Virgin Mary on a piece of toast (never, you notice, on a bagel), weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Blount dubs himself a “shade-tree lexicographer,” which calls to mind Sunday afternoons tinkering with a dictionary instead of a timing belt or carburetor. Once she even pronounced steak to rhyme with leak. Despite some pretty fancy etymologizing, Blount still comes across as a regular guy: “We know from the writings of Thales of Miletus (or more likely, as in my case, from encyclopedias) that the Greeks knew …” But when he wants to, he can deliver a quip or judgment as pointed as anything by a 17th-century French aphorist: “Reading from a monitor, instead of a book, is like playing videogame football instead of tossing a football around.” Alphabet Juice, being arranged like a dictionary, is designed for browsing, for flipping through the pages, reading where you will, “without ever being sure you’ve read it all.” Just don’t miss the entries about Wilt Chamberlain, the evolution of “D’oh,” the naughty but brilliant wordplay of Leonard Bernstein (see “transposition game”), the history of “okay,” the last, unlikely words that Lincoln heard before he was shot (see the entry for “socket”), the origin of Goody Two-Shoes, the snappy examples of movie dialogue, the Samuel Goldwynisms (“Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined”), the Willie Nelson story under the entry “appreciate,” and the anecdotes, such as the following, used to illustrate “Marriage, impact of word choice upon”: “A woman once told me that she made a point of mispronouncing words in fine restaurants because she knew it drove her husband crazy. ‘What’s this gunnotchy?’ she would ask the waiter, pointing to gnocchi on the menu. Why? Because years earlier, in a snooty French eatery, her husband had expressed embarrassment over her pronunciation of hutres, and she was still getting back at him.” Back in the 18th century, Samuel Johnson could define a lexicographer as “a harmless drudge,” but he obviously never foresaw the armed and dangerously funny Roy Blount Jr.
Late one night, Christopher comes across his neighbor’s poodle, Wellington, impaled on a garden fork.. Wellington’s owner finds him cradling her dead dog in his arms, and has him arrested. He takes everything that he sees gat face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers. In the hands of first-time novelist Haddon, Christopher is a fascinating case study and, above all, a sympathetic boy: not closed off, as the stereotype would have it, but too open-overwhelmed by sensations, bereft of the filters through which normal people screen their surroundings. Mark Haddon’s bitterly funny debut novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, is a murder mystery of sorts—one told by an autistic version of Adrian Mole. Strange as he may seem, other people are far more of a conundrum to him, for he lacks the intuitive “theory of mind” by which most of us sense what’s going on in other people’s heads. He is encouraged by Siobhan, a social worker at his school, to write a book about his investigations, and the result—quirkily illustrated, with each chapter given its own prime number—is The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This is the sort of book that could turn condescending, or exploitative, or overly sentimental, or grossly tasteless very easily, but Haddon navigates those dangers with a sureness of touch that is extremely rare among first-time novelists. As the mystery leads him to the secrets of his parents’ broken marriage and then into an odyssey to find his place in the world, he must fall back on deductive logic to navigate the emotional complexities of a social world that remains a closed book to him. Haddon’s novel is a startling performance. The result is an eye-opening work in a unique and compelling literary voice.. When his neighbor’s poodle is killed and Christopher is falsely accused of the crime, he decides that he will take a page from Sherlock Holmes gand track down the killer. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is original, clever, and genuinely moving: this one is a must-read. —Jack Illingworth, Amazon.caChristopher Boone, the autistic 15-year-old narrator of this revelatory novel, relaxes by groaning and doing math problems in his head, eats red-but not yellow or brown-foods and screams when he is touched. His literal-minded observations make for a kind of poetic sensibility and a poignant evocation of character. I cannot tell jokes because I do not understand them,” the novel brims with touching, ironic humor. Though Christopher insists, “This will not be a funny book. After spending a night in jail, Christopher resolves—against the objection of his father and neighbors—to discover just who has murdered Wellington.
Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances.
A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family’s struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister cope with their uncle’s attempt to sell them into slavery. Aboard a bus filled with refugees—a microcosm of today’s Africa—a Muslim boy summons his faith to bear a treacherous ride across Nigeria. Through the eyes of childhood friends the emotional toll of religious conflict in Ethiopia becomes viscerally clear.
Since the dawn of time, when the first smitten caveboy tried to woo the object of his affections by shoving her into the mud, men have demonstrated that when it comes to women, they are profoundly stupid. And when it comes to men, women — no matter how intelligent or mature — are completely crazy.
Based on this simple yet groundbreaking insight, comedy writers and real-life couple Howard J. Morris and Jenny Lee have devised a relationship guide that is refreshingly honest, completely hilarious, and surprisingly practical. Using their own crazy/stupid romance as an example of these forces in action, they set out to explain why women ask questions that they absolutely do not want answered — and why men persist in answering them. What are men really thinking — or crucially, not thinking? Why do women view even the most mundane events through an emotional prism? Why do guys suck at being romantic? And why does every conversation with a woman lead back to whether or not she’s fat?
Using wit, hard-earned wisdom, and a highly entertaining he said/she said format, the authors explore the surprising method to his dumbness and the valid reasons behind her insanity, while providing real solutions to perennial relationship problems. By teaching men how and why they’re stupid around women and showing women how to “control the crazy” for everybody’s sake, Women Are Crazy, Men Are Stupid helps couples to reach the place where giving isn’t giving in, needing isn’t needy, and where the sexes can break the dysfunctional patterns and find a way to live lovingly, happily ever after.
America is under attack. But the principal culprits are not foreign terrorists. They are influential and powerful Americans secretly stirring up disunion and disloyalty in the shifting shadows of the Democratic Party. New York Times best-selling authors David Horowitz and Richard Poe (both former radicals) weave together riveting history, investigative reporting, and cutting political analysis to help expose and explain:
- How the Shadow Party overthrows foreign governments—and why it may attempt to use the same methods here.
- The politicians on both sides of the aisle who have exchanged political favors with George Soros and his “government-in-the-wings.”
- The Shadow Party’s efforts to conceal its radical agenda behind the “moderate” pose of Hillary Clinton and other public figures.
- The vast network of private think tanks, foundations, unions, stealth PACs, and other front groups through which the Shadow Party operates in America.
- The radical network’s plan to seize power in 2008.
- The Shadow Party’s plan to rewrite the US Constitution.
A girl, mute since the loss of her parents, speaks her first words-to an abused and emaciated horse. This moment was really the birth of Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch in Oregon, writes Kim Meeder, the founder and operator of the ranch that rescues abused horses and gives disadvantaged children a chance to care for them. Readers will need an entire box of tissues handy for this collection of real-life stories of incidents at the ranch: two tough-as-nails boys minister lovingly to a horse that has, like them, suffered terrible neglect; in an answer to prayer, strangers donate hundreds of dollars so an impoverished girl can have a pony for Christmas. Most stories are emotional, even cloying, though some are comical and a few-such as one about a horse that was rescued too late to avoid being put down-sidestep the obligatory happy ending. The writing can at times be maudlin and the vignettes are encumbered by gratuitous adjectives intended to drive home a dramatic punch. Despite the over-the-top writing style, the emotions are real and intense. Readers will recoil from Meeder’s gritty descriptions of the devastating neglect of horses and children, then cheer when it seems their interaction provides healing for both. Meeder laces the stories with her testimony of God’s faithfulness and providence, making this an earnest and loving gift book for the Christian market.
