Bücher veröffentlicht von Harper Perennial

In The Making of the President 1972, the fourth volume of narrative history of American politics in action, Theodore H. White brings his defining quartet of campaign narratives to a surprising and riveting close. The consummate journalist, White chronicles both the Democratic and the Republican parties as they jockeyed for position toward the end of Richard M. Nixon’s turbulent first term. He illuminates the cinematic moments that shaped the campaign—the attempt on George Wallace’s life, Edmund Muskie crying in the snow in New Hampshire, the swift rise and fall of Tom Eagleton, and the ongoing anguish of Vietnam—leading inexorably to a second chaotic collapse among the Democrats and a landslide victory for Nixon. Yet even as the president’s highest ambitions were confirmed, White watches aghast as the “new Nixon” of 1968 is eclipsed by the corrupt Nixon of old—a Shakespearean conclusion to an astonishing political epoch.

In The Making of the President 1968, the third volume of the groundbreaking series that revolutionized American political journalism, Theodore H. White offers a compelling account of one of the most turbulent presidential campaigns in history: the 1968 election that put Richard M. Nixon in the White House. Viewing the electoral process from an insider's perspective—capturing both the vast scope and the intimate, behind-the-scenes details—White chronicles a campaign that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, was marked by protest and violence in the streets of Chicago, and that came down to a neck-and-neck finish between the tenacious but ill-starred Hubert H. Humphrey and the most fascinating politician of the modern age: the finally, unexpectedly, victorious Richard Nixon.

Ever been betrayed by a pretty cover and a pair of alluring blurbs?Rest assured: Read This Next will never hurt you. The 500 book recommendations contained within these pages have all been carefullyvetted and approved by two literary professionals with discerning taste and witty wit. Arranged into delightful thematic lists, thesesuggestions cover the best of literature high and low, from page-turning classics to mind-expanding fluff; from murder mysteries and post-apocalyptic visions to historical fiction and bathroom books. Each book is paired with deeply insightful, deeply hilarious discussionquestions, perfect for book groups or for readers who just enjoy talking to themselves.In a world where so many books disappoint— robbing you of your time and money, promising more than they can deliver—Read This Next is the wickedly smart, faithful, and attractive partner you’ve alwaysdreamed would bring you true and lasting reading happiness.

Based on a beloved ten-part series in the San Francisco Chronicle, Come Back, Como is Steven Winn's tender and hilarious memoir of his uncommonly rich experience with a dog who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him. With humor and pathos, Winn describes the exasperating but ultimately rewarding effects the pet had on his family, the ordeals he and his dog endured together, and the greatest lesson Como taught him: that loving a dog can somehow make us more human.

Her mother, Gloria, was a brainy knockout whose fierce wit could shock an audience into hilarity or silence. Her father was James Jones, the award-winning author of From Here to Eternity and other acclaimed novels of World War II . Kaylie Jones grew up amid such family friends as William Styron, Irwin Shaw, James Baldwin, and Willie Morris, and socialized with the likes of Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, and Kurt Vonnegut. When her father died from heart failure complicated by years of drinking, sixteen-year-old Kaylie was broken and lost, which in turn left her powerless to withstand her mother's withering barbs and shattering criticism, or to halt Gloria's further descent into the bottle—or that of her own. Lies My Mother Never Told Me is a beautifully written tale of personal evolution, family secrets, second chances, and one determined woman's journey to find her own voice.

Hummingbirds is a wonderfully compelling novel about the intertwining and darkly surprising relationships at the elite Carmine-Casey School for Girls on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where the rivalries and secrets of teachers and students intersect and eventually collide.In the world of students, popular Dixie Doyle battles to wrest attention away from Liz Warren, who spends her time writing and directing plays based on the Oresteia. In the world of teachers, Leo Binhammer must now share his territory with Ted Hughes, the new English teacher who threatens Binhammer's status as sole owner of the girls' hearts. Seasons change and tensions mount as the students, longing for entry into the adult world, toy with their premature powers of flirtation. The deceptive innocence of adolescence becomes a trap into which flailing teachers fall, as the line between maturity and youth begins to blur.

There are people out there, millions of them, who act as if they still believe everything their mothers told them in the first six months of their life—that they’re the nicest, most beautiful, and most promising and intelligent bags of flesh ever to walk the earth. We call these people shmucks. In How to Be a Mentsh (and Not a Shmuck), bestselling author Michael Wex offers a wise and witty guide to being a good human being, regardless of your religion or beliefs. Referencing pop culture, current events, and Jewish tradition with equal ease, Wex explores the strategies developed by an oppressed people to pursue happiness with their dignity—and sense of humor—intact.

