Umberto. Eco

William Weaver

“How to Travel with a Salmon” is a highly engaging collection of what Umberto Eco calls his diario minimo—minimal diaries—after the magazine column in which he began “pursuing the pathways of parody.” These essays are his playful but unfailingly accurate takes on militarism, computer jargon, Westerns, art criticism, librarians, bureaucrats, meals on airplanes, Amtrak trains, bad coffee, maniacal taxi drivers, express mail, multi-function, watches, fax machines and cellular phones, pornography, soccer fans, academia, and—last, but definitely not least—the author’s own self.

“How to Travel with a Salmon” gives us Eco’s acute vision of the absurdities of modern life.

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

New York

In these "impishly witty and ingeniously irreverent" essays (Atlantic Monthly), "the Andy Rooney of academia" (Los Angeles Times) takes on computer jargon, librarians, bureaucrats, meals on airplanes, bad coffee, taxi drivers, 33-function watches, soccer fans, and more. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book


How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays

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Cécile Volanges left her convent school to prepare for marriage to a proper suitor, chosen by her mother. But the lovely young creature had caught the eye of Marquise de Merteuil, a corrupt, amoral woman in league with her former lover, the Vicomte de Valmont. On the eve of the French Revolution, no excess was unknown to certain members of the aristocracy, and these two had created a perverse, diabolical game, a secret delight they shared. Cécile was their new victim… and nothing would thwart their desire. Slowly, cleverly, carefully, they won her trust, then her affection. Soon, the seduction would be complete…

“Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” first published in 1782, is a fascinating novel of sexual intrigue and the power of evil. An outrageous scandal in Paris, the book sold out within a few days. Marie Antoinette kept a private copy of the novel in her library, and forty years after its first appearance, it was condemned by a criminal court and publicly incinerated. “If this book burns,” said Baudelaire, “it burns as only ice can burn.” Two centuries later, this sensational story of forbidden obsession will shock you, stun you, and grip you up to the final, explosive climax.

NOTE: In reference to the last picture, this is a 1st edition book purchased around the time of publication in 1988, for all you vintage book collectors out there.

Les Liaisons Dangereuses

In 1965, the happy Bedloe family is living an ideal, apple-pie existence in Baltimore. Then, in the blink of an eye, a single, tragic event occurs that will transform their lives forever – particularly that of seventeen-year-old Ian Bedloe, the youngest son, who blames himself for the sudden “accidental” death of his older brother.

Depressed and depleted, Ian is almost crushed under the weight of an unbearable, secret guilt. Then one crisp January evening, he catches sight of a window with glowing yellow neon, the CHURCH OF THE SECOND CHANCE. He enters and soon discovers that forgiveness must be earned, through a bit of sacrifice and a lot of love …

NOTE: For all you vintage collectors out there, this is a first edition copy from around 1992. See the last picture for more.

Saint Maybe

A revolution is on, and managers in every field are rethinking the tried and, as it turns out, not so true management principles have that have often served their institutions poorly. At the heart of revolutions, historically, there have been no more than a handful of people. But now it’s time to enter another phase. The zeal to do something is clear. Video and audio cassettes on the new wave overwhelm the mind and the ad pages of airline magazines. A thousand seminars, all describing radically different approaches to managing, are in the air for the first time in memory. We ourselves have given hundreds of speeches and conducted almost five hundred seminars since 1982. Perhaps a hundred thousand to two hundred thousand people have gone through them. But the question remains: Who’s “doing” much of anything differently?

And that’s not even the most important question. The most important is: How many have “sustained” the new “it”? “In Search of Excellence” disgorged no magic: it simply said, Stay close to your customers; wander around. The absence of magic — “practice common sense” — turned out to be its biggest selling point. And it’s biggest source of frustration: no surefire magic formulas for productive wandering around, no ten-step guides, how to begin, how to learn, and above all, how to teach yourself to sustain success for decades. How, in short, do you practice excellence if your first name isn’t Chairman and his or her last name isn’t Kroc or Watson?

“A Passion for Excellence” is a first step along the path to answering those questions. It is not a how-to book in the traditional sense – there are no step-by-step guides. It is not a book on theory. It is rather an avowed Whitman’s Sampler of the passion for excellence observed and celebrated. Each chapter tells paradoxical tales of obsession in pursuing both detail and a dream. Each has scores of examples, as well as suggestions for practical actions that you can start immediately. (As a respected colleagues says with certainty, “If you don’t get started in the next seventy-two hours, you ain’t going to get started at all.”) Each stands essentially alone, which means you don’t have to read them in order. Our hope is that ten years from now you will be going back and checking your underlinings to see if you’re still really doing the things you committed yourself to do.

