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Booklists for Adults & Teens
Find great reading lists, ordered by subject, for adults and teens.
Booklist of the Month APAHM
May is Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month
A celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States! Like most commemorative months, Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month originated with Congress - in 1992, Congress passed Public Law 102-450, which annually designated May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. The month of May was chosen to commemorate the immigration of the first Japanese to the United States on May 7, 1843, and to mark the anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869. The majority of the workers who laid the tracks were Chinese immigrants.
Eye Level by
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Winner of the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, selected by Juan Felipe Herrera For years now, I've been using the wrong palette. Each year with its itchy blue, as the bruise of solitude reaches its expiration date. Planes and buses, guesthouse to guesthouse. I've gotten to where I am by dint of my poor eyesight, my overreactive motion sickness. 9 p.m., Hanoi's Old Quarter: duck porridge and plum wine. Voices outside the door come to a soft boil. --from "Phnom Penh Diptych: Dry Season" Jenny Xie's award-winning debut,Eye Level, takes us far and near, to Phnom Penh, Corfu, Hanoi, New York, and elsewhere, as we travel closer and closer to the acutely felt solitude that centers this searching, moving collection. Animated by a restless inner questioning, these poems meditate on the forces that moor the self and set it in motion, from immigration to travel to estranging losses and departures. The sensual worlds here--colors, smells, tastes, and changing landscapes--bring to life questions about the self as seer andthe self as seen. As Xie writes, "Me? I'm just here in my traveler's clothes, trying on each passing town for size." Her taut, elusive poems exult in a life simultaneously crowded and quiet, caught in between things and places, and never quite entirely at home. Xie is a poet of extraordinary perception--both to the tangible world and to "all that is untouchable as far as the eye can reach."
The Future is Asian: Commerce, Conflict and Culture in the 21st Century by Call Number: eAudiobook
The Souls of Yellow Folk by Call Number: eAudiobook
The Best We Could Do by
National bestseller 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist ABA Indies Introduce Winter / Spring 2017 Selection Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Spring 2017 Selection ALA 2018 Notable Books Selection An intimate and poignant graphic novel portraying one family's journey from war-torn Vietnam, from debut author Thi Bui. This beautifully illustrated and emotional story is an evocative memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for the past. Exploring the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child and her family, Bui documents the story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves. At the heart of Bui's story is a universal struggle: While adjusting to life as a first-time mother, she ultimately discovers what it means to be a parent--the endless sacrifices, the unnoticed gestures, and the depths of unspoken love. Despite how impossible it seems to take on the simultaneous roles of both parent and child, Bui pushes through. With haunting, poetic writing and breathtaking art, she examines the strength of family, the importance of identity, and the meaning of home. In what Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls "a book to break your heart and heal it," The Best We Could Dobrings to life Thi Bui's journey of understanding, and provides inspiration to all of those who search for a better future while longing for a simpler past.
The Sympathizer by
The winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as seven other awards,The Sympathizer is the breakthrough novel of the year. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Saul Bellow,The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal. The narrator, a communist double agent, is a "man of two minds," a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain who arranges to come to America after the Fall of Saigon, and while building a new life with other Vietnamese refugees in Los Angeles is secretly reporting back to his communist superiors in Vietnam.The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.
The Collective by
In 1988, Eric Cho, an aspiring writer, arrives at Macalester College. On his first day he meets a beautiful fledgling painter, Jessica Tsai, and another would-be novelist, the larger-than-life Joshua Yoon. Brilliant, bawdy, generous, and manipulative, Joshua alters the course of their lives, rallying them together when they face an adolescent act of racism. As adults in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three friends reunite as the 3AC, the Asian American Artists Collective--together negotiating the demands of art, love, commerce, and idealism until another racially tinged controversy hits the headlines, this time with far greater consequences. Long after the 3AC has disbanded, Eric reflects on these events as he tries to make sense of Joshua's recent suicide.With wit, humor, and compassion, The Collective explores the dream of becoming an artist, and questions whether the reality is worth the sacrifice.
Lucky Boy by
Solimar Castro-Valdez is eighteen and drunk on optimism when she embarks on a perilous journey across the US/Mexican border. Weeks later she arrives on her cousin's doorstep in Berkeley, CA, dazed by first love found then lost, and pregnant. This was not the plan. But amid the uncertainty of new motherhood and her American identity, Soli learns that when you have just one precious possession, you guard it with your life. For Soli, motherhood becomes her dwelling and the boy at her breast her hearth. Kavya Reddy has always followed her heart, much to her parents' chagrin. A mostly contented chef at a UC Berkeley sorority house, the unexpected desire to have a child descends like a cyclone in Kavya's mid-thirties. When she can't get pregnant, this desire will test her marriage, it will test her sanity, and it will set Kavya and her husband, Rishi, on a collision course with Soli, when she is detained and her infant son comes under Kavya's care. As Kavya learns to be a mother-the singing, story-telling, inventor-of-the-universe kind of mother she fantasized about being-she builds her love on a fault line, her heart wrapped around someone else's child. Lucky Boy is an emotional journey that will leave you certain of the redemptive beauty of this world. There are no bad guys in this story, no single obvious hero. Sekaran has taken real life and applied it to fiction; the results are moving and revelatory.
Mad Country by
Samrat Upadhyay's new collection vibrates at the edges of intersecting cultures. Journalists in Kathmandu are targeted by the government. A Nepali man studying in America drops out of school and finds himself a part of the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. A white American woman moves to Nepal and changes her name. A Nepali man falls in love with a mysterious foreign black woman. A rich kid is caught up in his own fantasies of poverty and bank robbery. In the title story, a powerful woman, the owner of a construction company, becomes a political prisoner, and in stark and unflinching prose we see both her world and her mind radically remade. Through the course of the stories in this collection, Upadhyay builds new modes of seeing our interconnected contemporary world. A collection of formal inventiveness, heartbreak and hope, it reaffirms Upadhyay's position as one or our most important chroniclers of globalization and exile.
Finding Samuel Lowe by
Spanning four generations and moving between New York, Jamaica, and China, a powerful memoir that is a universal story of one woman's search for her maternal grandfather and the key to her self-identity. Thanks to her spiteful, jealous Jamaican mother, Nell Vera Lowe was cut off from her Chinese father, Samuel, when she was just a baby, after he announced he was taking a Chinese bride. By the time Nell was old enough to travel to her father's shop in St. Ann's Bay, he'd taken his family back to China, never learning what became of his eldest daughter. Bereft, Nell left Jamaica for New York to start a new life. But her Asian features set her apart from her Harlem neighbors and even her own children--a difference that contributed to her feeling of loneliness and loss which she instilled in her only daughter, Paula. Years later, with a successful corporate career behind her and the arrival of her only grandchild raising questions about family and legacy, Paula decided to search for Samuel Lowe's descendants in China. With the support of her brothers and the help of encouraging strangers, Paula eventually pieced together the full story of her grandfather's life, following his story from China to Jamaica and back, and connecting with 300 surprised relatives who were overjoyed to meet her. Finding Samuel Lowe is a remarkable journey about one woman's path to self-discovery. It is a story about love and devotion that transcends time and race, and a beautiful reflection of the power of family and the interconnectedness of our world. Finding Samuel Lowe includes a 16-page black-and-white photo insert and photos in the text.
