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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

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World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Product Description
“The end was near.” –Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from persons apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of dread and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.
Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail started with the twelve-year-ancient Uncomplaining Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plot provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable fee, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally ongoing to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the audiobook captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the regularly raw and plain scenery of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the listener, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only right difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - March 22, 2010 at 4:28 am

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The Last Lecture

Where to buy The Last Address books online?

The Last Lecture

  • ISBN13: 9781401323257
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
–Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Address.” Professors are questioned to consider their demise and to ponder on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was questioned to give such a address, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with mortal cancer. But the address 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 reflect”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to judge. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his address such a phenomenon and agreed it an quick form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.Amazon.com Review
“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
–Randy Pausch

A lot of professors give talks titled “The Last Address.” Professors are questioned to consider their demise and to ponder on what matters most to them. And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If we had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy?

When Randy Pausch, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was questioned to give such a address, he didn’t have to imagine it as his last, since he had recently been diagnosed with mortal cancer. But the address 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 reflect”). It was a summation of everything Randy had come to judge. It was about living.

In this book, Randy Pausch has combined the humor, inspiration and intelligence that made his address such a phenomenon and agreed it an quick form. It is a book that will be shared for generations to come.

Questions for Randy Pausch

The Last LectureWe were shy about barging in on Randy Pausch’s valuable time to question him a few questions about his expansion of his legendary Last Address into the book by the same name, but he was gracious enough to take a moment to answer. (See Randy to the right with his kids, Dylan, Logan, and Chloe.) As anyone who has watched the address or read the book will know, the really crucial question is the last one, and we weren’t surprised to learn that the “secret” to winning giant stuffed animals on the midway, like most anything else, is sheer persistence.

Amazon.com: I make an apology for asking a question you must get far more regularly than you’d like, but how are you feeling?

Pausch: The tumors are not yet large enough to affect my health, so all the problems are related to the chemotherapy. I have neuropathy (lack of feeling in fingers and toes), and varying degrees of GI discomfort, mild vomiting, and fatigue. Occasionally I have an unusually terrible result to a chemo mix (last week, I spiked a 103 fever), but all of this is a tiny fee to pay for walkin’ around.

Amazon.com: Your address at Carnegie Mellon has reached millions of people, but even with the fleeting time you rumor has it that have, you wanted to write a book. What did you want to say in a book that you weren’t able to say in the address?

Pausch: Well, the address was written quickly–in under a week. And it was time-limited. I had a fantastic six-hour address I could give, but I suspect it would have been less well loved at that part ;-) .

A book allows me to take in many, many more tales from my life and the attendant lessons I hope my kids can take from them. Also, much of my address at Carnegie Mellon all ears on the professional side of my life–my students, colleagues and career. The book is a far more personal look at my childhood dreams and all the lessons I’ve learned. Putting words on paper, I’ve establish, was a better way for me to share all the yearnings I have regarding my wife, children and additional loved ones. I knew I couldn’t have gone into persons subjects on stage lacking getting emotional.

Amazon.com: You talk about the importance–and the possibility!–of following your childhood dreams, and of keeping that childlike sense of marvel. But are there things you didn’t learn until you were a grownup that helped you do that?

Pausch: That’s a fantastic question. I reflect the most vital thing I learned as I grew older was that you can’t get anywhere lacking help. That means people have to want to help you, and that begs the question: What kind of person do additional people seem to want to help? That strikes me as a pretty excellent operational answer to the existential question: “What kind of person should you try to be?”

Amazon.com: One of the things that struck me most about your talk was how many additional people you talked about. You made me want to meet them and work with them–and judge me, I wouldn’t make much of a computer scientist. Do you reflect the people you’ve brought together will be your legacy as well?

Pausch: Like any teacher, my students are my largest professional legacy. I’d like to reflect that the people I’ve crossed paths with have learned something from me, and I know I learned a fantastic deal from them, for which I am very grateful. Certainly, I’ve dedicated a lot of my teaching to helping young folks realize how they need to be able to work with additional people–especially additional people who are very different from themselves.

Amazon.com: And last, the most vital question: What’s the secret for knocking down persons milk bottles on the midway?

