Bücher veröffentlicht von Ecco Press

Arelentlessly curious, endlessly sensitive, and unequivocally adventurous examiner of human existence, William T. Vollmann now takes to the rails. In the company of experienced fellow train-hopper Steve, Vollmann trawls the secretive waters of a unique underground lifestyle--subjecting both our national romance with and skepticism about the hobo life to his finely tuned, analytical eye. Carrying on in the footloose tradition of Huckleberry Finn, he offers a moving, strikingly modern vision of the American dream, brilliantly exploring both our deeply ingrained romanticizing of "freedom" and the myriad ways we restrict the very freedoms we profess to admire.

His historic career as an aviator made Charles Lindbergh one of the most famous men of the twentieth century, the subject of best-selling biographies and a hit movie, as well as the inspiration for a dance step--the Lindy Hop--that he himself was too shy to try. But for all the attention lavished on Lindbergh, one story has remained untold until now: his macabre scientific collaboration with Dr. Alexis Carrel. This oddest of couples--one a brilliant Nobel Prize-winning surgeon turned social engineer, the other a failed dirt farmer turned hero of the skies--joined forces in 1930 driven by a shared and secret dream: to conquer death and attain immortality.Part Frankenstein, part The Professor and the Madman, and all true, The Immortalists is the remarkable story of how two men of prodigious achievement and equally large character flaws challenged nature's oldest rule, with consequences--personal, professional, and political--that neither man anticipated.

One of the most unusual literary innovations ever produced, A Life Full of Holes is the result of a singular collaboration between two remarkable individuals: Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, an illiterate North African servant and street vendor, and legendary American novelist and essayist Paul Bowles. The powerful story of a shepherd and petty trafficker struggling to maintain hope as he wrestles with the grim realities of daily life, it is the first novel ever written in the Arabic dialect Moghrebi, faithfully recorded and translated into English by Bowles. Straightforward yet rich in complex emotions, it is a fascinating inside look at an unfamiliar culture--harsh and startling, yet interwoven with a poignant, poetic beauty.

Until that fateful afternoon, Skunk Cunningham had been a normal little girl, playing on the curb in front of her house. Rick Buck-ley had been a normal geeky teen-ager, hosing off his brand-new car. Bob Oswald had been a normal sociopathic single father of five slutty daughters, charging furiously down the side-walk. Then Bob was beating Rick to a bloody pulp, right there in the Buckleys' driveway, and life on Drummond Square was never the same again.Inspired by Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Clay's brilliantly observed and darkly funny novel follows the sudden unraveling of a sub-urban community after a single act of thoughtless cruelty.

It is 1950 and, after a disastrous honeymoon night, Ariah Erskine's young husband throws himself into the roaring waters of Niagara Falls. Ariah, "the Widow Bride of the Falls," begins a relentless seven-day vigil in the mist, waiting for his body to be found. At her side is confirmed bachelor and pillar of the community Dirk Burnaby, who is unexpectedly drawn to this plain, strange woman. What follows is a passionate love affair, marriage, and family--a seemingly perfect existence. But the tragedy by which they were thrown together begins to shadow them, damaging their idyll with distrust, greed, and even murder.Set against the mythic-historic backdrop of Niagara Falls in the mid-twentieth century, this haunting exploration of the American family in crisis is a stunning achievement from "one of the great artistic forces of our time" (The Nation).

Although Gerd Heinrich, a devoted naturalist, specialized in wasps, Bernd Heinrich tried to distance himself from his "old-fashioned" father, becoming a hybrid: a modern, experimental biologist with a naturalist's sensibilities. In this extraordinary memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe and the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring.

Daniel Emerson lives with Kate Ellis, and he is like a father to her daughter, Ruby. But he cannot control his desire for Iris Davenport, the African-American woman whose son is Ruby's best friend. During a freak October blizzard, Daniel is stranded at Iris's house, and they begin a sexual liaison that eventually imperils all their relationships, Daniel's profession, their children's well-being, their own race-blindness, and their view of themselves as essentially good people.

Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts immigrate to a small town in upstate New York. Here the father--a former high school teacher--is demeaned by the only job he can get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. When local prejudice and the family's own emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable tragedy, the gravedigger's daughter, Rebecca heads out into America. Embarking upon an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, redemption, and peace--on the road to a bittersweet and distinctly "American" triumph.

In the 1970s and '80s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor. Collected here are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces--with a new preface by the author--assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book. Paper Trails is searing, heartbreaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann's fearless inquiry is a view of poverty unlike any previously offered. Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and quiet resignation, allowing the poor to explain the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience.

On the day of her father's funeral, twenty-eight-year-old Clarissa Iver-ton discovers that he wasn't her biological father after all. Her mother disappeared fourteen years earlier, and her fiancé has just revealed a life-changing secret to her. Alone and adrift, Clarissa travels to mystical Lapland, where she believes she'll meet her real father. There, at a hotel made of ice, Clarissa is confronted with the truth about her mother's his-tory, and must make a decision about how--and where--to live the rest of her life.

