When Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture, he didn't have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave--"Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams"--wasn't about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (because "time is all you have...and you may find one day that you have less than you think").
$12.00 20% Off: $9.60
Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart (Penguin (Non-Classics))
Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . has been a breakout bestseller ever since authorsand born vaudevillians Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein did their schtick on NPR's Weekend Edition. Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . . is a not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical thinkers and traditions, from Existentialism (What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common?) to Logic (Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything). Philosophy 101 for those who like to take the heavy stuff lightly, this is a joy to readand finally, it all makes sense!
$12.95 20% Off: $10.36
101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick (The MIT Press)
This is a book that students of architecture will want to keep in the studio and in their backpacks. It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom. These 101 concise lessons in design, drawing, the creative process, and presentation provide a much-needed primer in architectural literacy, making concrete what too often is left nebulous or open-ended in the architecture curriculum. "How to draw a line, the meaning of figure-ground theory, hand-lettering and the fact that windows look dark in the daytime--each item has resonance beyond architecture. Books like this are brief tutorials in the art of seeing, a skill useful in every aspect of life on the planet." -Susan Salter Reynolds, latimes.com
$14.00 20% Off: $11.20
Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions by Christian Lander (Random House Trade Paperbacks)
They love nothing better than sipping free-trade gourmet coffee, leafing through the Sunday New York Times, and listening to David Sedaris on NPR (ideally all at the same time). They believe they're unique, yet somehow they're all exactly the same. You know who they are: They're white people. They're here, and you're gonna have to deal. Fortunately, here's a book that investigates, explains, and offers advice for finding social success with the Caucasian persuasion. So kick back on your IKEA couch and lose yourself in the ultimate guide to the unbearable whiteness of being.
$24.95 20% Off: $19.96
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt (Knopf)
Based on exhaustive research and interviews with driving experts and traffic officials around the globe, Traffic gets under the hood of the quotidian activity of driving to uncover the surprisingly complex web of physical, psychological, and technical factors that explain how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving says about us. "Fascinating, illuminating, and endlessly entertaining as well. Vanderbilt shows how a sophisticated understanding of human behavior can illuminate one of the modern world's most basic and most mysterious endeavors. You'll learn a lot; and the life you save may be your own." —Cass R. Sunstein (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
"Citing the research of scientists and philosophers through the ages and incorporating facts and theories from psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert discusses the science of happiness, the shortcomings of imagination as well as the illusions of foresight. And far from being a dry tome, the book is a sly, irresistible romp down, or through, memory lane--past, present, and future. It is not only wildly entertaining but also hilarious (if David Sedaris were a psychologist, he very well might write like this) and yet full of startling insight, imaginative conclusions, and even bits of wisdom." -Booklist
$24.95 20% Off: $19.96
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (Riverhead Hardcover)
"Writing in a combustible mix of slang and lyricism, Díaz loops back and forth in time and place, generating sly and lascivious humor in counterpoint to tyranny and sorrow. And his characters—Oscar, the hopeless romantic; Lola, his no-nonsense sister; their heartbroken mother; and the irresistible homeboy narrator—cling to life with the magical strength of superheroes, yet how vibrantly human they are.... Díaz's novel is intrepid and radiant." -Booklist
Winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.Congratulations to Mr. Diaz.
$14.00 20% Off: $11.20
No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories by Miranda July (Scribner)
"Miranda July's impressive accomplishments include two exhibits at the Whitney Biennial, an award-winning film (Me and You and Everyone We Know), two albums on the record label Kill Rock Stars, and now her praised collection of short stories (encouraged by her literary mentor Rick Moody). The stories, previously published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper's, Tin House,and other literary journals, won July praise as 'a strange and compelling new voice' (Seattle Times)." -Bookmarks Magazine
$25.99 20% Off: $20.79
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company)
"David Sedaris's ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art" (The Christian Science Monitor) is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this remarkable new book.
"Older, wiser, smarter and meaner, Sedaris...defies the odds once again by delivering an intelligent take on the banalities of an absurd life." -Kirkus Reviews
"This latest collection proves that not only does Sedaris still have it, but he's also getting better.... Sedaris's best stuff will still--after all this time--move, surprise, and entertain." -Booklist
It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach. But is Rorschach really insane, or has he in fact uncovered a plot to murder superheroes — and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians? On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives, but what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet! Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story — the story of The Watchmen.
