by Patricia Preciado Martin

Product Details:
* Paperback: 150 pages
* Publisher: University of Arizona Press (March 1, 2004)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0816523827
* ISBN-13: 978-0816523825
* Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8.7 x 0.4 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Price: $17.95
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Through oral histories and a captivating array of historic and contemporary photos, this book records a vibrant and resourceful way of life that has contributed so much to the region. Descendants of pioneer ranching and farming families tell stories about rural life and vaquero culture that enrich our knowledge of settlement, culinary practices, religious traditions, arts, and education of Hispanic settlers of Arizona. They also talk frankly about how the land changed hands and tell how they feel about the disappearance of the rural lifestyle.

From the Inside Flap
Doña Ramona Benítez Franco was born in 1902 on her parents’ Arizona ranch and celebrated her hundredth birthday with family and friends in 2002, still living in her family’s century-old adobe house. Doña Ramona witnessed many changes in the intervening years, but her memories of the land and customs she knew as a child are indelible. For Doña Ramona as well as for countless generations of Mexican Americans, memories of rural life recall la querida tierra, the beloved land. Through good times and bad, the land provided sustenance. Today, many of those homesteads and ranches have succumbed to bulldozers that have brought housing projects and strip malls in their wake. Now a writer and a photographer who have long been intimately involved with Arizona’s Hispanic community have preserved the voices and images of men and women who are descendants of pioneer ranching and farming families in southern Arizona. Ranging from Tucson to the San Rafael Valley and points in between, this book documents the contributions of Mexican American families whose history and culture are intertwined with the lifestyle of the contemporary Southwest. These were hardy, self-reliant pioneers who settled in what were then remote areas. Their stories tell of love affairs with the land and a way of life that is rapidly disappearing. Through oral histories and a captivating array of historic and contemporary photos, Beloved Land records a vibrant and resourceful way of life that has contributed so much to the region. Individuals like Doña Ramona tell stories about rural life, farming, ranching, and vaquero culture that enrich our knowledge of settlement, culinary practices, religious traditions, arts, and education of Hispanic settlers of Arizona. They talk frankly about how the land changed hands–not always by legal means–and tell how they feel about modern society and the disappearance of the rural lifestyle. “Our ranch homes and fields, our chapels and corrals may have been bulldozed by progress or renovated into spas and guest ranches that never whisper our ancestors’ names,” writes Patricia Preciado Martin. “The story of our beautiful and resilient heritage will never be silenced . . . as long as we always remember to run our fingers through the nourishing and nurturing soil of our history.” Beloved Land works that soil as it revitalizes that history for the generations to come.

by Azar Nafisi
Product Details:

* Paperback: 384 pages
* Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (December 30, 2003)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 081297106X
* ISBN-13: 978-0812971064
* Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
* Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
Price: $10.20

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Inside This Book
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
blind censor
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
Islamic Republic, University of Tehran, Tahereh Khanoom, Jane Austen, Ayatollah Khomeini, Revolutionary Guards, Daisy Miller, Henry James, English Department, Madame Bovary, The Kid, New York, The Great Gatsby, Washington Square, The Ambassadors, Miss Ruhi, Muslim Association, Revolutionary Committee, United States, Islamic Jihad, Soviet Union, Catherine Sloper
Editorial Reviews

An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people’s lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and “shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color.” Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of “morality guards,” the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became “essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity,” she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: “There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom,” she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. –Shawn Carkonen –This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
This book transcends categorization as memoir, literary criticism or social history, though it is superb as all three. Literature professor Nafisi returned to her native Iran after a long education abroad, remained there for some 18 years, and left in 1997 for the United States, where she now teaches at Johns Hopkins. Woven through her story are the books she has taught along the way, among them works by Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James and Austen. She casts each author in a new light, showing, for instance, how to interpret The Great Gatsby against the turbulence of the Iranian revolution and how her students see Daisy Miller as Iraqi bombs fall on Tehran Daisy is evil and deserves to die, one student blurts out. Lolita becomes a brilliant metaphor for life in the Islamic republic. The desperate truth of Lolita’s story is… the confiscation of one individual’s life by another, Nafisi writes. The parallel to women’s lives is clear: we had become the figment of someone else’s dreams. A stern ayatollah, a self-proclaimed philosopher-king, had come to rule our land…. And he now wanted to re-create us. Nafisi’s Iran, with its omnipresent slogans, morality squads and one central character struggling to stay sane, recalls literary totalitarian worlds from George Orwell’s 1984 to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Nafisi has produced an original work on the relationship between life and literature.