Bright Lines by
Short-listed for the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize For as long as she can remember, Ella has longed to feel at home. Orphaned as a child after her parents' murder, and afflicted with hallucinations at dusk, she's always felt more at ease in nature than with people. She traveled from Bangladesh to Brooklyn to live with the Saleems: her uncle Anwar, aunt Hashi, and their beautiful daughter, Charu, her complete opposite. One summer, when Ella returns home from college, she discovers Charu's friend Maya - an Islamic cleric's runaway daughter - asleep in her bedroom. As the girls have a summer of clandestine adventure and sexual awakenings, Anwar - owner of a popular botanical apothecary - has his own secrets, threatening his thirty-year marriage. But when tragedy strikes, the Saleems find themselves blamed. To keep his family from unraveling, Anwar takes them on a fated trip to Bangladesh, to reckon with the past, their extended family, and each other. 'A Brooklyn-by-way-of-Bangladesh Royal Tenenbaums. A pot-tinged, PTSD Muslim Sesame Street. With sex. Hallucinations, hijabs and handlebars on the always-busy Atlantic Avenue. The New York sense of place inBright Lines rivals the recent memory of Teju Cole's Open City.' The Denver Post 'Tanwi Nandini Islam makes waves with her debut novel, which traverses from Bangladesh to Brooklyn exploring the secrets of three young women.' Time Magazine 'The miracles in Bright Lines are the understated moments of family telepathy . . . An understated queer coming-of-age, a study of how much work it is to be a family, and a snapshot of a disappearing Brooklyn, set against the ghosts of the past, and a search for home.' NPR.org 'A family, blended in unexpectedly compassionate ways, takes you on a tour of Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue, Bangladesh, and all the ways we make our lives more complicated than they ever had to be. For many of Islam's well-crafted characters, home is a place they've never actually been, but somehow dream to return to someday.' Ashley Ford, Elle.com 'Vivid and captivating . . . Spell-binding and a page turner . . . Bright Lines takes place in a Brooklyn that shimmers like a mirage - at once vivid and surreal . . . A very promising debut that explores family, love, loss, and the painful process of growing up in a way that is both timeless and modern.' Emma Cueto, Bustle 'Tanwi Nandini Islam has given Zadie Smith's White Teeth an American cousin where the characters of Bangladeshi origin are situated in America (Brooklyn to be exact) and not London. It's a story of immigrants and their children, family secrets, and feeling like a stranger in a place you're told is home. It's a damn fine first book - easily one of the best debuts of the year.' Jason Diamond, Electric Literature
Diamond Head by
A sweeping debut, crossing from China to Hawaii, that follows three generations of a wealthy dynasty whose rise and decline is riddled with secrets and tragic love—from a young, powerful new voice in fiction Frank Leong, a prominent shipping industrialist and head of the celebrated Leong family, brings his loved ones from China to Hawaii at the turn of the twentieth century, abandoning his interests at the port of Tsingtao when the Japanese invade. But something ancient follows the Leongs to the islands, haunting them—the parable of the red string of fate. According to Chinese legend, the red string binds one to her intended beloved, but also punishes for mistakes in love, twisting any misstep into a destructive knot that passes down through generations. When Frank Leong is murdered on Oahu, his family is thrown into a perilous downward spiral. Left to rebuild in their patriarch's shadow, the surviving Leongs attempt a new, ordinary life, vowing to bury their gilded past. Still, the island continues to whisper—fragmented pieces of truth and chatter—until a letter arrives two decades later, carrying a confession that shatters the family even further. Now the Leongs' survival rests with young Theresa, Frank's only grandchild. Eighteen and pregnant, Theresa holds the answers to her family's mysteries and is left to carry the burden of their mistakes. On the day of her father's funeral, as the Leongs gather to mourn the loss of their firstborn son, Theresa must decide what stories to tell, with whom to side, and which knots will endure for another generation. Told through the eyes of the Leongs' secret-keeping daughters and wives—and spanning the Boxer Rebellion, Pearl Harbor, and 1960s Hawaii—Diamond Head is an exploration of whether there's such a thing as a legacy of the heart. Passionate and devastating, it is a story filled with love, lies, loss, and—most astounding of all—hope.
memorial day
National Military Appreciation Month
Fiction and non-fiction.
While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!
Red Platoon by
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The only comprehensive, firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Keating by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha, for readers of Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden and Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell. "'It doesn't get better.' To us, that phrase nailed one of the essential truths, maybe even the essential truth, about being stuck at an outpost whose strategic and tactical vulnerabilities were so glaringly obvious to every soldier who had ever set foot in that place that the name itself--Keating--had become a kind of backhanded joke." In 2009, Clinton Romesha of Red Platoon and the rest of the Black Knight Troop were preparing to shut down Command Outpost (COP) Keating, the most remote and inaccessible in a string of bases built by the US military in Nuristan and Kunar in the hope of preventing Taliban insurgents from moving freely back and forth between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Three years after its construction, the army was finally ready to concede what the men on the ground had known immediately: it was simply too isolated and too dangerous to defend. On October 3, 2009, after years of constant smaller attacks, the Taliban finally decided to throw everything they had at Keating. The ensuing fourteen-hour battle--and eventual victory--cost eight men their lives. Red Platoon is the riveting firsthand account of the Battle of Keating, told by Romesha, who spearheaded both the defense of the outpost and the counterattack that drove the Taliban back beyond the wire and received the Medal of Honor for his actions. "A vitally important story that needs to be understood by the public, and I cannot imagine an account that does it better justice that Romesha's."--Sebastian Junger, journalist and author of The Perfect Storm "Red Platoon is sure to become a classic of the genre."--Hampton Sides, author of Ghost Soldiers and In the Kingdom of Ice
Helmet for My Pillow by
"A grand and epic prose poem . . . The purely human experience of war in the Pacific, written in the graceful imagery of a human being who--somehow--survived."--Tom Hanks See Robert Leckie's story in the HBO miniseries The Pacific Here is one of the most riveting first-person accounts ever to come out of World War II. Robert Leckie enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in January 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In Helmet for My Pillow we follow his odyssey, from basic training on Parris Island, South Carolina, all the way to the raging battles in the Pacific, where some of the war's fiercest fighting took place. Recounting his service with the 1st Marine Division and the brutal action on Guadalcanal, New Britain, and Peleliu, Leckie spares no detail of the horrors and sacrifices of war, painting an unvarnished portrait of how real warriors are made, fight, and often die in the defense of their country. From the live-for-today rowdiness of marines on leave to the terrors of jungle warfare against an enemy determined to fight to the last man, Leckie describes what war is really like when victory can only be measured inch by bloody inch. Woven throughout are Leckie's hard-won, eloquent, and thoroughly unsentimental meditations on the meaning of war and why we fight. Unparalleled in its immediacy and accuracy, Helmet for My Pillow will leave no reader untouched. This is a book that brings you as close to the mud, the blood, and the experience of war as it is safe to come.
Soldier Dogs by
A leading reporter offers a tour of military working dogs' extraordinary training, heroic accomplishments, and the lasting impacts they have on those who work with them. People all over the world have been riveted by the story of Cairo, the Belgian Malinois who was a part of the Navy SEAL team that led the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. A dog's natural intelligence, physical abilities, and pure loyalty contribute more to our military efforts than ever before. You don't have to be a dog lover to be fascinated by the idea that a dog-the cousin of that furry guy begging for scraps under your table-could be one of the heroes who helped execute the most vital and high-tech military mission of the new millennium. Now Maria Goodavage, editor and featured writer for one of the world's most widely read dog blogs, tells heartwarming stories of modern soldier dogs and the amazing bonds that develop between them and their handlers. Beyond tales of training, operations, retirement, and adoption into the families of fallen soldiers, Goodavage talks to leading dog-cognition experts about why dogs like nothing more than to be on a mission with a handler they trust, no matter how deadly the IEDs they are sniffing, nor how far they must parachute or rappel from aircraft into enemy territory. "Military working dogs live for love and praise from their handlers," says Ron Aiello, president of the United States War Dogs Association and a former marine scout dog handler. "The work is all a big game, and then they get that pet, that praise. They would do anything for their handler." This is an unprecedented window into the world of these adventurous, loving warriors.
Redeployment by
Winner of the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction · Winner of the John Leonard First Book Prize · Selected as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review, Time, Newsweek, The Washington Post Book World, Amazon, and more Phil Klay's Redeployment takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned. Interwoven with themes of brutality and faith, guilt and fear, helplessness and survival, the characters in these stories struggle to make meaning out of chaos. In "Redeployment", a soldier who has had to shoot dogs because they were eating human corpses must learn what it is like to return to domestic life in suburbia, surrounded by people "who have no idea where Fallujah is, where three members of your platoon died." In "After Action Report", a Lance Corporal seeks expiation for a killing he didn't commit, in order that his best friend will be unburdened. A Morturary Affairs Marine tells about his experiences collecting remains--of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers both. A chaplain sees his understanding of Christianity, and his ability to provide solace through religion, tested by the actions of a ferocious Colonel. And in the darkly comic "Money as a Weapons System", a young Foreign Service Officer is given the absurd task of helping Iraqis improve their lives by teaching them to play baseball. These stories reveal the intricate combination of monotony, bureaucracy, comradeship and violence that make up a soldier's daily life at war, and the isolation, remorse, and despair that can accompany a soldier's homecoming. Redeployment is poised to become a classic in the tradition of war writing. Across nations and continents, Klay sets in devastating relief the two worlds a soldier inhabits: one of extremes and one of loss. Written with a hard-eyed realism and stunning emotional depth, this work marks Phil Klay as one of the most talented new voices of his generation.
Dead Wake by
#1 New York Times Bestseller From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds"--the fastest liner then in service--and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small--hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.