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Leadership Difference

A Passion for Excellence

To discover the secrets of our “native art,” Peters, an alumnus of the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company who runs his own consulting firm, and Robert Waterman, now a Director of McKinsey, studied forty-three successful American companies. Some of these organizations, such as Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble, specialize in consumer goods; some, like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, are in high technology; some, such as Delta Airlines and McDonald’s, are in services. Shared by all of them are eight basic principles of management—action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices—that are readily transferable. Here they are, amply illustrated with anecdotes and examples from the experiences of these best-run companies to make them accessible and practical for you to use.

NOTE: Referencing the last picture, this is a 1st edition book purchased during the early 1980s, for all you vintage collectors out there.

Lessons From America’s Best-Run Companies

In Search of Excellence

Raimund Gregorius teaches classical languages at a Swiss lycée, and lives a life governed by routine. One day, a chance encounter with a Portuguese woman inspires him to question his life—and leads him to an extraordinary book that will open the possibility of changing it. Inspired by the words of Amadeu de Prado, a doctor whose intelligence and magnetism left a mark on everyone who met him and whose principles led him into a confrontation with Salazar’s dictatorship, Gergorius boards a train to Lisbon. As Gregorius becomes fascinated with unlocking the mystery of who Prado was, an extraordinary tale unfolds.

Night Train to Lisbon

Drawing on thousands of pages of correspondence, a biographer brings to life not only one of the most perplexing figures in Western history, but the lives of the two women who ultimately dedicated themselves to his protection. Reprint.

At Home With The Marquis De Sade

Serge Bramly

Artist, scientist, philosopher, genius. Leonardo da Vinci is arguably the most fascinating figure in recorded history, yet he is as mysterious to us today as the shadowy landscapes behind his celebrated subjects.

Five years in the making, Serge Bramly’s biography, first published to great critical and popular success in France, seeks to reveal the man behind the legend. Bramly’s research through thousands of pages of Leonardo’s notebooks and accounts by contemporaries has resulted in the most fully rounded account we have of the life and times of the artist—from his illegitimate birth in the tiny village of Vinci to his death in the arms of the king of France.

Though his father was a wealthy bourgeois, Leonardo was illegitimate and was apprenticed like any working-class child. Bramly brings to vibrant life the coming of age of the wildly talented yet unschooled boy amid the clamor and pageantry of fifteenth-century Florence. It was the city’s golden age and Lorenzo de’ Medici provided Leonardo‘s first taste of patronage. He came into his own as an artist and thinker under the Sforza in Milan, a family as addicted to intrigue as they were to the spectacles engineered by da Vinci. With the fall of the Sforza, Leonardo aligned himself and in turn with Cesare Borgia, Pope Leo X, and finally François I of France.

Along the way we come to know the hidden Leonardo. The circumstances of his childhood have long eluded scholars, but Bramly’s detailed analysis of his disillusioned observations on birth and maternal care helps fill the gaps, exposing complex emotions that persisted well into Leonardo‘s old age. We see evidence of his passion for men; his long-standing relationship with the beautiful Salai, who came to him as a boy; his ongoing self-doubt. The author writes poignantly of Leonardo’s last years, when he faced death with the legacy of so many brilliant projects brought to life—but not to completion.

With the patience of a master detective, Bramly demystifies the enigma of Leonardo. Revealed is a man who was stigmatized for his illegitimacy and buffeted by pious bigotry and political intrigue, but who nonetheless transcended the mundane trials of day-to-day life to embody the ideal of the Renaissance man.

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

Discovering the Life of Leonardo da Vinci

Recreates the life and times of Leonardo da Vinci, capturing his insecurities about his place in society and describing his ferocious desire to understand the mysteries of the universe

Leonardo

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Richard Dawkins

How did the replication bomb we call ”life” begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as ”the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius”), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery.

