Bücher veröffentlicht von Houghton Mifflin

"Wonderfully detailed and keenly researched, it is a moving portrait of a courageous woman caught between a disastrous affair with a charismatic revolutionary and the draconian laws of the land that would put her to death because of it." Kathleen Kent

"Ward Just is not merely America's best political novelist. He is America's greatest living novelist."-Susan Zakin, Lithub "An achievement . . . [that] fuses the romanticism of the early Kerouac and his mentor, Thomas Wolfe, with the wry humor of Richard Yates."-New York Times Book Review Tommy Ogden, an outsized character holding court in his mansion outside robber-baron-era Chicago, declines to give his wife the money to commission a bust of herself from the French master Auguste Rodin, and instead announces his intention to endow a boys' school. His decision reverberates years later in the life of Lee Goodell, whose coming of age is at the heart of Ward Just's emotionally potent novel. Lee's life in the small town of New Jesper, Illinois, is irrevocably changed by the rape of one of his high school classmates. His father, a local judge and a member of "the Committee" of civic leaders that runs the town, votes to suppress the crime in the name of protecting their community. His mother responds by forcing a move to Chicago's North Shore, where Lee enrolls in the private Ogden Hall School for Boys. Both the crime and the school come to profoundly shape Lee's knowledge of how the world works. Years later, Lee meets his victimized classmate. Their charged encounter is a confirmation of his understanding that how and what we remember lies at the heart of life.

Eavesdrop on one of the most celebrated literary friendships in American letters"An epistolary feast for literary fans [and] a confidence booster for aspiring writers everywhere. A-" --Entertainment Weekly"If friendship is an art, this volume is its masterpiece." --Lee Smith"A remarkable testimony to friendship, literature, and an abiding love of life." --Richmond Times-DispatchWhat There Is to Say We Have Said bears witness to Welty and Maxwell's more than fifty years of friendship and their lives as writers and readers. It serves as a chronicle of their literary world, their talk of Katherine Anne Porter, Salinger, Dinesen, Updike, Percy, Cheever, and more. Through more than three hundred letters, Marrs brings us the story of a true, deep friendship and an homage to the forgotten art of letter writing."A vivid picture of twentieth-century intellectual life and a record of a remarkable friendship... Glorious." --Houston Chronicle"Full of great tidbits about The New Yorker back in the day ... Charming." --The New Yorker"These letters evoke a lost world when events moved a bit more slowly, and friends could take the time to be both eloquently witty and generous with each other, and letters were unobtrusively artful about daily life. Welty and Maxwell are like two birds of the same species, calling to each other across the distances." --Charles Baxter

?The place to go if you're really interested in this version of the quest for creating Artificial Intelligence (AI).??Seattle Times For centuries, people have dreamed of creating a machine that thinks like a human. Scientists have made progress: computers can now beat chess grandmasters and help prevent terrorist attacks. Yet we still await a machine that exhibits the rich complexity of human thought?one that doesn't just crunch numbers, or take us to a relevant Web page, but understands us and gives us what we need. With the creation of Watson, IBM's Jeopardy! playing computer, we are one step closer to that goal. But how did we get here? In Final Jeopardy, Stephen Baker traces the arc of Watson's ?life,? from its birth in the IBM labs to its big night on the podium. We meet Hollywood moguls and Jeopardy! masters, genius computer programmers and ambitious scientists, including Watson's eccentric creator, David Ferrucci. We see how a new generation of Watsons could transform medicine, the law, marketing, even science itself, as machines process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, answer our questions, and possibly come up with new hypotheses. As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world?and how they'll disrupt it. ?Like Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine, Baker's book finds us at the dawn of a singularity. It's an excellent case study, and does good double duty as a Philip K. Dick scenario, too.??Kirkus Reviews ?Baker's narrative is both charming and terrifying . . . an entertaining romp through the field of artificial intelligence?and a sobering glimpse of things to come.??Publishers Weekly, starred review

?Astonishing . . . Moving.? ?People ?The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is an unflinching, visceral look at the emotional and physical damage?actual, real damage done to specific, individual apes?in some of America's most notorious biomedical research labs. It is also the story of humans who were driven to provide them with refuge, retirement . . . and, ultimately, their inherent right to dignity.? ?Sara Gruen, author of Water for ElephantsIN THE CANADIAN WILDERNESS, Gloria Grow has created a rehabilitation center like none other. Thirteen chimpanzees, rescued from zoos and medical testing laboratories, now call Fauna Sanctuary home. After decades of cruelty and deprivation, these resilient primates are finally free to eat, sleep, play, and roam in peace?all while fighting their personal demons. Primatologist and author Andrew Westoll lived and worked at Fauna one remarkable summer, and The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary is his poignant testimony to the capacity of these animals to heal?and to learn to be chimps again. This is an absorbing, bighearted story about the species more closely related to us than any other. ?There is plenty of moral outrage in this book, but there is also plenty of wonder . . . Impassioned and well reasoned.? ?Cleveland Plain Dealer