$27.50 20% Off: $22.00
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer (Doubleday)
The Dark Side is a dramatic, riveting, and definitive narrative account of how the United States made terrible decisions in the pursuit of terrorists around the world—decisions that not only violated the Constitution to which White House officials took an oath to uphold, but also hampered the pursuit of Al Qaeda. In gripping detail, acclaimed New Yorker writer and best-selling author Mayer relates the impact of these decisions—U.S.-held prisoners, some of them completely innocent, were subjected to treatment more reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition than the twenty-first century.
$14.95 20% Off: $11.96
Run: A Novel (P.S.) by Ann Patchett (Harper Perennial)
"The question of what makes a family is central to this luminous novel, Patchett's first since her award-winning Bel Canto (2001). Boston lawyer and ex-politician Bernard Doyle has nurtured his three sons—Sullivan, 33, and African American Tip, 21, and Teddy, 20, brothers adopted 20 years earlier—since the death of his beloved wife, Bernadette, some 15 years ago. Then, one snowy evening, Tip, inattentive and annoyed at his father, is pushed out of the way of an oncoming vehicle by a woman, herself hit and badly injured, who turns out to be the boys' birth mother and who's been watching the boys for years.... The drama of a single day is given an unreal quality by the snow that curtails normal activity, as these vividly portrayed characters struggle with their circumstances.... In extraordinarily fluid prose, Patchett unfolds this story to its epilogue-like final chapter as she illuminates issues of race, religion, duty, and desire." —Booklist (starred)
$27.95 20% Off: $22.36
The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism by Ron Suskind (Harper)
From Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation’s struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantanamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the forces waging today’s shadow wars and to the next generation of global citizens. Tracking down truth and hope within the Beltway and far beyond it, Suskind delivers historic disclosures with this emotionally stirring and strikingly original portrait of the post-9/11 world.
$12.00 20% Off: $9.60
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
"This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs.... Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide" —Publishers Weekly
$26.00 20% Off: $20.80
The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
"Renaissance Florence's artistic zenith and Mughal India's cultural summit—reached the following century, at Emperor Akbar's court in Sikri—are the twin beacons of Rushdie's ingenious latest, a dense but sparkling return to form. The connecting link between the two cities and epochs is the magically beautiful hidden princess, Qara Köz, so gorgeous that her uncovered face makes battle-hardened warriors drop to their knees. Her story underlies the book's circuitous journey.... In Rushdie's version of the West and East, the two cultures take on a similar blended polarity in Akbar as he listens to the tales. Each culture becomes the dream of the other." —Publishers Weekly (starred)
$14.95 20% Off: $11.96
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama (Three Rivers Press)
In this prescient book, first published in the fall of 2006, Democratic presidential nominee Obama calls for a different brand of politics. "[Few] on the partisan landscape can discuss the word 'hope' in a political context and be regarded as the least bit sincere. Obama is such a man, and he proves it by employing a fresh and buoyant vocabulary to scrub away some of the toxins from contemporary political debate." —The Los Angeles Times
"I doubt we’ll see a finer literary debut this year than The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. David Wroblewski’s got storytelling talent to burn and a big, generous heart to go with it." —Richard Russo (Bridge of Sighs; Empire Falls)
"[Wroblewski’s] spellbinding first novel…is nearly impossible to put down." —Kirkus Reviews, First Fiction Special
"The tears and whiskey that stain my copy of Edgar Sawtelle attest to how great this book is. I’d be hard pressed to name a more masterful debut novel. If you had told me that a story about a family who raises dogs, with elements of Hamlet, would make me sob, I would have said you were crazy. But it happened.” —Megan S., Harvard Book Store and bookdwarf.com
"When Kellen Zant, a brilliant black economist on the faculty of a New England college, is murdered in an apparent robbery attempt, the entire town of Elm Harbor is thrown into a stir. For it recalls the 30-year-old scandal of the murder of Gina Joule, a professor's daughter, and the subsequent killing of a local black youth charged with her murder. Unresolved issues of class and race continue to haunt the town, leery of outsiders and all members of the 'darker nation,' including the new college president, Lemaster Carlyle, and his wife, Julia.... Carter follows his highly-acclaimed Emperor of Ocean Park with another sharp, absorbing look at the black elite, academia, and power politics. Absolutely riveting." -Booklist (starred)
From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning Lahiri, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand. “Splendid.... The fact that America is still a place where the rest of the world comes to reinvent itself...is the underlying theme of Jhumpa Lahiri’s sensitive new collection of stories.... Lahiri handles her characters without leaving any fingerprints. She allows them to grow as if unguided, as if she were accompanying them rather than training them through the espalier of her narration. Reading her stories is like watching time-lapse nature videos of different plants, each with its own inherent growth cycle, breaking through the soil, spreading into bloom or collapsing back to earth.” –Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review (cover review)
$14.95 20% Off: $11.96
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (Three Rivers Press)
In this lyrical and unsentimental memoir written when he was thirty three, present presidential phenom Obama, the son of a black African father and a white American mother, searched for a workable meaning to his life as a black American.
