Please check and let me know if there are any errors. The below is updated up to & including Post #77. (Thanks for the extra help, WT Sharpe and lene1949
)
Make sure to check if the book is available to you. Must be available as a legal ebook...
There are now 9 fully nominated books.
The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger [ficbot] Nomination withdrawn
I could not find this in ebook?
[2]
Gomorrah by Robert Saviano [lila55, Format C:]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
City of Dust: Illness, Arrogance, and 9/11 by Anthony DePalma [lene1949]
Inkmesh search
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
Nearly a decade after the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in the Sept. 11 attacks, the toxic legacy of the dust cloud that covered the neighborhood endures. DePalma (Here), a former New York Times reporter who covered the attacks and their aftermath, dissects the policy mistakes and bitter medical and legal clashes over the health problems suffered by rescue workers, cleanup crew, and survivors. The political and economic necessity of getting New York up and running again left "no time for the great city to dwell on what the long-term impact of the dust might be." DePalma methodically if occasionally awkwardly traces the efforts of scientists and doctors to assess the effects of the contaminated dust on the tens of thousands exposed, and the methods used to determine compensation. The scope of the aftereffects remains so vast that DePalma's account doesn't always retain a sense of narrative urgency, but he does convey how outrageously bureaucracy has stalled appropriate care for survivors and rescue workers. "Trust collapsed with the towers, and dust buried the truth," he writes, and the path to retribution remains obscured.
* [3] Tunnel People by Teun Voeten [lene1949, lila55, nimblem]
Inkmesh search
* [3] Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone by Martin Dugard [snipenekkid, sun surfer, seagull]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
Spoiler:
It is rare when a historical narrative keeps readers up late into the night, especially when the story is as well known as Henry Morgan Stanley's search for the missionary and explorer David Livingstone. But author and adventurer Dugard, who's written a biography of Capt. James Cook among other works, makes a suspenseful tale out of journalist Stanley's successful trek through the African interior to find and rescue a stranded Livingstone. Dugan has read extensively in unpublished diaries, newspapers of the time and the archives of Britain's Royal Geographical Society; he also visited the African locations central to the story. Together these sources enable him to re-create with immediacy the astounding hardships, both natural and manmade, that Africa put in the path of the two central characters. Dugard also presents thoughtful insights into the psychology of both Stanley and Livingstone, whose respective responses to Africa could not have differed more. Stanley was bent on beating Africa with sheer force of will, matching it brutality for brutality, while Livingstone, possessed of spirituality and a preternatural absence of any fear of death, responded to the continent's harshness with patience and humility.
[2]
American Prometheus by Martin J. Sherwin and Kai Bird [snipenekkid, Hamlet53]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
[2]
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson [snipenekkid, VioletVal]
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Spoiler:
As a scientist, Albert Einstein is undoubtedly the most epic among 20th-century thinkers. Albert Einstein as a man, however, has been a much harder portrait to paint, and what we know of him as a husband, father, and friend is fragmentary at best. With Einstein: His Life and Universe , Walter Isaacson (author of the bestselling biographies Benjamin Franklin and Kissinger ) brings Einstein's experience of life, love, and intellectual discovery into brilliant focus. The book is the first biography to tackle Einstein's enormous volume of personal correspondence that heretofore had been sealed from the public, and it's hard to imagine another book that could do such a richly textured and complicated life as Einstein's the same thoughtful justice. Isaacson is a master of the form and this latest opus is at once arresting and wonderfully revelatory. --Anne Bartholomew
[2]
Remember Why You Play by David Thomas [jhempel24, stylib38]
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Every Breath You Take by Ann Rule [hedwig]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
Spoiler:
From Booklist:
Well-told true-crime stories, a category that Rule's book certainly falls into, tend to pull readers in hook, line, and sinker. Rule, who has written 16 best-sellers over the past quarter-century, once again gathers her considerable resources, this time, to deliver a troubling but absolutely riveting account of the recent and horrendous murder of a young wife and mother, Sheila Bellush. As astonishing as it sounds, Sheila told her sister, Kerry, that she was in fear for her life and if anything should happen to her, Kerry was to contact Rule; Sheila did not know the author, but she felt Rule would successfully and truthfully investigate her story and broadcast it to the world. The result is a sober, nonsensational account of Sheila's murder, the mind-boggling series of events preceding it, and the nail-biting sequence of twists and turns in the investigation of the crime and the eventual prosecution of her volatile, violent ex-husband. As usual, Rule excels at painting psychologically perceptive portraits of all the characters in this stranger-than-fiction but nevertheless real-life drama. Expect high demand from her many fans. Brad Hooper
Every Day in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life by Frances Mayes [arkietech]
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Spoiler:
For the lovers of Under the Tuscan Sun there is more! as described in goodreads:
Frances Mayes offers her readers a deeply personal memoir of her present-day life in Tuscany, encompassing both the changes she has experienced since Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany appeared, and sensuous, evocative reflections on the timeless beauty and vivid pleasures of Italian life. Among the themes Mayes explores are how her experience of Tuscany dramatically expanded when she renovated and became a part-time resident of a 13th century house with a stone roof in the mountains above Cortona, how life in the mountains introduced her to a "wilder" side of Tuscany--and with it a lively engagement with Tuscany's mountain people. Throughout, she reveals the concrete joys of life in her adopted hill town, with particular attention to life in the piazza, the art of Luca Signorelli (Renaissance painter from Cortona), and the pastoral pleasures of feasting from her garden. Moving always toward a deeper engagement, Mayes writes of Tuscan icons that have become for her storehouses of memory, of crucible moments from which bigger ideas emerged, and of the writing life she has enjoyed in the room where Under the Tuscan Sun began.