A Darwinian View of Life

"How did the replication bomb we call "life" begin and where in the world, or rather, in the universe, is it heading? Writing with characteristic wit and an ability to clarify complex phenomena (the New York Times described his style as "the sort of science writing that makes the reader feel like a genius"), Richard Dawkins confronts this ancient mystery." "Dawkins has been named by the London Daily Telegraph "the most brilliant contemporary preacher of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution." More than any other contemporary scientist, he has lent credence to the idea that human beings - indeed, all living things - are mere vehicles of information, gene carriers whose primary purpose is propagation of their own DNA. In this new book, Dawkins explains evolution as a flowing river of genes, genes meeting, competing, uniting, and sometimes separating to form new species." "Filled with absorbing, at times alarming, stories about the world of bees and orchids, "designed" eyes and human ancestors, River Out of Eden answers tantalizing questions: Why are forest trees tall - wouldn't each survive more economically if all were short? Why is the sex ratio fifty-fifty when relatively few males are needed to impregnate many females? Why do we inherit genes for fatal illnesses?" "Who was our last universal ancestor? Dawkins suggests that it was more likely to have been an Adam than an African Eve. By "reverse engineering," he deduces the purpose of life ("God's Utility Function"). Hammering home the crucial role of gradualism in evolution, he confounds those who argue that every element of, say, an eye has to function perfectly or the whole system will collapse." "But the engaging, personal, frequently provocative narrative that carries us along River Out of Eden has a larger purpose: the book illustrates the nature of scientific reasoning, exposing the difficulties scientists face in explaining life. We learn that our assumptions, intuitions, origin myths, and trendy intellectual and cultural "isms" all too often lead us astray."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

River Out of Eden

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The “CultureShock!” series is a dynamic and indispensable range of guides for those travellers who are looking to truly understand the countries they are visiting. Each title explains the customs, traditions, social and business etiquette in a lively and informative style.

“CultureShock!” authors, all of whom have experienced the joys and pitfalls of cultural adaptation, are ideally placed to provide warm and informative advice to those who seek to integrate seamlessly into diverse cultures.

Each “CultureShock!” book contains:

• insights into local culture and traditions
• advice on adapting into the local environment
• linguistic help, and most importantly
• how to get the most out of your travel experience

“CultureShock! India” helps you understand this country that has more than 4,000 separate communities and where over 300 different languages are spoken. Learn to maneuver through the structure and varieties of Indian society, and appreciate the traditions and values that bind the people together despite their differences. Peppered with personal anecdotes, this book gives practical advice to avoid cultural misunderstandings as well as tips to facilitate your move to the country, including information on how to find a suitable home, how to get around, what schools and facilities are available for your family and what to expect from the environment. Complete with delightful chapters on food, entertaining, leisure activities and festivals, “CultureShock! India” will give you a good feel of the life and activities of the Indian people and help you enjoy your stay in the country.

India

CultureShock! A Survival Guide to Customs and Etiquette

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Did you ever wonder why you never see baby pigeons? Or why a thumbs-up gesture means "OK"? At last the solutions to some of life's most baffling questions are gathered here in one volume. Written in an informative and entertaining style and illustrated with drawings that are clearly to the point, Imponderables gets to the bottom of everyday life's mysteries, among them:

• Why is a mile 5,280 feet?
• Which fruits are in Juicy Fruit' gum?
• Why does an X stand for a kiss?
• Why don't cats like to swim?
• Why do other people hear our voices differently than we do?

Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and almanacs don't have the answers --Imponderables does! And in answering such questions, it touches on an astonishing variety of subjects, including sports, science, history, politics, television, radio, and much more. No trivial pursuit, Imponderables takes a surprising, illuminating, and humorous look at ourselves and the world around us.

The Solutions to the Mysteries of Everyday Life

Imponderables

Twenty years ago, Stephen Hawking tried to explain time by understanding the Big Bang. Now, Sean Carroll says we need to be more ambitious. One of the leading theoretical physicists of his generation, Carroll delivers a dazzling and paradigm-shifting theory that illustrates how the arrow of time owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself—an era Einstein never dreamed of—and that our universe is part of a family in which many of our sibling universes experience time in the opposite direction.

Embracing subjects from entropy to quantum mechanics to time travel to information theory and the meaning of life, “From Eternity to Here” is no less than the next step toward understanding how we came to exist.

The Quest For The Ultimate Theory of Time

From Eternity to Here

John Ortberg

“The Me I Want to Be” will help you discover spiritual vitality like never before as you learn to "live in the flow of the spirit."
Why does spiritual growth seem so difficult?

God's vision for your life is not just that you are saved by grace, but that you also learn to live by grace, flourishing with the Spirit flowing through you. And this book will show how God's perfect vision for you starts with a powerful promise: All those who trust in God "will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit" (Jeremiah 17:7-8).

Pastor and bestselling author John Ortberg first helps gauge your spiritual health and measure the gap between where you are now and where God intends you to be. Then he provides detailed tasks and exercises to help you live in the flow of the Spirit, circumventing real-world barriers—pain and sorrow, temptations, self-doubt, sin—to flourish even in a dark and broken world.

