During six weeks in 1940, Hitler's blitzkrieg shattered the redoubtable Maginot Line and, shortly thereafter, the French army. No historian has written a more definitive chronicle of that disaster than Alistair Horne, or one so emotionally gripping. Moving with cinematic swiftness from the battlefield to the Reichstag and the Palais de l'...lysée, To Lose a Battle overspills the confines of traditional military history to become a portrait of the French national soul in its darkest night.

For nearly a century the Elders of Hotevilla--a tiny village on a remote Hopi reservation in Arizona--have been guarding the secrets and prophecies of a thousand-year-old covenant that was created to ensure the well-being of the earth and its creatures. But the elders are dying, and there is no one left to pass on its remarkable teachings. Renowned Native American expert Thomas Mails was chosen by the last surviving elders to reveal to the outside world the sacred Hopi prophecy and instructions at precisely the time in history when they are most urgently needed. The Hopi Survival Kit is the first full revelation of traditional Hopi prophecy. Many of its predictions have already been realized, but the most shattering apocalyptic events are still to occur. And though this may be a sobering realization, it is also our best defense. For the Hopi teachings give detailed instructions for survival--our actions can alter the pace and intensity of what will happen and help avoid a cataclysmic end.

Being on the Murder Squad is nothing like Detective Antoinette Conway dreamed it would be. Her partner, Stephen Moran, is the only person who seems glad she’s there. The rest of her working life is a stream of thankless cases, vicious pranks, and harassment. Antoinette is savagely tough, but she’s getting close to the breaking point.

Their new case looks like yet another by-the-numbers lovers’ quarrel gone bad. Aislinn Murray is blond, pretty, groomed-to-a-shine, and dead in her catalog-perfect living room, next to a table set for a romantic dinner. There’s nothing unusual about her—except that Antoinette’s seen her somewhere before.

And that her death won’t stay in its neat by-numbers box. Other detectives are trying to push Antoinette and Steve into arresting Aislinn’s boyfriend, fast. There’s a shadowy figure at the end of Antoinetteʼs road. Aislinnʼs friend is hinting that she knew Aislinn was in danger. And everything they find out about Aislinn takes her further from the glossy, passive doll she seemed to be.

Antoinette knows the harassment has turned her paranoid, but she can’t tell just how far gone she is. Is this case another step in the campaign to force her off the squad, or are there darker currents flowing beneath its polished surface?

Four plays which exemplify his interest in flawed, characters who defy the expectations of Greek society
The four tragedies collected in this volume all focus on a central character, once powerful, brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatred. The first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter’s sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family. Philip Vellacott’s lucid translation is accompanied by an introduction, which discusses the literary background of Classical Athens and examines the distinction between instinctive and civilized behaviour.

Nominated for numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN Center USA-West's annual literary award, this debut collection by a young Chinese-American writer has garnered stellar reviews and invited comparisons to Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston. These stories reveal the lives of immigrant families haunted by lost loves: a ghost seduces a young girl into a flooded river; a mother commands a daughter to avenge her father's death; and a woman speaks from beyond the grave about her tragic marriage to a man whose own disappointments nearly destroy their two daughters. In luminous prose Lan Samantha Chang weaves the forces of war and magic, food and desire, ghosts and family, into haunting tales that signal the arrival of an exciting new writer and "a work of gorgeous, enduring prose" (The Washington Post).

Before his 1959 breakthrough, "Naked Lunch," an unknown William S. Burroughs wrote "Junk," his first book, a candid, eyewitness account of times and places that are now long gone. This book brings them vividly to life again; it is an unvarnished field report from the American postwar underground. For this definitive 50th-anniversary edition, eminent Burroughs scholar Oliver Harris has painstakingly re-created the author's original text, word by word, from archival typescripts. Here for the first time are Burroughs's own unpublished Introduction and an entire omitted chapter, along with many "lost" passages and auxiliary texts by Allen Ginsberg and others. Harris's comprehensive Introduction reveals the composition history of "Junk"'s text and places its contents against a lively historical background.