"A splendid book for journalists (new or old), fiction writers, essayists, and critics. But it could also be of great use to the intelligent common reader, the man or woman who wonders why it's impossible to finish reading certain stories and why others carry the reader in a vivid rush to the end."--Pete Hamill, author of A Drinking Life In the spirit of Strunk and White's classic The Elements of Style, comes The Elements of Story, by Francis Flaherty, longtime story editor at The New York Times. A brilliant blend of memoir and how-to, The Elements of Story offers more than 50 principles that emphasize storytelling aspects rather than simply the mechanics of writing--a relentlessly entertaining, totally accessible writing guide for the novice and the professional alike.

“There’s a rush to it, an elevation of the senses. . . . It’s a sweet feeling, one I’ll never get tired of, not on my twentieth heist, or my fiftieth, or my hundredth.”Once a promising young rock musician, the son of a decorated policeman, Myles Connor became one of Boston’s most notorious criminals—a legendary art thief with irresistible charm and a genius IQ whose approach to his chosen profession mixed brilliant tactical planning with stunning bravado, brazen disguises, audaciously elaborate con jobs, and even the broad-daylight grab-and-dash. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, Boston’s Museum of Fine Art . . .no museum was off-limits. The fact that he was in jail at the time of the largest art theft in American history—the still-unsolved robbery of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum—has not stopped the FBI from considering him a prime suspect. Optioned for film by the Oscar-winning screenwriter and director William Monahan (The Departed), The Art of the Heist is Connor’s story—part confession, part thrill ride, and impossible to put down.

An intimate look at the founders—George Washington, Ben Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison—and thewomen who played essential roles in their livesWith his usual storytelling flair and unparalleled research, notedhistorian Thomas Fleming examines the relationships between theFounding Fathers and the women who were at the center of theirlives. They were the mothers who powerfully shaped their sons’visions of domestic life, from hot-tempered Mary Ball Washington to promiscuous Rachel Lavien, Hamilton’s mother. Lovers and wives played even more critical roles. We learn of the youthful Washington’s tortured love for the coquettish Sarah Fairfax, a close friend’s wife; of Franklin’s two “wives,” one in London and one in Philadelphia; of how lonely, deeply unhappy Abigail kept home and family togetherfor years on end during Adams’s long absences; of Hamilton’s adulterous betrayal of his wife and their eventual reconciliation; of how the brilliant Madison, jilted by a flirtatious fifteen-year-old, went on to marry the effervescent Dolley, who helped make this shy man into a popular president. Jefferson’s controversial relationshipwith Sally Hemings is also examined, reinterpreting where his heart truly lay.

"Darkly funny, surprisingly tender . . . witheringly dead-on." -- Los Angeles TimesNamed one of the year's best novels by: Time - Salon.com - Los Angeles Times - NPR/Fresh Air - New West - Kansas City Star - St. Louis Post-DispatchA comic and heartfelt novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins and Cold Millions about how we get to the edge of ruin--and how we begin to make our way back.What happens when small-time reporter Matthew Prior quits his job to gamble everything on a quixotic notion: a Web site devoted to financial journalism in the form of blank verse?Before long, he wakes up to find himself jobless, hobbled with debt, spying on his wife's online flirtation, and six days away from losing his home. . . . Until, one night on a desperate two a.m. run to 7-Eleven, he falls in with some local stoners, and they end up hatching the biggest--and most misbegotten--plan yet.

From Neal Pollack, acclaimed author of Alternadad and The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, comes Stretch: The Unlikely Making of a Yoga Dude. Here is the hilarious but true account of an overweight, balding, skeptical guy who undergoes a miraculous transformation into a healthy, blissful, obsessively dedicated yoga fiend.

Surgeons have long been known for their allergy to doubt, an unsurprising trait in professionals who must play God, routinely risking someone else's life to do their job. But in this illuminating memoir, Gabriel Weston reveals the emotions, passions, and doubts normally hidden behind a surgeon's mask.Interweaving her own story with those of her patients, old and young, Weston evokes both the humor and the heartbreak that come from medicine's daily confrontation with the ultimate unknowability of the human body. With prose that does not flinch from the raw, graphic realities of a surgeon's day, Weston confronts life, death, and the unique difficulties of being a female surgeon in a heavily male-dominated profession.

Her canvases were the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette; the Great Terror; America at the time of Washington and Jefferson; Paris under the Directoire and then under Napoleon; Regency London; the battle of Waterloo; and, for the last years of her life, the Italian ducal courts. She witnessed firsthand the demise of the French monarchy, the wave of the Revolution and the Reign of Terror, and the precipitous rise and fall of Napoleon. Lucie Dillon—a daughter of French and British nobility known in France by her married name, Lucie de la Tour du Pin—was the chronicler of her age. In this compelling biography, Caroline Moorehead illuminates the extraordinary life and remarkable achievements of this strong, witty, elegant, opinionated, and dynamic woman who survived personal tragedy and the devastation wrought by momentous historic events.

