First published in 1938, The Hobbit is a story that "grew inthe telling," and many characters and events in the published bookare completely different from what Tolkien first wrote to readaloud to his young sons as part of their "fireside reads." For thefirst time, The History of the Hobbit reproduces the originalversion of one of literature's most famous stories, and includesmany little-known illustrations and previously unpublished maps forThe Hobbit created by Tolkien himself. Also featured are extensiveannotations and commentaries on the date of composition, howTolkien's professional and early mythological writings influencedthe story, the imaginary geography he created, and how he came torevise the book in the years after publication to accommodateevents in The Lord of the Rings.

Harry Bernstein started chronicling his life at the age ofninety-four, after the death of his beloved wife, Ruby. In hisfirst book, The Invisible Wall , he told a haunting story offorbidden love in World War I-era England. Then Bernstein wrote The Dream , the touching tale of his family’s immigrantexperience in Depression-era Chicago and New York. Now Bernsteincompletes the saga with The Golden Willow , a heart-liftingmemoir of his life with Ruby, a romance that lasted nearly seventyyears. They met at a dance at New York’s legendary Webster Hall, fellinstantly and madly in love, and embarked on a rich and rewardinglife together. From their first tiny rented room on the Upper WestSide to their years in Greenwich Village, immersed in the artscene, surrounded by dancers, musicians, and writers, to their lifein the newly burgeoning suburbs, Harry and Ruby pursued theAmerican dream with gusto, much as Harry’s late mother would havewanted. Together, through a depression, a world war, and the McCarthy era

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Franz Kafka's imagination so faroutstripped the forms and conventions of the literary tradition heinherited that he was forced to turn that tradition inside out inorder to tell his splendid, mysterious tales. Scrupulouslynaturalistic on the surface, uncanny in their depths, these storiesrepresent the achieved art of a modern master who had the gift ofmaking our problematic spiritual life palpable and real. Thisedition of his stories includes all his available shorter fictionin a collection edited, arranged, and introduced by GabrielJosipovici in ways that bring out the writer's extraordinary rangeand intensity of vision. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

For over fifty years, Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, two ofour most admired writers, penned letters to each other. They sharedtheir worries about work and family, literary opinions andscuttlebutt, moments of despair and hilarity. Living half acontinent apart, their friendship was nourished and maintained bytheir correspondence. "What There Is to Say We Have Said" bearswitness to Welty and Maxwell's editorial relationships - both inhis capacity as New Yorker editor and in their collegial back-andforth on their work. It's also a chronicle of the literary world ofthe time; read talk of James Thurber, William Shawn, Katherine AnnePorter, J. D. Salinger, Isak Dinesen, William Faulkner, JohnUpdike, Virginia Woolf, Walker Percy, Ford Madox Ford, JohnCheever, and many more. It is a treasure trove of readingrecommendations.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Evelyn Waugh's short stories arethe marvelous, concentrated riffs of his comic genius, revealing inminiaturized perfection all the elements that made him the greatestcomic writer of our century. We find in them Waugh's almostsuperhuman technical skill as a writer and his quicksilverattentiveness to the minutiae of human absurdity, as well as hisworldly knowledge, his tenderness, his perceptive compassion, andhis sophisticated, disabused, but nevertheless forceful idealism.The thirty-nine stories collected here include such smallmasterpieces as "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" and "Scott-King'sModern Europe"; an alternative ending to Waugh's novel "A Handfulof Dust"; a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, thehero of "Brideshead Revisited"; and two linked stories, remnants ofan abandoned novel that Waugh considered his best writing. Thisedition contains the original illustrations to "Love Among theRuins," as well as more than thirty graphics produced by the authoras an Ox

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The three classic novelspublished here in one volume are rich with the crisp prose, subtlecharacters, and intricate plots that made Dashiell Hammett one ofthe most admired writers of the twentieth century. A one-timedetective and a master of deft understatement, Hammett virtuallyinvented the hard-boiled crime novel. In "The Maltese Falcon," SamSpade, a private eye with his own solitary code of ethics, tangleswith a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at thedrop of a dime. "The Thin Man" introduces Hammett's wittiestcreations, Nick and Nora Charles, who solve homicides in betweenwisecracks and martinis. And in "Red Harvest," Hammett's anonymoustough-guy detective, the Continental Op, takes on the entire townof Poisonville in a deadly war against corruption. "DashiellHammett is a master of the detective novel, yes, but also one hellof a writer."--"Boston Globe" "Hammett was spare, hard-boiled, buthe did over and over what only the best writers can ever do.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Raymond Chandler's first threenovels, published here in one volume, established his reputation asan unsurpassed master of hard-boiled detective fiction. "The BigSleep," Chandler's first novel, introduces Philip Marlowe, aprivate detective inhabiting the seamy side of Los Angeles in the1930s, as he takes on a case involving a paralyzed Californiamillionaire, two psychotic daughters, blackmail, and murder. In"Farewell, My Lovely," Marlowe deals with the gambling circuit, amurder he stumbles upon, and three very beautiful but potentiallydeadly women. In "The High Window," Marlowe searches the Californiaunderworld for a priceless gold coin and finds himself deep in thetangled affairs of a dead coin collector. In all three novels,Chandler's hard-edged prose, colorful characters, vivid vernacular,and, above all, his enigmatic loner of a hero, enduringly establishhis claim not only to the heights of his chosen genre but to thepantheon of literary art.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) The only complete edition ofstories by the undisputed master of detective literature, collectedhere for the first time in one volume, including some stories thathave been unavailable for decades. When Raymond Chandler turned towriting at the age of forty-five, he began by publishing stories inpulp magazines such as "Black Mask" before later writing his famousnovels. These stories are where Chandler honed his art anddeveloped his uniquely vivid underworld, peopled with good cops andbad cops, informers and extortionists, lethally predatory blondesand redheads, and crime, sex, gambling, and alcohol in abundance.In addition to his classic hard-boiled stories-in which hissignature atmosphere of depravity and violence swirls around thecool, intuitive loners whose type culminated in the famousdetective Philip Marlowe-Chandler also turned his hand to fantasyand even a gothic romance. This rich treasury of twenty-fivestories shows Chandler developing the terse, laconic, understatedstyle