by Robert B. Reich

Product Details:

* Hardcover: 272 pages
* Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (May 11, 2004)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 1400042216
* ISBN-13: 978-1400042210
* Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
Price: $9.99

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Editorial Reviews

Onto 2004’s already crowded political non-fiction bookshelf, comes Reason by former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

It’s a call to arms for liberals and progressives against what Reich terms the “Radcons”, radical conservatives who combine the aggressive “neoconservative” foreign policy of Richard Perle and Robert Kagan with an insistence on interfering with private morality, all the while eliminating social safety nets. At times, it seems like Reich is trying to have it both ways: he condemns the Radcons for being judgmental and demonizing those with whom they disagree but, in the process, he often does some demonizing of his own in his summarization of their philosophies. Reich’s arguments are most persuasive when he takes the approach of the Radcons but turns them around. Yes, he says, morality is crucial to the survival and prosperity of the United States, but instead of worrying about what people do in their own bedrooms, we should focus on public morality, especially as it pertains to overpaid CEOs, corrupt corporations, and the government’s tacit approval of them. Despite his long history with the Democrats, or perhaps because of it, Reich saves some of his most pointed criticisms for his own party. He assails the Democrats for ceding the ongoing electoral struggle to the Republicans (and the Radcons, naturally). It’s stupid, says Reich, to pursue a centrist approach to capturing the voting blocs necessary to achieve victory in the White House or congress because there is actually no such thing as centrism. Instead, there is a shift in the political dialogue as the right tacks further rightward and drags victory-hungry Democrats with it, thus alienating and ultimately disenfranchising the substantial liberal electorate. Reich ultimately sees good news for liberals on the horizon, however. While he thinks millions of Americans are fed up with the overly cautious Democratic Party that won’t stand up for it’s progressive principals, they are even wearier of the Radcons and “their intolerance, their mean-spiritedness, their moral righteousness, and their arrogance toward the rest of the world.” –John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
Today’s conservatives (”Radcons”) are reckless, vituperative extremists, deeply at odds with the caution and civility of traditional conservatives like Edmund Burke, argues Reich (Locked in the Cabinet), Clinton’s first secretary of labor. Liberals, he asserts, remain squarely in the tradition of Jefferson and FDR, not (as Radcons allege) the late ’60s New Left. Yet liberals have ceded certain issues and qualities to Radcons that they should take back. Moral outrage is one: “There is moral rot in America, but it’s not found in the private behavior of ordinary people. It’s located in the public behavior of people at or near the top.” Quoting liberally from conservatives like Robert Bork (who was Reich’s law school professor and gave him his first job), Reich wholeheartedly approves of their moral indignation but disagrees with their targets. Referring to John Q. Wilson’s “broken windows” argument for zero tolerance of petty vandalism, he writes, “The corporate fraud, conflicts of interest, exorbitant pay of top executives, and surge of money into politics are like hundreds of broken windows.” Despite such well-made points, the good-natured Reich can’t sustain outrage for more than a few sentences. His second main topic-reclaiming economic growth as a liberal banner-is more seriously compromised by his underdeveloped mix of neoliberalism and social democracy (despite his lucid critique of the Radcons’ economic ideas and record). But he roars home with his last main subject, “Positive Patriotism,” rejecting “chest-thumping pride” in favor of defining America by its ideals. Although his book is uneven, Reich’s distinctive perspective provides insights targeted well beyond November’s election.

by MoveOn.org

Product Details:
# Paperback: 144 pages
# Publisher: New World Library; illustrated edition edition (March 2004)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 193072229X
# ISBN-13: 978-1930722293
# Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
# Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
Price: $8.76

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Inside This Book
First Sentence:
In 1979 I was worked on an auto insurance agent and always carried a camera. I took pictures and talk with family members while farmer’s son crashed by grain truck hauling the farm’s load of grain to the local co-op. With no insurance, the family lost the truck and shortly thereafter the farm. If they were taken the cheap car insurance quote for truck and home insurance for their farm then the insurance agent would provide the support.
We live in the third century of the world’s most important political experiment: the founding of an American democracy “of, by, and for the people.”
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
registering voters
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
United States, Election Day, New York, White House, San Francisco, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Patriot Act, Board of Game, Think Peace, New Hampshire, San Diego, Bush Administration, League of Women Voters, New Jersey, President Bush, Progressive Election Alert, Super Bowl, World Trade Center, Fenton Communications, President Carter, University of California, Washington Post
Editorial Reviews