With more on the pleasures of life at Bramasole, the delights and challenges of living in Italy day-to-day and favorite recipes, Every Day in Tuscany is a passionate and inviting account of the richness and complexity of Italian life.
* [3]
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne [voodooblues, WT Sharpe, obs20]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
Spoiler:
From Amason:
The vast, semi-arid grasslands of the southern Great Plains could be dominated by hunters and warriors on horseback. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Comanches, often referred to as “lords of the Plains,” were the single most powerful military force in the region, to the frustration of both the Mexican and U.S. governments. In this engrossing chronicle, award-winning journalist Gwynne traces the rise of the Comanche people from their roots as primitive bands of hunter-gatherers to their mastery of the horse and emergence as the feared power brokers of the area. At the center of the narrative is the charismatic Quanah Parker, who skillfully navigated the gaps between his traditional culture and the emerging, settled culture of the late-nineteenth century. Quanah was the son of a Comanche warrior and a woman named Cynthia Ann Parker, who was kidnapped at the age of nine and chose to stay with the Comanches. Quanah was a brilliant, feared war chief who guided his people in adapting to new realities after their final suppression by the U.S. Calvary. An outstanding addition to western-history collections. --Jay Freeman
* [3] Progress and Poverty by Henry George [VioletVal, WT Sharpe, beppe]
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The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard [issybird]
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[2]
Shake Hands with the Devil by Romeo Dallaire [seagull, lila55]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing [CO'Neil]
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[2]
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami [Latinandgreek, seagull]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
* [3] -
Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton [GA Russell, issybird, jgaiser]
Free in MR Library - upload by Patricia Clark |
mobi/PRC |
lrf |
LIT |
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ePub upload by weatherwax | Also @
Project Gutenberg
[2]
Just Kids by Patti Smith [Hamlet53, sun surfer]
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Spoiler:
Description: Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2010 : Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe weren't always famous, but they always thought they would be. They found each other, adrift but determined, on the streets of New York City in the late '60s and made a pact to keep each other afloat until they found their voices--or the world was ready to hear them. Lovers first and then friends as Mapplethorpe … more »discovered he was gay, they divided their dimes between art supplies and Coney Island hot dogs. Mapplethorpe was quicker to find his metier, with a Polaroid and then a Hasselblad, but Smith was the first to fame, transformed, to her friend's delight, from a poet into a rock star. (Mapplethorpe soon became famous too--and notorious--before his death from AIDS in 1989.) Smith's memoir of their friendship, Just Kids , is tender and artful, open-eyed but surprisingly decorous, with the oracular style familiar from her anthems like "Because the Night," "Gloria," and "Dancing Barefoot" balanced by her powers of observation and memory for everyday details like the price of automat sandwiches and the shabby, welcoming fellow bohemians of the Chelsea Hotel, among whose ranks these baby Rimbauds found their way. --Tom Nissley Starred Review. In 1967, 21-year-old singer–song writer Smith, determined to make art her life and dissatisfied with the lack of opportunities in Philadelphia to live this life, left her family behind for a new life in Brooklyn. When she discovered that the friends with whom she was to have lived had moved, she soon found herself homeless, jobless, and hungry. Through a series of events, she met a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe who changed her life—and in her typically lyrical and poignant manner Smith describes the start of a romance and lifelong friendship with this man: It was the summer Coltrane died. Flower children raised their arms... and Jimi Hendrix set his guitar in flames in Monterey. It was the summer of Elvira Madigan , and the summer of love.... This beautifully crafted love letter to her friend (who died in 1989) functions as a memento mori of a relationship fueled by a passion for art and writing. Smith transports readers to what seemed like halcyon days for art and artists in New York as she shares tales of the denizens of Max's Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner's, Brentano's, and Strand bookstores. In the lobby of the Chelsea, where she and Mapplethorpe lived for many years, she got to know William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Johnny Winter. Most affecting in this tender and tough memoir, however, is her deep love for Mapplethorpe and her abiding belief in his genius. Smith's elegant eulogy helps to explain the chaos and the creativity so embedded in that earlier time and in Mapplethorpe's life and work. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. (from Amazon.com)