“Fluidly, calmly, insightfully, Obama guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race.” —Washington Post Book World
$22.99 20% Off: $18.39
Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4) by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown Young Readers)
"Meyer's trilogy seethes with the archetypal tumult of star-crossed passions, in which the supernatural element serves as a heady spice," wrote the New York Times about the first three installments of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga series. The awaited final installment, Breaking Dawn, has arrived...
$16.00 20% Off: $12.80
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein (Picador)
In this groundbreaking alternative history of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free-market economic revolution, Naomi Klein challenges the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory.
Can you learn to be happy? Yes, according to the teacher of Harvard University’s most popular course. One out of every five Harvard graduates has lined up to hear Tal Ben-Shahar’s insightful lectures on that ever-elusive subject: happiness. Grounded in the new "positive psychology" movement--as well as years of researching the works of scientists, scholars, and philosophers--Ben-Shahar’s revolutionary approach helps you understand what happiness really is and how to strive for it in your daily life.
$14.95 20% Off: $11.96
Bridge of Sighs: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries) by Richard Russo (Vintage)
"Here is the novel Russo was born to write. Coursing with humor and humanity, the sixth novel by the bard of Main Street U.S.A. gives full expression to the themes that have always been at the heart of his work: the all-important bond between fathers and sons, the economic desperation of small-town businesses, and the lifelong feuds and friendships that are a hallmark of small-town life. Following a trio of best friends who grew up in upstate Thomaston, New York, over 50 years, the novel captures some of the essential mysteries of life, including the unanticipated moments of childhood that will forever define one's adulthood." -Booklist (starred)
$22.95 20% Off: $18.36
How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein (Collins)
How the States Got Their Shapes is the first book to tackle why our state lines are where they are. Here are the stories behind the stories, right down to the tiny northward jog at the eastern end of Tennessee and the teeny-tiny (and little known) parts of Delaware that are not attached to Delaware but to New Jersey. Packed with fun oddities and trivia, this entertaining guide also reveals the major fault lines of American history, from ideological intrigues and religious intolerance to major territorial acquisitions. Adding the fresh lens of local geographic disputes, military skirmishes, and land grabs, Stein shows how the seemingly haphazard puzzle pieces of our nation fit together perfectly.
$15.00 20% Off: $12.00
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin (Plume)
"How the brain processes all aspects of music is the subject of this book rooted in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and the evolution of the brain. Levitin starts with how the ear perceives sound vibrations--signals are processed in the brain's audio cortex--and proceeds to the perception of frequencies, scales, and timbre, coupled with rhythm and tempo, exploring them within cultural context." -Booklist
$24.00 20% Off: $19.20
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich (Metropolitan Books)
In The Limits of Power, Boston University historian and international relations professor Bacevichidentifies a profound triple crisis facing America: the economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.
$16.00 20% Off: $12.80
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan (Penguin)
We are indeed what we eat — and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century in his latest book.
$24.99 20% Off: $19.99
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All: A New Zealand Story by Christina Thompson (Bloomsbury USA)
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All is the story of the cultural collision between Westerners and the Maoris of New Zealand, told partly as a history of the complex and bloody period of contact between Europeans and the Maoris in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and partly as the story of Harvard Review editor Thompson’s marriage to a Maori man. “Christina Thompson defines a contact encounter as 'what we call it when two previously unacquainted groups meet for the very first time.' This unusual, unclassifiable, unfailingly interesting book is a contact encounter. Few readers will forget their first meeting with the author, with her Maori husband, and with the historical context that swirls around them. Thompson writes beautifully, and, even more remarkably, she surprises us on every page.” —Anne Fadiman (The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down)
$15.00 20% Off: $12.00
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson (Penguin (Non-Classics))
Anyone who despairs of the individual’s power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan’s treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountain villagers and promised to build them a school.