"Diary of a Very Bad Year is a rarity: a book on modern finance that's both extraordinarily thoughtful and enormously entertaining."-- James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds "A great read. . . . HFM offers a brilliant financial professional's view of the economic situation in real time, from September 2007, when problems in financial markets began to surface, until late summer 2009."-- Booklist "n+1 is the rightful heir to Partisan Review and the New York Review of Books. It is rigorous, curious and provocative." -- Malcolm Gladwell A profoundly candid and captivating account of the economic crisis and subprime mortgage collapse, from an anonymous hedge fund manager, as told to the editors of New York literary magazine n+1.

Selected from the range of Cooper's essays and reportage in Artforum, Bookforum, Detour, Interview, LA Weekly, Spin, and the Village Voice, among other publications, Smothered in Hugs presents the best nonfiction of one of America's greatest writers. Cooper has written on grave social issues, producing touchstone pieces for a generation of readers. His obituaries for Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, and William S. Burroughs offer portraits that are both crystallizing and appropriately indefinite. His reckonings of contemporary writers are astute and unsparing. And, of course, he serves as witness to the work and play of an illustrious roster of cultural personalities—and does so with an acuity and fairness missing from most pop culture criticism.

Exhausted and disillusioned with the world of theater in May 1935, Josephine Tey has traveled to Cornwall to spend the summer with her friends the Motleys at their run-down but beautiful country estate. Ready to begin work on her second mystery novel, Tey finds much to inspire her in the landscape and its legends. Meanwhile, the Motleys have become involved in an amateur production at the nearby Minack Theater.Detective Inspector Archie Penrose has returned to his roots in Cornwall to attend the funeral of a family friend, a young estate worker who died in a tragic riding accident. Penrose has a few questions about the circumstances surrounding the fatal occurrence. And when the Minack Theater proves to be the stage for a real-life tragedy, Penrose and Tey together must investigate an audacious murder and confront an evil suggesting that there are darker things than death.

Ben Greenman is a writer of virtuosic range and uncanny emotional insight. As Darin Strauss has noted, "Like Bruno Schulz, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme, and no one else I can think of, Greenman has the power to be whimsical without resorting to whimsy." The stories in this new collection, What He's Poised to Do, showcase his wide range, yet are united by a shared sense of yearning, a concern with connections missed and lost, and a poignant attention to how we try to preserve and maintain those connections through the written word. From a portrait of an unfaithful man contemplating his own free will to the saga of a young Cuban man's quixotic devotion to a woman he may never have met; and from a nineteenth-century weapons inventor's letter to his young daughter to an aging man's wistful memory of a summer love affair in a law office—each of these stories demonstrates Greenman's maturity as a chronicler of romantic angst both contemporary and timeless, and as an explorer of the ways our yearning for connection informs our selves and our souls.

"A brilliant, complicated man is the centre of Jill Dawson's The Great Lover, and while she draws extensively on historical records of Brooke and his contemporaries, it is her decisions as a novelist that make this account of his life fascinating as well as faithful. . . . . The story that emerges is strong, satisfying, and memorable." -- The Times (London)An imaginative, fascinating novel about one of the most enduringly popular and romantic figures of the First World War--the radical, handsome young poet Rupert Brooke.

Billy Brent and Alice Stephens are star-crossed like all great lovers. Their need for each other drives them from Istanbul to Miami, Venice to Mexico. After years of encounters and escapes, they lose themselves deep in a desert wilderness, searching for a way forward, only to learn that sometimes the trail simply forks.From Charlie Smith, author of three New York Times Notable Books, comes his long-awaited new novel, his first in more than a decade. An exploration of the true particulars of obsession, Three Delays is a book of the spirit, of how broken people love and persist from darkness to darkness.

Kevin Michael Connolly is a twenty-four-year-old man who has seen the world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Games on his mono-ski, Kevin Connolly has been an object of curiosity since the day he was born without legs. Growing up in rural Montana, he was raised like any other kid (except, that is, for his father's MacGyver-like contraptions such as the "butt boot"). As a college student, Kevin traveled to seventeen countries on his skateboard, including Bosnia, China, Ukraine, and Japan. In an attempt to capture the stares of others, he took more than 30,000 photographs of people staring at him. In this dazzling memoir, Kevin Connolly casts the lens inward to explore how we view ourselves and what it is to truly see another person. From the home of his family in Helena, Montana, to the streets of Tokyo and Kuala Lumpur, Kevin's remarkable journey will change the way you look at others, and the way you see yourself.