No Easy Day by
The #1 New York Times bestselling first-person account of the planning and execution of the Bin Laden raid from a Navy SEAL who confronted the terrorist mastermind and witnessed his final moments. From the streets of Iraq to the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips in the Indian Ocean, and from the mountaintops of Afghanistan to the third floor of Osama Bin Laden's compound, operator Mark Owen of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group--known as SEAL Team Six--has been a part of some of the most memorable special operations in history, as well as countless missions that never made headlines. No Easy Day puts readers alongside Owen and his fellow SEAL team members as they train for the biggest mission of their lives. The blow-by-blow narrative of the assault, beginning with the helicopter crash that could have ended Owen's life straight through to the radio call confirming Bin Laden's death, is an essential piece of modern history. In No Easy Day, Owen also takes readers into the War on Terror and details the formation of the most elite units in the military. Owen's story draws on his youth in Alaska and describes the SEALs' quest to challenge themselves at the highest levels of physical and mental endurance. With boots-on-the-ground detail, Owen describes several missions that illustrate the life and work of a SEAL and the evolution of the team after the events of September 11. In telling the true story of the SEALs whose talents, skills, experiences, and exceptional sacrifices led to one of the greatest victories in the War on Terror, Mark Owen honors the men who risk everything for our country, and he leaves readers with a deep understanding of the warriors who keep America safe.
Unbroken (Movie Tie-In Edition) by
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The incredible true story of survival and salvation that is the basis for two major motion pictures: 2014's Unbroken and the upcoming Unbroken: Path to Redemption. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane's bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant's name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he'd been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and hum∨ brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man's journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit. Praise for Unbroken "Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic."--The Wall Street Journal "[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring."--New York "Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand's writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don't dare take your eyes off the page."--People "A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life."--The Washington Post "Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book."--The New York Times Book Review "Marvelous . . . Unbroken is wonderful twice over, for the tale it tells and for the way it's told. . . . It manages maximum velocity with no loss of subtlety."--Newsweek "Moving and, yes, inspirational . . . [Laura] Hillenbrand's unforgettable book . . . deserve[s] pride of place alongside the best works of literature that chart the complications and the hard-won triumphs of so-called ordinary Americans and their extraordinary time."--Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air "Hillenbrand . . . tells [this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter's pace."--Time "Unbroken is too much book to hope for: a hellride of a story in the grip of the one writer who can handle it."--Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run
Generation Kill by
They were called a generation without heroes. Then they were called upon to be heroes. Within hours of 9/11, America's war on terrorism fell to those like the twenty-three Marines of the First Recon Battalion, the first generation dispatched into open-ended combat since Vietnam. They were a new breed of American warrior unrecognizable to their forebears-soldiers raised on hip-hop, Internet porn, Marilyn Manson, video games, and The Real World, a band of born-again Christians, dopers, Buddhists, and New Agers who gleaned their precepts from kung fu movies and Oprah Winfrey. Cocky, brave, headstrong, wary, and mostly unprepared for the physical, emotional, and moral horrors ahead, the "First Suicide Battalion" would spearhead the blitzkrieg on Iraq and fight against the hardest resistance Saddam had to offer.Generation Kill is the funny, frightening, and profane firsthand account of these remarkable men, of the personal toll of victory, and of the randomness, brutality, and camaraderie of a new American war.
Call Number: eAudiobook
Devotion by
THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER * SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE * From America's "forgotten war" in Korea comes an unforgettable tale of courage by the author of A Higher Call. Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy's most famous aviator duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African American sharecropper's son from Mississippi, Jesse became the navy's first black carrier pilot, defending a nation that wouldn't even serve him in a bar. While much of America remained divided by segregation, Jesse and Tom joined forces as wingmen in Fighter Squadron 32. Adam Makos takes us into the cockpit as these bold young aviators cut their teeth at the world's most dangerous job--landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier--a line of work that Jesse's young wife, Daisy, struggles to accept. Deployed to the Mediterranean, Tom and Jesse meet the Fleet Marines, boys like PFC "Red" Parkinson, a farm kid from the Catskills. In between war games in the sun, the young men revel on the Riviera, partying with millionaires and even befriending the Hollywood starlet Elizabeth Taylor. Then comes the war no one expected, in faraway Korea. Devotion takes us soaring overhead with Tom and Jesse, and into the foxholes with Red and the Marines as they battle a North Korean invasion. As the fury of the fighting escalates and the Marines are cornered at the Chosin Reservoir, Tom and Jesse fly, guns blazing, to try and save them. When one of the duo is shot down behind enemy lines and pinned in his burning plane, the other faces an unthinkable choice: watch his friend die or attempt history's most audacious one-man rescue mission. A tug-at-the-heartstrings tale of bravery and selflessness, Devotion asks: How far would you go to save a friend? Praise for Devotion "Riveting . . . a meticulously researched and moving account."--USA Today "An inspiring tale . . . portrayed by Makos in sharp, fact-filled prose and with strong reporting."--Los Angeles Times "[A] must-read."--New York Post "Stirring."--Parade "A masterful storyteller . . . [Makos brings] Devotion to life with amazing vividness. . . . [It] reads like a dream. The perfectly paced story cruises along in the fast lane--when you're finished, you'll want to start all over again."--Associated Press "A delight to read . . . Devotion is a story you will not forget."--The Washington Times "My great respect for Tom Hudner knows no bounds. He is a true hero; and in reading this book, you will understand why I feel that way."--President George H. W. Bush "This is aerial drama at its best--fast, powerful, and moving."--Erik Larson, New York Times bestselling author of Dead Wake "Though it concerns a famously cold battle in the Korean War, make no mistake: Devotion will warm your heart."--Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and In the Kingdom of Ice "At last, the Korean War has its epic, a story that will stay with you long after you close this book."--Eric Blehm, New York Times bestselling author of Fearless and Legend
Ghost Soldiers by
"The greatest World War II story never told" (Esquire)--an enthralling account of the heroic mission to rescue the last survivors of the Bataan Death March. On January 28, 1945, 121 hand-selected U.S. troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation. In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates this daring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfolds alongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives in the camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive, defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation, tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkable mission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account of enormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most trying conditions.
Eat the Apple by
"TheIliad of the Iraq war" (Tim Weiner)--a gut-wrenching, beautiful memoir of the consequences of war on the psyche of a young man. Eat the Apple is a daring, twisted, and darkly hilarious story of American youth and masculinity in an age of continuous war. Matt Young joined the Marine Corps at age eighteen after a drunken night culminating in wrapping his car around a fire hydrant. The teenage wasteland he fled followed him to the training bases charged with making him a Marine. Young survived the training and then not one, not two, but three deployments to Iraq, where the testosterone, danger, and stakes for him and his fellow grunts were dialed up a dozen decibels. With its kaleidoscopic array of literary forms, from interior dialogues to infographics to prose passages that read like poetry, Young's narrative powerfully mirrors the multifaceted nature of his experience. Visceral, ironic, self-lacerating, and ultimately redemptive, Young's story drops us unarmed into Marine Corps culture and lays bare the absurdism of twenty-first-century war, the manned-up vulnerability of those on the front lines, and the true, if often misguided, motivations that drive a young man to a life at war. Searing in its honesty, tender in its vulnerability, and brilliantly written,Eat the Appleis a modern war classic in the making and a powerful coming-of-age story that maps the insane geography of our times.
The Yellow Birds by
Finalist for the National Book Award, The Yellow Birds is the harrowing story of two young soldiers trying to stay alive in Iraq. "The war tried to kill us in the spring." So begins this powerful account of friendship and loss. In Al Tafar, Iraq, twenty-one-year old Private Bartle and eighteen-year-old Private Murphy cling to life as their platoon launches a bloody battle for the city. Bound together since basic training when Bartle makes a promise to bring Murphy safely home, the two have been dropped into a war neither is prepared for. In the endless days that follow, the two young soldiers do everything to protect each other from the forces that press in on every side: the insurgents, physical fatigue, and the mental stress that comes from constant danger. As reality begins to blur into a hazy nightmare, Murphy becomes increasingly unmoored from the world around him and Bartle takes actions he could never have imagined. With profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on mothers and families at home, The Yellow Birds is a groundbreaking novel that is destined to become a classic.
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell by
John Crawford joined the Florida National Guard to pay for his college tuition. One weekend a month. Two weeks a year. A free education. But in 2002, one term shy of graduation, Crawford was shipped off to the front line in Iraq. Once there he decided to chronicle his daily life as a soldier in all its brutal, terrifying and heartbreaking honesty. The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell introduces a powerful new literary voice forged in the most intense of circumstances. |A heartbreaking and perversely beautiful book. A defining expression of men at war.| - James Frey
Here, Bullet by
A first-person account of the Iraq War by a solider-poet, winner of the 2005 Beatrice Hawley Award. Adding his voice to the current debate about the US occupation of Iraq, in poems written in the tradition of such poets as Wilfred Owen, Yusef Komunyakaa (Dien Cai Dau), Bruce Weigl (Song of Napalm) and Alice James' own Doug Anderson (The Moon Reflected Fire), Iraqi war veteran Brian Turner writes power-fully affecting poetry of witness, exceptional for its beauty, honesty, and skill. Based on Turner's yearlong tour in Iraq as an infantry team leader, the poems offer gracefully rendered, unflinching description but, remarkably, leave the reader to draw conclusions or moral lessons.Here, Bullet is a must-read for anyone who cares about the war, regardless of political affiliation.