"Even if read while sober, Andy Lechter's Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, is a near-transcendent experience." -New York Times Book ReviewSince its rediscovery only fifty years ago, the magic mushroom: a hallucinogenic fungus once shunned in the West as the most pernicious of poisons, has inspired a plethora of folktales and urban legends. In this timely and definitive study, Andy Letcher chronicles the history of the magic mushroom--from its use by the Aztecs of Central America and the tribes of Siberia through to the present day--stripping away the myths and taking a critical and humorous look at the drug's more recent manifestations.Informative, lively, and impeccably researched, Shroom is a unique and engaging exploration of this most extraordinary of psychedelics.

For many Americans, eating is a religion. We worship at the temples of celebrity chefs. We raise our children to believe that certain foods are good and others are bad. We believe that if we eat the right foods, we will live longer, and if we eat in the right places, we will raise our social status. Yet what we believe to be true about food is, in fact, quite contradictory.Part exposé, part social commentary, The Gospel of Food is a rallying cry to abandon the fads and fallacies in favor of calmer, more pleasurable eating. By interviewing chefs, food chemists, nutritionists, and restaurant critics about the way we eat, sociologist Barry Glassner helps us recognize the myths, half-truths, and guilt trips they promulgate, and liberates us for greater joy at the table.

In his groundbreaking book, Marc Hauser puts forth a revolutionary new theory: that humans have evolved a universal moral instinct, unconsciously propelling us to deliver judgments of right and wrong independent of gender, education, and religion. Combining his cutting-edge research with the latest findings in cognitive psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, economics, and anthropology, Hauser explores the startling implications of his provocative theory vis-à-vis contemporary bioethics, religion, the law, and our everyday lives.

In this sparkling collection, award-winning writer Rishi Reddi weaves a multigenerational tapestry of interconnected lives, depicting members of an Indian American community struggling to balance the demands of tradition with the allure of Western life.In "Lord Krishna," a teenager is offended when his evangelical history teacher likens the Hindu deity to Satan, but ultimately forgives the teacher against his father's wishes. In the title story, "Karma," an unemployed professor rescues birds in downtown Boston after his wealthy brother kicks him out of his home. In "Justice Shiva Ram Murthy," which appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2005, an irascible retired judge reconnects with a childhood friend while adjusting to a new life with his daughter and her American husband. In "Devadasi," a beautiful young woman raised in the United States travels back to India and challenges the sexual confines of her culture. And in "Bangles," a widow decides to return to her native village to flee her son's off-putting American ways.Set mostly in the Boston area, with side trips to an isolated immigrant community in Wichita, Kansas, and the characters' hometown of Hyderabad, India, Karma and Other Stories introduces a luminous new voice.

In 1975 Genna Hewett-Meade's college roommate died a mysterious, violent death partway through their freshman year. Minette Swift had been assertive, fiercely individualistic, and one of the few black girls at their exclusive, "enlightened" college--and Genna, daughter of a prominent civil defense lawyer, felt duty-bound to protect her at all costs. But fifteen years later, while reconstructing Minette's tragic death, Genna is forced to painfully confront her own past life and identity...and her deepest beliefs about social obligation in a morally gray world. Black Girl / White Girl is a searing double portrait of race and civil rights in post-Vietnam America, captured by one of the most important literary voices of our time.

Heinrich involves us in his quest to get inside the mind of the raven. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close, Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a "raven father," as well as observing them in their natural habitat. He studies their daily routines, and in the process, paints a vivid picture of the ravens' world. At the heart of this book are Heinrich's love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.Heinrich's passion for ravens has led him around the world in his research. Mind of the Raven follows an exotic journey--from New England to Germany, and from Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic--offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature. Each new discovery and insight into raven behavior is thrilling to read, at once lyrical and scientific.

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller"An exceptional story collection." --New York Times Book ReviewThe well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera--including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist--are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition. An intelligent and keenly observed collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera marks the arrival of a striking and resonant new voice that speaks adeptly to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.

Can Joe help it if he falls in love with people who don't make him happy? And what about Helena--she's in love, but somehow this isn't enough. Shouldn't it be? And if it isn't enough, does this mean she's not really in love? It certainly seems to be spoiling the love she's in. And let's say there's a volcano underneath the city--doesn't that make things more urgent? Does urgency mean that you should keep the person you're with, or search for the best possible person? And what if the best possible person loves someone else--like the Snow Queen, for instance?This novel may not answer these questions, but nevertheless the author and publisher hope it will be of interest.

Harry March is something of a wreck and more than half nuts. Up until now, he has lived peacefully on an island in the Hamptons with his talking dog, Hector, a born-again Evangelical and unapologetic capitalist. But March's life starts to completely unravel when Lapham--an ostentatious multimillionaire who made his fortune on asparagus tongs--begins construction of a gargantuan mansion just across the way. To Harry, Lapham's monstrosity-to-be represents the fetid and corrupt excess that has ruined modern civilization. Which means, quite simply, that this is war.