In January 2003, Kenya was hailed as a model of democracy after the peaceful election of its new president, Mwai Kibaki. By appointing respected longtime reformer John Githongo as anticorruption czar, the new Kikuyu government signaled its determination to end the corrupt practices that had tainted the previous regime. Yet only two years later, Githongo himself was on the run, having secretly compiled evidence of official malfeasance throughout the new administration. Unable to remain silent, Githongo, at great personal risk, made the painful choice to go public. The result was a Kenyan Watergate. Michela Wrong's account of how a pillar of the establishment turned whistle-blower—becoming simultaneously one of the most hated and admired men in Kenya—grips like a political thriller while probing the very roots of the continent's predicament.

"Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality." -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "Wondrous, wise and beautiful." -- David Kamp, New York Times Book Review The bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Werewolves in Their Youth, Wonderboys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon "takes [his] brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze and turns it on his own life" (Time) in the New York Times bestselling memoir Manhood for Amateurs.

One of the most famous, if controversial, lawyers in America, defense attorney Clarence Darrow was sixty-seven years old in 1924. His reputation was in tatters after a scandalous trial in Los Angeles and his life and career appeared almost over. Then, in rapid succession, he found himself at the forefront of three remarkable courtroom dramas. Each was dubbed "the Trial of the Century" by the press: the trial of teenage Chicago "thrill killers" Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; Tennessee's infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, later immortalized in the play Inherit the Wind; and the incendiary case of Ossian Sweet, an African American man accused of murder while defending his Detroit home against a white mob.In The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow, award-winning author Donald McRae re-creates these momentous courtroom battles with breathtaking vividness—and offers a compelling, intimate, and unforgettable portrait of a true American icon.

In the twenty-first century, political correctness, cynicism, prag-matism, and the commodification of sex have reduced romantic love to a discredited myth or a recreational sport—"a cause for embarrassment," says Cristina Nehring. In A Vindication of Love, Nehring wrests romantic love from the clutches of retrograde feminists and cutting-edge capitalists, thrill-seeking convenience shoppers and safe-sex moralists. With help from lovers ranging from Heloise and Abelard to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Nehring celebrates the wild, irreverent, and uncompromising models of love we have inherited—as she rediscovers romantic love's fearless and heroic provenance, and challenges readers to demand partnerships that fully engage body, heart, and mind.

The Boston police officers who brutally beat Michael Cox at a deserted fence one icy night in 1995 knew soon after that they had made a terrible mistake. The badge and handgun under Cox's bloodied parka proved he was not a black gang member but a plainclothes cop chasing the same murder suspect his assailants were. Officer Kenny Conley, who pursued and apprehended the suspect while Cox was being beaten, was then wrongfully convicted by federal prosecutors of lying when he denied witnessing the attack on his brother officer. Both Cox and Conley were native Bostonians, each dedicating his life to service with the Boston Police Department. But when they needed its support, they were heartlessly and ruthlessly abandoned.A remarkable work of investigative journalism, The Fence tells the shocking true story of the attack and its aftermath—and exposes the lies and injustice hidden behind a "blue wall of silence."

"[An] original and powerful writer.... His clear and honest writing blasts right through the clichés and the politically correct surface to touch the chaotic and ambiguous core of the Israeli identity." --Etgar Keret "In a dazzling display of empathy, Gavron creates two equally compelling narrators, the bomber and his victim. This is a virtuoso work; a pitch-perfect rendering of real Israeli life in all its chaos, energy, humor and terror. I couldn't put it down." -- Geraldine Brooks Politically incorrect, provocative, and steeped in wit and irony, Almost Dead is a fast-paced tragicomic novel about the perfectly ordinary madness in today's Middle East.

New York Times Bestseller"On the subject of his love of Red Auerbach and his Celtic teammates, Russell is loud and clear. He might object to my use of the word 'love, ' but deny it though you will, Mr. Russell, that's what sits at the heart of this beautiful book." -- Bill Bradley, New York Times Book ReviewIn Red and Me, Boston Celtics basketball legend Bill Russell pays homage to his mentor and coach, the inimitable Red Auerbach. A poignant remembrance of a life-altering relationship in the tradition of Big Russ and Me and Tuesdays With Morrie, Red and Me tells an unforgettable story of one unlikely and enduring friendship set against the backdrop of the greatest basketball dynasty in NBA history.Red Auerbach was one of the greatest basketball coaches in sports history. Bill Russell was the star center and five-time MVP for Auerbach's Celtics, and together they won eleven championships in thirteen years. But Auerbach and Russell were far more than just coach and player. A short, brash Jew from Brooklyn and a tall, intense African-American from Louisiana and Oakland, the men formed a friendship that evolved into a rare, telling example of deep male camaraderie even as their feelings remained largely unspoken.Red and Me is an extraordinary book: an homage to a peerless coach, which shows how he produced results unlike any other, and an inspiring story of mutual success, in which each man gave his all and gained back even more. Above all, it may be the most honest and heartfelt depiction of male friendship ever captured in print.