Hardcover $26.95 - 10%

One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel—a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original.

Dozens of characters pass across the reader’s sight lines—some never to be seen again—but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA’s lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home.

Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.

No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories
by Miranda July

Paperback $14.00

“These stories are incredibly charming, beautifully written, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and even, a dozen or so times, profound. Miranda July is a very real writer, and has one of the most original voices to appear in fiction in many years. Fans of Lorrie Moore should rub this book all over themselves — she’s got that perfect balance of humor and pathos. There has been no more enjoyable and promising a debut collection in many a moon.”– Dave Eggers

“These delightful stories do that essential-but-rare story thing: they surprise. They skip past the quotidian, the merely real, to the essential, and do so with a spirit of tenderness and wonder that is wholly unique. They are (let me coin a phrase) July-esque, which is to say: infused with wonder at the things of the world.”– George Saunders, author of In Persuasion Nation

“Miranda July’s is a beautiful, odd, original voice — seductive, sometimes erotic, and a little creepy, too.”– David Byrne

“A woman gives swimming lessons in her kitchen — of course! Miranda July can make anything seem normal in these truly original stories. She has first-rate comic timing and a generous view of the human condition. Maybe best of all, there’s joy here, too, often where you would not expect to find it.”– Amy Hempel, author of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
by Rick Perlstein
Hardcover $37.50 - 10%

A richly detailed descent into the inferno — that is, the years when Richard Milhous Nixon, ‘a serial collector of resentments,’ ruled the land.” — KIRKUS REVIEWS

Nixonland is a grand historical epic. Rick Perlstein has turned a story we think we know — American politics between the opposing presidential landslides of 1964 and 1972 — into an often surprising and always fascinating new narrative. This riveting book, full of colorful detail and great characters, brings back to life an astonishing era — and shines a new light on our own.” — Jeffrey Toobin author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

“This is a terrific read. What a delight it is to discover the new generation of historians like Rick Perlstein not only getting history correct but giving us all fresh insights and understanding of it.” — John W. Dean Nixon’s White House counsel

“Rick Perlstein has written a fascinating account of the rise of Richard Nixon and a persuasive argument that this angry, toxic man will always be part of the American landscape.” — Richard Reeves author of President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination

Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland digs deep into a decisive period of our history and brings back a past that is all the scarier for its intense humanity. With a firm grasp on the larger meaning of countless events and personalities, many of them long forgotten, Perlstein superbly shows how paranoia and innuendo flowed into the mainstream of American politics after 1968, creating divisive passions that have survived for decades.” — Sean Wilentz Princeton University, author of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008

The Pesthouse
by Jim Crace

Paperback $13.95

From Publishers Weekly
In this postapocalyptic picaresque from Whitbread-winner Crace (for Quarantine), America has regressed to medieval conditions. After a forgotten eco-reaction in the distant past, the U.S. government, economy and society have collapsed. The illiterate inhabitants ride horses, fight with bows and swords and scratch a meager living from farming and fishing. But with crop yields and fish runs mysteriously dwindling, most are trekking to the Atlantic coast to take ships to the promised land of Europe, gawking along the way at the ruins of freeways and machinery yards, which seem the wasteful excesses of giants. Heading east, naïve farm boy Franklin teams up with Margaret, a recovering victim of the mysterious “flux” whose shaven head (mark of the unclean) causes passersby to shun her. Their love blossoms amid misadventures in an anarchic landscape: Franklin is abducted by slave-traders; Margaret falls in with a religious sect that bans metal and deplores manual labor, symbolically repudiating America’s traditional cult of progress, technology and industriousness (masculinity takes some hits, too). Crace’s ninth novel leaves the U.S. impoverished, backward, fearful and abandoned by history. Less crushing than Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and less over-the-top than Matthew Sharpe’s Jamestown (to name two recent postapocalyptos), Crace’s fable is an engrossing, if not completely convincing, outline of the shape of things to come.

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008
edited by Laura Furman

Paperback $14.95

An annual collection of the twenty best contemporary short stories selected by series editor Laura Furman from hundreds of literary magazines, The O. Henry Prize Stories 2008 is studded with extraordinary settings and characters: a teenager in survivalist Alaska, the seed keeper of a doomed Chinese village, a young woman trying to save her life in a Ukrainian internet café. Also included are the winning writers’ comments on what inspired them, a short essay from each of the three eminent jurors, and an extensive resource list of literary magazines.

Translucent Tree
by Nobuko Takagi, translated by Deborah Iwabuchi

Hardcover $19.95 - 10%

Chigiri Yamazaki is a divorced single mother who has returned to Tsurugi City with her 11 year old daughter to care for her ailing father–a famouse sword maker whose business has completely faltered. It falls upon Chigiri to keep dept collectors at bay.

Go Imai, a freelance documentary maker, is on a business trip from Tokyo and has decided to stop by this little town of Tsurugi, where he had come to do a story on Chigiri’s father 25 years ago. Go reunites with Chigiri, and the two begin a love story of epic consequence and passion reminiscent of the works of Marguerite Duras and Alice Munro, set against the backdrop of bucolic Japan.

