This New York Times bestseller is the hilarious philosophy course everyone wishes they d had in school Outrageously funny, Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . has been a breakout bestseller ever since authors and born vaudevillians Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein did their schtick on NPR s Weekend Edition . Lively, original, and powerfully informative, Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar . . . is a not-so-reverent crash course through the great philosophical thinkers and traditions, from Existentialism ( What do Hegel and Bette Midler have in common? ) to Logic ( Sherlock Holmes never deduced anything ). Philosophy 101 for those who like to take the heavy stuff lightly, this is a joy to read and finally, it all makes sense! Watch a QuickTime trailer for this book. ,

北京遇上西雅图 不二情书 里面的传情书籍！ 看完电影后，偷偷送他/她一本，让你示爱的方式也诗情画意起来！ 全球爱书人之间的一个暗号 被称为 爱书人的圣经 《北京遇上西雅图之不二情书》电影原形 世界那么大，遇到你好难 在这个浮躁的时代，别说有人给你写信了 连好好听你说说心里话都难 总跟人保持着安全距离 把自己活成了仙人掌 扎伤了别人，其实自己更疼 当文学邂逅电影，诗意浪漫至极。 你想看的是爱情 它却还给了你整个人生 查令十字街 ，是伦敦无与伦比的旧书店一条街，是全世界爱书人的圣地； 查令十字街84号 ，是一本小书，是一叠悠悠20载的书信集。那书信的

Kindred spirits despite their profound differences inposition, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman shared a vision of thedemocratic character. They had read or listened to each other’swords at crucial turning points in their lives, and both wereutterly transformed by the tragedy of the Civil War. In thisradiant book, poet and biographer Daniel Mark Epstein tracks theparallel lives of these two titans from the day that Lincoln firstread Leaves of Grass to the elegy Whitman composed after Lincoln’sassassination in 1865. Drawing on a rich trove of personal and newspaper accounts anddiary records, Epstein shows how the influence and reverence flowedbetween these two men–and brings to life the many friends andcontacts they shared. Epstein has written a masterful portrait oftwo great American figures and the era they shaped through wordsand deeds.

For nearly twenty years, Aaron David Miller has played acentral role in U.S. efforts to broker Arab-Israeli peace as anadvisor to presidents, secretaries of state, and national securityadvisors. Without partisanship or finger-pointing, Miller recordswhat went right, what went wrong, and how we got where we aretoday. Here is a look at the peace process from a place at thenegotiation table, filled with behind-the-scenes strategy, colorfulanecdotes and equally colorful characters, and new interviews withpresidents, secretaries of state, and key Arab and Israelileaders. Honest, critical, and often controversial, Miller’s insider’saccount offers a brilliant new analysis of the problem ofArab-Israeli peace and how it still might be solved.

In The Fatal Englishman, his first work of nonfiction,Sebastian Faulks explores the lives of three remarkable men. Eachhad the seeds of greatness; each was a beacon to his generation andleft something of value behind; yet each one died tragicallyyoung. Christopher Wood, only twenty-nine when he killed himself, was apainter who lived most of his short life in the beau monde of 1920sParis, where his charm, good looks, and the dissolute life thatfollowed them sometimes frustrated his ambition and achievement asan artist. Richard Hillary was a WWII fighter pilot who wrote a classicaccount of his experiences, The Last Enemy, but died in a mysterious trainingaccident while defying doctor’s orders to stay grounded afterhorrific burn injuries; he was twenty-three. Jeremy Wolfenden, hailed by his contemporaries as the brightestEnglishman of his generation, rejected the call of academia to become a hackjournalist in Cold War Moscow. A spy, alcoholic, and openhomosexual at a time when su

From an award-winning historian, a stirring (and timely)narrative history of American labor from the dawn of the industrialage to the present day. From the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, the first realfactories in America, to the triumph of unions in the twentiethcentury and their waning influence today, the con?test betweenlabor and capital for their share of American bounty has shaped ournational experience. Philip Dray’s ambition is to show us the vitalaccomplishments of organized labor in that time and illuminate itscentral role in our social, political, economic, and culturalevolution. There Is Power in a Union is an epic, character-drivennarrative that locates this struggle for security and dignity inall its various settings: on picket lines and in union halls,jails, assembly lines, corporate boardrooms, the courts, the hallsof Congress, and the White House. The author demonstrates,viscerally and dramatically, the urgency of the fight for fairnessand economic democracy—a strugg

The political memoiras rousing adventure story—a sizzling account of a life lived inthe thick of every important struggle of the era. April 1973: snow falls thick and fast on the Badlands ofSouth Dakota. It has been more than five weeks since protestingSioux Indians seized their historic village of Wounded Knee, andthe FBI shows no signs of abandoning its siege. When Bill Zimmermanis asked to coordinate an airlift of desperately needed food andmedical supplies, he cannot refuse; flying through gunfire and amechanical malfunction, he carries out a daring dawn raid andsuccess?0?2fully parachutes 1,500 pounds of food into the village.The drop breaks the FBI siege, and assures an Indian victory. This was not the first—or last—time Bill Zimmerman put his life atrisk for the greater social good. In this extraordi?0?2nary memoir,Zimmerman takes us into the hearts and minds of those making thesocial revolution of the sixties. He writes about registering blackvoters in deepest, most racist Mississippi; marc