Brutalized Harlem teenager, Sapphire (American Dreams), a writer affiliated with the Nuyorican poets, charts the psychic damage of the most ghettoized of inner-city inhabitants. Obese, dark-skinned, HIV-positive, bullied by her sexually abusive mother, Clareece, Precious Jones is, at the novel’s outset, pregnant for the second time with her father’s child. (Precious had her first daughter at 12, named Little Mongo, “short for Mongoloid Down Sinder, which is what she is; sometimes what I feel I is. I feel so stupid sometimes. So ugly, worth nuffin.”) Referred to a pilot program by an unusually solicitous principal, Precious comes under the experimental pedagogy of a lesbian miracle worker named, implausibly enough, Blue Rain. Under her angelic mentorship, Precious, who has never before experienced real nurturing, learns to voice her long suppressed feelings in a journal. As her language skills improve, she finds sustenance in writing poetry, in friendships and in support groups-one for “insect” survivors and one for HIV-positive teens. It is here that Sapphire falters, as her slim and harrowing novel, with its references to Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes and The Color Purple (a parallel the author hints at again and again), becomes a conventional, albeit dark and unresolved, allegory about redemption. The ending, composed of excerpts from the journals of Precious’s classmates, lends heightened realism and a wider scope to the narrative, but also gives it a quality of incompleteness. Sapphire has created a remarkable heroine in Precious, whose first-person street talk is by turns blisteringly savvy, rawly lyrical, hilariously pig-headed and wrenchingly vulnerable. Yet that voice begs to be heard in a larger novel of more depth and complexity.
Lorrie Moore knits together the shadow of 9/11 and a young girl’s bumpy coming-of-age in this luminous, heart-wrenchingly wry novel—the author’s first in 15 years. Tassie Keltjin, 20, a smalltown girl weathering a clumsy college year in the Athens of the Midwest, is taken on as prospective nanny by brittle Sarah Brink, the proprietor of a pricey restaurant who is desperate to adopt a baby despite her dodgy past. Subsequent adventures in prospective motherhood involve a pregnant girl with scarcely a tooth in her head and a white birth mother abandoned by her African-American boyfriend—both encounters expose class and racial prejudice to an increasingly less naïve Tassie. In a parallel tale, Tassie lands a lover, enigmatic Reynaldo, who tries to keep certain parts of his life a secret from Tassie. Moore’s graceful prose considers serious emotional and political issues with low-key clarity and poignancy, while generous flashes of wit—Tessie the sexual innocent using her roommate’s vibrator to stir her chocolate milk—endow this stellar novel with great heart.
The youngest of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, he came of age among siblings from whom much was expected. As a young man, he played a key role in the presidential campaign of his brother John F. Kennedy, recounted here in loving detail. In 1962 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, where he began a fascinating political education and became a legislator.
In this historic memoir,Ted Kennedy takes us inside his family, re-creating life with his parents and brothers and explaining their profound impact on him. or the first time, he describes his heartbreak and years of struggle in the wake of their deaths. Through it all, he describes his work in the Senate on the major issues of our time—civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, the quest for peace in Northern Ireland—and the cause of his life: improved health care for all Americans, a fight influenced by his own experiences in hospitals.
His life has been marked by tragedy and perseverance, a love of family, and an abiding faith. There have been controversies, too, and Kennedy addresses them with unprecedented candor. At midlife, embattled and uncertain if he would ever fall in love again, he met the woman who changed his life, Victoria Reggie Kennedy. Facing a tough reelection campaign against an aggressive challenger named Mitt Romney, Kennedy found a new voice and began one of the great third acts in American politics, sponsoring major legislation, standing up for liberal principles, and making the pivotal endorsement of Barack Obama for president.
Hundreds of books have been written about the Kennedys. TRUE COMPASS will endure as the definitive account from a member of America’s most heralded family, an inspiring legacy to readers and to history, and a deeply moving story of a life like no other.
In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can’t seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost.
In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own-including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada-where he finds inspiration in example. Reid shares evidence from doctors, government officials, health care experts, and patients the world over, finding that foreign health care systems give everybody quality care at an affordable cost. And that dreaded monster “socialized medicine” turns out to be a myth. Many developed countries provide universal coverage with private doctors, private hospitals, and private insurance.
