Siddhartha Mukherjee

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

New York

A Biography of Cancer

A historical assessment of cancer addresses both the courageous battles against the complex disease and the misperceptions and hubris that have compromised modern understandings, providing coverage of such topics as ancient-world surgeries and the developments of present-day treatments.

The Emperor of All Maladies

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Walter Isaacson

There is a small tear on one page and a small fold on the corner of the next page. 

Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

"A gripping account of how the pioneering scientist Jennifer Doudna, along with her colleagues and rivals, launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and enhance our children"--

The Code Breaker

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Jorge L. Contreras

The top of the pages has started to slightly darken from the sun. 

Inside the Epic Legal Battle to Determine Who Owns Your DNA

In this riveting, behind-the-scenes courtroom drama, a brilliant legal team battles corporate greed and government overreach for our fundamental right to control our genes. When Chris Hansen, an ACLU lawyer, learned that the US government was issuing patents for human genes to biotech companies, his first thought was: How can a corporation own what makes us who we are? Then he discovered that women were being charged exorbitant fees to test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer - all because Myriad Genetics had patented the famous BRCA genes. So he sued them. The Genome Defense gives us a front-row seat as Hansen and a team of ACLU lawyers, along with a committed group of activists, scientists, and physicians, take their one-in-a-million case all the way to the US Supreme Court. Jorge L. Contreras, an attorney at the forefront of genetics law, interviews more than a hundred key players as he lays out the groundbreaking legal strategy to challenge human gene patents. The culmination of years of work, his book is both an intimate look at the cancer survivors whose lives have been affected by this case and a sweeping investigation into the fallout from our technological age of discovery. Like The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Genome Defense is a powerful and compelling story about how society struggles to balance scientific advancement, corporate profits, and the rights of all people.

The Genome Defense

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David Bainbridge

There is a small piece torn from the front cover. The last page is slightly ripped from the spine. 

The Art of Animal Anatomy

A lavishly illustrated compendium of the art and history of animal anatomy from antiquity to today For more than two thousand years, comparative anatomy—the study of anatomical variation among different animal species—has been used to make arguments in natural philosophy, reinforce religious dogma, and remind us of our own mortality. This stunningly illustrated compendium traces the intertwined intellectual and artistic histories of comparative anatomy from antiquity to today. Stripped Bare brings together some of the most arresting images ever produced, from the earliest studies of animal form to the technicolor art of computer-generated anatomies. David Bainbridge draws on representative illustrations from different eras to discuss the philosophical, scientific, and artistic milieus from which they emerged. He vividly describes the unique aesthetics of each phase of anatomical endeavor, providing new insights into the exquisite anatomical drawings of Leonardo and Albrecht Dürer in the era before printing, Jean Héroard’s cutting and cataloging of the horse during the age of Louis XIII, the exotic pictorial menageries of the Comte de Buffon in the eighteenth century, anatomical illustrations from Charles Darwin’s voyages, the lavish symmetries of Ernst Haeckel’s prints, and much, much more. Featuring a wealth of breathtaking color illustrations throughout, Stripped Bare is a panoramic tour of the intricacies of vertebrate life as well as an expansive history of the peculiar and beautiful ways humans have attempted to study and understand the natural world.

Stripped Bare

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Hayao Miyazaki

Some marks and wear on edges of pages. One page corner folded. 

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

Japan's most popular filmmaker speaks on life, love, and the world of anime.

The Starting Point...of the Greatest Career in Animation HistoryIn the first two decades of his career, filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki laid the groundwork for his legendary movies. Starting Point is a collection of essays, interviews, and memoir that go back to the roots of Miyazaki's childhood, the formulation of his theories of animation, and the founding of Studio Ghibli.Before directing such acclaimed films as Spirited Away, Miyazaki was just another salaried animator, but with a vision of his own. Follow him as he takes his first steps on the road to success, experience his frustrations with the manga and animation industries that often suffocate creativity, and realize the importance of bringing the childhood dreams of the world to life.Starting Point: 1979-1996 is not just a chronicle of the life of a man whose own dreams have come true, it is a tribute to the power of the moving image.

In the first two decades of his career, filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki laid the groundwork for his legendary movies. Starting Point is a collection of essays, interviews, and memoirs that go back to the roots of Miyazaki's childhood, the formulation of his theories of animation, and the founding of Studio Ghibli.

Before directing such acclaimed films as Spirited Away, Miyazaki was just another salaried animator, but with a vision of his own. Follow him as he takes his first steps on the road to success, experience his frustrations with the manga and animation industries that often suffocate creativity, and realize the importance of bringing the childhood dreams of the world to life.

Starting Point: 1979-1996 is not just a chronicle of the life of a man whose own dreams have come true, it is a tribute to the power of the moving image.