“This is a thriller, a page-turner, a probing look into theinner workings of the assassination squads that Israel mobilizedafter the Munich massacre.” –David K. Shipler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Arab andJew “Gratitude is due to Mr. Klein for his painstaking . . . book, thebest one could possibly hope for.” –Walter Lacquer, The Wall Street Journal Award-winning journalist Aaron J. Klein tells, for the firsttime, the complete story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre andthe Israeli counterterrorism operation it spawned. Withunprecedented access to Mossad agents and an nparalleled knowledgeof Israeli intelligence, Klein peels back the layers of myth andmisinformation that have permeated previous books, films, andmagazine articles about the “shadow war” against Black Septemberand other related terrorist groups. In this riveting account,long-held secrets are finally revealed, including who was killedand who was not, how it was done, which targets were hit and whichwere m

It’s not an exaggeration to say that middle-class Americansare an endangered species and that the American Dream of a secure,comfortable standard of living has become as outdated as an Edselwith an eight-track player. That the United States of Americais in danger of becoming a third world nation. The evidence is all around us: Our industrial base is vanishing, taking with it the kind of jobsthat have formed the backbone of our economy for more than acentury; our education system is in shambles, making it harder fortomorrow’s workforce to acquire the information and training itneeds to land good twenty-first century jobs; ourinfrastructure—our roads, our bridges, our sewage and water, ourtransportation and electrical systems—is crumbling; our economicsystem has been reduced to recurring episodes of Corporations GoneWild; our political system is broken, in thrall to a smallfinancial elite using the power of the checkbook to control bothparties. And America’s middle class, the

The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, volume three of PulitzerPrize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr."sAge of Roosevelt series, concentrates on the turbulent concludingyears of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term. A measure of economicrecovery revived political conflict and emboldened FDR's critics todenounce "that man in the White house." To his left were demagoguesHuey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend. To his right were thechampions of the old order ex-president Herbert Hoover, theAmerican Liberty League, and the august Supreme Court. For a time,the New Deal seemed to lose its momentum. But in 1935 FDR ralliedand produced a legislative record even more impressive than theHundred Days of 1933 a set of statutes that transformed the socialand economic landscape of American life. In 1936 FDR coasted toreelection on a landslide. Schlesinger has his usual touch withcolorful personalities and draws a warmly sympathetic portrait ofAlf M. Landon, the Republican candidate of 1936.

After nearly a dozen books and service as secretary of statefor presidents Nixon and Ford, Kissinger has established himself asa major thinker, writer, and actor on the world's diplomatic stage.His newest work is a remarkable survey of the craft ofinternational relations from the early 17th century to the presentera. Beginning with the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, Kissingersummarizes three centuries of Western diplomacy, giving specialattenton to the influence of Wilsonian idealism on 20th-centuryAmerican foreign policy. He is not shy about describing his owncontributions to Nixon's foreign gambits, nor is he reticient aboutoffering his own advice to the current administration on how tohandle Russia, China, or the rest of the world. From Kissinger welearn that there is really little new about the New World Order.This is an important contribution to the theoretical literature onforeign affairs and will also serve quite ably as a one-volumesynthesis of modern diplomatic history. All libraries should havethi

The ideas of US Air Force Colonel John Boyd have transformedAmerican military policy and practice. A first-rate fighter pilotand a self-taught scholar, he wrote the first manual on jet aerialcombat; spearheaded the design of both of the Air Force's premierfighters, the F-15 and the F-16; and shaped the tactics that savedlives during the Vietnam War and the strategies that won the GulfWar. Many of America's best-known military and political leadersconsulted Boyd on matters of technology, strategy, andtheory. In The Mind of War, Grant T. Hammond offers the first completeportrait of John Boyd, his groundbreaking ideas, and his enduringlegacy. Based on extensive interviews with Boyd and those who knewhim as well as on a close analysis of Boyd's briefings, thisintellectual biography brings the work of an extraordinary thinkerto a broader public.

Book De*ion "A spectre is hauntingEurope - the spectre of Communism." So begins one of history's mostimportant documents, a work of such magnitude that it has foreverchanged not only the scope of world politics, but indeed the courseof human civilization. The Communist Manifesto was written inFriedrich Engels's clear, striking prose and declared theearth-shaking ideas of Karl Marx. Upon publication in 1848, itquickly became the credo of the poor and oppressed who longed for asociety "in which the free development of each is the condition forthe free development of all." The Communist Manifesto contains the seeds of Marx's morecomprehensive philosophy, which continues to inspire influentialeconomic, political, social, and literary theories. But theManifesto is most valuable as an historical document, one that ledto the greatest political upheaveals of the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries and to the establishment of the Communistgovernments that until recently ruled half the globe. This Bantam Classic edi

Using information and techniques gathered by the InternationalSpy Museum and an ex-CIA agent, this book shows how the tricks andmethods used by spies can be incorporated into everyday life, suchas how to hide valuables in your home or how to avoid carjacking orpickpockets.

Neglected by scholars and journalists alike, the years ofconflict in Vietnam from 1968 to 1975 offer surprises not onlyabout how the war was fought, but about what was achieved. Drawingfrom thousands of hours of previously unavailable (and stillclassified) tape-recorded meetings between the highest levels ofthe American military command in Vietnam, A Better War is aninsightful, factual, and superbly documented history of these finalyears. Through his exclusive access to authoritative materials,award-winning historian Lewis Sorley highlights the dramaticdifferences in conception, conduct, and-at least for a time-resultsbetween the early and later years of the war. Among his mostimportant findings is that while the war was being lost at thepeace table and in the U.S. Congress, the soldiers were winning onthe ground. Meticulously researched and movingly told, A Better Warsheds new light on the Vietnam War.