Shoot Like a Girl by
"A must-read about an American patriot whose courage and determination will have a lasting impact on the future of our Armed Forces and the nation."--Senator John McCain On July 29, 2009, Air National Guard major Mary Jennings "MJ" Hegar was shot down while on a Medevac mission on her third tour in Afghanistan. Despite being wounded, she fought the enemy and saved the lives of her crew and their patients. But soon she would face a new battle: to give women who serve on the front lines the credit they deserve... After being commissioned into the U.S. Air Force, MJ Hegar was selected for pilot training by the Air National Guard, finished at the top of her class, then served three tours in Afghanistan, flying combat search-and-rescue missions, culminating in a harrowing rescue attempt that would earn MJ the Purple Heart as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross with Valor Device. But it was on American soil that Hegar would embark on her greatest challenge--to eliminate the military's Ground Combat Exclusion Policy, which kept female armed service members from officially serving in combat roles despite their long-standing record of doing so with honor. In Shoot Like a Girl, MJ takes the reader on a dramatic journey through her military career: an inspiring, humorous, and thrilling true story of a brave, high-spirited, and unforgettable woman who has spent much of her life ready to sacrifice everything for her country, her fellow man, and her sense of justice. SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE INCLUDES PHOTOS
The Operator by
This instant New York Times bestseller--"a jaw-dropping, fast-paced account" (New York Post) recounts SEAL Team Operator Robert O'Neill's incredible four-hundred-mission career, including the attempts to rescue "Lone Survivor" Marcus Luttrell and abducted-by-Somali-pirates Captain Richard Phillips, and which culminated in the death of the world's most wanted terrorist--Osama bin Laden. In The Operator, Robert O'Neill describes his idyllic childhood in Butte, Montana; his impulsive decision to join the SEALs; the arduous evaluation and training process; and the even tougher gauntlet he had to run to join the SEALs' most elite unit. After officially becoming a SEAL, O'Neill would spend more than a decade in the most intense counterterror effort in US history. For extended periods, not a night passed without him and his small team recording multiple enemy kills--and though he was lucky enough to survive, several of the SEALs he'd trained with and fought beside never made it home. "Impossible to put down...The Operator is unique, surprising, a kind of counternarrative, and certainly the other half of the story of one of the world's most famous military operations...In the larger sense, this book is about...how to be human while in the very same moment dealing with death, destruction, combat" (Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author). O'Neill describes the nonstop action of his deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, evokes the black humor of years-long combat, brings to vivid life the lethal efficiency of the military's most selective units, and reveals details of the most celebrated terrorist takedown in history. This is "a riveting, unvarnished, and wholly unforgettable portrait of America's most storied commandos at war" (Joby Warrick).
Code Talker by
The first and only memoir by one of the original Navajo code talkers of WWII. His name wasn't Chester Nez. That was the English name he was assigned in kindergarten. And in boarding school at Fort Defiance, he was punished for speaking his native language, as the teachers sought to rid him of his culture and traditions. But discrimination didn't stop Chester from answering the call to defend his country after Pearl Harbor, for the Navajo have always been warriors, and his upbringing on a New Mexico reservation gave him the strength--both physical and mental--to excel as a marine. During World War II, the Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. But when the Marines turned to its Navajo recruits to develop and implement a secret military language, they created the only unbroken code in modern warfare--and helped assure victory for the United States over Japan in the South Pacific. INCLUDES THE ACTUAL NAVAJO CODE AND RARE PICTURES
A Farewell to Arms by
The definitive edition of the classic novel of love during wartime, featuring all of the alternate endings: "Fascinating...serves as an artifact of a bygone craft, with handwritten notes and long passages crossed out, giving readers a sense of an author's process" (The New York Times). Written when Ernest Hemingway was thirty years old and lauded as the best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield--weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion--this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote the ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right. This edition collects all of the alternative endings together for the first time, along with early drafts of other essential passages, offering new insight into Hemingway's craft and creative process and the evolution of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Featuring Hemingway's own 1948 introduction to an illustrated reissue of the novel, a personal foreword by the author's son Patrick Hemingway, and a new introduction by the author's grandson Seán Hemingway, this edition of A Farewell to Arms is truly a celebration.
Jarhead by
In his New York Times bestselling chronicle of military life, Anthony Swofford weaves his experiences in war with vivid accounts of boot camp, reflections on the mythos of the marines, and remembrances of battles with lovers and family. When the U.S. Marines -- or "jarheads" -- were sent to Saudi Arabia in 1990 for the first Gulf War, Anthony Swofford was there. He lived in sand for six months; he was punished by boredom and fear; he considered suicide, pulled a gun on a fellow marine, and was targeted by both enemy and friendly fire. As engagement with the Iraqis drew near, he was forced to consider what it means to be an American, a soldier, a son of a soldier, and a man.
Ashley's War by
In 2010, the Army created Cultural Support Teams, a secret pilot program to insert women alongside Special Operations soldiers battling in Afghanistan. The Army reasoned that women could play a unique role on Special Ops teams: accompanying their male colleagues on raids and, while those soldiers were searching for insurgents, questioning the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives living at the compound. Their presence had a calming effect on enemy households, but more importantly, the CSTs were able to search adult women for weapons and gather crucial intelligence. They could build relationships--woman to woman--in ways that male soldiers in an Islamic country never could. In Ashley's War, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon uses on-the-ground reporting and a finely tuned understanding of the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked from the Army to serve in this highly specialized and challenging role. The pioneers of CST-2 proved for the first time, at least to some grizzled Special Operations soldiers, that women might be physically and mentally tough enough to become one of them. The price of this professional acceptance came in personal loss and social isolation: the only people who really understand the women of CST-2 are each other. At the center of this story is a friendship cemented by "Glee," video games, and the shared perils and seductive powers of up-close combat. At the heart of the team is the tale of a beloved and effective soldier, Ashley White. Much as she did in her bestselling The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, Lemmon transports readers to a world they previously had no idea existed: a community of women called to fulfill the military's mission to "win hearts and minds" and bound together by danger, valor, and determination. Ashley's War is a gripping combat narrative and a moving story of friendship--a book that will change the way readers think about war and the meaning of service.
No Better Time by
The acclaimed author of The Secret Women and Things Past Telling returns with an engrossing historical novel about a little known aspect of World War II--the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only Black WACs to serve overseas during the conflict. In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Dorothy Thom, Spelman graduate, librarian and Francophile, joins the Women's Army Corps wanting to do her part for the war effort. Longing for adventure, she has one question for the recruiter: "Do you think I'll get to go abroad" As Dorothy and her sister WACs discover, life in the Army is an adventure filled with unexpected deprivations and culture shock. Women from all levels of society, secretaries, teachers, and sharecroppers, work together to navigate a military segregated by race and gender. At boot camp, the "colored girls" are separated for processing. At Ft. Riley, the women's barracks are rustic and heated by coal-burning pot-bellied stoves while German POWs spend their incarceration in buildings with central heat and hot water. In early 1945, Dorothy and eight hundred African American WACs cross the turbulent North Atlantic to their post in England. Their orders are to process the mail sent to GIs from their loved ones back home, an estimated 17 million pieces. The women arrive to find mail stockpiled for over two years in warehouses and airplane hangars, many pieces in poor condition, the names illegible. In England and France, the WACs traverse a landscape of unimagined possibilities. With their outlooks changed forever, they return to the United States as the catalysts for change in America and build lives that transcend anything their ancestors ever dreamed of. No Better Time illuminates a love of country and duty that has been overlooked until now.
Fobbit by
Fobbit \'fä-bit\, noun. Definition: A U.S. soldier stationed at a Forward Operating Base who avoids combat by remaining at the base, esp. during Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003-2011). Pejorative. In the satirical tradition ofCatch-22 and M*A*S*H, Fobbit takes us into the chaotic world of Baghdad's Forward Operating Base Triumph. The Forward Operating base, or FOB, is like the back-office of the battlefield - where people eat and sleep, and where a lot of soldiers have what looks suspiciously like a desk job. Male and female soldiers are trying to find an empty Porta Potty in which to get acquainted, grunts are playing Xbox and watching NASCAR between missions, and a lot of the senior staff are more concerned about getting to the chow hall in time for the Friday night all-you-can-eat seafood special than worrying about little things like military strategy. Darkly humorous and based on the author's own experiences in Iraq, Fobbit is a fantastic debut that shows us a behind-the-scenes portrait of the real Iraq war.
