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| A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption | Lizabeth Cohen | Vintage Books | $15.25
($16.95 list) |
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The Politics of Mass Consumption by Lizabeth Cohen This book takes an in-depth look at how the post-WWII prioritization of consumption has altered our identities as well as our environment, our political system, and even our very notion of citizenship itself. Cohen works hard to demonstrate that all are now -- to varying degrees --defined in terms of personal consumption; with the concept of individual rights being framed more and more as the right to consume. While you may not agree with all her conclusions, you will certainly receive an education in how things got to be the way they are in this country today. softcover |
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| A People's History of American Empire | $15.00
($17.00 list) |
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by Howard Zinn • adapted by David Wagner & Paul Buhle with art by Mike Konopacki This 272 page, 8 1/2" x 11" volume provides a graphic interpretation of the key points of Howard Zinn's seminal, alternative reading of American history, A People's History of The United States. If you' haven't been able to find the time to read Zinn's opus, this volume just might be the ticket. We used to say that A People's History will teach you a whole different American history from what you learned in school, but this book (and/or the material it introduced) has now begun to be introduced into curriculums, as well as bits and pieces being disseminated through the culture at large through the mainstream media, so maybe you've already been introduced to some of the events and perspectives delineated here, but nothing beats getting the big picture, and that's what this book is intent on delivering. In any event, if you're not familiar with Zinn's work and you enjoy history in comics form, then you owe it to yourself to check this out. hardcover - | |||||
| Atmospheric Disturbances | Rivka Galchen | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | $21.50
($24.00 list) |
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In her debut novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, Rivka Galchen has attempted to create a romantic, even sentimental, take on the works of P.K. Dick. J.G. Ballard, (early)Thomas Pynchon and (to a degree) William Burroughs, authors who created obsessive -- some might say delusional -- renderings of the altered states that contemporary consciousness takes when overloaded with raw data, cultural and/or scientific input, technological stimulus, education, or some combination of any or all of these, and wove them into intricate tapestries filled with complex patterns the meanings of which have been ceaselessly debated. Galchen enters this essentially masculine debate specifically to ask the reader to step outside of it and consider how it might be impacted by gender. She coaxes readers to her point of view through the device of employing a masculine first-person voice to tell a tale in which the authorial sympathies are clearly more aligned with the feminine perspectives on the the events as they unfold. The book provides an important -- some might say essential -- proviso to the literary creation of the modern mind. Check out the book's very own website, where you can absorb some of its flavor while you read an extract from the novel, an interview with the author, and more. | |||||
| Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 | Houghton Mifflin | $11.90
($14.00 list) |
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edited by David Eggers While we're on the topic of best-of anthologies, we might as well hep you to this year's installment of McSweeney's editor, David Eggars ongoing anthology selecting work from his corner of the world. This year's edition is more comics laden than is typical, from the cover by Art Spiegelman and introdcution by Matt Groening, to an excerpt from Pyongyang by Guy Delisle, a short piece of political reporting by comics journalist Joe Sacco, that is, we believe, receciving its first US appearence here, to a full-length graphic novella by Italian cartoonist, Gipi that first apeared as part of the Coconino-Fantagraphics Ignatz line of comics. In addition to all this comics work there is, of course, plenty of what readers have come to expect from this series, including contributions by Kurt Vonnegut, Haruki Murakami, Rick Moody, Judy Bunitz, Sam Shaw, Julia Sweeney, George Saunders, a discussion between Jon Stewert and Stephen Colbert, headlines from The Onion, and much, much more. | |||||
| Book of Changes | Kristine McKenna | Fantagraphics | $12.75
($14.95 list) |
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| From Girls to Grrrlz: A History of Women's Comics from Teens to Zines | Chronicle Books | $12.95