As you start living in the flow, you will feel:

• a deeper connection with God
• a growing sense of joy
• an honest recognition of your brokenness
less fear, and more trust
• a growing sense of being "rooted in love"
• and a deeper sense of purpose.

God invites you to join Him in crafting an abundant and joy-filled life. “The Me I Want to Be” shows you how to graciously accept His invitation.

Becoming God's Best Version of You





Bestselling author and pastor John Ortberg helps readers discover spiritual vitality like never before as they follow God's direction for Spirit-led life transformation.God desires each person to grow and flourish like a tree planted by a river-but sometimes that spiritual vitality can feel elusive, almost impossible. We get stuck in the same dead-end patterns and lose sight of the person God wants us to become.In The Me I Want to Be bestselling author John Ortberg helps you re-discover God's vision for their life and begin the great task and joy of becoming God's best version of yourself. It's not always easy-no one likes to acknowledge their brokenness-but when you let go of control and follow God's direction, you will learn to live by grace and by the transformative power of the Spirit. The Me I Want to Be is a powerful guide to spiritual truth and an operator's manual for building a Spirit-filled life in a world where perfection can only be found in God's loving vision for you.The good news is, your life is not your project-it's God's. And through his power you can become the person you want to be.

The Me I Want to Be

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Chol-Hwan Kang

Pierre Rigoulot

Amid escalating nuclear tensions, Kim Jong-un and North Korea’s other leaders have kept a tight grasp on their one-party state, quashing any nascent opposition movements and sending all suspected dissidents to its brutal concentration camps for “re-education.”

Kang Chol-Hwan is the first survivor of one of these camps to escape and tell his story to the world, documenting the extreme conditions in these gulags and providing a personal insight into life in North Korea. Sent to the notorious labor camp Yodok when he was nine years old, Kang observed frequent public executions and endured forced labor and near-starvation rations for ten years. In 1992, he escaped to South Korea, where he found God and now advocates for human rights in North Korea.

Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, this book brings together unassailable firsthand experience, setting one young man’s personal suffering in the wider context of modern history, giving eyewitness proof to the abuses perpetrated by the North Korean regime.

Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag

The first personal documentation of life in the North Korean labor camps from a survivor and escapee of the communist regime's prisons

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

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Nick Bostrom

Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life.

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on humans than on the species itself, so would the fate of humankind depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed Artificial Intelligence, to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?

This profoundly ambitious and original book breaks down a vast track of difficult intellectual terrain. After an utterly engrossing journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life, we find in Nick Bostrom's work nothing less than a reconceptualization of the essential task of our time.

Paths, Dangers, Strategies

The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. Other animals have stronger muscles or sharper claws, but we have cleverer brains. If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence. But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation? To get closer to an answer to this question, we must make our way through a fascinating landscape of topics and considerations. Read the book and learn about oracles, genies, singletons; about boxing methods, tripwires, and mind crime; about humanity's cosmic endowment and differential technological development; indirect normativity, instrumental convergence, whole brain emulation and technology couplings; Malthusian economics and dystopian evolution; artificial intelligence, and biological cognitive enhancement, and collective intelligence. This profoundly ambitious and original book picks its way carefully through a vast tract of forbiddingly difficult intellectual terrain. Yet the writing is so lucid that it somehow makes it all seem easy. After an utterly engrossing journey that takes us to the frontiers of thinking about the human condition and the future of intelligent life, we find in Nick Bostrom's work nothing less than a reconceptualization of the essential task of our time.

Superintelligence

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In the small town of Holt, Tom Guthrie, a high school teacher, fights to keep his life together and to raise his two boys after their depressed mother first retreats into her bedroom, and then moves away to her sister’s house. The boys, not yet adolescents, struggle to make sense of adult behavior and their mother’s apparent abandonment. A pregnant teenage girl, kicked out by her mother and rejected by the father of her child, searches for a secure place in the world. And far out in the country, two elderly bachelor brothers work the family farm as they have their entire lives, all but isolated from life beyond their own community.

From these separate strands emerges a vision of life—and of the community and landscape that bind them together—that is both luminous and enduring. Plainsong is a story of the abandonment, grief, and stoicism that bring these people together, and it is a story of the kindness, hope, and dignity that redeem their lives. Utterly true to the rhythms and patterns of life, Plainsong is an American classic: a novel to care about, believe in, and learn from.