Thank You for Your Service by
From a MacArthur Fellow and the author of The Good Soldiers, a profound look at life after war The wars of the past decade have been covered by brave and talented reporters, but none has reckoned with the psychology of these wars as intimately as the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Finkel. For The Good Soldiers, his bestselling account from the front lines of Baghdad, Finkel embedded with the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion during the infamous "surge," a grueling fifteen-month tour that changed them all forever. In Finkel's hands, readers can feel what these young men were experiencing, and his harrowing story instantly became a classic in the literature of modern war. In Thank You for Your Service, Finkel has done something even more extraordinary. Once again, he has embedded with some of the men of the 2-16--but this time he has done it at home, here in the States, after their deployments have ended. He is with them in their most intimate, painful, and hopeful moments as they try to recover, and in doing so, he creates an indelible, essential portrait of what life after war is like--not just for these soldiers, but for their wives, widows, children, and friends, and for the professionals who are truly trying, and to a great degree failing, to undo the damage that has been done. The story Finkel tells is mesmerizing, impossible to put down. With his unparalleled ability to report a story, he climbs into the hearts and minds of those he writes about. Thank You for Your Service is an act of understanding, and it offers a more complete picture than we have ever had of these two essential questions: When we ask young men and women to go to war, what are we asking of them? And when they return, what are we thanking them for? One of Publishers Weekly's Best Nonfiction Books of 2013 One of The Washington Post's Top 10 Books of the Year A New York Times Notable Book of 2013 An NPR Best Book of 2013 A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2013
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award! From the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, comes Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk ("The Catch-22 of the Iraq War" --Karl Marlantes). A razor-sharp satire set in Texas during America's war in Iraq, it explores the gaping national disconnect between the war at home and the war abroad. Ben Fountain's remarkable debut novel follows the surviving members of the heroic Bravo Squad through one exhausting stop in their media-intensive "Victory Tour" at Texas Stadium, football mecca of the Dallas Cowboys, their fans, promoters, and cheerleaders.
The Face of War by
Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998) was a war correspondent for nearly fifty years. From the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the wars in Central America in the mid-eighties, her candid reports reflected her feelings for people no matter what their political ideologies, and the openness and vulnerability of her conscience. "I wrote very fast, as I had to," she says, "afraid that I would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures, which were special to this moment and this place." Whether in Java, Finland, the Middle East, or Vietnam, she used the same vigorous approach. Collected here together for the first time, The Face of War is what The New York Times called "a brilliant anti-war book."
Band of Sisters by
"A crackling portrayal of everyday American heroines...A triumph." -- Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue A group of young women from Smith College risk their lives in France at the height of World War I in this sweeping novel based on a true story--a skillful blend of Call the Midwife and The Alice Network--from New York Times bestselling author Lauren Willig. A scholarship girl from Brooklyn, Kate Moran thought she found a place among Smith's Mayflower descendants, only to have her illusions dashed the summer after graduation. When charismatic alumna Betsy Rutherford delivers a rousing speech at the Smith College Club in April of 1917, looking for volunteers to help French civilians decimated by the German war machine, Kate is too busy earning her living to even think of taking up the call. But when her former best friend Emmeline Van Alden reaches out and begs her to take the place of a girl who had to drop out, Kate reluctantly agrees to join the new Smith College Relief Unit. Four months later, Kate and seventeen other Smithies, including two trailblazing female doctors, set sail for France. The volunteers are armed with money, supplies, and good intentions--all of which immediately go astray. The chateau that was to be their headquarters is a half-burnt ruin. The villagers they meet are in desperate straits: women and children huddling in damp cellars, their crops destroyed and their wells poisoned. Despite constant shelling from the Germans, French bureaucracy, and the threat of being ousted by the British army, the Smith volunteers bring welcome aid--and hope--to the region. But can they survive their own differences? As they cope with the hardships and terrors of the war, Kate and her colleagues find themselves navigating old rivalries and new betrayals which threaten the very existence of the Unit. With the Germans threatening to break through the lines, can the Smith Unit pull together and be truly a band of sisters?
Catch-22 by
This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction; critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos; and much more. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read. Now a Hulu limited series starring Christopher Abbott, George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, and Hugh Laurie. Fifty years after its original publication, Catch-22 remains a cornerstone of American literature and one of the funniest--and most celebrated--books of all time. In recent years it has been named to "best novels" lists by Time, Newsweek, the Modern Library, and the London Observer. Set in Italy during World War II, this is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not the enemy--it is his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions the men must fly to complete their service. Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he's assigned, he'll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane and therefore ineligible to be relieved. This fiftieth-anniversary edition commemorates Joseph Heller's masterpiece with a new introduction by Christopher Buckley; a wealth of critical essays and reviews by Norman Mailer, Alfred Kazin, Anthony Burgess, and others; rare papers and photos from Joseph Heller's personal archive; and much more. Here, at last, is the definitive edition of a classic of world literature.
Dispatches by
"The best book to have been written about the Vietnam War" (The New York Times Book Review); an instant classic straight from the front lines. From its terrifying opening pages to its final eloquent words, Dispatches makes us see, in unforgettable and unflinching detail, the chaos and fervor of the war and the surreal insanity of life in that singular combat zone. Michael Herr's unsparing, unorthodox retellings of the day-to-day events in Vietnam take on the force of poetry, rendering clarity from one of the most incomprehensible and nightmarish events of our time. Dispatches is among the most blistering and compassionate accounts of war in our literature.
Tree of Smoke by
Once upon a time there was a war . . . and a young American who thought of himself as the Quiet American and the Ugly American, and who wished to be neither, who wanted instead to be the Wise American, or the Good American, but who eventually came to witness himself as the Real American and finally as simply the Fucking American. That's me. This is the story of Skip Sands--spy-in-training, engaged in Psychological Operations against the Vietcong--and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young men who drift out of the Arizona desert into a war in which the line between disinformation and delusion has blurred away. In its vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympatheticportraits of men and women desperate for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex or death or by the grace of God, this is a story like nothing in our literature.Tree of Smokeis Denis Johnson's first full-length novel in nine years, and his most gripping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. Tree of Smoke is the 2007 National Book Award Winner for Fiction.
Hold It 'Til It Hurts by
Finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award "The magnificence ofHold It 'Til It Hurts is not only in the prose and the story but also in the book's great big beating heart. These complex and compelling characters and the wizardry of Johnson's storytelling will dazzle and move you from first page to last. Novels don't teach us how to live butHold It 'Til It Hurts will make you hush and wonder."--Anthony Swofford, author ofJarhead "This rich and sophisticated first novel brings together pleasures rarely found in one book:Hold It 'Til It Hurtsis a novel about war that goes in search of passionate love, a dreamy thriller, a sprawling mystery, a classical quest for a lost brother in which the shadowy quarry is clearly the seeker's own self, and a meditation on family and racial identity that makes its forerunners in American fiction look innocent by comparison."--Jaimy Gordon, National Book Award winner forLord of Misrule When Achilles Conroy and his brother Troy return from a tour of duty in Afghanistan, their white mother presents them with the key to their past: envelopes containing details about their respective birth parents. After Troy disappears, Achilles--always his brother's keeper--embarks on a harrowing journey in search of Troy, an experience that will change him forever. Heartbreaking, intimate, and at times disturbing,Hold It 'Til It Hurts is a modern-day odyssey through war, adventure, disaster, and love, and explores how people who do not define themselves by race make sense of a world that does. T. Geronimo Johnson was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. His fiction and poetry have appeared inBest New American Voices,Indiana Review,Los Angeles Review of Books, andIlluminations, among others. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Johnson teaches writing at the University of California-Berkeley.Hold It 'Til It Hurts is his first book.
The Thin Red Line by
They are the men of C-for-Charlie company--"Mad" 1st Sgt. Eddie Welsh, Pvt. 1st Class Don Doll, Pvt. John Bell, Capt. James Stein, Cpl. Fife, and dozens more just like them--infantrymen who are about to land, grim and white-faced, on an atoll in the Pacific called Guadalcanal. This is their story, a shatteringly realistic walk into hell and back. nbsp; In the days ahead, some will earn medals, others will do anything they can dream up to get evacuated before they land in a muddy grave. But they will all discover the thin red line that divides the sane from the mad--and the living from the dead--in this unforgettable portrait that captures for all time the total experience of men at war. nbsp; Foreword by Francine Prose nbsp; "Brutal, direct, and powerful . . . The men are real, the words are real, death is real, imminent and immediate."--Los Angeles Times nbsp; "A rare and splendid accomplishment . . . strong and ambitious, spacious, and as honest as any novel ever written."-- Newsweek nbsp; "[A] major novel of combat in World War II . . . reminiscent of Stephen Crane in The Red Badge of Courage."--The Christian Science Monitor nbsp; "The Thin Red Line moves so intensely and inexorably that it almost seems like the war it is describing."--The New York Times Book Review
The Naked and the Dead by
Hailed as one of the finest novels to come out of the Second World War,The Nakedand the Dead received unprecedented critical acclaim upon its publication and has since become part of the American canon. This fiftieth anniversary edition features a new introduction created especially for the occasion by Norman Mailer. Written in gritty, journalistic detail, the story follows an army platoon of foot soldiers who are fighting for the possession of the Japanese-held island of Anopopei. Composed in 1948,The Naked and the Dead is representative of the best in twentieth-century American writing.