Starting Point: 1979-1996

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Liz Scheier

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A Memoir

Liz Scheier’s darkly funny and touching memoir—with shades of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle and Mira Bartók’s The Memory Palace—of growing up in ’90s Manhattan with a brilliant, mendacious single mother Scheier’s mother Judith was a news junkie, a hilarious storyteller, a fast-talking charmer you couldn’t look away from, a single mother whose devotion crossed the line into obsession, and—when in the grips of the mental illness that plagued every day of her life—a violent and abusive liar whose hold on reality was shaky at best. On an uneventful afternoon when Scheier was eighteen, her mother sauntered into the room to tell her two important things: one, she had been married for most of Scheier’s life to a man she’d never heard of, and two, the man she’d told Scheier was her father was entirely fictional. She’d made him up. Those two big lies were the start, but not the end; it took dozens of smaller lies to support them, and by the time she was done she had built a farcical, half-true life for the two of them, from fake social security number to fabricated husband. One hot July day twenty years later, Scheier receives a voicemail from Adult Protective Services, reporting that Judith has stopped paying rent and is refusing all offers of assistance. That call is the start of a shocking journey that takes the Scheiers, mother and daughter, deep into the cascading effects of decades of lies and deception. Never Simple is the story of learning to survive—and, finally, trying to save—a complicated parent, as feared as she is loved, and as self-destructive as she is adoring.

Never Simple

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Peter Ackroyd

The History of England from Its Earliest Beginnings to the Tudors

"An extraordinary book . . . Peter Ackroyd is arguably the most talented and prolific writer working in Britain today." --Daily Express (UK)

In Foundation, acclaimed historian Peter Ackroyd tells the epic story of England itself. He takes us from the primeval forests of England's prehistory to the death, in 1509, of the first Tudor king, Henry VII. He guides us from the building of Stonehenge to the founding of the two great glories of medieval England: common law and the cathedrals. He describes the successive waves of invaders who made England English, despite being themselves Roman, Viking, Saxon, or Norman French.

With his extraordinary skill for evoking time and place and his acute eye for the telling detail, Ackroyd recounts the story of warring kings, of civil strife, and foreign wars. But he also gives us a vivid sense of how England's early people lived: the homes they built, the clothes they wore, the food they ate, even the jokes they told. All are brought to life in this history of England through the narrative mastery of one of Britain's finest writers.

Foundation

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William J. Bernstein

Financial Bubbles, End-Times Manias, and the Reasons People Go Mad in Groups

From the award-winning author of A Splendid Exchange, a fascinating new history of financial and religious mass manias over the past five centuries

The Delusions of Crowds

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Carol Mack

Dinah Mack

Wear along edges. The back cover has a crease. 

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

Explains how to identify the many species of demons, where to find them, and the traditional ways of appeasing or dispelling them

A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels and Other Subversive Spirits

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L.m. Arroyo

There are marks/stains on the front and back covers that will not wipe off. 

An Exploration of Indigenous Beliefs and Cultures

Native American Spiritualism

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Tim Mackintosh-Smith

No Author Listed

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Travels in Dictionary Land

Our ideas of the Arabian Peninusula have been hijacked: by images of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War. But there is another Arabia. For the Classical geographers Yemen was a fabulous land where flying serpents guarded sacred incense groves. Medieval Arab visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains. Vita Sackville-West found Aden 'precisely the most repulsive corner of the world'. Arguably the most fascinating but least known country in the Arab world, Yemen has a way of attracting comment that ranges from the superficial to the wildly fictitious. In Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, Tim Mackintosh-Smith writes with an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through over twenty years among the Yemenis. He is a travelling companion of the best sort - erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and three millennia of history, he portrays hyrax hunters and dhow skippers, a noseless regicide, and a sword-wielding tyrant with a passion for Heinz Russian salad. Yet even the ordinary Yemenis are extraordinary: their family tree goes back to Noah and is rooted in a land which, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the dictionary of its people. Every page of this book is dashed - like the land it describes - with the marvellous.

Yemen

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Mark Kurlansky

Wear along edges and on spine. There is a name sticker on the inside cover. 

A World History

“Kurlansky finds the world in a grain of salt.” - New York Times Book Review An unlikely world history from the bestselling author of Cod and The Basque History of the World In his fifth work of nonfiction, Mark Kurlansky turns his attention to a common household item with a long and intriguing history: salt. The only rock we eat, salt has shaped civilization from the very beginning, and its story is a glittering, often surprising part of the history of humankind. A substance so valuable it served as currency, salt has influenced the establishment of trade routes and cities, provoked and financed wars, secured empires, and inspired revolutions. Populated by colorful characters and filled with an unending series of fascinating details, Salt is a supremely entertaining, multi-layered masterpiece.

Salt

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Heavy wear on spine and covers. Tear on front cover. 