An improbably funny account of how the purchase and restoration of a disaster of a fixer-upper saves a young marriageWhen a season of ludicrous loss tests the mettle of their marriage, Matthew Batt and his wife decide not to call it quits. They set their sights instead on the purchase of a dilapidated house in the Sugarhouse section of Salt Lake City. With no homesteading experience and a full-blown quarter-life crisis on their hands, these perpetual grad students/waiters/nonprofiteers decide to seek salvation through renovation, and do all they can to turn a former crack house into a home. Dizzy with despair, doubt, and the side effects of using the rough equivalent of napalm to detoxify their house, they enter into full-fledged adulthood with power tools in hand.Heartfelt and joyous, Sugarhouse is the story of how one couple conquers adversity and creates an addition to their family, as well as their home.

"Bakopoulos has invented a man for all rainy seasons--a horny, heartbroken cousin of Richard Ford's Frank Bascombe." --Tom Piazza"A winning distraction, a smart entertainment." --New York Times Book Review A clairvoyant when it comes to the Starbucks orders, a renegade when it comes to bureaucracy, Zeke asks almost everybody he meets, "Why are you so unhappy?" The answers he receives--a mix of true sadness and absurd complaint--become the core of an obsessive project, "The Inventory of American Unhappiness," a project that becomes all the more personally meaningful as he follows steps outlined in a women's magazine on finding the perfect mate. Incisively tapping the voice of one of the most charming--and deluded--narrators to come along in years, Dean Bakopolous captures our zeitgeist with lacerating wit and a big heart, confirming Jonathan Miles's (author of Dear American Airlines) claim that "there's no such thing as unhappiness when you're holding a Dean Bakopolous novel.""Hilarious and heartfelt . . . This funny-sad novel seems to take elements of the author's own life . . . and twists them in a funhouse mirror--with delightful results." --NPR

"A brilliant essayist, [O'Hagan] constructs sentences that pierce like pinpricks." - Publishers Weekly, starred reviewFor more than two decades, Andrew O'Hagan has been publishing celebrated essays on both sides of the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean highlights the best of his clear-eyed, brilliant work, including his first published essay, a reminiscence of his working-class Scottish upbringing; an extraordinary piece about the lives of two soldiers, one English, one American, both of whom died in Iraq on May 2, 2005; and a piercing examination of the life of William Styron. O'Hagan's subjects range from the rise of the tabloids to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, from the trajectory of the Beatles to the impossibility of not fancying Marilyn Monroe.The Atlantic Ocean - an engrossing and important collection.

?A beautifully written and masterfully told story full of wicked intrigue, gripping suspense, stirring action, deft plot twists, and incredibly rich and compelling characters ... destined to be a classic series of nautical adventure.? ?Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan and Fur, Fortune, and EmpireHaving sunk the first ship he commanded off the coast of Ireland, Captain Matthew Quinton is determined to complete his second mission without loss of life or honor. Rebellion is stirring in the Scottish Isles, and King Charles II needs loyal officers to sail north and face the threat. But aboard His Majesty's Ship the Jupiter, the young ?gentleman captain? leads a resentful crew and has but few on whom he can rely. As they approach the wild coast of Scotland, Quinton begins to learn the ropes and win the respect of his fellow officers and sailors. But he has other worries: a suspicion that the previous captain of the Jupiter was murdered, a feeling that several among his crew have something to hide, and a growing conviction that betrayal lies closer to home than he had thought. ?A delightful tale.? ?Kirkus Reviews?As fascinating an account of Restoration politics as it is of the Restoration Navy.? ?Seth Hunter, author of The Winds of Folly

"Bass creates a slice of music history from the ground up, from the backwoods and front porches all the way to Elvis." ?Los Angeles Times1959: the Brown siblings are the biggest thing in country music. Their inimitable harmony will give rise to the polished sound of the multibillion-dollar country music industry we know today. But when the bonds of family begin to fray, the flame of their celebrity proves as brilliant as it is fleeting. In this arresting novel, acclaimed author Rick Bass draws poignant portraits of their lives, lived both in and out of the limelight. Masterfully jumping between the Browns' once auspicious past and the heartbreaking present, Nashville Chrome is the richly imagined story of this forgotten family and an unflinching portrait of an era in American music. "An empathic, breath-catching, mythic and profoundly American tale of creation, destruction and renewal." ?Kansas City Star "Splendid . . . Rick Bass's best." ?Dallas Morning News