The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
by Matt Taibbi

Hardcover $24.00 - 10%

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi set out to describe the nature of George Bush’s America in the post-9/11 era and ended up vomiting demons in an evangelical church in Texas, riding the streets of Baghdad in an American convoy to nowhere, searching for phantom fighter jets in Congress, and falling into the rabbit hole of the 9/11 Truth Movement.
Matt discovered in his travels across the country that the resilient blue state/red state narrative of American politics had become irrelevant. A large and growing chunk of the American population was so turned off—or radicalized—by electoral chicanery, a spineless news media, and the increasingly blatant lies from our leaders (“they hate us for our freedom”) that they abandoned the political mainstream altogether. They joined what he calls The Great Derangement.
Taibbi tells the story of this new American madness by inserting himself into four defining American subcultures: The Military, where he finds himself mired in the grotesque black comedy of the American occupation of Iraq; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the passionately bonkers 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas and enters the lives of its desperate congregants. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality and desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places.
Funny, smart, and a little bit heartbreaking, The Great Derangement is an audaciously reported, sobering, and illuminating portrait of America at the end of the Bush era.

The Big Girls
by Susanna Moore

Paperback $14.95

From Publishers Weekly
In spare yet hypnotic prose, Moore (One Last Look) examines the bond between a young psychiatrist and a mentally ill patient in her devastating sixth novel, set at an upstate New York federal women’s prison. Sloatsburg Correctional Institution, a former sanitarium on the west bank of the Hudson, is dangerous, understaffed, underfinanced and overwhelmingly grim. The place epitomizes what’s wrong with our nation’s prison system and stands as a warning about our growing mental health crisis. Moore deftly shifts perspective among her principal characters—Dr. Louise Forrest, Sloatsburg’s psychiatry chief; Helen Nash, a suicidal inmate who’s been convicted of killing her children; Capt. Henry “Ike” Bradshaw, a corrections officer who’s in love with Louise; and Angie Mills, a Hollywood actress (and Louise’s ex-husband’s girlfriend), whom Helen believes is her long-lost sister—as the action hurtles to an oddly satisfying resolution. Reading this heartbreaker is like watching a train wreck while dialing for help on your cellphone. You can’t turn away.

The Post-American World
by Fareed Zakaria

Hardcover $25.95 - 10%

“This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.” So begins Fareed Zakaria’s important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the “rise of the rest”—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.

Brooklyn Street Art
by Jaime Rojo & Steven P. Harrington

Hardcover $14.95 - 10%

This latest addition to Prestel s acclaimed Street Art series takes the train to Brooklyn to present a dizzying collection of urban images that gives testament to the vibrant culture in New York City s largest borough.

From the warehouses of ultra-hip Williamsburg to the brick facades of Bushwick tenements and DUMBO S waterfront cool, the 150 images in this book by photographer Jaime Rojo capture the wide range of mediums and styles of today s exciting street artists. Presented as full-page images, this selection of Brooklyn street art celebrates free expression. The result is a collection of art that brilliantly reflects Brooklyn s unique energy and dynamic population.

Vermeer’s Secret World
by Vincent Etienne

Hardcover $14.95 - 10%

Young readers will delight in this journey through the life and work of one of history s most distinctive and enigmatic painters.

Scenes of domestic life and luminous color make Vermeer s art both accessible and irresistible. Designed and written to appeal to young readers, this engaging introduction to the Dutch master encourages children to experience the charm and mystery of Vermeer s work. Large, vibrant reproductions allow for a close study of the fascinating details that make Vermeer s paintings so compelling and allow the colors for which he was so famous to leap off the page. While recent books and movies have brought Vermeer into the forefront of popular culture, this lively and informative book introduces the artist to children.

Space Between People: How the Virtual Changes Physical Architecture
edited by Stephan Doesinger

Paperback $29.95

Winners of the Second Life architecture competition bring the physical world into the digital age on the pages of this book.

If architecture is the construction of space between people, what happens when that space exists in a virtual world? That question is the starting point for this collection of revolutionary projects by a new generation of designers. The book begins by examining the important issues that have emerged as technology reshapes our idea of place and proceeds to present the four winning projects from the first architecture competition held within the explosively popular Internet community known as Second Life. Chosen for their inventiveness and aesthetic excellence, these structures a cloud that can be inhabited; a meta-museum; an interactive sound scape; and a snow palace of discarded objects illustrate the mind-bending possibilities of digital design. In the book s final section, media artists share their real-time experiences conceptualizing and creating projects for the virtual world.

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis
by Kingsley Amis, intro by Christopher Hitchens

Hardcover $19.99 - 10%

A gift for anyone who loves good liquor and high-proof prose: a collection of hilarious and deeply informed writings about drink from one of the all-time authorities.
Kingsley Amis was one of the great masters of comic prose, and no subject was dearer to him than the art and practice of imbibing. This new volume brings together the best of his three out-of-print works on the subject. Along with a series of well-tested recipes (including a cocktail called the Lucky Jim) the book includes Amis’s musings on The Hangover, The Boozing Man’s Diet, What to Drink with What, and (presumably as a matter of speculation) How Not to Get Drunk—all leavened with fun quizzes on the making and drinking of alcohol all over the world. Mixing practical know-how and hilarious opinionation, this is a delightful cocktail of wry humor and distilled knowledge, served by one of our great gimlet wits.

What It Is
by Lynda Barry

Hardcover $24.95 - 10%

How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry’s compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry’s first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”

The Boat
by Nam Le

Hardcover $22.95 - 10%

A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling.

In the magnificent opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam—and what seems at first a satire of turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. “Cartagena” provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In “Meeting Elise,” an aging New York painter mourns his body’s decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees, where a young woman’s bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.

Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating a jaw-dropping versatility of voice and point of view, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.