It’s somewhat rare to see an entire grassroots political organization listed as the author of a book but it’s perfectly in keeping with the spirit of both MoveOn.org and this handbook on civic activism authored by some of the group’s members. It features 50 short chapters (one or two pages each in most cases) authored by non-celebrities from all walks of life who took it upon themselves to change the world. Some of the ideas are ambitious, as in the case of a liberal-minded Texan who decided the best way to make his views known was to run against Republican stalwart Tom DeLay in the GOP primary. Others are much simpler: write a letter to the editor, sign a petition, or go to a rally. But even in those seemingly obvious tactics, there are interesting techniques offered that could make a simple act a much more effective one. Included in each tip are bullet-pointed tips from MoveOn organizers to help the reader translate the idea into real action. While MoveOn is certainly not the first group to suggest simple steps to change the world, this volume scores points for it’s concise editing and populist authorship. It’s not a book to curl up with in front of the fire, it’s meant to be thrown into a backpack or purse on the way to the next protest, campaign rally, or discussion group. The slant, like the organization itself, is a liberal one but the writers generally stop short of expanding on their political beliefs, choosing instead to focus on what those beliefs inspired them to do with their time and energy. Brief interstitial essays by notables such as Al Gore and Nancy Pelosi introduce sections of the book, providing expert gravity without detracting from the common person message. –John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
Fifty members of the online activist group MoveOn.org provide tips on how to take political action in this inspiring audiobook, which is impressive not only because of the breadth of its suggestions, but also because 42 of the 50 contributors lend their own voices to the recording. Although this makes for an uneven listening experience, as not all of the contributors possess velvet voices, it drives home the audiobook’s message: that people of all ages, races and income levels can make a difference. The essays—which cover everything from starting an online petition and hosting a political salon to writing letters to congress and organizing a political book club—each end with a set of “action tips” summarizing the steps the writer took in achieving his/her goals. The most useful component of this audiobook, however, may be its enhanced CD features. Those with access to a computer can browse these “action tips” and link directly to any Web sites mentioned in the material.

by Jonathan Hanson

Product Details:
* Paperback: 167 pages
* Publisher: University of Arizona Press (March 1, 2004)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0816521867
* ISBN-13: 978-0816521869
* Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
* Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces

Price: $17.95

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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
In this entertaining guidebook, naturalist Jonathan Hanson introduces readers to the satisfaction of attracting and enjoying desert wildlife and tells how to cope with those that are sometimes considered pests. Generously laced with humor and brimming with helpful information, his book can turn readers from mere bystanders into active participants in an environment in which we all–people and wildlife–must coexist.

From the Back Cover
Bobcats in your backyard? Javelinas tromping through your landscaping? Or maybe a packrat has found its way into the vent of your clothes dryer and decided to call it home. . . . Human residents of the Sonoran Desert are sometimes not completely comfortable when confronted by the wild creatures with whom they share this fragile habitat. But have no fear–please! Not only do these critters mean you no harm, they can also be a source of immense delight. In this entertaining guidebook, naturalist Jonathan Hanson introduces readers to the satisfaction of attracting and enjoying desert wildlife. Whether your home is deep within the city limits or on what is (currently) the edge of human settlement, you can turn your backyard into a miniature wildlife refuge by providing a simple combination of food, water, and habitat. An appropriately landscaped yard can become a home for a bevy of birds, beasts, and bugs, while even a condo patio can attract colorful hummingbirds and butterflies. Hanson advises you on what kind of birdseed to put out to attract the most interesting avian species, how to tell the difference between rabbits and jackrabbits, and when to worry about roving reptiles–which really isn’t all that often. He’ll even help you pick out a pair of binoculars to heighten your enjoyment. Not all desert creatures offer people a positive experience, and Hanson tells how to cope with those that are sometimes considered pests–whether it’s the Gila woodpecker announcing its presence on your roof at five in the morning, the rattlesnake slithering unconcerned across your porch, the coyote running amok with a taste for wandering housecats, or the aforementioned woodrat homesteading in a major appliance or car engine. From bears to bees to “creepy crawlies”–scorpions, spiders, and the like–he lets you know when you need to be cautious . . . and when you simply need to give a wild animal its space. If you live in the desert, you’re part of the desert. This book, generously laced with humor and brimming with helpful information, can turn you from a mere bystander into an active participant in an environment in which we all–people and wildlife–must coexist.

