en-US Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:15:35 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 92250
The play is a complex, often metaphorical, and at times symbolic examination of AIDS and homosexuality in America in the 1980s. Certain major and minor characters are supernatural beings (angels) or deceased persons (ghosts). The play contains multiple roles for several of the actors. Initially and primarily focusing on a gay couple in Manhattan, the play also has several other storylines, some of which occasionally intersect.]]> 119 Tony Kushner 1559360615 Jason 0 to-read 4.27 1993
author: Tony Kushner
name: Jason
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1993
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/08/06
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]]> 55643287 Poet and contributor to The Atlantic Clint Smith’s revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation 

Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.]]> 336 Clint Smith 0316492930 Jason 0 to-read 4.71 2021
author: Clint Smith
name: Jason
average rating: 4.71
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/02/18
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]]> 90528 264 Robin D.G. Kelley 0807009776 Jason 5 4.36 2002
author: Robin D.G. Kelley
name: Jason
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2002
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/03/19
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]]> 5137 281 Elspeth Huxley 0141183780 Jason 3 4.10 1959
author: Elspeth Huxley
name: Jason
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1959
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/03/19
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]]> 72003 304 Tony Kushner 1559362316 Jason 3 4.27 1995
author: Tony Kushner
name: Jason
average rating: 4.27
book published: 1995
rating: 3
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date added: 2015/03/19
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]]> 7244 The Poisonwood Bible is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it -- from garden seeds to Scripture -- is calamitously transformed on African soil. What follows is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in postcolonial Africa.]]> 546 Barbara Kingsolver 0060786507 Jason 5 4.10 1998
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Jason
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1998
rating: 5
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date added: 2015/03/19
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]]> 3710
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. His business is to hunt for names on paper, collect them, sell them, and occasionally fake them—all to give the people what they want: a little piece of Fame. But what does Alex want? Only the return of his father, the end of religion, something for his headache, three different girls, infinite grace, and the rare autograph of forties movie actress Kitty Alexander. With fries.

The Autograph Man is a deeply funny existential tour around the hollow trappings of modernity: celebrity, cinema, and the ugly triumph of symbol over experience. It offers further proof that Zadie Smith is one of the most staggeringly talented writers of her generation.]]> 347 Zadie Smith 037570387X Jason 2 3.17 2002
author: Zadie Smith
name: Jason
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2002
rating: 2
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]]> 11989
It tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.

The book tells a gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.

The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label. The novel stresses the powerlessness of the individual characters to affect their destinies. The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, whose individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings; the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition.]]> 308 Albert Camus Jason 4 4.05 1947
author: Albert Camus
name: Jason
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1947
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/10/02
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]]> 233292 252 Rigoberta MenchĂş 0860917886 Jason 5 3.83 1984
author: Rigoberta MenchĂş
name: Jason
average rating: 3.83
book published: 1984
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/09/23
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]]> 3009435 This is Florens, who can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Rejected by her mother, Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, and later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives.
A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter - a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.]]> 167 Toni Morrison 0307264238 Jason 5 3.76 2008
author: Toni Morrison
name: Jason
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2008
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/09/12
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]]> 4796
Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty that today ranks it alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This edition features an introduction and notes by Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.]]> 291 John Steinbeck 0143039482 Jason 5 4.01 1961
author: John Steinbeck
name: Jason
average rating: 4.01
book published: 1961
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/09/09
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]]> 9516
Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.]]> 153 Marjane Satrapi 037571457X Jason 5 4.27 2003
author: Marjane Satrapi
name: Jason
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/09/06
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]]> 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Jason 5 4.34 2003
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Jason
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/09/06
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]]> 128029
With the passing of time comes Taliban rule over Afghanistan, the streets of Kabul loud with the sound of gunfire and bombs, life a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear, the women's endurance tested beyond their worst imaginings. Yet love can move people to act in unexpected ways, lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism. In the end it is love that triumphs over death and destruction.