. Theirs are the names primarily associated with the Beat Generation. But what about
(nee
),
, and dozens of others? These female friends and lovers of the famous iconoclasts are now beginning to be recognized for their own roles in forging the Beat movement and for their daring attempts to live as freely as did the men in their circle a decade before Women's Liberation.Twenty-one-year-old
, an aspiring novelist and a secretary at a New York literary agency, fell in love with
on a blind date arranged by
nine months before the publication of
made Kerouac an instant celebrity. While Kerouac traveled to Tangiers, San Francisco, and Mexico City, Johnson roamed the streets of the East Village, where she found herself in the midst of the cultural revolution the Beats had created.
portrays the turbulent years of her relationship with Kerouac with extraordinary wit and love and a cool, critical eye, introducing the reader to a lesser known but purely original American voice: her own.

From Library Journal
British historian Ponting provides a fascinating and comprehensive environmental perspective on the rise and fall of civilizations, including the Sumerians, the Egyptians, and the Mayans. Beginning with hunting-and-gathering societies, settled societies, and the industrialized societies of today, he describes how each has had greater effects on the environment than the last. Settled societies use more resources to support larger populations, often overextending the resources available. "Since the rise of settled societies . . . the majority of the world's population have lived in conditions of grinding poverty." Ponting's forecast for the future based on current population trends and available resources is equally bleak. "To feed the whole world on the diet enjoyed by the average American, using the same level of inputs into agriculture, would require all the world's current oil production and exhaust known reserves within not much more than a decade." A significant contribution that needs to be available and promoted in every public library.
- Mary J. Nickum, Fish and Wildlife Reference Svce., Bethesda, Md.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews
A comprehensive assessment of humanity's assault on the environment across the centuries, by British historian Ponting (University College, Swansea). Examining the interaction between societies and their surroundings from the earliest hunter-gatherer groups on, Ponting describes the first great leap of civilization--the development of crops and agriculture--as the start of a systematic environmental transformation. As groups settled near their fields and as populations grew, the burden on the land increased, and at times the ecological pressure grew too great. Crop irrigation, the author says, led to increased salination and diminished yields, while a loss of forest cover brought erosion and the destruction of precious arable land. The Sumerian civilization in the Middle East and the Mayans of Central America, among others, fell victim to these limits to growth, with the collapse in some cases being precipitous. Other societies survived, however, to participate in the more recent great transition involving the use of fossil fuels for energy. With this step, Ponting says, environmental degradation increased exponentially through pollution at all stages of the industrialization process--and, in addition, the industrialized societies, by their exploitation of others less advanced, created the Third World, with its Pandora's Box of poverty, overpopulation, and other social ills that continue to worsen today. Ponting suggests no solutions, marking instead the devastating course of human progress and the ruins that serve as its milestones. Few colorful anecdotes, but an impressive accumulation of evidence culled from the annals of recorded history: a sobering view of a planet deeply in peril. (Maps and charts.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Anne Lister was extraordinary. Fearless, charismatic and determined to explore her lesbian sexuality, she forged her own path in a society that had no language to define her. She was a landowner, an industrialist and a prolific diarist, whose output has secured her legacy as one of the most fascinating figures of the 19th century.
follows Anne from her crumbling ancestral home in Yorkshire to the glittering courts of Denmark as she resolves to put past heartbreak behind her and find herself a wife. This biographical portrait introduces the real Gentleman Jack, featuring unpublished journal extracts decrypted for the first time by series creator Sally Wainwright and historian Anne Choma.

Whether puncturing the lies of politicians, wittily dissecting the English character or telling unpalatable truths about war, Orwell's timeless, uncompromising essays are more relevant, entertaining and essential than ever in today's era of spin.
Contents:
"Why I Write", first published 1946
"The Lion and the Unicorn", first published 1940
"A Hanging", first published 1931
"Politics and the English Language", first published 1946

Every day we make choices—about what to buy or eat, about financial investments or our children’s health and education, even about the causes we champion or the planet itself. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. Nudge is about how we make these choices and how we can make better ones. Using dozens of eye-opening examples and drawing on decades of behavioral science research, Nobel Prize winner Richard H. Thaler and Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein show that no choice is ever presented to us in a neutral way, and that we are all susceptible to biases that can lead us to make bad decisions. But by knowing how people think, we can use sensible “choice architecture” to nudge people toward the best decisions for ourselves, our families, and our society, without restricting our freedom of choice.