by Katharine Sands

Product Details:

* Paperback: 288 pages
* Publisher: Watson-Guptill (April 1, 2004)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0871162067
* ISBN-13: 978-0871162069
* Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 2.8 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds

Price : $9.55

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Inside This Book
First Sentence:
Imagine for a moment you’re a literary agent. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
poetry pitch, nonfiction proposal, good query letter, pitch letter, narrative nonfiction, query letters, discovery story, slush pile, commercial fiction
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
New York, Jeff Herman, Katharine Sands Sands, Random House, Pulitzer Prize, Bear Heart, Sheree Bykofsky, Stephen King, Distant Valor, San Francisco, William Morris, John Wiley, Literary Market Place, Publishers Weekly, Pushing Thirty, The Complete Idiot’s Guide, Tom Clancy, Alternate History, Babitt’s Copywriting Canon, Harry Potter, Hot Flashes, John Grisham, Old School, The World of Normal Boys, Trident Media Group

Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
Here’s a very useful book for first-time writers. Most how-to books for writers deal with this important subject (finding an agent) in a chapter or two, but Sands, a literary agent in New York, shows that there’s a lot more to it than one might expect. Drawing on the experience of a variety of agents (plus one copywriter), she demonstrates that finding an agent involves finding the perfect match between author and representative, between material and market. Think it’s easy to write a query letter? Think again: agents get a lot of mail, and you only have one chance to get their attention. Think it’s easy to put together a book proposal? Try it sometime, but try not to be too wordy, or too self-promoting, or too been-there-done-that. Do your homework, Sands stresses: don’t pitch a genre novel to an agent who deals primarily in nonfiction; do know what other books cover the same ground as yours. But, above all, do read this book, which should teach you pretty much everything you’ll need to know. David Pitt

by David Sedaris
Product Details:

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Bestselling humorist Sedaris likes to test out new material on twice-a-year reading tours to get the rhythm and phrasing perfected before he puts them down on the page. This live recording of his October 22, 2002, reading at Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall finds Sedaris performing seven hilarious new pieces and taking a few questions from his audience. As uproarious as Sedaris is on the page, he’s even funnier reading his wickedly jaundiced reflections. With brilliant deadpan timing, Sedaris is a charm, whether being coaxed into purchasing his clothes in the women’s department by his sister Amy (”I’m the guy in a crowded steak house removing a jacket with the label reading ‘Sassy Sport’”) or untangling the Dutch legend of St. Nicholas and his “six to eight black men” slaves/assistants or trying to explain to guests–in French–that his boss has a rubber hand. Sedaris reaches his pinnacle of hilarity describing his purchase of the “Stadium Pal,” an exterior catheter marketed to “sports fans, truck drivers and anyone else who’s tired of searching for a bathroom.” He praises the “freedom leg bag” that conveniently attaches to the user’s calf: “The bag can be emptied and reused up to 12 times, making it both disgusting and cost-effective.”
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Product Description
If you are driving, pull over. If you are at work, close your door-unless you don’t mind your colleagues seeing you doubled over, in tears, on your office floor. With this CD, taped before a delirious sold out audience at Carnegie Hall, you are there as David Sedaris performs new stories from his upcoming book. A parrot who mimics an ice maker, lovers quarreling over a rubber hand, and a Santa Claus who moonlights from his job as bishop of Turkey-the cast of characters in these stories is like no other. This new work will appeal to David’s loyal fans as well as admirers of the classic comedy albums of George Carlin, Bill Cosby and Steve Martin.

by Barbara Kingsolver
Product Details:

* Hardcover: 192 pages
* Publisher: National Geographic; illustrated edition edition (October 1, 2002)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0792269098
* ISBN-13: 978-0792269090
* Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 10.3 x 0.9 inches
* Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
Price: $27.58