?Thanks to its wicked style and pacing, Mule lets me forget I'm reading serious literature while I follow its terrifying story into the land of the all-American damned.? ? Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air ?Mule is swift, taut, and relentless, both a rip-roaring drug tale and a fascinating portrait of a decent human being whose morals slowly disintegrate under unbearable financial strain.? ? Lauren Groff, author of The Monsters of Templeton James and Kate are golden children of the late twentieth century, flush with opportunity. But an economic downturn and an unexpected pregnancy send them searching for a way to make do. A friend in California's Siskiyou County grows prime-grade marijuana; if James transports just one load from Cali to Florida, he'll pull down enough cash to survive for months. And so begins the life of a mule. A page-turning, Zeitgeist-capturing novel that plunges us into the criminal underworld with little chance to take a breath, Mule is about young people trying to make do in a moment when the American Dream they never had to believe in ? because it was handed to them, fully wrapped and ready to go at the takeout window ? suddenly vanishes from the menu. ?With adrenaline-infused sentences and a seat-gripping story line, Mule is a novel that illuminates contemporary American desperation, both its dangerous precipices and its thrilling, overwhelming freedom.? ? Dean Bakopoulos, author of My American Unhappiness

ARE YOUR SKINNY JEANS STARTING TO FEEL A LITTLE SNUG?

?Haunting . . . Written in the author's classic, clear style, these narratives enchant.??Boston GlobeThe need for love?obsessive, self-destructive, unpredictable?takes us to forbidden places, as in the chilling world of Give Me Your Heart, a new collection of stories by the inimitable Joyce Carol Oates. In ten razor-sharp stories, children veer beyond their parents' control, wives and husbands wake up to find that they hardly know each other, haunted pasts intrude upon uncertain futures, and those who bring us the most harm may be the nearest at hand.?Dread, in fiction, can be a magnificent thing . . . Oates isn't writing horror fiction, but she might as well be. Her stories pack the same kind of visceral wallop.??Los Angeles Times

The Best American Series® First, Best, and Best-Selling The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected?and most popular?of its kind. The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011 includes Atul Gawande, Jonathan Franzen, Deborah Blum, Malcolm Gladwell, Oliver Sacks, Jon Mooallem, Jon Cohen, Luke Dittrich, and others

?A compelling moral fable in the shape of a gritty, twist-filled thriller.??Wall Street Journal John Shannon is a petty thief on the run. A three-time loser framed for murder, he knows that he's facing life in prison?or death by lethal injection. Then, a bizarre text message draws him to a meeting in the dark of night. A foreigner who calls himself the Identity Man offers Shannon an incredible chance to start again: a new face, a new home, a new beginning. In a ruined city trying to rebuild, he gets work as a carpenter, and falls in love. It seems too good to be true?and it is. It turns out this city is crawling with crooked politicians, gangsters, and dirty cops?all of whom seem to want Shannon dead. Moving through the shambles of a town, he's got to ferret out the secret of his new life?and fast?if he wants to be left with any life at all. ?A gripping thriller.??Entertainment Weekly ?A work of intense realism pervaded by sorrow, mercy, hope?and ultimately, transcendence.??Washington Times

Sarah promised Marjorie when they were five years old that they would be best friends forever. But that was before seventh grade, when everything changed everything except Marjorie. While Sarah wants to meet new people and try new things, Marjorie still likes doing the same things they always did. It seems the more time the two girls spend together, the more time Sarah wants to spend apart. How did a promise that was so easy to make become so hard to keep?With beautifully drawn characters and vivid details, this incisive novel portrays middle school in all its complexity both the promise of what is to come and the pain of what must be left behind."

Big Audrey is a girl . . . with cat's whiskers . . . and sort of cat's eyes. But, is there an other cat-whiskered, sort of cat-eyed girl?Big Audrey waves goodbye to her friends Iggy and Neddie, Seamus, and Crazy Wig, in Los Angeles and hitches a ride with bongo-playing-while-driving Marlon Brando across the country to Poughkeepsie, New York, city of mystery. She finds she has questions needing answers-and a bit of inter-plane-of-existence traveling to do.Big Audrey and her telepathic friend Molly zigzag off on an incredibly strange and kooky adventure, and solve the mystery of the cat-whiskered doppelganger.

Three guys from the Briar Academy fencing team went up to the cliff that night for a hazing ritual but only two came back alive. Now Luke s best friend, Hayden, is in jail and the pressure is on Luke to report what he saw. But what did he see? An accident or a murder? Luke has always followed Hayden s lead, but this is one decision he ll be forced to make on his own. And to do it, he must face the truth about his friendship with Hayden and his own painful past.

Cyan was named after a shade of blue, her artist mother's favorite color. The color of the sea. Since her father's death last year, she's felt just as mercurial and dark as her namesake, and the distance between Cyan and her mother has grown as wide as an ocean. Now they're returning to the island of Curaçao in the Caribbean, where her father's mysterious accident occurred, and joining them will be Kammi--who may soon become a stepsister. Haunted by the secrets of the past, Cyan will explore all the depths of her blueness this summer, discovering the light, the darkness, and the many shades in between that are within her?and within us all.