Pausch: Two-part answer:
     1) long arms
     2) discretionary income / persistence

Really, I was never excellent at the milk bottles. I’m more of a ring toss and softball-in-milk-can guy, myself. More seriously, though, most people try these games once, don’t win immediately, and then give up. I’ve won *lots* of midway stuffed animals, but I don’t ever recall winning one on the very first try. Nor did I expect to. That’s why I reflect midway games are a fantastic metaphor for life.

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - March 21, 2010 at 7:01 pm

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A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity

Where to buy A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity books online?

A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity

  • ISBN13: 9780767928823
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

The year was 1957, the month September, and I had just turned eight years ancient. Dwight Eisenhower was President, but in my life it was the diminutive, intense Sister Mary Lurana who ruled, at least in the third-grade class where I was held captive. For reasons you will soon know, my parents had remanded me to the penal institution of St. Brigid’s School in Westbury, New York, a cruel and unusual punishment if there ever was one.

Already, I had barely survived my first two years at St. Brigid’s because I was, well, a small nitwit. Not satisfied with memorizing the Baltimore Catechism’s fine prose, which featured passages like “God made me to show his goodness and to make me pleased with him in heaven,” I was constantly annoying my classmates and, of course, the no-nonsense Sister Lurana. With sixty overactive students in her class, she was understandably fleeting on patience. For survival, she had also become quick on the draw.

Then it happened. One day I blurted out some dumb remark, and Sister Lurana was on me like a panther. Her black habit blocked out all distractions as she leaned down, looked me in the eye, and uttered words I have never forgotten: “William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity.”

And she was dead-on.

One day in 1957, in the third-grade classroom of St. Brigid’s parochial school, an exasperated Sister Mary Lurana bent over a restless young William O’Reilly and said, “William, you are a bold, fresh piece of humanity.” Small did she know that she was, early in his career as a troublemaker, defining the essence of Bill O’Reilly and providing him with the title of his brash and entertaining issues-based memoir.

And this time it’s personal. In his most intimate book yet, O’Reilly goes back in time to examine the people, places, and experiences that launched him on his journey from effective-class kid to immensely influential television personality and bestselling leader. Readers will learn how his traditional outlook was formed in the crucible of his family tree, his neighborhood, his church, and his schools, and how his views on America’s proper role in the world emerged from covering four wars on five continents over three-plus decades as a news correspondent. What will delight his copious fans and surprise many others is the humor and self-deprecation with which he handles one of his core subjects: himself, and just how O’Reilly became O’Reilly.

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - at 9:58 am

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Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It

Where to buy Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Manufacturing Food is Building Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It books online?

Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer And What You Can Do About It

  • ISBN13: 9781586486945
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

Food, Inc. is guaranteed to shake up our perceptions of what we eat. This powerful documentary deconstructing the corporate food industry in America was hailed by Entertainment Weekly as “more than a terrific movie—it’s an vital movie.” Aided by practiced commentators such as Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser, the film poses questions such as: Where has my food come from, and who has processed it? What are the giant agribusinesses and what stake do they have in maintaining the status quo of food production and consumption? How can I feed my family tree healthy foods affordably?

Expanding on the film’s themes, the book Food, Inc. will answer persons questions through a series of challenging essays by leading experts and thinkers. This book will encourage persons inspired by the film to learn more about the issues, and act to change the world.

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - at 3:00 am

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SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

Where to buy SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance books online?

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance

  • ISBN13: 9780060889579
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

The New York Times bestselling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling more than four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, more amusing, and more surprising than the first.

SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we reflect all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:

  • How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
  • What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
  • Can eating kangaroo save the planet?

Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and fantastic storytelling like no one else. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is—excellent, terrible, hideous, and, in the final analysis, super freaky. Freakonomics has been imitated many times over—but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

Amazon.com Review
Book Description

The New York Times best-selling Freakonomics was a worldwide sensation, selling over four million copies in thirty-five languages and changing the way we look at the world. Now, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with SuperFreakonomics, and fans and newcomers alike will find that the freakquel is even bolder, more amusing, and more surprising than the first.