Modern Shoestring: Contemporary Architecture on a Budget
by Susanna Sirefman

Hardcover $40.00 - 10%

Residential design provides a rich testing ground for architectural innovation. Intimate scales and specific programs inspire distinctive homes, and comparatively small budgets are catalysts for exploring nontraditional materials. Modern Shoestring proves that building a contemporary house can be affordable and shows how constraints actually stimulate the most creative design solutions.

Eighteen residential projects are presented, with emphasis on the goals of the owners, the site, and the cost in the design process. Collections determine floor plans, observatories are built for starry rural nights, and found and industrial materials such as highway construction remnants, laboratory counters, plastic water bottles, and discarded chalkboards keep costs low while imbuing structures with character. These ingenious designs range in cost from $50 to $220 per square foot and represent geographical settings from Los Angeles to Anchorage to East Hampton.

Eric Fischl: 1970-2007
edited by Arthur C. Danto & Robert Enright

Hardcover $85.00 - 10%

The Hyena & Other Men
by Pieter Hugo, intro by Adetokunbo Abiola

Hardcover $50.00 - 10%

Many myths surround the Hyena Men who haunt the
peripheries of Nigeria s cities. Accompanied by hyenas, rock
pythons and baboons, these men earn a living by performing
before crowds and selling traditional medicines. Pieter Hugo s
extraordinary portraits of their liminal existence reveal an
uncanny world of complex, codependent relationships, where
familiar distinctions between dominance and submission,
wildness and domesticity, tradition and modernity are
constantly subverted. Nigerian journalist Adetokunbo Abiola
introduces readers to the Hyena Men, explaining the
traditions and mystique behind their practices. Presented in
thirty-five full-color plates, these intense portraits reveal why
Hugo is one of the most exciting young photographers at work
today.

Dead Lucky: Life After Death on Mount Everest
by Lincoln Hall

Hardcover $24.95 - 10%

Lincoln Hall likes to say that on the evening of May 25, 2006, he died on Everest. Indeed, he attempted to climb the mountain during a deadly season in which eleven people perished. And Hall, in fact, was pronounced dead, after collapsing from altitude sickness. Two Sherpas spent hours trying to revive him, but, as darkness fell, word came via radio from the exhibition’s leader that the Sherpas should descend the mountain in order to save themselves.

The news of Lincoln Hall’s death traveled rapidly from mountaineering websites to news media around the world, and ultimately to his family back in Australia. Early the next morning, however, an American guide, climbing with two clients and a Sherpa, was startled to find Hall, sitting cross-legged on the summit ridge, just staring at them.

As featured in the Emmy-nominated Dateline NBC documentary “Miracle on Mount Everest,” Dead Lucky is Lincoln Hall’s account of this miraculous night atop Everest and the days and nights that led up to and followed this fascinating expedition. Hall had been part of Australia’s first attempt to climb to the top of the mountain in 1984, but, he had not done any serious climbing for many years, having set aside his passion in order to support his family. Hall was forced to turn back due to illness in 1984 so his triumph in reaching the summit at the age of fifty is a story unto itself. Not since Into Thin Air has there been such a thrilling Everest story. Dead Lucky is a page-turner from beginning to end.

May 12, 2008                                         20% off list price

Hardcover Fiction

1. UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. Jhumpa Lahiri. Random House. $25. Our Price $20.
2. SHARP TEETH. Toby Barlow. HarperCollins.  $22.95. Our Price $18.36.
3. BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. Junot Diaz. Riverhead. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
4. BLIND SPEED. Josh Barkan. Northwestern University Press. $21.95. Our Price $17.56.
5. LUSH LIFE. Richard Price. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. Our Price $20.80.
6. MIRACLE AT SPEEDY MOTORS. Alexander McCall Smith. Random House. $22.95. Our Price $18.36.
7. LAZARUS PROJECT. Aleksandar Hemon. Riverhead. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
8. PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI. Jennifer Cody Epstein. Norton. $24.95.                   Our Price $19.96.
9. LIFE & DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT. Mo Tan. Arcade. $29.95.                    Our Price $23.96.
10. CHILD 44. Tom Smith. Warner. $24.99. Our Price $19.99.

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. BROOKLYN MODERN. Diana Lind. Rizzoli. $45. Our Price $36.
2. ART OF SIMPLE FOOD. Alice Waters. Random House. $35. Our Price $28.
3. MAPS & LEGENDS. Michael Chabon. McSweeney’s. $24. Our Price $19.20.
4. SWEET MELISSA BAKING BOOK. Melissa Murphy. Penguin. $27.                     Our Price $21.60.
5. POST-AMERICAN WORLD. Fareed Zakaria. Norton. $25.95. Our Price $20.76.
6. AUDITION. Barbara Walters. Random House. $29.95. Our Price $23.96.
7. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. Michael Pollan. Penguin. $21.95. Our Price $17.56.
8. VOYAGE LONG & STRANGE. Tony Horwitz. Holt. $27.50. Our Price $22.
9. ARMEGEDDON IN RETROSPECT. Kurt Vonnegut. Putnam. $24.95.                        Our Price $19.96.
10. WOLF AT THE TABLE. Augusten Burroughs. St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.                          Our Price $19.96.