Having fled the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, Tanja Lucic is now a professor of literature at the University of Amsterdam, where she teaches a class filled with other young Yugoslav exiles, most of whom earn meager wages assembling leather and rubber S&M clothing at a sweatshop they call the "Ministry." Abandoning literature, Tanja encourages her students to indulge their "Yugonostalgia" in essays about their personal experiences during their homeland's cultural and physical disintegration. But Tanja's act of academic rebellion incites the rage of one renegade member of her class--and pulls her dangerously close to another--which, in turn, exacerbates the tensions of a life in exile that has now begun to spiral seriously out of control.

Paul Bowles, the acclalmed author of The Shelterlng Sky, offers movlng, powerful, subtle, and fasclnatlng lnslghts lnto hls llfe, hls wrltlng, and hls world.

"Bowles's tales are at once austere, witty, violent, and sensuous. They move with the inevitability of myth. His language has a purity of line, a poise and authority entirley its own." --Tobias WolffAn American cult figure, Paul Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Tobias Wolff. From "The Delicate Prey" to "Too Far from Home," this definitive collection celebrates the Bowles's masterful artistry in short fiction.

Celebrated author Joshua Seigl, an idiosyncratic bachelor and confirmed recluse--young but in failing health--reluctantly admits to himself that he must hire a live-in assistant to help him with his increasingly complicated professional and personal affairs. Then one day at the bookstore he encounters Alma, a young woman covered with bizarre tattoos, who stirs something inside him. Unaware of her torturous past--the abuses she's suffered, the wrongs she's committed, the virulent hatred that seethes within her--Seigl decides that she is the one, and he has no idea that he is bringing an enemy into his home.With her unique, masterful balance of dark suspense and surprising tenderness, Joyce Carol Oates probes the tragedy of ethnic hatred and challenges the accepted limits of desire.

Nikki Eaton, single, thirty-one, sexually liberated, and economically self-supporting, has never particularly thought of herself as a daughter. Yet, following the unexpected loss of her mother, she undergoes a remarkable transformation during a tumultuous year that brings stunning horror, sorrow, illumination, wisdom, and even—from an unexpected source—a nurturing love.

First highlighted in The New Yorker fiction issue, here is award-winning writer Nell Freudenberger's debut story collectionLucky Girls is a collection of five novella-like stories, which take place mostly in Asia. The characters--expatriates, often by accident--are attracted to the places they find themselves in a romantic way, or repelled by a landscape where every object seems strange. For them, falling in love can be inseparable from the place where it happens. Living according to unfamiliar rules, these characters are also vulnerable in unique ways. In the title story, a young woman who has been involved in a five-year affair with a married Indian man feels bound to both her memories and her adopted country after his death. The protagonist of "Outside the Eastern Gate" returns to her childhood home in Delhi, to find a house still inhabited by the impulsive, desperate spirit of her mother, who left her family for a wild journey over the Khyber Pass to Afghanistan. In "Letter from the Last Bastion," a teenage girl begins a correspondence with a novelist who's built his reputation writing about his experiences as a soldier in Vietnam and who, in his letters, confides in her a secret about his past. Highly anticipated in the literary community and beyond, Lucky Girls marks the debut of a very special talent that places her among today's most gifted young writers.

Between 1987 and 1989, Paul Bowles, at the suggestion of a friend, kept a journal to record the daily events of his life. What emerges is not only just a record of the meals, conversations, and health concerns of the author of The Sheltering Sky but also a fascinating look at an artist at work in a new medium. Characterized by a refreshing informality, clear-sightedness, and passages of exquisite prose, these pages record with equal fascination the behavior of an itinerant spider, a brutal episode of violence in a Tangier marketplace, and the pageantry and excess of Malcolm Forbes's seventieth birthday party. In Days, a master observer of the foreign and obscure turns his attentions toward his own daily existence, giving us a startlingly candid portrait of his life in late twentieth-century Tangier.

"The Walt Whitman of Los Angeles."--Joyce Carol Oates, bestselling author"He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels."--Leonard Cohen, songwriterOne of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany of pathetic whores, sordid rooms, dreary embraces, and drunken brawls, as he makes his bitter, brilliant way from one drink to the next.Charles Bukowski's posthumous legend continues to grow. Factotum is a masterfully vivid evocation of slow-paced, low-life urbanity and alcoholism, and an excellent introduction to the fictional world of Charles Bukowski.

Saint Augustine -- the celebrated theologian who served as Bishop of Hippo from 396 C.E. until his death in 430 C.E. -- is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the Western world. His autobiography, Confessions, remains among the most important religious writings in the Christian tradition. In this eye-opening and eminently readable biography, renowned historical scholar James J. O'Donnell picks up where Augustine himself left off to offer a fascinating, in-depth portrait of an unparalleled politician, writer, and churchman in a time of uncertainty and religious turmoil.Augustine is a triumphant chronicle of an extraordinary life that is certain to surprise and enlighten even those who believed they knew the complex and remarkable man of God.

Intrigued by a disturbing photograph of a woman, a young journalist in Calcutta embarks on a quest to learn the story behind the violent incident captured on film -- a strange odyssey that leads him to a volatile remote corner of India mired in civil strife and sustained by timber, drugs, and guns. Yet the truth he hopes to uncover is as uncertain as the mysterious woman he seeks, smoldering dangerously on the border between illusion and reality.