($17.95 list) |
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This is a nicely produced oversize survey by the grand dame of women's comics, Trina Robbins. It's jam packed with full color illustrations, and covers the history of women and comics -- as characters in as well as creators of -- from the 1940s through the 1990s. This book makes for a nice gift as it is a great introduction for someone who is only casually aware of the relationship betwen women and comics but would like to learn more. We've had this book in stock since it's initial publication. |
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| Gentlemen of the Road | Michael Chabon | UNDEFINED | $18.88
($21.95 list) OUT OF STOCK! |
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What's this? Two new Michael Chabon novels in one year? This new novel is a bit slighter on the ambition scale than this year's earlier release, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but that is its intention. As is splendidly evident in its design, Gentlemen of the Road is a classic adventure yarn. Starting with endpapers that depict a historical map of the area where the book's adventures occur, and continuing with its old-school table of contents and list of illustrations, and, especially, on through to the llustrations themselves -- all done up in the classic pen and ink style by the current (and quite excellent) illustrator of Prince Valiant, Gary Gianni which are liberally scattered throughout -- this is a book that wants to take you back to when reading was an adventure in and of itself. Set a thousand years in the past amidst the Caucas Mountains and along the Don and Volga River valleys, it's a tale that follows a mismatched pair of adventurers, affectionately referencing Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, as they get into -- and out of -- one mess after another on their way to the revolution. Here's a couple of reviews in The Village Voice and The Guardian UK. | |||||
| Heyday | UNDEFINED | $22.22
($26.95 list) |
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This book has our name on it, as it is written by Spy Magazine co-founder, Andersen, whose previous novel, Turn of the Century, was thoroughly enjoyable -- and, more importantly, Heyday is set in the USA of the pivotal year 1848, where so much was happening that determined what was to come (for better and for worse) that we can't wait to see what Andersen has to say about how it all fits together. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Charles Darwin and Karl Marx -- to name but a few -- were producing work that was opening the way to the future as Edgar Allen Poe (a quote from whose last work, Eureka -- completed in 1848, shortly before his death -- was chosen for one of the book's two opening epigraphs) was laying to rest the past. And then there's the war with Mexico (remember the Alamo?) and the gold rush of '49. Money, power, personalities and ideas swirl, back in the day -- the heyday, that is. | |||||
| I Am Plastic: The Designer Toy Explosion | Harry N. Abrams, Inc. | $35.00
($40.00 list) |
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a Kid Robot Production written by Paul Budnitz Well, this one might aptly described as a survey of a product that is for people who know they have to grow up, but regret that this is so, and so, as a sort of consolation, do their best to take a piece of their childhood with them; but this is no simple nostalgia trip here, no -- it is much more complex, for these designer toys contain within them fairly sophisticated critiques of the childhood longings that spawned them; they may even be considered, in a critical sense, to be "self aware" of their status as visible links to and tokens of childhood pasts that are forever beyond recapturing, except within their own plastic bodies, which are three-dimensional materializations, not of the past, not the memories of the past, but the process of recollection itself, the remembrance of things past -- in plastic. I Am Plastic is probably the best collection of its sort, and weighing in at 368 oversized pages covered with full color representations of the galaxy of toys thus far extant, it's going to be hard to pass up for anyone who finds themselves longing for the sort of connection these toys provide. | |||||
| I Wish There Was Something The I Could Quit | $7.20
($8.00 list) |
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It was bound to happen eventually: Aaron Cometbus has written his first novel. It's here, and, as you would expect, it deals with a group of social outcasts that are right out of the pages of Cometbus. And, as with all his published works, it's bargain priced. We'll get back to you with more details soon. | |||||
| Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed | Paul Trynka | UNDEFINED | $21.50
($0.00 list) |