Paperback Fiction

1. INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Jhumpa Lahiri. Houghton Mifflin. $13.95.             Our Price $11.16.
2. AFTER DARK. Haruki Murakami. Random House. $13.95. Our Price $11.16.
3. THEN WE CAME TO THE END. Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown. $13.99.                   Our Price $11.19.
4. YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION. Michael Chabon. HarperCollins. $15.95.              Our Price $12.76.
5. DIVISADERO. Michael Ondaatje. Random House. $13.95. Our Price $11.16.
6. THE ROAD. Cormac McCarthy. Random House. $14.95.  Our Price $11.96.
7. WHAT IS THE WHAT? Dave Eggers. Random House. $15.95. Our Price $12.76.
8. THE NAMESAKE.  Jhumpa Lahiri. Houghton Mifflin. $14. Our Price $11.20.
9. THE GATHERING. Anne Enright. Grove Press. $14. Our Price $11.20.
10. 10 DAYS IN THE HILLS. Jane Smiley. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.

Paperback Nonfiction

1. GREEN, GREENER, GREENEST. Lori Bongiorno. Putnam. $14.95.                           Our Price $11.96.
2. EAT, PRAY, LOVE. Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin. $15. Our Price $12.
3. OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA.  Michael Pollan. Penguin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
4. ON PLEASURE OF HATING. William Hazlitt. Penguin (Great Ideas Series). $8.95.                Our Price $7.16.
5. ZAGAT BEST OF BROOKLYN. Zagat Survey. $12.95. Our Price $10.36.
6. FIELD GUIDE TO THE NATURAL WORLD OF NEW YORK CITY. Leslie Day. Johns Hopkins University Press. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
7. I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE. Sloane Crosley. Riverhead. $14. Our Price $11.20.
8. WALKING BROOKLYN. Adrienne Onofri. Wilderness Press. $17.95. Our Price $14.36
9. 60 HIKES WITHIN 60 MILES OF NEW YORK CITY. Christopher Brooks. Menasha Ridge. $18.95. Our Price $15.16.
10. DIVING BELL & THE BUTTERFLY. Jean-Dominique Bauby. Random House. $12.95. Our Price $10.36.

Children’s Hardcover & Paperback

1. BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH. Rick Riordan. Hyperion. $17.99.                                     Our Price $14.39.
2. JIN JIN THE DRAGON. Grace & Chong Chang. Enchanted Lion. $16.95.                          Our Price $13.56.
3. PIGEON WANTS A PUPPY. Mo Willems. Hyperion. $14.99. Our Price $11.99.
4. I LIVE IN BROOKLYN. Mari Takabayski. Houghton Mifflin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
5. INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET. Brian Selznick. Scholastic. $22.99.   Our Price $18.39.
6. SPRING IS HERE Board Book. Taro Gomi. Chronicle. $6.95. Our Price $5.56.
7. KNUFFLE BUNNY TOO. Mo Willems. Hyperion. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.
8. SMASH CRASH. John Scieszka. Simon & Schuster. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.
9. ELEPHANTS. Steve Bloom. Thames & Hudson. $19.95. Our Price $15.96.
10. BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA. Katherine Paterson. Harper. $6.99. Our Price $5.59.

May 5, 2008                                         20% off list price

Hardcover Fiction

1. UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. Jhumpa Lahiri. Random House. $25. Our Price $20.
2. BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. Junot Diaz. Riverhead.  $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
3. LUSH LIFE. Richard Price. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. Our Price $20.80.
4. PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI. Jennifer Cody Epstein. Norton. $24.95.                        Our Price $19.96.
5. BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN. Charles Bock. Random House. $25. Our Price $20.
6. SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN. Siri Hustvedt. Holt. $25. Our Price $20.
7. TIME & MATERIALS. Robert Hass. HarperCollins. $22.95. Our Price $18.36.
8. LIFE & DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT. Mo Tan. Arcade. $29.95.                   Our Price $23.96.
9. LAZARUS PROJECT. Aleksandar Hemon. Riverhead. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
10. PLAGUE OF DOVES. Louise Erdrich. HarperCollins. $25.95. Our Price $20.76.

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. BROOKLYN MODERN. Diana Lind. Rizzoli. $45. Our Price $36.
2. ART OF SIMPLE FOOD. Alice Waters. Random House. $35. Our Price $28.
3. WOLF AT THE TABLE. Augusten Burroughs. St. Martin’s Press. $24.95.                      Our Price $19.96.
4. ARMAGEDDON IN RETROSPECT. Kurt Vonnegut. Putnam. $24.95.                        Our Price $19.96.
5. LIKE A ROLLING STONE. Steven Kurutz. Doubleday. $23.95. Our Price $19.16.
6. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. Michael Pollan. Penguin. $21.95. Our Price $17.56.
7. MAPS & LEGENDS. Michael Chabon. McSweeney’s. $24. Our Price $19.20.
8. LONG WAY GONE. Ishmael Beah. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $22. Our Price $17.60.
9. VOYAGE LONG & STRANGE. Tony Horwitz. Holt. $27.50. Our Price $22.
10. BLACK POSTCARDS. Dean Wareham. Penguin. $25.95. Our Price $20.76.

Paperback Fiction

1. YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION. Michael Chabon. HarperCollins. $15.95.              Our Price $12.76.
2. AFTER DARK. Haruki Murakami. Random House. $13.95. Our Price $11.16.
3. AGE OF DREAMING. Nina Revoyr. Akashic. $15.95. Our Price $12.76.
4. THE GATHERING. Anne Enright. Grove Press. $14. Our Price $11.20.
5. INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Jhumpa Lahiri. Houghton Mifflin. $13.                      Our Price $10.40.