The Things They Carried by
"O'Brien has written a vital, important book--a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well."--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times A classic work of American literature that has not stopped changing minds and lives since it burst onto the literary scene, The Things They Carried is a ground-breaking meditation on war, memory, imagination, and the redemptive power of storytelling. The Things They Carried depicts the men of Alpha Company: Jimmy Cross, Henry Dobbins, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Norman Bowker, Kiowa, and the character Tim O'Brien, who has survived his tour in Vietnam to become a father and writer at the age of forty-three. Taught everywhere--from high school classrooms to graduate seminars in creative writing--it has become required reading for any American and continues to challenge readers in their perceptions of fact and fiction, war and peace, courage and fear and longing. The Things They Carried won France's prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize; it was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Johnny Got His Gun by
"Mr. Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or punctuation and with a fury accounting to eloquence."--The New York Times This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered--not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome . . . but so is war. Praise for Johnny Got His Gun "[It is] very hard to write about Johnny Got His Gun without being guilty of understatement or hysterics. It is a terrifying book, of an extraordinary emotional intensity."--Washington Post "An extraordinarily agitating book, passionate in its language, potent in its emotional effect, a novel that tells in unsparingly honest words what a wickedly gruesome business war is, and how wickedly wasteful. Johnny Got His Gun, full of horror and hurt, will be a terrific and vivid experience for anyone who reads it."--Boston Herald "It is hard to imagine a more persuasive argument for staying out of war than this smooth, savage, brilliant tale."--Chicago Daily News
Plenty of Time When We Get Home by
Brian, on his way back to base after mid-tour leave, was wounded by a roadside bomb that sent shrapnel through his brain. Kayla waited anxiously for news and, on returning home, sought out Brian. The two began a tentative romance and later married, but neither anticipated the consequences of Brian's injury on their lives. Lacking essential support for returning veterans from the military and the VA, Kayla and Brian suffered through posttraumatic stress amplified by his violent mood swings, her struggles to reintegrate into a country still oblivious to women veterans, and what seemed the callous, consumerist indifference of civilian society at large. Kayla persevered. So did Brian. They fought for their marriage, drawing on remarkable reservoirs of courage and commitment. They confronted their demons head-on, impatient with phoniness of any sort. Inspired by an unwavering ethos of service, they continued to stand on common ground. Finally, they found their own paths to healing and wholeness, both as individuals and as a family, in dedication to a larger community.
War Letters by
In 1998, Andrew Carroll founded the Legacy Project, with the goal of remembering Americans who have served their nation and preserving their letters for posterity. Since then, over 50,000 letters have poured in from around the country. Nearly two hundred of them comprise this amazing collection--including never-before-published letters that appear in the new afterword. Here are letters from the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf war, Somalia, and Bosnia--dramatic eyewitness accounts from the front lines, poignant expressions of love for family and country, insightful reflections on the nature of warfare. Amid the voices of common soldiers, marines, airmen, sailors, nurses, journalists, spies, and chaplains are letters by such legendary figures as Gen. William T. Sherman, Clara Barton, Theodore Roosevelt, Ernie Pyle, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Julia Child, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and Gen. Benjamin O. Davis Sr. Collected in War Letters, they are an astonishing historical record, a powerful tribute to those who fought, and a celebration of the enduring power of letters.
A Death in San Pietro by
By the time Mark Clark's Fifth Army reached the small village of San Pietro north of Naples in the first week of December 1943, a tough but rapid sweep through Sicily came to a muddy halt. On the slopes of a distant mountain, the death of a single platoon captain, Henry Waskow, epitomized the struggle. A Death in San Pietro chronicles the quietly heroic and beloved Captain Waskow and his company as they make their way into battle. Waskow's 36th ("Texas") Division would ultimately succeed in driving the Germans off the mountains; but not before eighty percent of Waskow's company is lost in action. For Americans back home, two of the war's most lasting artistic expression brought horrified focus to the battlefield, already dubbed "Purple Heart Valley" by the men of the 36th. Pulitzer Prize-winner Ernie Pyle's dispatch about Waskow's death and filmmaker John Huston's award-winning documentary of the battle rivets--and shocks--the nation, bringing, as if for the first time, the awful carnage of world war into living rooms across America.
Rule Number Two by
A psychologist in the US Navy, Kraft learned how to listen to the most traumatic stories a war zone has to offer. One of the toughest lessons of her deployment was articulated by the TV show M*A*S*H, 'There are two rules of war. Rule number one is that young men die. Rule number two is that doctors can't change rule number one'.
Matterhorn by
Intense, powerful, and compelling,Matterhorn is an epic war novel in the tradition of Norman Mailer'sThe Naked and the Dead and James Jones'sThe Thin Red Line. It is the timeless story of a young Marine lieutenant, Waino Mellas, and his comrades in Bravo Company, who are dropped into the mountain jungle of Vietnam as boys and forced to fight their way into manhood. Standing in their way are not merely the North Vietnamese but also monsoon rain and mud, leeches and tigers, disease and malnutrition. Almost as daunting, it turns out, are the obstacles they discover between each other: racial tension, competing ambitions, and duplicitous superior officers. But when the company finds itself surrounded and outnumbered by a massive enemy regiment, the Marines are thrust into the raw and all-consuming terror of combat. The experience will change them forever. Written by a highly decorated Marine veteran over the course of thirty years,Matterhorn is a spellbinding and unforgettable novel that brings to life an entire world--both its horrors and its thrills--and seems destined to become a classic of combat literature.
The Guns of August by
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time The Proud Tower, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Guns of August, and The Zimmerman Telegram comprise Barbara W. Tuchman's classic histories of the First World War era In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize-winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war's key players, Tuchman's magnum opus is a classic for the ages. nbsp; Praise for The Guns of August nbsp; "A brilliant piece of military history which proves up to the hilt the force of Winston Churchill's statement that the first month of World War I was 'a drama never surpassed.'"--Newsweek nbsp; "More dramatic than fiction . . . a magnificent narrative--beautifully organized, elegantly phrased, skillfully paced and sustained."--Chicago Tribune nbsp; "A fine demonstration that with sufficient art rather specialized history can be raised to the level of literature."--The New York Times nbsp; "[The Guns of August] has a vitality that transcends its narrative virtues, which are considerable, and its feel for characterizations, which is excellent."--The Wall Street Journal
Still Life by
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick A Veranda Magazine Book Club Pick A captivating, bighearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E. M. Forster, by the celebrated author of Tin Man. Tuscany, 1944: As Allied troops advance and bombs fall around deserted villages, a young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted villa. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amidst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses's life for the next four decades. As Ulysses returns home to London, reimmersing himself in his crew at The Stoat and Parot--a motley mix of pub crawlers and eccentrics--he carries his time in Italy with him. And when an unexpected inheritance brings him back to where it all began, Ulysses knows better than to tempt fate, and returns to the Tuscan hills. With beautiful prose, extraordinary tenderness, and bursts of humor and light, Still Life is a sweeping portrait of unforgettable individuals who come together to make a family, and a deeply drawn celebration of beauty and love in all its forms.
The Facemaker by
A New York Times Bestseller "Enthralling. Harrowing. Heartbreaking. And utterly redemptive. Lindsey Fitzharris hit this one out of the park." --Erik Larson, author of The Splendid and the Vile Lindsey Fitzharris, the award-winning author of The Butchering Art, presents the compelling, true story of a visionary surgeon who rebuilt the faces of the First World War's injured heroes, and in the process ushered in the modern era of plastic surgery. From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: humankind's military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. The Facemaker tells the extraordinary story of such an individual: the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, who dedicated himself to reconstructing the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care. Gillies, a Cambridge-educated New Zealander, became interested in the nascent field of plastic surgery after encountering the human wreckage on the front. Returning to Britain, he established one of the world's first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. There, Gillies assembled a unique group of practitioners whose task was to rebuild what had been torn apart, to re-create what had been destroyed. At a time when losing a limb made a soldier a hero, but losing a face made him a monster to a society largely intolerant of disfigurement, Gillies restored not just the faces of the wounded but also their spirits. The Facemaker places Gillies's ingenious surgical innovations alongside the dramatic stories of soldiers whose lives were wrecked and repaired. The result is a vivid account of how medicine can be an art, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.
towel
Celebrate Towel Day @ your library!
We're having a towel drive in May! Click the link below to see participating libraries, a Douglas Adams booklist, and more!
als
ALS Awareness Month
While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!