Basic Lessons in an Ancient Art

Mastering the Tarot

Elizabeth Kolbert

Some wear and small marks on the covers. There is the remnants of a sticker on the back cover that I can't get off. 

An Unnatural History

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy and Elizabeth Kolbert's book urgently compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

The Sixth Extinction

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Kelly J. Cogswell

My Life As a Lesbian Avenger

Coming-of-age memoir and account of the Lesbian Avengers, an American lesbian action group focused on lesbian visibility and survival, founded in 1992.

Eating Fire

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Alex Perry

Edges of pages have darkened from the sun. 

A New Africa Breaks Free

Alex Perry's lyrical exploration of the new Africa reveals the continent at a time of extraordinary change. Taking the Great Rift Valley - the geological fault that will eventually tear Africa in two - as his central metaphor, Perry explores the split between a resurgent Africa and a world at odds with its rise. Africa has long been misunderstood - and abused - by outsiders. Perry travelled the continent for most of a decade, meeting with entrepreneurs and warlords, professors and cocaine smugglers, presidents and jihadis, among many others. Opening with a devastating investigation into a largely unreported war crime in Somalia in 2011, he finds Africa at a moment of furious self-assertion. This is a remade continent, defiantly rising from centuries of oppression to become an economic and political titan: where cash is becoming a thing of the past, where astronomers are unlocking the origin of life and where, twenty-five years after Live Aid, Ethiopia's first yuppies are traders on an electronic food exchange. Yet, as Africa finally wins the substance of its freedom, it must confront the three last false prophets of Islamists, dictators and aid workers, who would keep it in its bonds. Beautifully written, intimately reported and passionately argued, THE RIFT is a vivid and provocative look at how the world gets Africa wrong, and how a resurgent Africa is forcing us to think again.

The Rift

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Zach Vertin

The Making and Unmaking of the World's Newest State

The untold story of America's attempt to forge a nation from scratch, from euphoric birth to heart-wrenching collapse.

South Sudan's independence was celebrated around the world--a triumph for global justice and an end to one of the world's most devastating wars.  But the party would not last long: South Sudan's freedom fighters soon plunged their new nation into chaos, shattering the promise of liberation and exposing the hubris of their foreign backers. 

Chronicling extraordinary stories of hope, identity, and survival, A Rope from the Sky journeys inside an epic tale of paradise won and then lost. This character-driven narrative is first a story of power, promise, greed, compassion, violence, and redemption from the world's most neglected patch of territory.  But it is also a story about the best and worst of America--both its big-hearted ideals and its difficult reckoning with the limits of American power amid a changing global landscape.

Zach's Vertin's firsthand acounts, from deadly war zones to the halls of Washington power, brings readers inside this remarkable episode--an unprecedented experiment in state-building and a cautionary tale.  It is brilliant and breathtaking, a moder-day Greek tragedy that will challenge our perspectives on global politics.

A Rope from the Sky

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Writers of Color on the New American South

A fierce collection of essays that tackle the question, "Who is welcome?" while also uplifting and celebrating the incredible diversity in the contemporary South, by twenty-one of the finest young writers of color living and working there. Essays in A Measure of Belonging: Writers of Color on the New American South, examine issues of sex, gender, academia, family, immigration, health, social justice, sports, music, and more. Kiese Laymon navigates the racial politics of publishing while recording his audiobook in Mississippi. Regina Bradley moves to Indiana and grapples with a landscape devoid of her Southern cultural touchstones, like Popeyes and OutKast. Aruni Kashyap apartment hunts in Athens and encounters a minefield of invasive questions. Frederick McKindra delves into the particularly Southern history of Beyonce's black majorettes. From the DMV to the college basketball court to doctors' offices, there are no shortage of places of tension in the American South. Urgent, necessary, funny, and poignant, these essays from new and established voices confront the complexities of the South's relationship with race, uncovering the particular difficulties and profound joys of being a southerner in the 21st century. With writing from Cinelle Barnes, Jaswinder Bolina, Regina Bradley, Jennifer Hope Choi, Tiana Clark, Christena Cleveland, Osayi Endolyn, M. Evelina Galang, Minda Honey, Gary Jackson, Toni Jensen, Aruni Kashyap, Latria Graham, Soniah Kamal, Frederick McKindra, Devi Laskar, Kiese Laymon, Nichole Perkins, Joy Priest, Ivelisse Rodriguez, and Natalia Sylvester.

A Measure of Belonging

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Benjamin Ajak

Benson Deng

Alephonsion Deng

There is marker on the top of the page and some marks on the edges. 