Four years in the building, SuperFreakonomics questions not only the tough questions, but the unexpected ones: What’s more treacherous, driving drunk or walking drunk? Why is chemotherapy prescribed so regularly if it’s so ineffective? Can a sex change boost your salary?

SuperFreakonomics challenges the way we reflect all over again, exploring the hidden side of everything with such questions as:

  • How is a street prostitute like a department-store Santa?
  • Why are doctors so terrible at washing their hands?
  • How much excellent do car seats do?
  • What’s the best way to catch a terrorist?
  • Did TV cause a rise in crime?
  • What do hurricanes, heart attacks, and highway deaths have in common?
  • Are people hard-wired for altruism or egocentricity?
  • Can eating kangaroo save the planet?
  • Which adds more value: a pimp or a Realtor?

Levitt and Dubner mix smart thinking and fantastic storytelling like no one else, whether investigating a solution to global warming or explaining why the fee of oral sex has fallen so drastically. By examining how people respond to incentives, they show the world for what it really is – excellent, terrible, hideous, and, in the final analysis, super freaky.

Freakonomics has been imitated many times over – but only now, with SuperFreakonomics, has it met its match.

From Superfreakonomics: Where do you stand on the freak-o-meter?

SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance Four years ago, you were cool. You read Freakonomics when it first came out. You impressed family tree and friends and dazzled dates with the insights you gleaned. Now Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner return with Superfreakonomics, a freakquel even bolder, more amusing, and more surprising than the first.

Have you been keeping up? Can you call yourself a SuperFreak? Test your Superfreakonomics know-how now:

Question 1: 5 points
According to Superfreakonomics, what has been most helpful in improving the lives of women in rural India?
A. The government ban on dowries and sex-selective abortions
B. The spread of cable and satellite television
C. Projects that pay women to not abort female babies
D. Condoms made specially for the Indian market

Question 2: 3 points
Among Chicago street prostitutes, which night of the week is the most profitable?
A. Saturday
B. Monday
C. Wednesday
D. Friday

Question 3: 5 points
You land in an urgent situation room with a serious condition and your fate lies in the hands of the doctor you draw. Which characteristic doesn’t seem to matter in terms of doctor skill?
A. Attended a top-ranked medical school and served a position at a prestigious hospital
B. Is female
C. Gets high ratings from peers
D. Spends more money on treatment

Question 4: 3 points
Which cancer is chemotherapy more likely to be effective for?
A. Lung cancer
B. Melanoma
C. Leukemia
D. Pancreatic cancer

Question 5: 5 points
Half of the decline in deaths from heart disease is mainly attributable to:
A. Inexpensive drugs
B. Angioplasty
C. Grafts
D. Stents

Question 6: 3 points
Right or Fake: Child car seats do a better job of protecting children over the age of 2 from auto fatalities than regular seat belts.

Question 7: 5 points
What’s the best thing a person can do personally to cut greenhouse gas emissions?
A. Drive a hybrid car
B. Eat one less hamburger a week
C. Buy all your food from local sources

Question 8: 3 points
Which is most effective at stopping the greenhouse effect?
A. Public-awareness campaigns to discourage consumption
B. Cap-and-trade agreements on carbon emissions
C. Volcanic explosions
D. Planting lots of trees

Question 9: 5 points
In the 19th century, one of the gravest threats of childbearing was puerperal fever, which was regularly fatal to mother and child. Its cause was finally determined to be:
A. Forceful bindings of petticoats early in the pregnancy
B. Foul air in the manner of language wards
C. Doctors not taking sanitary precautions
D. The mother rising too soon in the manner of language room

Question 10: 3 points
Which of the following were not aftereffects of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks on September 11, 2001:
A. The decrease in airline traffic slowed the spread of influenza.
B. Thanks to extra police in Washington, D.C., crime fell in that city.
C. The psychological effects of the attacks caused people to cut back on their consumption of alcohol, which led to a decrease in traffic accidents.
D. The increase in border security was a boon to some California farmers, who, as Mexican and Canadian imports declined, sold so much marijuana that it became one of the states most valuable crops.