NOTE: Listed as “Fair” condition because of water damage to the pages, but none of the ink is faded, and there are no missing pages.

Plainsong

In “Beyond Reason,” you will discover five “core concerns” that motivate people: appreciation, affiliation, autonomy, status, and role. You will learn how to use these core concerns to generate helpful emotions in yourself and in others. Armed with this knowledge, you can gauge the needs of another negotiator, set the emotional tone of discussion, and reach a mutually acceptable agreement.

“Beyond Reason” clarifies the complicated, “fuzzy” world of emotions and offers straightforward, practical advice. It builds on previous work of the Harvard Negotiation Project, the group that brought you the groundbreaking book “Getting to YES.” Here, world-renowned negotiator Roger Fisher teams up with psychologist Daniel Shapiro, an expert on the emotional dimension of negotiation. They show you how to employ emotions to turn a disagreement—big or small, professional or personal—into an opportunity for mutual gain.

Fresh, insightful, and relevant to any interaction, “Beyond Reason” is certain to become a lasting classic for dealing with anyone from family and friends to colleagues, customers, and employees.

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Using Emotions as You Negotiate

Beyond Reason

Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives.

Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above seventy degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it’s easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents).

As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph—in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover’s knot.

The Shipping News

Howard E. Gardner

Howard Gardner’s brilliant conception of individual competence has changed the face of education in the two decades since the publication of his classic work, “Frames of Mind.” Thousands of educators, parents, and researchers all over the world have explored the practical implications and applications of his Multiple Intelligences theory—the powerful notion that there are separate human capacities, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in self-understanding. This new edition of “Multiple Intelligences” covers all developments since its original publication in 1993, and stands as the most thorough and up-to-date account of the theory and application of Multiple Intelligences available anywhere. Completely revised throughout, it features new material on global applications and on Multiple Intelligences in the workplace, an assessment of Multiple Intelligences practice in the current conservative educational climate, new evidence about brain functioning, and much more.

The most complete account of the theory and application of Multiple Intelligences available anywhere.

Howard Gardner's brilliant conception of individual competence, known as Multiple Intelligences theory, has changed the face of education. Tens of thousands of educators, parents, and researchers have explored the practical implications and applications of this powerful notion, that there is not one type of intelligence but several, ranging from musical intelligence to the intelligence involved in self-understanding.

Multiple Intelligences distills nearly three decades of research on Multiple Intelligences theory and practice, covering its central arguments and numerous developments since its introduction in 1983. Gardner includes discussions of global applications, Multiple Intelligences in the workplace, an assessment of Multiple Intelligences practice in the current conservative educational climate, new evidence about brain functioning, and much more.

Multiple Intelligences

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Adam W. Seligman

Peter Erskine

Julie A. Furger

In his first book since the bestselling “Fermat’s Enigma”, Simon Singh offers the first sweeping history of encryption, tracing its evolution and revealing the dramatic effects codes have had on wars, nations, and individual lives. From Mary, Queen of Scots, trapped by her own code, to the Navajo Code Talkers who helped the Allies win World War II, to the incredible (and incredibly simple) logisitical breakthrough that made Internet commerce secure, “The Code Book” tells the story of the most powerful intellectual weapon ever known: secrecy.

Throughout the text are clear technical and mathematical explanations, and portraits of the remarkable personalities who wrote and broke the world’s most difficult codes. Accessible, compelling, and remarkably far-reaching, this book will forever alter your view of history and what drives it.  It will also make you wonder how private that e-mail you just sent really is.

The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography

The Code Book

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Cees Nooteboom

The consummate portrait of Spain for all readers, “Roads to Santiago” is an evocative travelogue through the architecture, art, and landscapes of Spain past and present. A richly detailed chronicle of one writer’s thirty-five-year love affair with his adopted second country, this meditation on Spain offers a world not visible to the casual tourist. Nooteboom creates a reverie of the country that so possesses him by invoking the great spirits of Spain’s past—El Cid, Cervantes, the ill-fated Habsburgs, Velázquez, and Zurbarán. Be it a discussion of his trip to the magnificent Prado Museum or his visit to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Guadalupe, Nooteboom writes with the depth and intelligence of a historian, the bravado of an adventurer, and the passion of a poet.

