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Rare Books
The author presents a collection of writings on the future of our cities, our public transportation systems, our museums, galleries, concert halls, and cinemas.
610036
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Rare Books
Publisher description: One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked. Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America--the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation's worst schools, housing, and unemployment rates. It's these parts of the South, so often ignored, that have caught Theroux's keen traveler's eye. On road trips spanning four seasons, wending along rural highways, Theroux visits gun shows and small-town churches, laborers in Arkansas, and parts of Mississippi where they still call the farm up the road 'the plantation.' He talks to mayors and social workers, writers and reverends, the working poor and farming families--the unsung heroes of the south, the people who, despite it all, never left, and also those who returned home to rebuild a place they could never live without. From the writer whose 'great mission has always been to transport us beyond that reading chair, to challenge himself--and thus, to challenge us' (Boston Globe), Deep South is an ode to a region, vivid and haunting, full of life and loss alike.
646319
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"Five decades after its original landmark publication, Joseph Hansen's 'Fadeout' is as fresh and important as ever. Preceded only by a handful of gay protagonists in crime fiction, Hansen's Dave Brandstetter, a ruggedly handsome World War II vet with a quick wit, a faultless moral compass, and endless confidence, broke the mold and won over a large reading audience, a feat previously considered impossible for queer fiction. Set in the mid-1960s, 'Fadeout' centers on the disappearance of a Southern California radio personality named Fox Olson. A failed writer, Olson finally found success as a beloved folk singer and wholesome country raconteur with a growing national audience. The community is therefore shocked when Olson's car is found wrecked, having been driven off a bridge and swept away in a fast-moving arroyo on a rainy night. A life insurance claim is filed by Olson's widow and the company holding the policy sends their best man to investigate. The problem is that Olson's body was never found. Not in the car. Not farther down the river. As Dave Brandstetter begins his investigation, he quickly finds that none of it adds up"--From back cover.
642324
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Ellis Hock never believed that he would return to Africa. He runs an old-fashioned menswear store in a small town in Massachusetts but still dreams of his Eden, the four years he spent in Malawi with the Peace Corps, cut short when he had to return to take over the family business. When his wife leaves him, and he is on his own, he realizes that there is one place for him to go: back to his village in Malawi, on the remote Lower River, where he can be happy again. Arriving at the dusty village, he finds it transformed: the school he built is a ruin, the church and clinic are gone, and poverty and apathy have set in among the people. They remember him--the White Man with no fear of snakes--and welcome him. But is his new life, his journey back, an escape or a trap?
646364
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"When Archer opened the door to the tall young man who was afraid of the light, he was letting the Doomsters in. Who were the Doomsters? Carl certainly knew them--that was why Archer found him on the doorstep in a bad state of exhaustion and desperately in need of help. Zinnie knew them, though you wouldn't expect her to be haunted by memories--or conscience; Zinnie was pseudo-Hollywood, expensive and not very new, but a nice machine for all that. Mildred certainly knew them and that was more understandable, with her grave innocence and the loneliness that made her seem vulnerable. And Dr. Grantland had his fill of them--he was a good doctor suffering from a bad case of lack of integrity. There was the red-headed woman, too, who drank time under the table; she knew them. But Archer didn't, until he got talked into helping Carl, and found himself a lap behind the next murder"--Dust jacket.
636034