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This is it: at long last we have a definitive biography of the one and only Iggy Pop. While we're sure that this book will prove to be far from the last word on Iggy, Open Up and Bleed is without any doubt the most thorough going, well researched and fully fleshed out account of the life and career of James Osterberg and his alter ego, Iggy Pop, that has yet been produced. Beginning with an in depth look at his trailer park beginnings and a surprising account of his high school politcal ambitions, it continues through his early days with the Iguanas and The Primer Movers and his epochal introduction to the Asheton brothers before charting his roller coaster career: first with the Stooges, then through his friendship and musical partnership with David Bowie and all the way up to the present day, coming full circle to the reunion of The Stooges that is currently underway. Plus, plenty of rare photos! Recommended to all Iggyphiles everywhere. | |||||
| Lady Into Fox | David Garnett | McSweeney's | $16.75
($18.00 list) |
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The latest from McSweeney's sub-imprint, The Collins Library, is, in keeping with this series' mission, a reissue of a long (but unfairly) forgotten classic of early twentieth century literature. Lady Into Fox is "a lost classic of the Bloomsbury circle" which was originally published in 1922 and received some amazing raves at that time. To wit: "Magnificent... write twenty more books, at once, I beseech." -- Virginia Woolf; "It is the most successful thing of the kind I have ever seen... flawless in style and exposition, altogether an accomplished piece of work." -- Joseph Conrad; and finally, "The most amazingly good story I have read in a long time." -- H.G. Wells. Well, we've read it and it's pretty great. A lot like a Kafka's Metamorphosis (published six years earlier in 1916) in its matter-of-fact tone and straightforward plunge into absurdity; but in this case, the metamorphosis is undergone by the narrator's spouse rather the the narrator, and is accompanied by the differences in perspective and outcome that such a shift implies. Comparative Lit profs, please take note! hardcover |
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| Maps and Legends | Jordan Crane, Michael Chabon | McSweeney's | $22.22
($24.00 list) |
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The first non-fiction collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Kavalier & Clay ranges from autobiographical essays (growing up in the then experimental community of Columbia, MD) to book reviews (Cormac McCarthy's The Road, for one) to artist appreciations (Howard Chaykin, Will Eisner, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) to Judaism (Golems anyone?) and then back to memoirs (writing Mysteries of Pittsburgh, childhood encounters with literature). We can pretty much guarantee that any and all readers who are enamored of Chabon's fiction will take great pleasure in reading this volume, as the same discerning intelligence is on ample display here in sentences and paragraphs that are as finely crafted as any he has written and that will leave each reader with greater appreciations of and deeper insights into all the covered topics. And then there's the way fab, three tier, Jordan Crane dustjacket. | |||||
| McSweeney's #20 | $17.77
($22.00 list) |
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This time around we have a relatively sedate package: an embossed hardcover edition with cloth spine that includes new work by Susan Steinberg, Kevin Moffett, Ben Jahn, Tony D.Souza, J. Erin Sweeney and a host of others. But -- once you open it up you will be treated to a visual feast as this is the official illustrated edition: 51 full-page, full-color illustrations precisely punctuate each and every prose piece proffered. Artists include: Fred Tomaselli, Jodie Mohr, Franz Ackermann, Rachel Salomon, Keith Andrew Shore, Wendy Heldmann, Henri Rousseau and many others. | |||||
| McSweeney's #27 | Dave Eggers | McSweeney's | $21.50
($24.00 list) |
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This time out we have a tripartate, slipcased edition, thus: a 196-page softcover fiction anthology featuring the writings of Larry Smith, Jim Shepard, Ashlee Adams, Liz Mandrell, Mikel Jollett and Stephen King that sports a swell, architectronic wraparound cover and interior illustrations by Scott Teplin; a 72-page horizontally formatted collection of "Art" cartoons by the likes of Jean Michel Basquiat, Kenneth Koch, Raymond Pettibone, David Shrigley, Jeffrey Brown, Paul Hornschemeier, Leonard Cohen, David Mamet and others, in full color and black & white; an 80-page sketchbook executed between March 12 and May 26, 2007 by Art Spiegelman, titled "Autophobia," which Spiegelman created to overcome his "fear of drawing." | |||||