Is America an empire? Certainly not, according to our government. Despite the conquest of two sovereign states in as many years, despite the presence of more than 750 military installations in two thirds of the world's countries and despite his stated intention to extend the benefits of freedom...to every corner of the world, George W. Bush maintains that America has never been an empire. We don't seek empires, insists Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. We're not imperialistic.Nonsense, says Niall Ferguson. In
he argues that in both military and economic terms America is nothing less than the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. Just like the British Empire a century ago, the United States aspires to globalize free markets, the rule of law, and representative government. In theory it's a good project, says Ferguson. Yet Americans shy away from the long-term commitments of manpower and money that are indispensable if rogue regimes and failed states really are to be changed for the better. Ours, he argues, is an empire with an attention deficit disorder, imposing ever more unrealistic timescales on its overseas interventions. Worse, it's an empire in denial--a hyperpower that simply refuses to admit the scale of its global responsibilities. And the negative consequences will be felt at home as well as abroad. In an alarmingly persuasive final chapter Ferguson warns that this chronic myopia also applies to our domestic responsibilities. When overstretch comes, he warns, it will come from within--and it will reveal that more than just the feet of the American colossus is made of clay.

With his singular gift for turning complex financial events into eminently readable stories, Roger Lowenstein lays bare the labyrinthine events of the manic and tumultuous 1990s. In an enthralling narrative, he ties together all of the characters of the dot-com bubble and offers a unique portrait of the culture of the era. Just as John Kenneth Galbraithas "The Great Crash" was a defining text of the Great Depression, Lowensteinas "Origins of the Crash" is destined to be the book that will frame our understanding of the 1990s.

A good joke can lift the lowest spirits, enliven the dullest party, or be a welcome icebreaker at the start of a speech. But why is it so hard to find that key quip when you need it? Now anyone can have the best jokes at their fingertips with this comprehensive collection of the finest, funniest, most up-to-date gags, rib-ticklers, and silly one-liners ever. Organized by subject and containing side-splitters stolen from such wits as Groucho Marx, Orson Welles, Mark Twain, and P. J. O'Rourke, among many, many others, this volume assures those who use it that they will never again be at a loss for words that produce giggles galore.

In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of BrontA's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel--unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.

From the award-winning illustrator and author of The Fox and the Star, Coralie Bickford-Smith, a beautifully illustrated tale about a Worm, a Bird, and the importance of being present and appreciating what you have, where you are.
Digging through the ground day in and day out, Worm dreams of a better life. Despite having endless paths of dirt to plough, other burrowing creatures to befriend, and underground treasures to discover, Worm wants more—more space to be alone. Too busy to see the world around it, pushing everything aside, Worm learns a hard lesson in appreciating what you have and where you are.
This beautifully illustrated tale by award-winning author and illustrator Coralie Bickford-Smith explores themes of hope, curiosity, and the circle of life. Taking inspiration from Seneca’s essay “On the Shortness of Life,” which reads “But life is very short and anxious for those who forget the past, neglect the present and fear the future,” and drawing from the simple wisdom of the natural world, Bickford-Smith reminds readers about the importance of slowing down and engaging in the life around us.
Printed in Italy, with a foil-stamped cloth cover, sewn binding, metallic inks, and high-quality paper, Bickford-Smith's new illustrated book is for readers of all ages of fables and fairy tales, from gardeners to bird-watchers to design lovers, and for those seeking mindfulness.
—and it will be a great companion volume to her first book, The Fox and the Star, named Waterstones Book of the Year in 2015.

Dickens's historical novel of the French Revolution, in a gorgeous new clothbound edition
After eighteen years as a political prisoner in the Bastille the aging Dr Manette is finally released and reunited with his daughter in England. There two very different men, Charles Darnay, an exiled French aristocrat, and Sydney Carton, a disreputable but brilliant English lawyer, become enmeshed through their love for Lucie Manette. From the tranquil lanes of London, they are all drawn against their will to the vengeful, bloodstained streets of Paris at the height of the Reign of Terror and soon fall under the lethal shadow of La Guillotine.

Young lovers Sophie and Matteo are dissatisfied with their middle-class upbringing and travel to India in search of spiritual fulfillment, but the realities of life on an ashram intensify the lovers' differences, until they learn that wisdom is found in the journey itself, not its destination. Reprint. NYT.