A Thousand Splendid Suns is a portrait of a wounded country and a story of family and friendship, of an unforgiving time, an unlikely bond, and an indestructible love.]]> 372 Khaled Hosseini 1594489505 Jason 5 4.44 2007
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Jason
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2007
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/08/30
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]]> 1038088
As Isaac navigates the tedium and terrors of prison, forging tenuous trusts, his wife feverishly searches for him, suspecting, all the while, that their once-trusted housekeeper has turned on them and is now acting as an informer.

And as his daughter, in a childlike attempt to stop the wave of baseless arrests, engages in illicit activities, his son, sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs, struggles to find happiness even as he realizes that his family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.

A page-turning literary debut, The Septembers of Shiraz simmers with questions of identity, alienation, and love, not simply for a spouse or a child, but for all the intangible sights and smells of the place we call home.]]> 340 Dalia Sofer 0061130400 Jason 3 3.80 2007
author: Dalia Sofer
name: Jason
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2007
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/08/15
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]]> 9650 276 George Orwell 1421808307 Jason 4 3.87 1934
author: George Orwell
name: Jason
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1934
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/08/08
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]]> 332111
The daring fragmented structure of this epistolary novel mirrors the chaos surrounding the heroine, Asmahan, as she futilely writes letters to her loved ones, to her friends, to Beirut, and to the war itself--letters of lament that are never to be answered except with their own resounding echoes. In Beirut Blues , Hanan al-Shaykh evokes a Beirut that has been seen by few, and that will never be seen again.]]> 384 Hanan Al-Shaykh 0385473826 Jason 4 3.43 1992
author: Hanan Al-Shaykh
name: Jason
average rating: 3.43
book published: 1992
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/08/05
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]]> 2159
John Perkins should know—he was an economic hit man. His job was to convince countries that are strategically important to the U.S.—from Indonesia to Panama—to accept enormous loans for infrastructure development, and to make sure that the lucrative projects were contracted to U. S. corporations. Saddled with huge debts, these countries came under the control of the United States government, World Bank and other U.S.-dominated aid agencies that acted like loan sharks—dictating repayment terms and bullying foreign governments into submission.

This New York Times bestseller exposes international intrigue, corruption, and little-known government and corporate activities that have dire consequences for American democracy and the world. It is a compelling story that also offers hope and a vision for realizing the American dream of a just and compassionate world that will bring us greater security.]]> 303 John Perkins 0452287081 Jason 4 3.85 2004
author: John Perkins
name: Jason
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2004
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/07/26
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]]> 8658803
Drawing extensively on the rich interview material, Mark Warren shows how white Americans can develop a commitment to racial justice, not just because it is the right thing to do, but because they embrace the cause as their own. Contrary to much contemporary thinking on racial issues focused on altruism or interests, Warren finds that cognitive and rational processes alone do little to move whites to action. Rather, the motivation to take and sustain action for racial justice is profoundly moral and relational.

Warren shows how white activists come to find common cause with people of color when their core values are engaged, as they build relationships with people of color that lead to caring, and when they develop a vision of a racially just future that they understand to benefit everyone--themselves, other whites, and people of color. Warren also considers the complex dynamics and dilemmas white people face in working in multiracial organizations committed to systemic change in America's racial order, and provides a deeper understanding and appreciation of the role that white people can play in efforts to promote racial justice.

The first study of its kind, Fire in the Heart brings to light the perspectives of white people who are working day-to-day to build not a post-racial America but the foundations for a truly multiracial America rooted in a caring, human community with equity and justice at its core.
]]> 320 Mark R. Warren 0199751250 Jason 3 3.66 2010
author: Mark R. Warren
name: Jason
average rating: 3.66
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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]]> 762134 501 Naguib Mahfouz 0385264666 Jason 4 4.09 1956
author: Naguib Mahfouz
name: Jason
average rating: 4.09
book published: 1956
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/07/11
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]]> 13057939
For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia's capital. Soon the family's world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood - the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.]]> 322 Vaddey Ratner 1451657706 Jason 4 4.04 2012
author: Vaddey Ratner
name: Jason
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2012
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/06/15
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]]> 52042
Capturing the spirit of those heady days of excitement and idealism, Reed's true-to-life account follows many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, as well as vividly capturing the mood of the masses. Verbatim reports of speeches by leaders, and comments of bystanders—set against an idealized backdrop of the proletariat united with soldiers, sailors, and peasants—are balanced by passionate narratives describing the fall of the provisional government, the assault on the Winter Palace, and Lenin's seizure of power.