Eyes to the Wind by
In this "gripping story of resistance and the triumph of human will" (Senator Elizabeth Warren), activist and subject of the new documentary Not Going Quietly Ady Barkan explores his life with ALS and how his diagnosis gave him a profound new understanding of his commitment to social justice for all. Ady Barkan loved taking afternoon runs on the California coast and holding his newborn son, Carl. But one day, he noticed a troubling weakness in his hand. At first, he brushed it off as carpal tunnel syndrome, but after a week of neurological exams and two MRIs, he learned the cause of the problem: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. At age thirty-two, Ady was given just three to four years to live. Yet despite the devastating diagnosis, he refused to let his remaining days go to waste. Eyes to the Wind is a rousing memoir featuring intertwining storylines about determination, perseverance, and how to live a life filled with purpose and intention. The first traces Ady's battle with ALS: how he turned the initial shock and panic from his diagnosis into a renewed commitment to social justice--not despite his disability but because of it. The second, told in flashbacks, illustrates Ady's journey from a goofy political nerd to a prominent figure in the enduring fight for equity and justice whose "selfless activism fighting to make health care a right should be an inspiration to us all" (Senator Bernie Sanders). From one of today's most vocal advocates for social justice, Eyes to the Wind's "primary question is existential: how to live when you are dying? Barkan's answer is to share, open up, act, and capital-R Resist, and his memoir, clearly and candidly written, establishes a legacy" (Booklist).
It's Not Yet Dark by
"A fiercely eloquent testament to making the most out of every moment we're given." --People, Book of the Week A luminous memoir in the tradition of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and a #1 bestseller upon its initial release in Ireland, a young filmmaker gives us "a story of courage, of heart, of coming back for more, of love and struggle and the power of both" (Joseph O'Connor). In 2008, Simon Fitzmaurice was diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive. In It's Not Yet Dark, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children, draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose, it is an astonishing journey into a life that, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully than most, revealing at its core the potent power love has to carry us through the days. Written using an eye-gaze computer, It's Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people, and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.
A Life Impossible by
From NFL player Steve Gleason, a powerful, inspiring memoir of love, heartbreak, resilience, family, and remarkable triumph in the face of ALS In 2011, three years after leaving the NFL, Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal disease that takes away the ability to move, talk, and breathe. Doctors gave him three years to live. He was thirty-three years old. As Steve says, he is now ten years past his expiration date. His memoir is the chronicle of a remarkable life, one filled with optimism and joy, despite the trauma and pain and despair he has experienced. Writing using eye-tracking technology, Gleason covers his pre-ALS life through the highs and lows of his NFL career with the New Orleans Saints, where he made one of the most memorable plays in Saints history, leading to a victory in the first post-Katrina home game, uplifting the city, making him a hero, and reflected in a nine-foot bronze statue outside the Superdome. Then came his heartbreaking diagnosis. Gleason lost all muscle function, he now uses Stephen Hawking-like technology to communicate, and breathes with the help of a ventilator. This book captures Gleason and his wife Michel's unmatched resilience as they reinvent their lives, refuse to succumb to despair, and face his disease realistically and existentially. This unsparing portrait argues that a person's true strength does not reside solely in one's body but also in the ability to face unfathomable adversity and still be able to love and treasure life.
Tell Me Good Things by
A profound examination of grief and a great celebration of love by internationally bestselling author James Runcie. In early 2020, as the world sunk into the pandemic, James Runcie and his wife Marilyn Imrie were going through a different, far more personal tragedy. After 35 years of miraculously happy marriage, they learned that the painful, frustrating symptoms Marilyn had been experiencing for two years were a sign of Lou Gehrig's Disease. With this diagnosis, during the isolation and strangeness of the pandemic, James and Marilyn's lives were transformed. Now, in his startling and intimate memoir, James tells the story of Marilyn's illness and death--in all its moments of tragedy, rage, and strangeness--while painting a vivid portrait of her life, in all its color, humor, and brightness. Tender, funny, and deeply true, Tell Me Good Things is an unforgettable story of life before death and love after grief.
The Ice Bucket Challenge by
While everyone knows of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the viral craze that swept the nation in summer 2014, too few know the truly inspirational story behind it. Pete Frates was a man at war with his own body. A man whose love for others was unshakable. A man who refused to fight alone, and in so doing mobilized a global army to combat one of the most devastating diseases on earth: ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease. When disease crippled Frates, the former Boston College baseball star turned tragedy into inspiration. Pete's story is a testament to the power of love, the steadfastness of family, the generosity of strangers, and the compassion of crowds. Half of the authors' proceeds will go to the Frates family.
We Know How This Ends by
Nautilus Book Awards -- Silver Award Winner 2010 had been a very good year for Bruce H. Kramer. But what began as a floppy foot and leg weakness led to a shattering diagnosis: he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS is a cruel, unrelenting neurodegenerative disease in which the body's muscles slowly weaken, including those used to move, swallow, talk, and ultimately breathe. There is no cure: ALS is a death sentence. When death is a constant companion, sitting too closely beside you at the dinner table, coloring your thoughts and feelings and words, your outlook on life is utterly transformed. The perspective and insights offered in We Know How This Ends reveal this daily reality and inspire a way forward for anyone who has suffered major loss and for anyone who surely will. Rather than wallowing in sadness and bitterness, anger and denial, Kramer accepted the crushing diagnosis. The educator and musician recognized that if he wanted a meaningful life, then embracing his imminent death was his only viable option. His decision was the foundation for profound, personal reflection and growth, even as his body weakened, and inspired him to share the lessons he was learning from ALS about how to live as fully as possible, even in the midst of devastating grief. At the time Kramer was diagnosed, broadcast journalist Cathy Wurzer was struggling with her own losses, especially her father's slow descent into the bewildering world of dementia. Mutual friends put this unlikely pair--journalist and educator--together, and the serendipitous result has been a series of remarkable broadcast conversations, a deep friendship, and now this book. Written with wisdom, genuine humor, and down-to-earth observations, We Know How This Ends is far more than a memoir. It is a dignified, courageous, and unflinching look at how acceptance of loss and inevitable death can lead us all to a more meaningful and fulfilling life.
All the Colors Came Out by
This "love story for the ages" from a # 1 New York Times bestselling author comes an unforgettable story about basketball and the enduring bonds between a father and daughter that "will heal relationships and hearts" (Glennon Doyle). ​ Kate Fagan and her father forged their relationship on the basketball court, bonded by sweaty high fives and a dedication to the New York Knicks. But as Kate got older, her love of the sport and her closeness with her father grew complicated. The formerly inseparable pair drifted apart. The lessons that her father instilled in her about the game, and all her memories of sharing the court with him over the years, were a distant memory. When Chris Fagan was diagnosed with ALS, Kate decided that something had to change. Leaving a high-profile job at ESPN to be closer to her mother and father and take part in his care, Kate Fagan spent the last year of her father's life determined to return to him the kind of joy they once shared on the court. All the Colors Came Out is Kate Fagan's completely original reflection on the very specific bond that one father and daughter shared, forged in the love of a sport which over time came to mean so much more. Studded with unforgettable scenes of humor, pain and hope, Kate Fagan has written a book that plumbs the mysteries of the unique gifts fathers gives daughters, ones that resonate across time and circumstance.
Hawking by
Following their New York Times-bestselling graphic novel Feynman, Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick deliver a gripping biography of Stephen Hawking, one of the most important scientists of our time. From his early days at the St Albans School and Oxford, Stephen Hawking's brilliance and good humor were obvious to everyone he met. A lively and popular young man, it's no surprise that he would later rise to celebrity status. At twenty-one he was diagnosed with ALS, a degenerative neuromuscular disease. Though the disease weakened his muscles and limited his ability to move and speak, it did nothing to limit his mind. He went on to do groundbreaking work in cosmology and theoretical physics for decades after being told he had only a few years to live. He brought his intimate understanding of the universe to the public in his 1988 bestseller, A Brief History of Time. Soon after, he added pop-culture icon to his accomplishments by playing himself on shows like Star Trek, The Simpsons, and The Big Bang Theory, and becoming an outspoken advocate for disability rights. In Hawking, writer Jim Ottaviani and artist Leland Myrick have crafted an intricate portrait of the great thinker, the public figure, and the man behind both identities.