Answers and Scoring
Question 1
B, Cable and satellite TV. Women with television were less willing to tolerate wife beating, less likely to admit to having a “son inclination,” and more likely to exercise personal autonomy. Plus, the men were perhaps too busy watching cricket.

Question 2
A, Saturday nights are the most profitable. While Friday nights are the busiest, the single greatest determinant of a prostitute’s fee is the point trick she is hired to perform. And for whatever reason, Saturday customers buy more expensive services.

Question 3
C, One factor that doesn’t seem to matter is whether a doctor is highly rated by his or her colleagues. Persons named as best by their colleagues turned out to be no better than average at lowering death excise–although they did spend less money on treatments.

Question 4
C, Leukemia. Chemotherapy has proven effective on some cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin’s disease, and testicular cancer, especially if these cancers are detected early. But in most cases, chemotherapy is remarkably ineffective, regularly showing zero perceptible effect. That said, cancer drugs make up the second-largest category of pharmaceutical sales, with chemotherapy comprising the bulk.

Question 5
A, Inexpensive drugs. Expensive medical procedures, while technologically dazzling, are reliable for a remarkably tiny share of the improvement in heart disease. Roughly half of the decline has come from reductions in risk factors like high cholesterol and high blood pressure, both of which are treated with relatively inexpensive drugs. And much of the remaining decline is thanks to ridiculously inexpensive treatments like aspirin, heparin, ACE inhibitors, and beta-blockers.

Question 6
Fake. Based on wide data analysis as well as crash tests paid for by the authors, ancient-fashioned seat belts do just as well as car seats.

Question 7
B, Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more greenhouse-gas reduction than buying all locally sourced food, according to a recent study by Christopher Weber and H. Scott Matthews, two Carnegie Mellon researchers. Every time a Prius or additional hybrid owner drives to the grocery store, she may be cancelling out its emissions-sinking benefit, at least if she shops in the meat section. Emission from cows, as well as sheep and additional ruminants, are 25 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide unrestricted by cars and humans.

Question 8
C, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines discharged more than 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere, which acted like a layer of sunscreen, sinking the amount of solar radiation and cooling off the planet by an average of one degree F.

Question 9
C, doctors not taking sanitary precautions. This was the dawning age of the autopsy, and doctors did not yet know the importance of washing their hands after leaving the autopsy room and entering the manner of language room.

Question 10
C, the psychological effect of the attacks caused people to increase their alcohol consumption, and traffic accidents increased as a result.

Scoring
32-40: Certified SuperFreak
25-31: Freak–surprises lay in wait for you
16-24: Wannabe freak–you’ve got some reading to do
1-15: Conventional wisdomer–you’re still thinking in ancient ways

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - March 20, 2010 at 4:10 pm

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I Am Ozzy

Where to buy I Am Ozzy books online?

I Am Ozzy

  • ISBN13: 9780446569897
  • Condition: NEW
  • Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
“They’ve said some crazy things about me over the years. I mean, okay: ‘He bit the head off a bat.’ Yes. ‘He bit the head off a dove.’ Yes. But then you hear things like, ‘Ozzy went to the show last night, but he wouldn’t perform until he’d killed fifteen puppies . . .’ Now me, kill fifteen puppies? I like puppies. I’ve got eighteen of the f**king things at home. I’ve killed a few cows in my time, mind you. And the chickens. I shot the chickens in my house that night.

It haunts me, all this crazy stuff. Every day of my life has been an event. I took lethal combinations of booze and drugs for thirty f**king years. I survived a direct hit by a plane, suicidal overdoses, STDs. I’ve been accused of attempted murder. Then I nearly died while riding over a bump on a quad bike at f**king two miles per hour.

People question me how come I’m still alive, and I don’t know what to say. When I was growing up, if you’d have place me up against a wall with the additional kids from my street and questioned me which one of us was gonna make it to the age of sixty, which one of us would end up with five kids and four grandkids and houses in Buckinghamshire and Beverly Hills, I wouldn’t have place money on me, no f**king way. But here I am: ready to tell my tale, in my own words, for the first time.