Accompanied by contemporaneous photographs, this gripping record by a western journalist has been acclaimed worldwide since its first publication in 1919. Endorsed by Lenin as a "truthful and most vivid exposition," the work was the basis for the Academy Award-winning 1981 film Reds.]]> 400 John Reed 0486452409 Jason 4 3.98 1919
author: John Reed
name: Jason
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1919
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/06/07
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]]> 231609
Covering a fifteen year period from 1934 to 1950, the contents of this book have been drawn from Einstein's articles, addresses, letters and assorted papers. Through his words, you can understand the man and gain his insight on social, religious, and educational issues.]]> 282 Albert Einstein 0785820450 Jason 0 to-read 4.08 1950
author: Albert Einstein
name: Jason
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1950
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/05/22
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]]> 14376 Einstein's Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar.

Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein's Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.]]> 140 Alan Lightman 140007780X Jason 5 4.08 1993
author: Alan Lightman
name: Jason
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1993
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/05/22
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]]> 3367956 290 Jamie Ford 0345505336 Jason 3 4.03 2009
author: Jamie Ford
name: Jason
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2009
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/05/22
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]]> 1488897
An epic for our time, Big History begins when the universe is no more than a single point the size of an atom, squeezed together in unimaginable density, and ends with a twenty-first-century planet inhabited by 6.1 billion people. It's a story that takes in prehistoric geology, human evolution, the agrarian age, the Black Death, the voyages of Columbus, the industrial revolution, and global warming. Historian Cynthia Brown visits the Vikings, the Mayas and Aztecs, the Incas, the Mongol empire, and the Islamic heartlands. Along the way she considers topics as varied as cell formation, population growth, global disparities, and illiteracy, creating a stunning synthesis of historical and scientific knowledge of humanity and the earth we inhabit.

Big History represents a new kind of history, one that skillfully interweaves historical knowledge and cutting-edge science. In an age of global warming, when the fate of the earth hangs in the balance, scientific advances permit us to see the universe as never before, grasping the timescales that allow us to understand the history of mankind in the context of its ecological impact on the planet. Cynthia Brown's lucid, accessible narrative is the first popularization of this innovative new field of study, as thrilling as it is ambitious.]]> 304 Cynthia Stokes Brown 1595581960 Jason 4 3.85 2007
author: Cynthia Stokes Brown
name: Jason
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2007
rating: 4
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]]> 5204 454 Joyce Carol Oates 0452282829 Jason 3 3.75 1996
author: Joyce Carol Oates
name: Jason
average rating: 3.75
book published: 1996
rating: 3
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date added: 2014/04/25
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]]> 449164


"The foremost Filipino novelist in English, his novels deserve a much wider readership than the Philippines can offer."--Ian Buruma, New York Review of Books


"Tolstoy himself, not to mention Italo Svevo, would envy the author of this story."--Chicago Tribune]]> 325 F. Sionil José 0375751440 Jason 4 4.14 1984
author: F. Sionil José
name: Jason
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1984
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/04/03
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]]> 253264 129 Jerome Lawrence 0345501039 Jason 4 3.93 1955
author: Jerome Lawrence
name: Jason
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1955
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/03/28
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]]> 18079776
Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble. She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ...