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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In this coffee-table nature book, two ardent conservationists make an impassioned plea for the preservation of American wilderness, from sparkling seashores to pristine deserts. In her moving introduction, bestselling author Kingsolver laments the loss of untouched spaces. Like most ecologically minded people, she is an optimistic pessimist, predicting more of the same destruction but begging us to “find in ourselves the grace to do otherwise.” Unfortunately, Belt’s photographs-meant to bolster Kingsolver’s words-can fall into greeting-card cliche. Her technique of using black-and-white infrared negative film for half the images and hand-coloring the prints results in blurred, pale pictures that share a pastel sameness. The more conventional photos are stunning, though, and Belt makes up for her experiment by capturing the essence of America the way we imagine it used to be. Kingsolver provides introductions to each of the sections devoted to broad biomes such as plains, wetlands and forests. With literary and photographic nods to the giants of conservation-Aldo Leopold, Henry David Thoreau, Edward Abbey and others-the book offers quiet evidence that there is still something better than a world where “children’s adventures and glimpses of fox dwell only in books.”

Product Description

Last Stand takes readers from the tallgrass prairies of Kansas to the Arctic tundra of Alaska to the deserts of the Southwest and bears passionate witness to our last wildernesses, reminding us why they must be preserved.

Dedicated conservationist and acclaimed novelist Barbara Kingsolver teams with National Geographic photographer Annie Griffiths Belt to capture the essence of America’s endangered virgin lands. In her moving introduction and int he essays opening each chapter, Kingsolver deftly explores the ways of the wilderness, the threats against it, and what it needs to survive. Griffiths Belt’s accompanying hand-tinted infrared photographs breathtakingly evoke the spirit and beauty of these diverse bioregions.

by Dan Brown
Product Details:

* Hardcover: 592 pages
* Publisher: Atria; 1st Atria Books Hardcover Ed edition (July 1, 2003)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0743486226
* ISBN-13: 978-0743486224
* Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
Price: $15.29
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Editorial Reviews:

It takes guts to write a novel that combines an ancient secret brotherhood, the Swiss Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, a papal conclave, mysterious ambigrams, a plot against the Vatican, a mad scientist in a wheelchair, particles of antimatter, jets that can travel 15,000 miles per hour, crafty assassins, a beautiful Italian physicist, and a Harvard professor of religious iconology. It takes talent to make that novel anything but ridiculous. Kudos to Dan Brown (Digital Fortress) for achieving the nearly impossible. Angels & Demons is a no-holds-barred, pull-out-all-the-stops, breathless tangle of a thriller–think Katherine Neville’s The Eight (but cleverer) or Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum (but more accessible).

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is shocked to find proof that the legendary secret society, the Illuminati–dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science and condemning the blind faith of Catholicism–is alive, well, and murderously active. Brilliant physicist Leonardo Vetra has been murdered, his eyes plucked out, and the society’s ancient symbol branded upon his chest. His final discovery, antimatter, the most powerful and dangerous energy source known to man, has disappeared–only to be hidden somewhere beneath Vatican City on the eve of the election of a new pope. Langdon and Vittoria, Vetra’s daughter and colleague, embark on a frantic hunt through the streets, churches, and catacombs of Rome, following a 400-year-old trail to the lair of the Illuminati, to prevent the incineration of civilization.

Brown seems as much juggler as author–there are lots and lots of balls in the air in this novel, yet Brown manages to hurl the reader headlong into an almost surreal suspension of disbelief. While the reader might wish for a little more sardonic humor from Langdon, and a little less bombastic philosophizing on the eternal conflict between religion and science, these are less fatal flaws than niggling annoyances–readers should have no trouble skimming past them and immersing themselves in a heck of a good read. “Brain candy” it may be, but my! It’s tasty. –Kelly Flynn
From Publishers Weekly
Pitting scientific terrorists against the cardinals of Vatican City, this well-plotted if over-the-top thriller is crammed with Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama. Robert Langdon, a Harvard specialist on religious symbolism, is called in by a Swiss research lab when Dr. Vetra, the scientist who discovered antimatter, is found murdered with the cryptic word “Illuminati” branded on his chest. These Iluminati were a group of Renaissance scientists, including Galileo, who met secretly in Rome to discuss new ideas in safety from papal threat; what the long-defunct association has to do with Dr. Vetra’s death is far from clear. Vetra’s daughter, Vittoria, makes a frightening discovery: a lethal amount of antimatter, sealed in a vacuum flask that will explode in six hours unless its batteries are recharged, is missing. Almost immediately, the Swiss Guard discover that the flask is hidden beneath Vatican City, where the conclave to elect a new pope has just begun. Vittoria and Langdon rush to recover the canister, but they aren’t allowed into the Vatican until it is discovered that the four principal papal candidates are missing. The terrorists who are holding the cardinals call in regarding their pending murders, offering clues tied to ancient Illuminati meeting sites and runes. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that a sinister Vatican entity with messianic delusions is in league with the terrorists. Packing the novel with sinister figures worthy of a Medici, Brown (Digital Fortress) sets an explosive pace as Langdon and Vittoria race through a Michelin-perfect Rome to try to save the cardinals and find the antimatter before it explodes. Though its premises strain credulity, Brown’s tale is laced with twists and shocks that keep the reader wired right up to the last revelation. (May)