A lot of it ain’t gonna be pretty. I’ve done some terrible things in my time. I’ve permanently been drawn to the dark side, me. But I ain’t the devil. I’m just John Osbourne: a effective-class kid from Aston, who quit his job in the factory and went looking for a excellent time.”

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - at 7:52 am

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The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher: A Novel

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The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher: A Novel

  • ISBN13: 9780310277064
  • Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
  • Notes:

Product Description
Meet Ryan Fisher. He’s young, energetic, and needs an edge in the real estate market. He’s establish the perfect niche: Christians. His business doubles when he advertises in the Christian business directory, and he starts to reflect he could really cash in by planting a church. But when the church takes off, Ryan is in over his head.

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5 comments - What do you think?  Posted by Library - March 19, 2010 at 9:59 pm

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Dracula

Where to buy Dracula books online?

Dracula

Product Description
The aristocratic vampire that haunts the Transylvanian countryside has captivated readers’ imaginations since it was first published in 1897. Hindle asserts that Dracula depicts an embattled man’s struggle to recover his “deepest sense of himself as a man”, building it the “essential terror myth”.Amazon.com Review
Dracula is one of the few horror books to be honored by inclusion in the Norton Critical Edition series. (The others are Frankenstein, The Turn of the Screw, Heart of Darkness, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Metamorphosis.) This 100th-anniversary edition includes not only the perfect authoritative text of the novel with illuminating footnotes, but also four contextual essays, five reviews from the time of publication, five articles on dramatic and film variations, and seven selections from literary and literary criticism. Nina Auerbach of the University of Pennsylvania (leader of Our Vampires, Ourselves) and horror scholar David J. Skal (leader of Hollywood Gothic, The Monster Show, and Screams of Reason) are the editors of the volume. Especially fascinating are excerpts from materials that Bram Stoker consulted in his research for the book, and his effective papers over the several years he was composing it. The selection of criticism includes essays on how Dracula deals with female sexuality, gender inversion, homoerotic fundamentals, and Victorian fears of “back colonization” by politically turbulent Transylvania.

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The Postmistress

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The Postmistress

Product Description
Unabridged CDs, 9 CDs, 11 hours

Read by TBA

What would take place if a name did the unthinkable-and didn’t deliver a letter? Filled with stunning parallels to today, The Postmistress is a sweeping novel about the loss of innocence of two extraordinary women-and of two countries torn apart by war.

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Kathryn Stockett Interviews Sarah Blake

Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama with a degree in English and Creative Writing, she stirred to New York City, where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. The Help is her first novel.Kathryn Stockett Here she talks with novelist Sarah Blake about her experiences writing The Postmistress.

Kathryn Stockett: I should start by adage that I am honored to be on the same page with you—I loved The Postmistress. The book is so complex, it gives you so much to reflect about and chat about. My first question to you is, how did the book come about? What made you start writing it?

Sarah Blake: Thanks so much, Kathryn—and I’d like to lob persons kind words right back at you; it’s a tremendous thrill for me to be in conversation with the leader of The Help.

The Postmistress started with a picture that sprang into my head one day, of a woman sorting the mail in the back of a post office, quietly slipping a letter into her pocket as a replacement for of delivering it. Immediately, questions flooded forwards: Whose letter was it? Why on planet would she choose to pocket it? What havoc would be wreaked by not delivering a letter? As I answered persons questions, Emma and Will and their like tale, and the workings of the tiny town in which Iris was the center, came to life. One hundred pages into that draft, Frankie Bard arrived on the bus, out of the blue. I had no thought who she was or why she was there, except that one character referred to her as a war correspondent lacking a war. That was appealing, I thought. By this time I had chose to set the novel in the late thirties, early forties. It was 2001 and I was living in Washington, D.C., after the attacks of 9/11, and I was very distant with trying to make sense of what was happening around me. Were we in danger? Would we go to war? The parallels between that uncertain time and the time before the United States entered World War II resonated with me, and what was a novel about manufacturing accident and fate and the overlapping of lives deepened into a novel with war as its backdrop, which questioned questions about how we know ourselves to be in a past moment and what we do when we are called to it.