A powerful, sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the nineteenth century, The Invention of Wings evokes a world of shocking contrasts, of beauty and ugliness, of righteous people living daily with cruelty they fail to recognize; and celebrates the power of friendship and sisterhood against all the odds.]]> 384 Sue Monk Kidd 0670024783 Jason 4 4.24 2014
author: Sue Monk Kidd
name: Jason
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2014
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/03/28
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]]> 7550408 140 Thomas Paine 1605203734 Jason 0 to-read 4.80 1776
author: Thomas Paine
name: Jason
average rating: 4.80
book published: 1776
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/08
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]]> 6956 447 Gordon S. Wood 0679736883 Jason 0 to-read 4.07 1992
author: Gordon S. Wood
name: Jason
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/03/08
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]]> 72223
In an era that promises ever-greater natural disasters, The Worst Hard Time is “arguably the best nonfiction book yet� (Austin Statesman Journal) on the greatest environmental disaster ever to be visited upon our land and a powerful cautionary tale about the dangers of trifling with nature.]]> 340 Timothy Egan 0618773479 Jason 4 4.04 2005
author: Timothy Egan
name: Jason
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2005
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/03/08
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]]> 765811 In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak inner-city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and open-hearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition. Her remarkable sense of community and history makes The Women of Brewster Place a contemporary classic—and a touching and unforgettable read.

]]> 192 Gloria Naylor Jason 0 to-read 4.20 1982
author: Gloria Naylor
name: Jason
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2014/02/15
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]]> 18114322
First published in 1939, Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning epic of the Great Depression chronicles the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s and tells the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads—driven from their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots evolves a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its human dignity. A portrait of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless, of one man’s fierce reaction to injustice, and of one woman’s stoical strength, the novel captures the horrors of the Great Depression and probes into the very nature of equality and justice in America. At once a naturalistic epic, captivity narrative, road novel, and transcendental gospel, Steinbeck’s powerful landmark novel is perhaps the most American of American Classics.]]> 496 John Steinbeck 067001690X Jason 5 4.06 1939
author: John Steinbeck
name: Jason
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1939
rating: 5
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]]> 5129 Brave New World is a searching vision of an unequal, technologically-advanced future where humans are genetically bred, socially indoctrinated, and pharmaceutically anesthetized to passively uphold an authoritarian ruling order–all at the cost of our freedom, full humanity, and perhaps also our souls. “A genius [who] who spent his life decrying the onward march of the Machine� (The New Yorker), Huxley was a man of incomparable talents: equally an artist, a spiritual seeker, and one of history’s keenest observers of human nature and civilization. Brave New World, his masterpiece, has enthralled and terrified millions of readers, and retains its urgent relevance to this day as both a warning to be heeded as we head into tomorrow and as thought-provoking, satisfying work of literature. Written in the shadow of the rise of fascism during the 1930s, Brave New Worldd likewise speaks to a 21st-century world dominated by mass-entertainment, technology, medicine and pharmaceuticals, the arts of persuasion, and the hidden influence of elites.

"Aldous Huxley is the greatest 20th century writer in English." —Chicago Tribune]]> 268 Aldous Huxley 0060929871 Jason 5 3.99 1932
author: Aldous Huxley
name: Jason
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1932
rating: 5
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]]> 8732 95 John Steinbeck Jason 5 3.49 1933
author: John Steinbeck
name: Jason
average rating: 3.49
book published: 1933
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/02/15
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]]> 18490 This is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 9780141439471

'Now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart ...'

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Based on the third edition of 1831, this volume contains all the revisions Mary Shelley made to her story, as well as her 1831 introduction and Percy Bysshe Shelley's preface to the first edition. This revised edition includes as appendices a select collation of the texts of 1818 and 1831 together with 'A Fragment' by Lord Byron and Dr John Polidori's 'The Vampyre: A Tale'.]]> 288 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Jason 4 3.77 1818
author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
name: Jason
average rating: 3.77
book published: 1818
rating: 4
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]]> 7624 182 William Golding 0140283331 Jason 5 3.70 1954
author: William Golding
name: Jason
average rating: 3.70
book published: 1954
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/02/15
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]]> 5470 328 George Orwell Jason 5 4.15 1949
author: George Orwell
name: Jason
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1949
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/02/15
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]]> 7613
The book tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to create a society where the animals can be equal, free, and happy. Ultimately, however, the rebellion is betrayed, and the farm ends up in a state as bad as it was before, under the dictatorship of a pig named Napoleon.

One night, all the animals at Mr. Jones' Manor Farm assemble in a barn to hear old Major, a pig, describe a dream he had about a world where all animals live free from the tyranny of their human masters. Old Major dies soon after the meeting, but the animals � inspired by his philosophy of Animalism � plot a rebellion against Jones.

Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon, prove themselves important figures and planners of this dangerous enterprise. When Jones forgets to feed the animals, the revolution occurs, and Jones and his men are chased off the farm. Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm, and the Seven Commandments of Animalism are painted on the barn wall...]]> 129 George Orwell Jason 5 3.90 1945
author: George Orwell
name: Jason
average rating: 3.90
book published: 1945
rating: 5
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]]> 18135 Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare creates a violent world, in which two young people fall in love. It is not simply that their families disapprove; the Montagues and the Capulets are engaged in a blood feud.

In this death-filled setting, the movement from love at first sight to the lovers� final union in death seems almost inevitable. And yet, this play set in an extraordinary world has become the quintessential story of young love. In part because of its exquisite language, it is easy to respond as if it were about all young lovers.]]> 281 William Shakespeare 0743477111 Jason 5 3.74 1597
author: William Shakespeare
name: Jason
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1597
rating: 5
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]]> 10975 366 William Faulkner Jason 4 3.86 1929
author: William Faulkner
name: Jason
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1929
rating: 4
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date added: 2014/02/15
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]]> 17690 The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, The Trial has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.]]> 255 Franz Kafka Jason 5 4.00 1925
author: Franz Kafka
name: Jason
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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date added: 2014/02/15
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]]> 49552 The Stranger has long been considered a classic of twentieth-century literature. Le Monde ranks it as number one on its "100 Books of the Century" list. Through this story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."]]> 123 Albert Camus Jason 5 4.04 1942
author: Albert Camus
name: Jason
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1942
rating: 5
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]]> 5107 It's Christmas time and Holden Caulfield has just been expelled from yet another school...

Fleeing the crooks at Pencey Prep, he pinballs around New York City seeking solace in fleeting encounters—shooting the bull with strangers in dive hotels, wandering alone round Central Park, getting beaten up by pimps and cut down by erstwhile girlfriends. The city is beautiful and terrible, in all its neon loneliness and seedy glamour, its mingled sense of possibility and emptiness. Holden passes through it like a ghost, thinking always of his kid sister Phoebe, the only person who really understands him, and his determination to escape the phonies and find a life of true meaning.

The Catcher in the Rye is an all-time classic in coming-of-age literature- an elegy to teenage alienation, capturing the deeply human need for connection and the bewildering sense of loss as we leave childhood behind.

J.D. Salinger's (1919�2010) classic novel of teenage angst and rebellion was first published in 1951. The novel was included on Time's 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923. It was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It has been frequently challenged in the court for its liberal use of profanity and portrayal of sexuality and in the 1950's and 60's it was the novel that every teenage boy wants to read.]]> 277 J.D. Salinger 0316769177 Jason 5 3.81 1951
author: J.D. Salinger
name: Jason
average rating: 3.81
book published: 1951
rating: 5
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]]> 12220 Death of a Salesman and The Crucible), and Williams� essay “The World I Live In.�

It is a very short list of 20th-century American plays that continue to have the same power and impact as when they first appeared�57 years after its Broadway premiere, Tennessee Williams� A Streetcar Named Desire is one of those plays. The story famously recounts how the faded and promiscuous Blanche DuBois is pushed over the edge by her sexy and brutal brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski. Streetcar launched the careers of Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden, and solidified the position of Tennessee Williams as one of the most important young playwrights of his generation, as well as that of Elia Kazan as the greatest American stage director of the �40s and �50s.]]> 107 Tennessee Williams 0822210894 Jason 4 3.98 1947
author: Tennessee Williams
name: Jason
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1947
rating: 4
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]]> 4671 The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family and from his lifelong publisher.

This edition is the enduring original text, updated with the author’s own revisions, a foreword by his granddaughter, and with a new introduction by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third book, stands as the supreme achievement of his career. First published by Scribner in 1925, this quintessential novel of the Jazz Age has been acclaimed by generations of readers. The story of the mysteriously wealthy Jay Gatsby and his love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan is an exquisitely crafted tale of America in the 1920s.]]> 180 F. Scott Fitzgerald 0743273567 Jason 5 3.93 1925
author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
name: Jason
average rating: 3.93
book published: 1925
rating: 5
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]]> 11337 The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change—in painful, devastating ways.