by Jeffrey Eugenides
Product Details:

* Hardcover: 544 pages
* Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1st edition (September 4, 2002)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0374199698
* ISBN-13: 978-0374199692
* Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
* Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
Price: $17.82

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Inside This Book
First Sentence:
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petroskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
golden fleece, silkworm box, carpet muncher, chromosomal status, yia yia, obscure object, hockey ball
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
Father Mike, Zebra Room, Jimmy Zizmo, New York, Grosse Pointe, Uncle Pete, Lefty Stephanides, Rex Reese, San Francisco, Milton Stephanides, Michael Antoniou, Sister Wanda, Miss Marsh, Bob Presto, Maxine Grossinger, Captain Kontoulis, Sophie Sassoon, Black Bottom, Fard Muhammad, Jimmy Fioretos, Peter Luce, Hastings Street, Asia Minor, Tessie Zizmo, Julie Kikuchi

Editorial Reviews

“I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.” And so begins Middlesex, the mesmerizing saga of a near-mythic Greek American family and the “roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time.” The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides, whose elegant and haunting 1993 debut, The Virgin Suicides, remains one of the finest first novels of recent memory.

Eugenides weaves together a kaleidoscopic narrative spanning 80 years of a stained family history, from a fateful incestuous union in a small town in early 1920s Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit; from the early days of Ford Motors to the heated 1967 race riots; from the tony suburbs of Grosse Pointe and a confusing, aching adolescent love story to modern-day Berlin. Eugenides’s command of the narrative is astonishing. He balances Cal/Callie’s shifting voices convincingly, spinning this strange and often unsettling story with intelligence, insight, and generous amounts of humor:

Emotions, in my experience aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” … I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” … I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever.

When you get to the end of this splendorous book, when you suddenly realize that after hundreds of pages you have only a few more left to turn over, you’ll experience a quick pang of regret knowing that your time with Cal is coming to a close, and you may even resist finishing it–putting it aside for an hour or two, or maybe overnight–just so that this wondrous, magical novel might never end. –Brad Thomas Parsons

From Publishers Weekly
As the Age of the Genome begins to dawn, we will, perhaps, expect our fictional protagonists to know as much about the chemical details of their ancestry as Victorian heroes knew about their estates. If so, Eugenides (The Virgin Suicides) is ahead of the game. His beautifully written novel begins: “Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Peter Luce’s study, ‘Gender Identity in 5-Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphrodites.’ ” The “me” of that sentence, “Cal” Stephanides, narrates his story of sexual shifts with exemplary tact, beginning with his immigrant grandparents, Desdemona and Lefty. On board the ship taking them from war-torn Turkey to America, they married-but they were brother and sister. Eugenides spends the book’s first half recreating, with a fine-grained density, the Detroit of the 1920s and ’30s where the immigrants settled: Ford car factories and the tiny, incipient sect of Black Muslims. Then comes Cal’s story, which is necessarily interwoven with his parents’ upward social trajectory. Milton, his father, takes an insurance windfall and parlays it into a fast-food hotdog empire. Meanwhile, Tessie, his wife, gives birth to a son and then a daughter-or at least, what seems to be a female baby. Genetics meets medical incompetence meets history, and Callie is left to think of her “crocus” as simply unusually long-until she reaches the age of 14. Eugenides, like Rick Moody, has an extraordinary sensitivity to the mores of our leafier suburbs, and Cal’s gender confusion is blended with the story of her first love, Milton’s growing political resentments and the general shedding of ethnic habits. Perhaps the most wonderful thing about this book is Eugenides’s ability to feel his way into the girl, Callie, and the man, Cal. It’s difficult to imagine any serious male writer of earlier eras so effortlessly transcending the stereotypes of gender. This is one determinedly literary novel that should also appeal to a large, general