6. DIVISADERO. Michael Ondaatje. Random House. $13.95.  Our Price $11.16.
7. WHAT IS THE WHAT? Dave Eggers. Random House. $15.95. Our Price $12.76.
8. THEN WE CAME TO THE END.  Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown. $13.99.                          Our Price $11.19.
9. 10 DAYS IN THE HILLS. Jane Smiley. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.
10. THE ROAD. Cormac McCarthy. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.

Paperback Nonfiction

1. OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA. Michael Pollan. Penguin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
2. I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE. Sloane Crosley. Riverhead. $14.                    Our Price $11.20.
3. EAT, PRAY, LOVE.  Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin. $15. Our Price $12.
4. COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS. Marjane Satrapi. Random House. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
5. NFT GUIDE TO BROOKLYN 2008. Not For Tourists. $12.95. Our Price $10.36.
6. GOD DELUSION. Richard Dawkins. Houghton Mifflin. $15.95. Our Price $12.76.
7. WHY I WRITE. George Orwell. Penguin (Great Ideas Series). $8.95. Our Price $7.16.
8. GREEN, GREENER, GREENEST. Lori Bongiorno. Putnam. $14.95.                    Our Price $11.96.
9. ART OF WAR. Sun-Tzu. Penguin (Great Ideas Series). $10. Our Price $8.
10. ON NATURAL SELECTION. Charles Darwin. Penguin (Great Ideas Series). $8.95. Our Price $7.16.

Children’s Hardcover & Paperback

1. JIN JIN THE DRAGON. Grace & Chong Chang. Enchanted Lion. $16.95.                        Our Price $13.56.
2. PIGEON WANTS A PUPPY. Mo Willems. Hyperion. $14.99. Our Price $11.99.
3. PINKLALICIOUS. Elizabeth Kann. HarperCollins. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.
4. I LIVE IN BROOKLYN. Mari Takabayski. Houghton Mifflin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
5. FANCY NANCY LOVES, LOVES, LOVES. Jane O’Connor. HarperCollins. $6.99. Our Price $5.59.
6. LISA IN NEW YORK. Anne Gutman. Random House. $9.95. Our Price $7.96.
7. GOOD NIGHT NEW YORK CITY. A. Gamble. Our World of Books. $9.95.                  Our Price $7.96.
8. HUG Board Book. Jez Alborough. Candlewick. $6.99. Our Price $5.59.
9. SUBWAY. Anastasia Suen. Penguin. $15.99. Our Price $12.79.
10. PURPLICIOUS. Elizabeth Kann. HarperCollins. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.

Hardcover $59.95 - 10%

In the early twentieth century Zaida Ben-Yusuf (1869–1933) was one of the busiest photographers in New York City, maintaining a fashionable studio on Fifth Avenue, exhibiting her distinctly modern portraits across America, Europe and Russia, and publishing work in many magazines. Her self-portraits also challenged traditional perceptions of female identity. This striking book celebrates Ben-Yusuf ’s achievement, showcasing a significant selection of her elegant and compelling portraits featuring prominent artistic and political figures of the day, including Lincoln Steffens, Edith Wharton, Elsie de Wolfe and Robert Henri. ”
Architecture: A World History
by Daniel Borden, Jerzy Elzanowski, Joni Taylor, Stephanie Tuerk

Paperback $19.95

Lavishly illustrated and super-condensed, Architecture: A World History is the perfect gift for any architecture buff. In this pocket-sized book bursting with 600 illustrations, page after page is dedicated to significant architectural movements, time lines that explore the evolution of the practice, and capsule biographies of great architects and examinations of their masterpieces.

Organized chronologically, the book travels from prehistory to the present, highlighting noteworthy examples of important architectural styles, and showcasing the work of significant architects, including Mies van der Rohe, Frank Gehry, Philip Johnson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Zaha Hadid, and Rem Koolhaas. From the pyramids of Egypt to the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower to the Glass House, Architecture: A World History takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the most spectacular examples of architecture from around the world and throughout time.

Why You Shouldn’t Eat Your Boogers and Other Useless or Gross Information About Your Body: Information About Your Body
by Francesca Gould

Paperback $12.95

This delightful book is full of random and, at times, scatological facts about the human anatomy. Broken down by the systems of the body, it answers questions you may be too embarrassed to ask or even think about, such as:

- Do bugs live in your eyelashes?
- What does human flesh taste like?
- Can you really catch a cold by standing in the rain?
- How do astronauts poo in space?
- What foods can cure a hangover?
- Why is yawning contagious?
- Is eating boogers bad for you?

This oddball yet erudite book is full of fascinating factoids that those of us in search of guilty pleasures (or gross thrills!) will delight in.

The Life and Death of Images
Edited by Diarmuid Costello & Dominic Willsdon

Paperback $24.95

During the 1970s and 1980s the discourse surrounding aesthetics largely disappeared from the study of art history, theory, and cultural studies. Claims for the aesthetic value of artworks were thought elitist and politically regressive. The 1990s witnessed a return to aesthetics, but one that stressed the independent claims of beauty in reaction to its perceived suppression by ethical and political imperatives. Beauty, however, is just one aspect of the aesthetic. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the ways in which aesthetics and ethics are intertwined.

In The Life and Death of Images some of the world’s leading cultural thinkers engage in dialogue with one another concerning this “new” aesthetics. In provocative and accessible fashion, they demonstrate its relevance to a range of disciplines including analytic and continental philosophy, art history, theory and practice, cultural history and visual culture, rhetoric and comparative literature. While the focus is primarily on artworks, contributors also consider other forms of imagery that raise questions about the boundaries between art and non-art, about beauty, and about the ethics of aesthetics.