[2]
The Dark Side The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer [JSWolf, WT Sharpe]
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Spoiler:
Description: This hard-hitting expose examines both the controversial excesses of the war on terror and the home-front struggle to circumvent legal obstacles to its prosecution. New Yorker correspondent Mayer (Strange Justice) details the battle within the Bush Administration over a new anti-terrorism policy of harsh interrogations, indefinite detentions without due process, extraordinary renditions, … more »secret CIA prisons and warrantless wiretappings. Fighting with memos and legal briefs, Mayer reports, hard-liners led by Dick Cheney, his aide David Addingtion and then-Justice Department lawyer John Yoo rejected any constraints on the treatment of prisoners or limitations on presidential power in fighting terrorism, while less militant administration lawyers invoked the Constitution and international law to oppose their initiatives. As a counterpoint to the wrangling over the definition of torture and the Geneva Conventions, the author looks at the use of techniques like waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation against prisoners by the American military and CIA; her chilling account compellingly argues that this "enhanced interrogation" regimen constitutes torture. The result is a must-read: a meticulous behind-the-scenes reconstruction of policymaking that demonstrates how legal abstractions became an ugly reality. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. “Deeply troubling, but splendidly executed.... Mayer does invaluable work locking these reports into a coherent narrative framework and sketching in vital connective details and insights.... Superb.”— Los Angeles Times “A gripping, meticulously researched, and deeply disturbing book that vindicates the observation of the great Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis that 'the greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.'” — Parameters (U.S. Army War College Quarterly)“Essential reading.” — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Gripping.... Chilling.... [A] vivid and comprehensive account.” — The New York Times “One of those rare books that should be read by every concerned American.” — Austin American-Statesman “Stunning.” — Slate “Powerful, brilliantly researched, and deeply unsettling.... Extraordinary and invaluable.” — The New York Times Book Review “Some of The Dark Side seems right out of “The Final Days,” minus Nixon's operatic boozing and weeping.... Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. The Dark Side is scarier than “The Final Days” because these final days aren't over yet and because the stakes are much higher.”—Frank Rich, The New York Times “In The Dark Side , Jane Mayer, a staff writer for the New Yorker , documents some of the ugliest allegations of wrongdoing charged against the Bush administration. To dismiss these as wild, anti-American ravings will not do. They are facts, which Mayer substantiates in persuasive detail, citing the testimony not of noted liberals like Noam Chomsky or Keith Olbermann but of military officers, intelligence professionals, "hard-line law-and-order stalwarts in the criminal justice system" and impeccably con... (from Amazon.com)
* [3] The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin [VioletVal, Hamlet53, jgaiser]
Free in the MR Library - uploaded by RWood - Eliot, Charles W. (editor), Harvard Classics 01: Franklin/Woolman/Penn
mobi/PRC |
IMP |
lrf
Free in the MR Library uploaded by weatherwax
ePub
Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath by Michael Norman [jgaiser]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
* [3] Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand [edbro, JSWolf, JaneD]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
Spoiler:
From Amazon:
From the 1936 Olympics to WWII Japan's most brutal POW camps, Hillenbrand's heart-wrenching new book is thousands of miles and a world away from the racing circuit of her bestselling Seabiscuit. But it's just as much a page-turner, and its hero, Louie Zamperini, is just as loveable: a disciplined champion racer who ran in the Berlin Olympics, he's a wit, a prankster, and a reformed juvenile delinquent who put his thieving skills to good use in the POW camps, In other words, Louie is a total charmer, a lover of life--whose will to live is cruelly tested when he becomes an Army Air Corps bombardier in 1941. The young Italian-American from Torrance, Calif., was expected to be the first to run a four-minute mile. After an astonishing but losing race at the 1936 Olympics, Louie was hoping for gold in the 1940 games. But war ended those dreams forever. In May 1943 his B-24 crashed into the Pacific. After a record-breaking 47 days adrift on a shark-encircled life raft with his pal and pilot, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips, they were captured by the Japanese. In the "theater of cruelty" that was the Japanese POW camp network, Louie landed in the cruelest theaters of all: Omori and Naoetsu, under the control of Corp. Mutsuhiro Watanabe, a pathologically brutal sadist (called the Bird by camp inmates) who never killed his victims outright--his pleasure came from their slow, unending torment. After one beating, as Watanabe left Louie's cell, Louie saw on his face a "soft languor.... It