The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan

Benjamin, Alepho, and Benson were raised among the Dinka tribe of Sudan. Their world was an insulated, close-knit community of grass-roofed cottages, cattle herders, and tribal councils. The lions and pythons that prowled beyond the village fences were the greatest threat they knew. All that changed the night the government-armed Murahiliin began attacking their villages. Amid the chaos, screams, conflagration, and gunfire, five-year-old Benson and seven-year-old Benjamin fled into the dark night. Two years later, Alepho, age seven, was forced to do the same. Across the Southern Sudan, over the next five years, thousands of other boys did likewise, joining this stream of child refugees that became known as the Lost Boys. Their journey would take them over one thousand miles across a war-ravaged country, through landmine-sown paths, crocodile-infested waters, and grotesque extremes of hunger, thirst, and disease. The refugee camps they eventually filtered through offered little respite from the brutality they were fleeing. In They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, Alepho, Benson, and Benjamin, by turn, recount their experiences along this unthinkable journey. They vividly recall the family, friends, and tribal world they left far behind them and their desperate efforts to keep track of one another. This is a captivating memoir of Sudan and a powerful portrait of war as seen through the eyes of children. And it is, in the end, an inspiring and unforgettable tribute to the tenacity of even the youngest human spirits.

They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky

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Richard Cockett

Darfur and the Failure of an African State

Over the past two decades, the situation in Africa's largest country, Sudan, has progressively deteriorated: the country is in second position on the Failed States Index, a war in Darfur has claimed hundreds of thousands of deaths, President Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, a forthcoming referendum on independence for Southern Sudan threatens to split the country violently apart.

In this fascinating and immensely readable book, the Africa editor of the Economist gives an absorbing account of Sudan's descent into failure and what some have called genocide. Drawing on interviews with many of the main players, Richard Cockett explains how and why Sudan has disintegrated, looking in particular at the country's complex relationship with the wider world. He shows how the United States and Britain were initially complicit in Darfur--but also how a broad coalition of human-rights activists, right-wing Christians, and opponents of slavery succeeded in bringing the issues to prominence in the United States and creating an impetus for change at the highest level.

Sudan

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James Welch

Paul Stekler

The Battle of Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians

The classic account of Custer\'s Last Stand that shattered the myth of the Little Bighorn and rewrote history books.

This historic and personal work tells the Native American side of Custer\'s fabled attack, poignantly revealing how disastrous the encounter was for the "victors," the last great gathering of Plains Indians under the leadership of Sitting Bull.

Killing Custer

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David Hajdu

The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America

In the years between World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium, American popular culture as we know it was first created--in the pulpy, boldly illustrated pages of comic books. No sooner had this new culture emerged than it was beaten down by church groups, community bluestockings, and a McCarthyish Congress--only to resurface with a crooked smile on its face in Mad magazine. The story of the rise and fall of those comic books has never been fully told--until The Ten-Cent Plague. David Hajdu's remarkable new book vividly opens up the lost world of comic books, its creativity, irreverence, and suspicion of authority. When we picture the 1950s, we hear the sound of early rock and roll. The Ten-Cent Plague shows how--years before music--comics brought on a clash between children and their parents, between prewar and postwar standards. Created by outsiders from the tenements, garish, shameless, and often shocking, comics spoke to young people and provided the guardians of mainstream culture with a big target. Parents, teachers, and complicit kids burned comics in public bonfires. Cities passed laws to outlaw comics. Congress took action with televised hearings that nearly destroyed the careers of hundreds of artists and writers. The Ten-Cent Plague radically revises common notions of popular culture, the generation gap, and the divide between "high" and "low" art. As he did with the lives of Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington (in Lush Life) and Bob Dylan and his circle (in Positively 4th Street), Hajdu brings a place, a time, and a milieu unforgettably back to life.

The Ten-Cent Plague

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Gayla Partridge

Blue Star Press

An Embroidery Book of Simple Stitches and Peculiar Patterns

Step inside the enchanted world of arcane imagery and rich esoteric symbolism in this deeply imaginative embroidery art book! Author Gayla Partridge draws upon her knowledge of vintage anatomical artwork, floral design, palmistry, Ouija, and oddities from the natural world to create magical, witchy twists on an age-old craft. Through extraordinary, stylized photography and detailed close-ups of designs, the embroidery art in Stitchcraft is entirely achievable with basic stitches and easy-to-follow instructions, enchanting beginners and expert crafters alike. Stitchcraft features: • 30 intricate embroidery designs, using a combination of nine basic stitches • Insights from the author on how she created each piece • 30 basic patterns to get you started embroidering your own version of her designs From the anatomy of a snake to floral skulls, from palmistry hands to botanical hearts, readers will be inspired to recreate Partridge’s spellbinding designs and to make them their own.

Stitchcraft

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Maura Spiegel

There is marker on the spine. The edges are dirty. Edges have wear. 

Writings on Death, Dying, and Living On

This compelling anthology of poems, letters, historical documents, essays, and fictions on the emotions, experiences, and rituals accompanying death and dying. The Grim Reader offers a fresh and unmediated encounter with mortality and the many dimensions of grief. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

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