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Roads to Santiago is an evocative travelogue through the sights, sounds, and smells of a little known Spain-its architecture, art, history, landscapes, villages, and people. And as much as it is the story of his travels, it is an elegant and detailed chronicle of Cees Nooteboom's thirty-five-year love affair with his adopted second country. He presents a world not visible to the casual tourist, by invoking the great spirits of Spain's past-El Cid, Cervantes, Alfonso the Chaste and Alfonso the Wise, the ill-fated Hapsburgs, and Velázquez. Be it a discussion of his trip to the magnificent Prado Museum or his visit to the shrine of the Black Madonna of Guadalupe, Nooteboom writes with the depth and intelligence of an historian, the bravado of an adventurer, and the passion of a poet. Reminiscent of Robert Hughes's Barcelona, Roads to Santiago is the consummate portrait of Spain for all readers.

Roads to Santiago

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Paul Krugman

This national bestseller by one of the country’s most influential political commentators surveys a century of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh economic disparities of the Gilded Age to the reemergence of immense social and political inequality since the 1970s. One decade into the twenty-first century, as the tide turns once again, “The Conscience of a Liberal” calls for another great era of reform, outlining a program for change that emphasizes universal health care as the centerpiece of a new New Deal, explaining what can be done to narrow the income gap, and describing the shape of the new political coalition needed to make our society not just more equal but more democratic. This edition includes a new introduction reflecting on the opportunities and challenges that face the country in the wake of the 2008 election.

"The most consistent and courageous--and unapologetic--liberal partisan in American journalism." --Michael Tomasky, New York Review of Books


In this "clear, provocative" (Boston Globe) New York Times bestseller, Paul Krugman, today's most widely read economist, examines the past eighty years of American history, from the reforms that tamed the harsh inequality of the Gilded Age and the 1920s to the unraveling of that achievement and the reemergence of immense economic and political inequality since the 1970s. Seeking to understand both what happened to middle-class America and what it will take to achieve a "new New Deal," Krugman has created his finest book to date, a "stimulating manifesto" offering "a compelling historical defense of liberalism and a clarion call for Americans to retake control of their economic destiny" (Publishers Weekly).

"As Democrats seek a rationale not merely for returning to power, but for fundamentally changing--or changing back--the relationship between America's government and its citizens, Mr. Krugman's arguments will prove vital in the months and years ahead." --Peter Beinart, New York Times

The Conscience of a Liberal

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John Keats

Twenty years ago, when John Keats went to visit the St. Lawrence, he had no idea he would return as the owner of an island he could seldom use and not afford to buy. Nevertheless, when his brother-in-law offered to sell him two acres of rock set in the middle of the Thousand Islands, he felt somehow right in accepting.

Soon he left his job to write full-time, and the island became home to Keats and his family, where they discovered the quiet pleasures of living close to unspoiled nature: the beauty of the changing seasons, the joys of fishing, the savor of fresh food, and the comfort of the river people.

Yet life on the island was not without hardship: isolated in the midst of the river, they had to contend with storms and loneliness. Curiously, in turning inward, and in sharing recreation and strife, the family developed an independence and self-assurance that left them free to turn outward and enter a far larger world.

Looking back on those years, the famed social critic reflects on his life and work, both in the United States and on his island. In recounting the abundant tales and legends, the rites and rituals of this rural and unsophisticated community, Keats suggests a timelessness, a world in harmony with the rhythms of the universe. Against this backdrop, the vulgarity of the summer tourist and the depresations of an ever-encroaching polluted and mechanical society lie like a blight on a summer harvest.

For those who know what it is to escape, if only momentarily, the chaos of cosmopolitan living for the tranquility of a country retreat, or who know what it is to have a home or to be a family, this is truly a book for all seasons.

The Writer Reflects on His Life in the Thousand Islands—And on Life in America

Examines the history of America from Columbus' explorations and the colonial era through the War of 1812.

Of Time and an Island

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Winston Churchill, the visionary hero of Britain’s darkest hours, suffered from bouts of severe depression (he called them his “black dog”) that would have crippled a lesser man. Franz Kafka lived in a state of excruciating anxiety that took him to the edge of hallucinatory madness. Yet, as Anthony Storr shows in this provocative study of the creative mind, both Churchill and Kafka were able to overcome and even to use their pathological conditions in achieving their monumental successes.

In a dazzling, beautifully written series of essays, Storr contends that although highly gifted individuals are far more likely to suffer from mental illness than ordinary people, the “divine discontent” that motivates both artistic and scientific creativity is ultimately a protection against madness. In probing the psyches of Churchill, Kafka, Isaac Newton, Carl Jung, C.P. Snow, and others, Storr persuasively demonstrates the “sanity of true genius.”

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Umberto. Eco; William Weaver

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Saint Maybe

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A Passion for Excellence

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From Eternity to Here

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