Kathryn Stockett: Your book features three different women. From a logistical standpoint, did you find it hard to pull off the different points of view? I know this is something I spend a lot of time on in my work—building sure the voices are distinct and also very much right to the different characters.

Sarah BlakeSarah Blake: To be honest, with this novel, the challenge was trying to keep each of these women in line, since each one threatened at some point or another to run away with the tale! It took eight years for this tale to become the novel you have in your hands, and in large part that’s because with the introduction of each character, I establish myself going off and following an individual tale, traveling further and further from a workable plot. By the time I had finished, I had written three separate novels, one for each of the three women—perfect with like affairs, whole families, additional towns—and the challenge came not in trying to keep them distinct, but in trying to figure out how to weave their tales together.

Kathryn Stockett: Who is your favorite character, and why?

Sarah Blake: I’m not sure I can answer that, since there are parts of each of these women I admire, and parts of each of them I don’t like. They are all broken in an essential way—a way I find incredibly appealing. When a reporter finds she cannot tell a tale and a postmaster finds herself unable to pass along a letter, the moments they have arrived at as characters are compelling. Mrs. Cripps was certainly the most fun to write—she didn’t have to carry too much weight in the telling of the tale, and she was such a nosy parker it was fun to write her lines.

Kathryn Stockett: Is there a character in The Postmistress with whom you identify most? (And if you have been having trysts with excellent-looking soldiers in dark alleyways, please share!)

Sarah Blake: Oh, there are bits of me in all three women: certainly Frankie’s rage and sorrow, the desire to get the tale (something I despaired of regularly in the eight years of writing); Iris’s like of order; and Emma’s feeling of invisibility, her longing for the sense that a name would watch over her.

Kathryn Stockett: The most haunting scenes for me—and there were many—were persons of Frankie on the train with Thomas and of the mother and child on the train platform. How did these scenes come about? Were they hard to write?

Sarah Blake: Much of the drive to write the book had to do with my own attempt to write my way toward understanding the sudden, final breaks that crack into our lives, in the form of accidents, death, additional irrevocable events. I have two sons, and while it is impossible for me to imagine putting them on a train by themselves, with nothing but paper to send them to safety, it was simple to conjure feelings of despair and heartbreak. The book is full of mothers and sons being torn apart by childbirth, bombs, and visas; but the last parting—the mother embracing her boy in the train car with Frankie—was probably the most hard to write. It’s the toughest to comprehend, and yet it happened all the time, adage excellent-bye, knowingly, possibly forever.

Kathryn Stockett: What research did you do for past accuracy? You seem to have really nailed the time period.

Sarah Blake: Thank you. I’m glad it feels credible. I read many books on the history of World War II, pored through Life magazines from 1939 to 1945 for a sense of how much things cost and what they looked like, read Federal Writers Project interviews with all types of people living on Cape Cod in the 1930s, watched movies made in 1940 and 1941 (my favorite is The Letter with Bette Davis) in order to get the rhythms of idiomatic speech. I also spent many hours at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, and at the Radio & Television Museum in Bowie, Maryland.

(Photo of Kathryn Stockett © Kem Lee)


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My Name Is Russell Fink

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My Name Is Russell Fink

  • ISBN13: 9780310277279
  • Condition: USED – VERY GOOD
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Product Description
Russell Fink is twenty-six years ancient and determined to salvage a job he despises so he can finally go out of his parents house for excellent. He’s convinced he gave his twin sister cancer when they were nine years ancient. And his crazy fiancée refuses to accept the fact that their engagement really is over.

Then Sonny, his allegedly diviner basset hound, is establish murdered.

The ensuing amateur investigation forces Russell to confront several things at once-the enormity of his family tree’s dysfunction, the guy stalking his family tree, and his long-buried feelings for a most peculiar like interest.

At its heart, My Name Is Russell Fink is a comedy, with sharp dialogue, characters steeped in authenticity, romance, suspense, and fresh humor. With a postmodern style similar to Nick Hornby and Douglas Coupland, the leader explores reconciliation, forgiveness, and faith in the midst of tragedy. No amount of neurosis or dysfunction can ruin God’s redemptive purposes.

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