Little Criminals
by Gene Kerrigan

Paperback $16.95

Justin and Angela Kennedy are doing fine. Better than fine-they have wealth, position, love, children, and a limitless future. Into their lives comes Frankie Crowe, an ambitious criminal tired of risking his life for small change. Together with a crew of singularly dangerous men, Frankie decides that a kidnapping could be the first step toward a better life. Set in modern Dublin, Little Criminals is a story that bristles with tension and expectation, a story about what happens to the fragile things-friendship, love, compassion-when all rules are broken.

The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up
by Liao Yiwu

Hardcover $25.00 - 10%

The Corpse Walker is a compilation of twenty-seven extraordinary oral histories that opens a window, unlike any other, onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women. Liao Yiwu (one of the best-known writers in China because he is also one of the most censored) chose his subjects from the bottom of Chinese society: people for whom the “new” China–the China of economic growth and globalization-—is no more beneficial than the old. By asking challenging questions with respect and empathy, he manages to get his subjects to talk openly about their lives.

Here are a professional mourner, a trafficker in humans, a leper, an abbot, a retired government official, a former landowner, a mortician, a feng shui master, a former Red Guard, a political prisoner, a village teacher, a blind street musician, a Falun Gong practitioner, and many others–people who have been battered by life but who have managed to retain their dignity, their humor, and their essential, complex humanity.

Liao crafted the interviews (conducted between 1990 and 2003) with sensitivity and patience, working both from notes and from his own memory of these remarkable conversations. The result is an idiosyncratic, powerful, and richly revealing portrait of a people, a time, and a place we might otherwise have never known.

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World
by Tony Horwitz

Hardcover $27.50 - 10%

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz realizes he’s mislaid more than a century of American history, from Columbus’s sail in 1492 to Jamestown’s founding in 16-oh-something. Did nothing happen in between? Determined to find out, he embarks on a journey of rediscovery, following in the footsteps of the many Europeans who preceded the Pilgrims to America.

An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, A Voyage Long and Strange captures the wonder and drama of first contact. Vikings, conquistadors, French voyageurs—these and many others roamed an unknown continent in quest of grapes, gold, converts, even a cure for syphilis. Though most failed, their remarkable exploits left an enduring mark on the land and people encountered by late-arriving English settlers.

Tracing this legacy with his own epic trek—from Florida’s Fountain of Youth to Plymouth’s sacred Rock, from desert pueblos to subarctic sweat lodges—Tony Horwitz explores the revealing gap between what we enshrine and what we forget. Displaying his trademark talent for humor, narrative, and historical insight, A Voyage Long and Strange allows us to rediscover the New World for ourselves.

A Wolf at the Table: A Memoir of My Father
by Augusten Burroughs

Hardcover $24.95 - 10%

With A Wolf at the Table, Augusten Burroughs makes a quantum leap into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. Told with scorching honesty and penetrating insight, it is a story for anyone who has ever longed for unconditional love from a parent. Though harrowing and brutal, A Wolf at the Table will ultimately leave you buoyed with the profound joy of simply being alive. It’s a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.

A School Leader’s Guide to Excellence: Collaborating Our Way to Better Schools
by Carmen Farina & Laura Kotch

Paperback $22.00

April 28, 2008                                         20% off list price

Hardcover Fiction

1. UNACCUSTOMED EARTH. Jhumpa Lahiri. Random House. $25. Our Price $20.
2. BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO. Junot Diaz. Riverhead.  $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
3. LUSH LIFE. Richard Price. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26. Our Price $20.80.
4. TEN-YEAR NAP. Meg Wolitzer. Riverhead. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
5. WAR & PEACE. Leo Tolstoy. Random House. $37. Our Price $29.60.
6. WILD NIGHTS. Joyce Carol Oates. HarperCollins. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.
7. PAINTER FROM SHANGHAI. Jennifer Cody Epstein. Norton. $24.95.                Our Price $19.96.
8. BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN. Charles Bock. Random House. $25. Our Price $20.
9. THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS. Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead. $25.95.                  Our Price $20.76.
10. PEOPLE OF THE BOOK. Geraldine Brooks. Penguin. $25.95. Our Price $20.76.

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. BROOKLYN MODERN. Diana Lind. Rizzoli. $45. Our Price $36.
2. IN DEFENSE OF FOOD. Michael Pollan. Penguin. $21.95. Our Price $17.56.
3. MAPS & LEGENDS. Michael Chabon. McSweeney’s. $24. Our Price $19.20.
4. TERROR & CONSENT. Philip Bobbitt. Random House. $35. Our Price $28.
5. ART OF SIMPLE FOOD. Alice Waters. Random House. $35. Our Price $28.
6. 101 THINGS I LEARNED IN ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL.                 Matthew Frederick. MIT Press. $12.95. Our Price $10.36.
7. BLACK POSTCARDS. Dean Wareham. Penguin. $25.95. Our Price $20.76.
8. HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING VEGETARIAN. Mark Bittman. Wiley. $35. Our Price $28.
9. MUSICOPHILIA. Oliver Sacks. Random House. $26. Our Price $20.80.
10. HERE IS NEW YORK. E.B. White. Little Bookroom. $16.95. Our Price $13.56.