With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels- and a significant work of American fiction.]]> 216 Toni Morrison Jason 5 4.13 1970
author: Toni Morrison
name: Jason
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1970
rating: 5
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]]> 11486
Then her husband's lover, a flamboyant blues singer, barreled into her world and gave Celie the courage to ask for more - to laugh, to play, and finally - to love.]]> 295 Alice Walker Jason 5 4.22 1982
author: Alice Walker
name: Jason
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1982
rating: 5
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]]> 227463 A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."]]> 192 Anthony Burgess Jason 5 3.98 1962
author: Anthony Burgess
name: Jason
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Jason 5 4.20 1962
author: Ken Kesey
name: Jason
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 5
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]]> 2657
Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, "To Kill A Mockingbird" takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos. Now with over 18 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.]]> 323 Harper Lee 0060935464 Jason 5 4.25 1960
author: Harper Lee
name: Jason
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1960
rating: 5
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]]> 6514 294 Sylvia Plath 0571268862 Jason 5 4.05 1963
author: Sylvia Plath
name: Jason
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1963
rating: 5
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]]> 161206 Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum.

Here is the poignant journey of a minority student who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation--from his past, his parents, his culture--and so describes the high price of making it in middle-class America.

Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.


]]> 212 Richard RodrĂ­guez 0553231936 Jason 3 3.31 1981
author: Richard RodrĂ­guez
name: Jason
average rating: 3.31
book published: 1981
rating: 3
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]]> 11012 I regret to see that my book has turned out un fiasco solenne.' James Joyce's disillusion with the publication of Dubliners in 1914 was the result of ten years battling with publishers, resisting their demands to remove swear words, real place names and much else, including two entire stories. Although only 24 when he signed his first publishing contract for the book, Joyce already knew its worth: to alter it in any way would 'retard the course of civilisation in Ireland'.

Joyce's aim was to tell the truth � to create a work of art that would reflect life in Ireland at the turn of the last century and by rejecting euphemism, reveal to the Irish the unromantic reality the recognition of which would lead to the spiritual liberation of the country.

Each of the fifteen stories offers a glimpse of the lives of ordinary Dubliners � a death, an encounter, an opportunity not taken, a memory rekindled � and collectively they paint a portrait of a nation.]]> 352 James Joyce Jason 4 3.86 1914
author: James Joyce
name: Jason
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1914
rating: 4
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]]> 7274337
Paris, 1937. Andras Lévi, a Hungarian Jewish architecture student, arrives from Budapest with a scholarship, a single suitcase, and a mysterious letter he has promised to deliver to C. Morgenstern on the rue de Sévigné. As he becomes involved with the letter’s recipient, his elder brother takes up medical studies in Modena, their younger brother leaves school for the stage—and Europe’s unfolding tragedy sends each of their lives into terrifying uncertainty.

From the Hungarian village of Konyár to the grand opera houses of Budapest and Paris, from the lonely chill of Andras’s garret to the enduring passion he discovers on the rue de Sévigné, from the despair of a Carpathian winter to an unimaginable life in forced labor camps and beyond, The Invisible Bridge tells the unforgettable story of brothers bound by history and love, of a marriage tested by disaster, of a Jewish family’s struggle against annihilation, and of the dangerous power of art in a time of war.

Length: 27 hrs and 51 mins]]> 28 Julie Orringer 0307713547 Jason 3 4.17 2010
author: Julie Orringer
name: Jason
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2010
rating: 3
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]]> 8171378
Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California.

Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World. The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration� within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is a modern classic.]]> 622 Isabel Wilkerson 0679444327 Jason 5 4.45 2010
author: Isabel Wilkerson
name: Jason
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2010
rating: 5
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]]> 3985 639 Michael Chabon 0312282990 Jason 3 4.18 2000
author: Michael Chabon
name: Jason
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2000
rating: 3
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]]>