Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism, 1959-1975
by Library of America

Library of America / paperback
original price: $17.95
our price: $6.99

In Reporting Vietnam the work of over 50 remarkable writers captures firsthand the bravery, cruelty, suffering, and sorrow of a tragic conflict. Following events from the first American fatalities in 1959, through the 1968 Tet Offensive, to the fall of Saigon in 1975, and gathering writers as disparate as David Halberstam and Hunter S. Thompson, Malcolm W. Browne and Michael Herr, Tom Wolfe and Gloria Emerson, this unique collection records the shifting course of the war, its impact on a fractured America, and the changing texture of American journalism.

From David to Ingres: Early 19th-Century French Artists
edited by Jane Turner

Grove Art / paperback
original price: $17.95
our price: $8.99

The early 19th century was among the most exciting and dramatic of political and artistic eras in French history. During the French Revolution and its aftermath, as painters and sculptors were employed as weapons of propaganda, Paris became the artistic capital of Europe. In this unique treatment of this extraordinary period, more than 300 in-depth biographies examine the lives and works of those who brought Neo-classicism to its height, and those who rebelled against this academic ideal with the birth of Romanticism, from David to Ingres to Delacroix and Gericault. With further articles on Realist and Barbizon painters whose works anticipated those of the Impressionists, this is a fascinating guide to a revolutionary period of artistic activity.

A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W.H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and ...
edited with an introduction by Arthur Krystal

Free Press/hardcover
original price: $26.00
our price: $8.99

In 1951, Jacques Barzun, W. H. Auden, and Lionel Trilling joined together to form the editorial board of the Readers' Subscription Book Club. Thus began a venture unique in the annals of American culture. Never before or since have three such eminent intellectuals collaborated to bring books to the attention of the general public.

Now, a half century later, A Company of Readers tells the story of this extraordinary partnership and presents for the first time a selection of essays from the publications of the Readers' Subscription Book Club and its successor, the Mid-Century Book Society.

As they composed their comments to club members, these distinguished editors freely shared with each other their notes and drafts. The result is criticism of the highest order: smart, humane, learned -- in short, stuff that makes for damn good reading. And because these pieces were written for the general public by men who knew that books still mattered, perhaps no other collection of essays gives so natural and vivid a picture of the cultural landscape at midcentury.

Together, Auden, Barzun, and Trilling would plunge into a pile of books and pick out what they liked, what they thought would instruct and delight. What they chose may surprise you. Here is Auden on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring, Barzun on Virginia Woolf's Writer's Diary, and Trilling on Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Each book, whether weighty or light, summoned from the editors a spirited appraisal, in language that welcomed any kind of reader.

The Mid-Century club disbanded in 1963, but its legacy lives on in these pages. A Company of Readers is essential to admirers of this illustrious trio, and it offers a window on an America in which books took center stage.

Ambassador of the Dead
by Askold Melnyczuk

Counterpoint, hardcover
original price: $25.00
our price: $7.99

One Sunday morning, Nick Blud, a successful Boston physician, is home in bed when he receives a phone call from Ada Kruk, the mother of a boyhood friend. Ada summons Nick back to his old Ukranian-American New Jersey neighborhood, where something unspeakable has just happened--exactly what, no one is willing to say. To find out, Nick sets off on a journey through the past, his own as well as that of Ada's son, Alex, who long has struggled to escape his family's legacy of violence. A harrowing tale about friendship and love, America and the immigrant's dream, Ambassador of the Dead introduces Ada Kruk, a mother like no other, at once Mary and Medea, Sarah and Medusa. A study of ambitions gone awry and appetites too easily gratified, this novel is also an unflinching meditation on exile and assimilation and the price of love.