently wish she’d stayed in some rear area where it was safe and where her editor expected her to stay. But something pulls her back and she’s at it again--and again terrified. All the while, she finds herself becoming deeply involved with a war-sick, married reporter who’s been there 23 months but can’t seem to go home, and her photographer, a Vietnamese man who speaks flawless English and never talks about his background or his frequent disappearances.
The story is set in Vietnam in 1967. This reviewer, a Vietnam veteran, was initially skeptical that Leimbach could pull it off. Through obviously careful and considerable research, however, going through memoirs and articles of the time that told the stories of people like Army nurses, women correspondents, and soldiers on both sides, she has constructed a realistic and fascinating setting. This takes not only skill, but courage. Any time a writer steps outside of her skin, for example, into the skin of a jaded, male war correspondent, or into a time and place she has never inhabited, she exposes herself to mistakes and criticism. If the writer doesn’t do this, then her art stands limited to her experience. Even Ernest Hemingway, who definitely knew how to fish, was neither old nor Cuban when he wrote The Old Man and the Sea. Then there was Emily Dickinson.
Just like her protagonist, who exposes herself to danger to get the story, Leimbach does this to tell the story. You won’t want to put it down for anything except reluctant pauses for necessities. --Karl Marlantes
Marti Leimbach on The Man from Saigon
I was a baby when the war in Vietnam began. The images on our black and white television were as close to the conflict as I came and my novel reflects nothing of my personal experience. It may therefore seem risky, even improper, to have written a novel that takes place in 1967 just before Tet. I am the wrong gender and generation. I have never lived in a war zone or even held a gun. For me as a writer, however, the war in Vietnam proved impossible to resist.
Of course, I am not the only writer who has been drawn to this war. An entire generation of journalists competed to gain access. Many were women: Kate Webb, Frances Fitzgerald, Gloria Emerson, to name a few. Some were captured, injured. Dickie Chappelle was killed. Nothing that happened--not the bombings or the landmines or constant fire--stopped them. While reading their memoirs I was constantly reminded of their bravery and determination. Martha Gellhorn wrote urgent letters begging for a chance to report there, stating, "All I really wanted was to get to Vietnam."
But war isn’t romantic. It is about killing and about death. A soldier sends a letter home, describing the smell of that morning’s bacon, rubbing red dirt onto the bottom of the page to show his parents the color of the earth in this different world. Later, he is killed. Not weeks later, but hours. I write about what it might have been like to live with such constant uncertainty, about soldiers on both sides, about journalists and jungles, about things that happened or might have happened. I owe the novel to the tireless recording of others much bolder than myself, and wrote from a safe distance, far from the events of that time. --Marti Leimbach
About this product: Prince Houssain, the eldest brother, who had heard wonders of the extent, strength, riches, and splendour of the kingdom of Bisnagar, bent his course towards the Indian coast; and, after three months travelling with different caravans, sometimes over deserts and barren mountains, and sometimes through populous and fertile countries, he arrived at Bisnagar, the capital of the kingdom of that name and the residence of its king. He lodged at a khan appointed for foreign merchants; and having learnt that there were four principal quarters where merchants of all sorts kept their shops, in the midst of which stood the castle, or rather the king's palace, as the centre of the city.
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