Here for the first time, the original, complete Star Warstrilogy in a special 25th anniversary collector's editionhardcover.Twenty-five years after the phenomenon was born, StarWars remains one of the greatest fantasy epics ever told. Here inone collector's edition are the original stories from the firstthree classic films -- Star Wars: A New Hope, Star Wars: The EmpireStrikes Back, and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi -- each a New YorkTimes bestseller with over one million copies in print. Read thesethrilling novels to see where it all began with Luke Skywalker, afarm boy looking for adventure in a galaxy far, far away....

Alan Lee, the Oscar-winning conceptual designer for the Lordof the Rings movie trilogy, discusses his approach to depictingTolkien's imaginary world. The book presents more than 150 of Lee'scelebrated illustrations to show how his imagery for both theillustrated Lord of the Rings and the films progressed from conceptto finished art. In addition, the book contains 20 full-colorplates and numerous examples of the conceptual art produced forPeter Jackson's film adaptation. The Lord of the Rings Sketchbookprovides a wealth of background information and will be of interestto those who know and love Tolkien's work, from books to films toDVDs, as well as to budding artists and illustrators interested inhow to approach book illustration.

Comparing Google to an ordinary business islike comparing a rocket to an Edsel. No academic analysis orbystander’s account can capture it. Now Doug Edwards, EmployeeNumber 59, offers the first inside view of Google, giving readers achance to fully experience the bizarre mix of camaraderie andcompetition at this phenomenal company. Edwards, Google’s firstdirector of marketing and brand management, describes it as ithappened. We see the first, pioneering steps of Larry Page andSergey Brin, the company’s young, idiosyncratic partners; theevolution of the company’s famously nonhierarchical structure(where every employee finds a problem to tackle or a feature tocreate and works independently); the development of brand identity;the races to develop and implement each new feature; and the manyideas that never came to pass. Above all, Edwards—a formerjournalist who knows how to write—captures the “Google Experience,”the rollercoaster ride of being part of a company creating itselfin a whole new u

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) One of the most popular Americanwriters of the twentieth century, Dashiell Hammett gave us crimefiction stripped down to its most subtle and searing essentialsand, at the same time, elevated to literature. The diamond-sharpprose and artfully manipulated intrigue for which he is known areon full display in the four classic short stories and two rivetingnovels published here in one volume. The Continental Op, Hammett'sanonymous antihero, was the indelible prototype for generations oftough-guy detectives. Single-minded, emotionally detached, anddecidedly unglamorous, he narrates the four linked storiescollected here--"The House in Turk Street," "The Girl with theSilver Eyes," "The Big Knockover," and "$106,000 Blood Money." InTHE DAIN CURSE, the Continental Op takes on his most bizarre case,that of a wealthy young woman who appears to be the victim of adeadly family curse. And THE GLASS KEY--Hammett's own favoriteamong his works--features his most cynical and morally ambiguoushero

The Spartans is a compelling narrative that explores theculture and civilization of the most famous "warrior people": theSpartans of ancient Greece, by the world's leading expert in thefield. Sparta has often been described as the original Utopia--aremarkably evolved society whose warrior heroes were forbidden anyother trade, profession, or business. As a people, the Spartanswere the living exemplars of such core values as duty, discipline,the nobility of arms in a cause worth dying for, sacrificing theindividual for the greater good of the community (illustrated bytheir role in the battle of Thermopylae), and the triumph of willover seemingly insuperable obstacles--qualities that today arefrequently believed to signify the ultimate heroism. Paul Cartledgeis the distinguished scholar and historian who has long been seenas the leading international authority on ancient Sparta. He tracesthe evolution of Spartan society--the culture and the people, aswell as the tremendous influence they had on their worl

As a young man Frank Oppenheimer followed in his famousbrothers footstepsgrowing up in a privileged Manhattan household,becoming a physicist, working on the atomic bomb. Tragically, Frankand Robert both had their careers destroyed by the Red Scare. Buttheir paths diverged. While Robert died an almost ruined man, Frankcame into his own, emerging from ten years of exile on a Coloradoranch to create not just a multimillion dollar institution but alsoa revolution that was felt all over the world. His Exploratoriumwas a "museum of human awareness" that combined art and sciencewhile it encouraged play, experimentation, and a sense of joy andwonder; its success inspired a transformation in museums around theglobe. In many ways it was Franks answer to the atom bomb. K. C.Colea friend and colleague of Franks for many yearshas drawn fromletters, documents, and extensive interviews to write a verypersonal story of the man whose irrepressible spirit would inspireso many.

"There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before TheLord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in thegreat country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: landswhere Treebeard once walked, but that were drowned in the greatcataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. "In that remotetime Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress ofAngband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turinand his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear ofAngband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secretcities of the Elves. "Their brief and passionate lives weredominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as thechildren of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn himto his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant,Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragonof fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of foresthiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, theD