Last Things by
Last Things is the true and intensely personal story of how one woman coped with the devastating effects of a catastrophic illness in her family. Using her trademark mix of words and pictures to sharp effect, Marissa Moss presents the story of how she, her husband, and her three young sons struggled to maintain their sense of selves and wholeness as a family and how they continued on with everyday life when the earth shifted beneath their feet. After returning home from a year abroad, Marissa's husband, Harvey, was diagnosed with ALS. The disease progressed quickly, and Marissa was soon consumed with caring for Harvey while trying to keep life as normal as possible for her young children. ALS stole the man who was her husband, the father of her children, and her best friend in less than 7 months. This is not a story about the redemptive power of a terminal illness. It is a story of resilience - of how a family managed to survive a terrible loss and grow in spite of it. Although it's a sad story, it's powerfully told and ultimately uplifting as a guide to strength and perseverance, to staying connected to those who matter most in the midst of a bleak upheaval. If you've ever wondered how you would cope with a dire diagnosis, this book can provide a powerful example of what it feels like and how to come through the darkness into the light. Last Things is one of the most amazingly poignant and honest memoirs - graphic or otherwise -- I've ever encountered. This book - which I read in one insatiable sitting -- tore my heart in two. Moss handles the material with such a delicate sensibility, both with her drawings and her text, I couldn't help but let her carry me along on her journey of love and loss. ---Katie Hafner, contributing writer to The New York Times and author of Mother, Daughter, Me: A Memoir A gripping portrayal of how devastating ALS can be, but also a powerful example of resilience and hope. --- Dr. Catherine Lomen-Hoerth, neurologist, ALS clinic, UCSF
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Check out our subject guide!
- New Mexico AuthorsThis guide presents an ever-growing list of New Mexico Authors, writers who have lived in New Mexico or who have strong ties with the Land of Enchantment.
goth
World Goth Day is May 22
While most of these listings link by default to a print copy, many are available in other formats (eBook and eAudiobook). Don't forget to check the catalog by title or author if you prefer digital!
Goth by
Since it first emerged from Britain's punk-rock scene in the late 1970s, goth subculture has haunted postmodern culture and society, reinventing itself inside and against the mainstream. Goth: Undead Subculture is the first collection of scholarly essays devoted to this enduring yet little examined cultural phenomenon. Twenty-three essays from various disciplines explore the music, cinema, television, fashion, literature, aesthetics, and fandoms associated with the subculture. They examine goth's many dimensions--including its melancholy, androgyny, spirituality, and perversity--and take readers inside locations in Los Angeles, Austin, Leeds, London, Buffalo, New York City, and Sydney. A number of the contributors are or have been participants in the subculture, and several draw on their own experiences. The volume's editors provide a rich history of goth, describing its play of resistance and consumerism; its impact on class, race, and gender; and its distinctive features as an "undead" subculture in light of post-subculture studies and other critical approaches. The essays include an interview with the distinguished fashion historian Valerie Steele; analyses of novels by Anne Rice, Poppy Z. Brite, and Nick Cave; discussions of goths on the Internet; and readings of iconic goth texts from Bram Stoker's Dracula to James O'Barr's graphic novel The Crow. Other essays focus on gothic music, including seminal precursors such as Joy Division and David Bowie, and goth-influenced performers such as the Cure, Nine Inch Nails, and Marilyn Manson. Gothic sexuality is explored in multiple ways, the subjects ranging from the San Francisco queercore scene of the 1980s to the increasing influence of fetishism and fetish play. Together these essays demonstrate that while its participants are often middle-class suburbanites, goth blurs normalizing boundaries even as it appears as an everlasting shadow of late capitalism. Contributors: Heather Arnet, Michael Bibby, Jessica Burstein, Angel M. Butts, Michael du Plessis, Jason Friedman, Nancy Gagnier, Ken Gelder, Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Joshua Gunn, Trevor Holmes, Paul Hodkinson, David Lenson, Robert Markley, Mark Nowak, Anna Powell, Kristen Schilt, Rebecca Schraffenberger, David Shumway, Carol Siegel, Catherine Spooner, Lauren Stasiak, Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock
Goth Culture by
Goth Culture explores Goths' expressive practices of dress, fashion, style and the body, in relation to issues of identity and representation. The book shares vivid accounts of the author's experiences exploring gender and sexuality and doing fieldwork in the Gothic subculture. Through the voices of Goths from the UK, US and Germany, it draws the reader into the gender-bending and heavily gendered world of Goth. It reassesses the significance of the dress of both male and female Goths, examining these striking and often highly creative subcultural fashion displays. Using a wide range of methods and sources, from ethnography to critical examination of music, literature, social theory and different types of popular media, Goth Culture offers an original and accessible analysis of the fashion, media and counterculture of the Gothic world.
Goth Chic by
Goth Chic is the first book to properly explore Gothic culture in the modern world. Gavin Baddeley unearths hidden gems from the underground alongside better-known manifestations, including horror comics, fetish clubs, Goth-rock superstars and vampire cultists. The result is a book that provides a peerless primer for Gothic culture novices and an incisive analysis to challenge and compel even the most seasoned veteran of this dark underworld.
Encyclopedia Gothica by
Encyclopedia Gothica is a guide to the language of that shadowiest of subcultures: modern Goths. It collects and defines more than 550 words and phrases used by these children of the night so that readers too can engage in conversations about Deathhawks and Rivetheads and who is more Ubergoth: Bela Lugosi or Robert Smith. With its Goth Band Family Tree and appendices of essential listening, reading and viewing, it's far more than a dictionary - it's an Encyclopedia Gothica!
Gothic Charm School by
An essential, fully illustrated guidebook to day-to-day Goth living There's more to being a Goth than throwing on some black velvet, dyeing your hair, and calling it a day (or a night). How do you dress with morbid flair when going to a job interview Is there such a thing as growing too old to be a Goth How do you explain to your grandma that it's not just a phase Jillian Venters, a.k.a. "the Lady of the Manners," knows how to be strange and unusual without sacrificing politeness and etiquette. In Gothic Charm School, she offers the quintessential guide to dark decorum for all those who have ever searched for beauty in dark, unexpected places, embraced their individuality, and reveled in decadence . . . and for families and friends who just don't understand.
The Goth Canon
from a list on Book Riot
Complete Poems by
Including all poems published in the previous three editions, this comprehensive new translation of Baudelaire's poetry is both vivid and authoritative. This dual-language volume presents both the original French poems as well as their translations.
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe by
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe compiles Poe's greatest writings- tales of fantasy, terror, death, revenge, murder, and mystery, including "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the world's first detective story. In addition, this volume offers letters, articles, criticism, visionary poetry, and a selection of random "opinions" on fancy and the imagination, music and poetry, intuition and sundry other topics. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Interview with the Vampire by
The spellbinding classic that started it all, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author--the inspiration for the hit television series "A magnificent, compulsively readable thriller . . . Rice begins where Bram Stoker and the Hollywood versions leave off and penetrates directly to the true fascination of the myth--the education of the vampire."--Chicago Tribune Here are the confessions of a vampire. Hypnotic, shocking, and chillingly sensual, this is a novel of mesmerizing beauty and astonishing force--a story of danger and flight, of love and loss, of suspense and resolution, and of the extraordinary power of the senses. It is a novel only Anne Rice could write.
Cthulhu Mythos by
Howard Phillips Lovecraft forever changed the face of horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a remarkable series of stories as influential as the works of Poe, Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Howard Phillips Lovecraft forever changed the face of horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a remarkable series of stories as influential as the works of Poe, Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Amphigorey by
An illustrated collection of 15 macabre short stories. In this gorgeously detailed volume, American artist and author Edward Gorey accents amphigory (nonsense verse or composition) with his signature cross-hatched pen-and-ink drawings. A mix of poetry and prose, light-hearted and decidedly more morbid storytelling, the book is sure to satisfy both fans of art and lovers of short stories alike. Stories included: "The Unstrung Harp" "The Listing Attic" "The Doubtful Guest" "The Object Lesson" "The Bug Book" "The Fatal Lozenge" "The Hapless Child" "The Curious Sofa" "The Willowdale Handcar" "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" "The Insect God" "The West Wing" "The Wuggly Ump" "The Sinking Spell" "The Remembered Visit"
Sandman Vol 1 Preludes and Nocturnes - O/P by
An occultist attempting to capture the physical embodiment of Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. After his seventy-year imprisonment and eventual escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power to reclaim his reign. From there, one of the greatest series in the history of the graphic novel genre begins... New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman's transcendent series The Sandman is often hailed as the definitive Vertigo title and one of the finest achievements in comics storytelling. Gaiman created an unforgettable tale of the forces that exist beyond life and death by weaving ancient mythology, folklore and fairy tales with his own distinct narrative vision. This graphic novel--a perfect jumping-on points for any reader--includes the introductions of Morpheus, Lucifer and The Endless, all intricate parts of this enduring series that is still as relevant today as ever. Includes issues #1-8 of the original series with completely new coloring, approved by the author.
The Stranger by
With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger--Camus's masterpiece--gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward. Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. "The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward's translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus's stoical anti-hero and devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity." --from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.
Geek Love by
National Book Award Finalist * Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities--with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family's most precious--and dangerous--asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
