The Essential Chomsky
by Noam Chomsky, edited by Anthony Arnove
Paperback $16.95
For the past forty years Noam Chomsky’s writings on politics and language have established him as a preeminent public intellectual and as one of the most original and wide-ranging political and social critics of our time. Among the seminal figures in linguistic theory over the past century, since the 1960s Chomsky has also secured a place as perhaps the leading dissident voice in the United States.
Chomsky’s many bestselling works—including Manufacturing Consent, Hegemony or Survival, Understanding Power, and Failed States—have served as essential touchstones for dissidents, activists, scholars, and concerned citizens on subjects ranging from the media to human rights to intellectual freedom. In particular, Chomsky’s scathing critiques of the U.S. wars in Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East have furnished a widely accepted intellectual inspiration for antiwar movements over nearly four decades.
The Essential Chomsky assembles the core of his most important writings, including excerpts from his most influential texts over the past forty years. Here is an unprecedented, comprehensive overview of Chomsky’s thought.
Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature (Paperback)
edited by Warren F. Motte Jr.
Paperback $19.95
A remarkable collection of writings by members of the group known as Oulipo, this anthology includes, among others, Italo Calvino, Harry Mathews, Georges Perec, Jacques Roubad, and Raymond Queneau. Founded in Paris in 1960, Oulipo approaches writing in a way that has yet to make its impact in the United States and its creative writing programs. Rather than inspiration, rather than experience, rather than self-expression, the Oulipans view imaginative writing as an exercise dominated by the method of “constraints.” While a major contribution to literary theory, Oulipo is perhaps most distinguished as an indispensable guide to writers.
The Good Rat: A True Story
by Jimmy Breslin
Hardcover $24.95 - 10%
Of course Pulitzer Prize winner Jimmy Breslin recognized Burton Kaplan right away as the Mafia witness of the ages. Breslin comes from the same Queens streets as mob bosses John Gotti and Vito Genovese. But even they couldn’t match Kaplan in crime—and neither could anybody else.
In his inimitable New York voice, Breslin, “the city’s steadiest and most accurate chronicler” (Tom Robbins, Village Voice), gives us a look through the keyhole at the people and places that define the mafia—characters like Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, Gaspipe Casso (named for his weapon of choice), Thomas “Three-Finger Brown” Lucchese, and Jimmy “The Clam” Eppolito, interwoven with the good rat himself, Burt Kaplan of Bensonhurst, the star witness in the recent trial of two New York City detectives indicted for acting as hit men in eight gangland executions.
Breslin takes us to the old-time hangouts like Pep McGuire’s, the legendary watering hole where reporters and gangsters (all hailing from the same working-class neighborhoods) rubbed elbows and traded stories; the dog-fight circles and body dumps at Ozone Park; and the back room at Midnight Rose’s candy store, where Murder, Inc., hired and fired.
Most compelling of all, Breslin captures the moments in which the Mafia was made and broken—Breslin was there the night John Gotti celebrated his acquittal at his Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry, having bribed his way to innoÂcence only to incite the wrath of the FBI, who would later crush Gotti and others with the full force of the RICO laws.
As in his unforgettable novel The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, Breslin brings together these real-life and long-forgotten Mafia stories to brilliantly create a sharp-eyed portrait of the mob as it lived and breathed, as it sounded and survived.
The Museum of Modern Art Book of Cartoons
compiled by The New Yorker
Hardcover $14.95 - 10%
When The Museum of Modern Art first opened its doors on November 8, 1929-in less than 5,000 square feet of rented office space in midtown Manhattan-it was considered a radical experiment. Who would have thought that a museum devoted entirely to “outrageous” Modern art could be successful? But succeed it did, weathering both the stock market crash of 1929 just a week later and a storm of controversy that did not dissuade the crowds from going to see what all the fuss was about. Today, MoMA is one of the leading institutions of its kind in the world, with an unrivaled collection of Modern and Contemporary art. Spanning the Museum’s entire history, this delightful book of 87 cartoons culled from the pages of The New Yorker magazine, is an enjoyable and witty celebration of the Museum and the lively public debate it has often inspired.
Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England, 1600-1770
by Emily Cockayne
Paperback $18.00
Modern city-dwellers suffer their share of unpleasant experiences—traffic jams, noisy neighbors, pollution, food scares—but urban nuisances of the past existed on a different scale entirely, this book explains in vivid detail. Focusing on offenses to the eyes, ears, noses, taste buds, and skin of inhabitants of England’s pre-Industrial Revolution cities, Hubbub transports us to a world in which residents were scarred by smallpox, refuse rotted in the streets, pigs and dogs roamed free, and food hygiene consisted of little more than spit and polish. Through the stories of a large cast of characters from varied walks of life, the book compares what daily life was like in different cities across England from 1600 to 1770.
Using a vast array of sources, from novels to records of urban administration to diaries, Emily Cockayne populates her book with anecdotes from the quirky lives of the famous and the obscure—all of whom confronted urban nuisances and physical ailments. Each chapter addresses an unpleasant aspect of city life (noise, violence, moldy food, smelly streets, poor air quality), and the volume is enhanced with a rich array of illustrations. Awakening both our senses and our imaginations, Cockayne creates a nuanced portrait of early modern English city life, unparalleled in breadth and unforgettable in detail.
The Kitchen Readings: Untold Stories of Hunter S. Thompson
by Michael Cleverly & Bob Braudis
Paperback $13.95
This book contains the following:
Unsafe use of powerful firearms in combination with explosives
Cultivation of illegal crops
Impressionable minors being exposed to illicit activities
Piloting of automobiles under impaired conditions
Transporting large sums of cash across national borders
Overheard in New York UPDATED: Conversations from the Streets, Stores, and Subways (Paperback)
compiled & edited by S. Morgan Friedman & Michael Malice
Paperback $12.95
The streets of New York are full of characters who don’t mince words-or care who hears them. This collection presents some of the most outlandish real life conversations overheard on the sidewalk, in the subway, and at the next table. It’s the Big Apple peeled, a hysterically unvarnished portrait of the city that never sleeps-and often neglects to think before it speaks in public.
An Atlas of Radical CartographyÂ
Paperback $30.00
An Atlas of Radical Cartography makes an important contribution to a growing cultural movement that traverses the boundaries between art, cartography, geography and activism. It pairs writers with artists, architects, designers and collectives to address the role of the map as political agent (rather than neutral document). Ten mapping projects dealing with social and political issues such as migration, incarceration, globalization, housing rights, garbage and energy issues, are complemented by 10 critical essays and dialogues responding to each map. The maps themselves are printed as posters, unbound for leisurely perusal. Among the contributors are artists Trevor Paglen, John Emerson, Ashley Hunt and Pedro Lasch, and essayists Avery Gordon, Heather Rogers, Alejandro De Acosta and Jenny Price. An Atlas of Radical Cartography also serves as a catalogue to the exhibition An Atlas, which has been touring the United States and internationally since July of 2007.
Dada’s Boys: Masculinity after Duchamp
by David Hopkins
Hardcover $55.00 - 10%
In this provocative and stimulating book, David Hopkins addresses the homosocial structures in Dada and Surrealist art with an eye to their relevance to current artistic and theoretical debate. Bestriding the book is the pivotal figure of the artist Marcel Duchamp, who was at the center of various groups of artistic and literary figures—predominantly male—in Europe and America. And at the heart of the investigation are Duchamp’s relationships with these men, the various interactions of those within the groups, and the impact of this type of male camaraderie on the artworks they produced.
Hopkins looks at specific moments in the careers of Duchamp and some of his associates—Francis Picabia, Man Ray, Max Ernst and André Breton—and discusses in detail the reception of Duchamp’s ideas in the post-war period. He goes on to trace the influence of the homosocial nature of Surrealism and Dada on the art world from the 1950s to the work of contemporary male and female artists.