was an expression of sexual rapture." And Louie, with his defiant and unbreakable spirit, was Watanabe's victim of choice. By war's end, Louie was near death. When Naoetsu was liberated in mid-August 1945, a depleted Louie's only thought was "I'm free! I'm free! I'm free!" But as Hillenbrand shows, Louie was not yet free. Even as, returning stateside, he impulsively married the beautiful Cynthia Applewhite and tried to build a life, Louie remained in the Bird's clutches, haunted in his dreams, drinking to forget, and obsessed with vengeance. In one of several sections where Hillenbrand steps back for a larger view, she writes movingly of the thousands of postwar Pacific PTSD sufferers. With no help for their as yet unrecognized illness, Hillenbrand says, "there was no one right way to peace; each man had to find his own path...." The book's final section is the story of how, with Cynthia's help, Louie found his path. It is impossible to condense the rich, granular detail of Hillenbrand's narrative of the atrocities committed (one man was exhibited naked in a Tokyo zoo for the Japanese to "gawk at his filthy, sore-encrusted body") against American POWs in Japan, and the courage of Louie and his fellow POWs, who made attempts on Watanabe's life, committed sabotage, and risked their own lives to save others. Hillenbrand's triumph is that in telling Louie's story (he's now in his 90s), she tells the stories of thousands whose suffering has been mostly forgotten. She restores to our collective memory this tale of heroism, cruelty, life, death, joy, suffering, remorselessness, and redemption.
* [3] Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen [beppe, Latinandgreek, SameOldStory]
Inkmesh search
Spoiler:
"Written with such elegance, erudition and skill, a singular reflection of fundamental problems, virtues and vices, of our time."-Ivan Klima (Ivan Klima 20081022) "Rob Riemen's essays spring from a deep and firm conviction-they are like water from artesian wells and this is, I think, the main reason why they are so important and refreshing."-Adam Zagajewski (Adam Zagajewski ) "The author's … more »vast cultural knowledge, his firm commitment to liberal ideals and the agility of his pen make these essays an invaluable guide to orient us amid the great political and cultural problems-and the ideological confusions-of the world in which we live."-Mario Vargas Llosa (Mario Vargas Llosa ) "Rob Riemen has written a rare and much needed book, one which we appreciate not because we necessarily agree with its views, but for its commitment to ideas and its passion for imagination. It is a timely reminder of how imaginative knowledge can become a way of questioning, connecting to and changing the world as well as ourselves."-Azar Nafisi (Azar Nafisi ) "Mr. Riemen's Nobility of Spirit is intended as a meditation on the forces that threaten civilization and, no less important, on the forces that are desperately needed to sustain it."-Darrin M. McMahon, Wall Street Journal (Darrin M. McMahon Wall Street Journal ) "Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it."-The Elegant Variation (Blog) ( The Elegant Variation (Blog) ) In the pages of this slim, powerful book Rob Riemen argues with passion that “nobility of spirit” is the quintessence of a civilized world. It is, as Thomas Mann believed, the sole corrective for human history. Without nobility of spirit, culture vanishes. Yet in the early twenty-first century, a time when human dignity and freedom are imperiled, the concept of nobility of spirit is scarcely considered. Riemen insists that if we hope to move beyond the war on terror and create a life-affirming culture, we must address timeless but neglected questions: What is a good society? Why art? Why culture? What is the responsibility of intellectuals? Why anti-Americanism? Why nihilism? Why the cult of death of fundamentalists? In a series of three essays, the author identifies nobility of spirit in the life and work of Baruch Spinoza and of Thomas Mann; explores the quest for the good society in our own time; and addresses the pursuit of truth and freedom that engaged figures as disparate as Socrates and Leone Ginzburg, a Jewish Italian intellectual murdered by Nazis. “The forces now aligned against humanistic values are manifold,” observes George Steiner in the foreword to the book. In this imaginative and compelling volume, Riemen addresses these forces and speaks to every reader who believes in the power of classical ideas to restore Western civilization’s highest values. (20080610) (from Amazon.com)
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman [obs20]
Inkmesh search May not be available internationally
Spoiler:
“Fascinating . . . One of the finest works of history written . . . A splendid and glittering performance.” – The New York Times “MORE DRAMATIC THAN FICTION . . . A MAGNIFICENT NARRATIVE . . . elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained . . . The product of painstaking and sophisticated research.” – Chicago Tribune “A BRILLIANT PIECE OF MILITARY HISTORY which proves up to the hilt the … more »force of Winston Churchill’s statement that the first month of World War I was ‘a drama never surpassed.’ A writer with an impeccable sense of telling detail, Mrs. Tuchman is able to evoke both the enormous pattern of the tragedy and the minutiae which make it human.” – Newsweek “[A] BEAUTIFULLY ORGANIZED, COMPELLING NARRATIVE.” – San Francisco Chronicle “AN EPIC NEVER FLAGGING IN SUSPENSE . . . It seemed hardly possible that anything new of significance could be said about the prelude to and the first month of World War I. But this is exactly what Mrs. Tuchman has succeeded in doing . . . by transforming the drama’s protagonists as well as its immense supporting cast, from half-legendary and half shadowy figures into full-dimensional, believable persons.” – The Christian Science Monitor “EXCELLENT . . . [ The Guns of August ] has a vitality that transcends its narrative virtues.” – The Wall Street Journal From the Paperback edition. Historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman has brought to life again the people and events that led up to Worl War I. With attention to fascinating detail, and an intense knowledge of her subject and its characters, Ms. Tuchman reveals, for the first time, just how the war started, why, and why it could have been stopped but wasn't. A classic historical survey of a time and a people we all need to know more about, THE GUNS OF AUGUST will not be forgotten. Note: This edition does not include the photo insert. (from Amazon.com)
Godless by Ann Coulter [THE TERMINATOR]
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Spoiler:
"If a martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation's official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law. Many Americans are outraged by liberal hostility to traditional religion. But as Ann Coulter reveals in this, her most explosive book yet, to focus solely on the Left's attacks on our Judeo-Christian … more »tradition is to miss a larger point: liberalism is a religion—a godless one. And it is now entrenched as the state religion of this county. Though liberalism rejects the idea of God and reviles people of faith, it bears all the attributes of a religion. In Godless , Coulter throws open the doors of the Church of Liberalism, showing us its sacraments (abortion), its holy writ ( Roe v. Wade ), its martyrs (from Soviet spy Alger Hiss to cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal), its clergy (public school teachers), its churches (government schools, where prayer is prohibited but condoms are free), its doctrine of infallibility (as manifest in the "absolute moral authority" of spokesmen from Cindy Sheehan to Max Cleland), and its cosmology (in which mankind is an inconsequential accident). Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: it is bogus science . Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called gaps in the theory of evolution are all there is—Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom? Liberals' absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution's scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion. Fearlessly confronting the high priests of the Church of Liberalism and ringing with Coulter's razor-sharp wit, Godless is the most important and riveting book yet from one of today's most lively and impassioned conservative voices. "Liberals love to boast that they are not 'religious,' which is what one would expect to hear from the state-sanctioned religion. Of course liberalism is a religion. It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, its own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation of the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all the attributes of what is generally known as 'religion.'" —From Godless From the Hardcover edition. Ann Coulter is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must) , Treason, Slander, and High Crimes and Misdemeanors . From the Trade Paperback edition. (from Amazon.com
[2]
What Am I Doing Here? by Bruce Chatwin [beppe, sun surfer]
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Spoiler:
This is the last of Bruce Chatwin's works to be published while he was still alive (he penned the introduction in 1988, a few months before he died). It's a collection of Chatwin gems--profiles, essays, and travel stories that span the world, from trekking in Nepal and sailing down the Volga to working on a film with Werner Herzog in Ghana and traveling with Indira Gandhi in India. Chatwin … more »excels, as usual, in the finely honed tale. Whether he is cruising down the Volga, gauging the effects of French colonialism in Algeria or searching for the Yeti ("Abominable Snowman") in the Himalayas, Chatwin, who died recently, exudes natural curiosity and a nose for adventure. By the author of In Patagonia and The Songlines , this mosaic of travelogues, profiles, semi-fictionalized stories and fragments is an endless feast, rich in small discoveries and larger perceptions of the world. In India, Chatwin investigates the case of a "wolf-boy" who survived years living in the wild. In Hong Kong he meets a geomancer, who determines the best site for a building or a marriage bed by aligning it with the Earth's "dragon-lines." There are pieces on art auctioneering, nomads, Afghanistan, a California LSD guru who thinks he's the Savior, power politics in ancient China. There are also perceptive encounters with filmmaker Werner Herzog, Nadezhda Mandelstam, Indira Gandhi, Andre Malraux, couturier Madeleine Vionnet and many others. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. (from Amazon.com)
* [3] Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff [JaneD, voodoo_pepperweb, Latinandgreek]
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