Paperback Fiction

1. THEN WE CAME TO THE END. Joshua Ferris. Little, Brown. $13.99.               Our Price $11.19.
2. 10 DAYS IN THE HILLS. Jane Smiley. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.
3. THE ROAD. Cormac McCarthy. Random House. $14.95. Our Price $11.96.
4. BREAKABLE YOU. Brian Morton. Harcourt. $14. Our Price $11.20.
5. MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Jonathan Lethem. Random House. $13.95.                       Our Price $11.16.
6. DIVISADERO. Michael Ondaatje. Random House. $13.95.  Our Price $11.16.
7. THE GATHERING. Anne Enright. Grove Press. $14. Our Price $11.20.
8. SAVAGE DETECTIVES.  Roberto Bolano. St. Martin’s Press. $15. Our Price $12.
9. INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Jhumpa Lahiri. Houghton Mifflin. $13.                     Our Price $10.40.
10. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. Betty Smith. HarperCollins. $16.95.                      Our Price $13.56.

Paperback Nonfiction

1. OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA. Michael Pollan. Penguin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
2. ALICE WATERS & CHEZ PANISSE. Thomas McNamee. Penguin. $15.                     Our Price $12.
3. GREEN, GREENER, GREENEST.  Lori Bongiorno. Putnam. $14.95.                        Our Price $11.96.
4. EAT, PRAY, LOVE. Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin. $15. Our Price $12.
5. NFT GUIDE TO BROOKLYN 2008. Not For Tourists. $12.95. Our Price $10.36.
6. THREE CUPS OF TEA. Greg Mortenson. Penguin. $15. Our Price $12.
7. FUN HOME. Alison Bechdel. Houghton Mifflin. $13.95. Our Price $11.16.
8. BROOKLYN STOREFRONTS. Paul Lacy. Norton. $17.95. Our Price $14.36.
9. I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK. Nora Ephron. Random House. $12.95.                       Our Price $10.36.
10. FIELD GUIDE TO THE NATURAL WORLD OF NEW YORK CITY. Leslie Day. Johns Hopkins University Press. $24.95. Our Price $19.96.

Children’s Hardcover & Paperback

1. PINKALICIOUS. Elizabeth Kann. HarperCollins. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.
2. KNUFFLE BUNNY TOO. Mo Willems. Hyperion. $16.99. Our Price $13.59.
3. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE NORTH. Phillip Pullman. Random House. $12.99. Our Price $10.39.
4. I STINK! Kate & Jim McMullan. HarperCollins. $6.99. Our Price $5.59.
5. THIS IS NEW YORK. M. Sasek. Universe. $17.95. Our Price $14.36.
6. WHAT’S UP DUCK? Tad Hills. Random House. $6.99. Our Price $5.59.
7. GOOD NIGHT NEW YORK CITY. A. Gamble. Our World of Books. $9.95.                  Our Price $7.96.
8. I LIVE IN BROOKLYN. Mari Takabayashi. Houghton Mifflin. $16. Our Price $12.80.
9. INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET. Brian Selznick. Scholastic. $22.99.                        Our Price $18.39.
10. PIGEON WANTS A PUPPY. Mo Willems. Hyperion. $14.99. Our Price $11.99.

Hardcover $26.95 - 10%

“Where is the market?” inquires the tourist one dark, chilly morning. “Follow the ghosts,” responds the taxi driver, indicating a shadowy parade of overloaded tricycles. “It’s not called the ghost market for nothing!” And indeed, Beijing is nothing if not haunted. Among the soaring skyscrapers, choking exhaust fumes, nonstop traffic jams, and towering monuments, one discovers old Beijing—newly styled, perhaps, but no less present and powerful than in its ancient incarnation. Beijing Time conducts us into this mysterious world, at once familiar and yet alien to the outsider.

The ancient Chinese understood the world as enchanted, its shapes revealing the mythological order of the universe. In the structure and detail of Tian’anmen Square, the authors reveal the city as a whole. In Beijing no pyramids stand as proud remnants of the past; instead, the entire city symbolizes a vibrant civilization. From Tian’anmen Square, we proceed to the neighborhoods for a glimpse of local color—from the granny and the young police officer to the rag picker and the flower vendor. Wandering from the avant-garde art market to the clock towers, from the Monumental Axis to Mao’s Mausoleum, the book allows us to peer into the lives of Beijingers, the rules and rituals that govern their reality, and the mythologies that furnish their dreams. Deeply immersed in the culture, everyday and otherworldly, this anthropological tour, from ancient cosmology to Communist kitsch, allows us to see as never before how the people of Beijing—and China—work and live.

Jerusalem: City of Longing
by Simon Goldhill

Hardcover $27.95 - 10%

Simon Goldhill has written an elegant and evocative multi-religious history of Jerusalem. Rock by rock, myth by myth, the book guides the reader through an exhilarating visit to the city, exposing its magnetism and fragility, its light and darkness.
–Sari Nusseibeh, author of Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life

A fascinating journey through Jerusalem’s most memorable placesand among its most colorful personalities, and epoch-making events. Simon Goldhill is a master historian and expert guide who reveals much that is unexpected about this revered, fought-over, and often misunderstood city. Engaging in tone, superbly written, and admirably even-handed, this book offers a compelling new portrait of the many souls of Jerusalem.
–Neil Asher Silberman, co-author of The Bible Unearthed

Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944

Hardcover $9.99 - 10%

“Don’t be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women. They may be acting under orders.” This was only one of the many warnings given to the 30,000 British troops preparing to land in the enemy territory of Nazi Germany nine-and-a-half months after D-Day. The newest addition to the Bodleian Library’s bestselling series of wartime pamphlets, Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944 opens an intriguing window into the politics and military stratagems that brought about the end of World War II.

The pamphlet is both a succinct survey of German politics, culture, and history and a work of British propaganda. Not only does the pamphlet cover general cultural topics such as food and drink, currency, and social customs, but it also explains the effect of years of the war on Germans and their attitudes toward the British. The book admonishes, “The Germans are not good at controlling their feelings. They have a streak of hysteria. You will find that Germans may often fly into a passion if some little thing goes wrong.” The mix of humor and crude stereotypes—“If you have to give orders to German civilians, give them in a firm, military manner. The German civilian is used to it and expects it”—in the text make this pamphlet a stark reminder of the wartime fears and hopes of the British.

By turns a manual on psychological warfare, a travel guide, and a historical survey, Instructions for British Servicemen in Germany, 1944 offers incomparable insights into how the British, and by extension the Allied forces, viewed their fiercest enemy on the eve of its defeat.

How to Be Useful: A Beginner’s Guide to Not Hating Work
by Megan Hustad

Hardcover $19.95 - 10%

There’s a lot of career advice out there. Much of it dumb. But what if someone read all the advice books — over a hundred years’ worth — and put all the good ideas in one place? Could you finally escape the cube? Stop mailing things? Be happier?

In How to Be Useful, Megan Hustad dismantles the myths of getting ahead and helps you navigate the murky waters of office life. Humorous yet wise, irreverent yet marvelously practical, this book will help you learn

Why “just being yourself” is a terrible idea.

How to be smart, but not too smart.

Why you shouldn’t be “nice.”

When not to be good at your job.

How to screw up with grace and dignity.

Why shoes matter.

The right and wrong ways to talk trash about yourself.

That ambition, practiced wisely, is a noble thing.

A Good and Happy Child: A Novel
by Justin Evans

Paperback $13.95

From Publishers Weekly
This stunning novel marks the debut of a serious talent. Evans manages to take a familiar concept—the young child haunted by a demon invisible to others—and infuse it with psychological depth and riveting suspense. The setting alternates between George Davies’s difficult childhood in Preston, Va., a small college town, after his father Paul’s untimely death, and his equally challenging life as an adult and new father in New York City. Ostracized by his classmates and emotionally isolated by his mother, a struggling academic, young George begins to be visited by a doppelgänger, who, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, intimates that foul play was involved in Paul’s death. When those visitations lead to violence, George begins receiving psychiatric treatment. Meanwhile, some of his late father’s colleagues claim that demonic possession is a reality. Evans subtly evokes terror and anxiety with effective understatement. The intelligence and humanity of this thriller should help launch it onto bestseller lists.

Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet
by Alisa Smith & J.B. Mackinnon

Paperback $13.95

The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment.

When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born.

The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep.

Attack of the Theater People
by Marc Acito

Paperback $12.95

In praising “the witty high school romp” How I Paid for College, the New York Times Book Review said, it “makes you hope there’s a lot more where this came from.” There is. In this hilarious sequel Attack of the Theater People, Edward Zanni and his merry crew of high school musical-comedy miscreants move to the magical wonderland that is Manhattan.

It is 1986, and aspiring actor Edward Zanni has been kicked out of drama school for being “too jazz hands for Juilliard.” Mortified, Edward heads out into the urban jungle of eighties New York City and finally lands a job as a “party motivator” who gets thirteen-year-olds to dance at bar mitzvahs and charms businesspeople as a “stealth guest” at corporate events. When he accidentally gets caught up in insider trading with a handsome stockbroker named Chad, only the help of his crew from How I Paid for College can rescue him from a stretch in Club Fed.

Laced with the inspired zaniness of classic American musical comedy, Attack of the Theater People matches the big hair of the eighties with an even bigger heart.

Divisadero
by Michael Ondaatje

Paperback $13.95

My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. I began Divisadero as soon as it came into my possession and over the course of a few evenings was captivated by Ondaatje’s finest novel to date. The story is simple, almost mythical, stemming from a family on a California farm that is ruptured just as it is about to begin. Two daughters, Anna and Claire, are raised not just as siblings but with the intense bond of twins, interchangeable, inseparable. Coop, a boy from a neighboring farm, is folded into the girls’ lives as a hired hand and quasi-brother. Anna, Claire, and Coop form a triangle that is intimate and interdependent, a triangle that brutally explodes less than thirty pages into the book. We are left with a handful of glass, both narratively and thematically. But Divisadero is a deeply ordered, full-bodied work, and the fragmented characters, severed from their shared past, persevere in relation to one another, illuminating both what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world. The notion of twins, of one becoming two, pervades the novel, and so the farm in California is mirrored by a farm in France, the setting for another plot line in the second half of the book and giving us, in a sense, two novels in one. But the stories are not only connected but calibrated by Ondaatje to reveal a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes, and reflections across time and place. Like Nabokov, another master of twinning, Ondaatje’s method is deliberate but discreet, and it was only in rereading this beautiful book–which I wanted to do as soon as I finished it–that the intricate play of doubles was revealed. Every sign of the author’s genius is here: the searing imagery, the incandescent writing, the calm probing of life’s most turbulent and devastating experiences. No one writes as affectingly about passion, about time and memory, about violence–subjects that have shaped Ondaatje’s previous novels. But there is a greater muscularity to Divisadero, an intensity born from its restraint. Episodes are boiled down to their essential elements, distilled but dramatic, resulting in a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. –Jhumpa Lahiri