A Great Memoir! At Last!

From : The Book


Photo : http://www.tnr.com/

The Professor and Other Writings.

The public expression of contempt for professors is one of our cherished national pastimes and is that rare thing—bipartisan. We need a commander-in-chief, not a law professor, is a Sarah Palin applause line. Recently on its front page the New York Times invoked “the classic image of a humanities professor … tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular—and liberal” in a story on a sociological study of the power of typecasting. And in the annals of egghead bashing, the perennial butt of the foolproof punch line has long been the English professor.




MORE..........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

The Music Instinct by Philip Ball

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Science can't explain why we value music so highly, says Guy Dammann. But it's part of what makes us human.

In How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker laid down the evolutionary-psychological law about music. "Music," he put it, "is auditory cheesecake." For those who avoid cheesecake, whether administered orally or aurally, he added: music is "a cocktail of recreational drugs that we ingest … to stimulate a mass of pleasure circuits at once".

MORE............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Violent but Charming

From : Humanities


Photo : http://www.neh.gov/

The Dictionary of Old English explores the brutality and elegance of our ancestral tongue.










“Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.” So said Samuel Johnson, according to James Boswell—and if any man can get away with making a pithy, slightly nonsensical, yet somehow illuminating statement about the merits of dictionaries, repositories of our language, it is Johnson.




MORE............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com


Latest reviews from the Guardian

The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It Hard to Be Happy by Michael Foley
Everything about modern life conditions you for a life of unhappiness, broken dreams and thwarted ambition. Michael Foley's entertaining, intelligent book may just help you get over yourself, writes Phil Hogan
The Small Hours by Lachlan Mackinnon
The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Choose Your Weapons: The British Foreign Secretary by Douglas Hurd
The Storm by Vince Cable

The story of Indira & India

From : The Hindu

Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

The author hopes that Indira's vision of a secular India will withstand the vicissitudes of today's corrosive politics .

A quarter century after her assassination, pollsters continue to be baffled by Indira Gandhi's undiminished popularity, and the name recall she commands in the remotest corners.
A google search throws up more than a 100 books on India's most controversial Prime Minister. Indira was a riveting subject, more than even Jawaharlal Nehru, whose own life story was no less than a cinematic magnum opus. Nehru's sterling qualities were acknowledged by critics and admirers alike, and most saw him as straightforward, if naïve at times. However, Indira appeared to the beholder as a multi-layered, complex, and beguilingly contradictory person.

MORE.............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Stranger than fiction: the true story behind Kidnapped
2. Harry Potter plagiarism lawsuit could be billion-dollar case, says claimant
3. Lyndall Gordon on Emily Dickinson
4. Henry Sutton's top 10 unreliable narrators
5. A plea to Iain M Banks Damien G Walter

What Darwin Got Wrong

From : Boston Review


Photo : http://bostonreview.net/



Misunderstanding DarwinNatural selection’s secular critics get it wrong.






In On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, Charles Darwin made two remarkable scientific contributions. First, he presented an overwhelming case for the relatedness of all living things. Biological diversity, he argued, results from a process of “transmutation” of species—via “descent with modification.” Second, he recognized that the basic mechanism of such change is natural selection: a combination of variations in traits and a selective retention of the variations that contribute to reproductive success.
Descent with modification was accepted quickly. As early as 1872, Thomas Henry





MORE...........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

From Los Angeles Times

Book news and information

Glenn Beck, anarchist bookseller 02/23/2010, 7:10 a.m.
Peeking inside Tools of Change 02/22/2010, 3:22 p.m.
LA Times announces 2009 Book Prize finalists 02/22/2010, 9:00 a.m.
A thriller with a ghost writer 02/19/2010, 3:03 p.m.
Los Angeles will miss Mary Herczog [Updated] 02/19/2010, 10:14 a.m.
White House library's 'socialist' books were Jackie Kennedy's 02/19/2010, 7:27 a.m.
Will Walter Kirn be watching the Oscars at home? 02/18/2010, 3:32 p.m.
L.A. schools superintendent resigns position at Scholastic 02/18/2010, 1:39 p.m.

Literature's First Unreliable Narrator

From : Slate

Photo : http://www.slate.com/

The unexpected lessons of The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

There are less hubristic ways to start a career as a novelist than by retelling the story of The Odyssey. For one thing, the original was pretty good. For another, the story has been retold before—by the likes of Alfred Lord Tennyson, James Joyce, and Fritz Lang, to name a few. Yet in The Lost Books of the Odyssey, Zachary Mason has achieved something remarkable. He's written a first novel that is not just vibrantly original but also an insightful commentary on Homer's epic and its lasting hold on our imagination.

MORE..........

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Lyndall Gordon on Emily Dickinson
2. Harry Potter plagiarism lawsuit could be billion-dollar case, says claimant
3. A plea to Iain M Banks Damien G Walter
4. Henry Sutton's top 10 unreliable narrators
5. Stranger than fiction: the true story behind Kidnapped

Democracy and diplomacy

From : The Hindu

Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

INDIA’S FOREIGN POLICY — The Democracy Dimension: S. D. Muni; Foundation Books, 4381/4, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 495.

A country’s foreign policy is determined by its basic interests as an entity in the international arena contending for a place in the sun. Foreign policy is often presented in terms of lofty values, which are however put behind whenever security imperatives acquire overriding precedence. Security is a nation-state’s core concern. It is sought to be achieved through alliances that may, sometimes, warrant compromises, apart of course through strengthening of defences to deter aggression. How far has the security factor influenced India’s foreign policy in relation to its democratic advocacy and its interest in pluralistic, participative governments prevailing in and among the nations of the world?
S.D. Muni, a respected academic

MORE.........

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Freedom’s Laboratory

From : The New York Time

Photo : by Yarek Waszul

To say that the scientific frame of mind has played an important part in the rise of the West is not exactly controversial.

Science always gets its moment in the spotlight in “Whig history,” as historians (dismissively) call grand narratives of political and material progress. In “The Science of Liberty,” the veteran science writer Timothy Ferris makes a more extravagant claim, assigning not a mere supporting role but top billing to the celebrated experimenters and inventors of the past several centuries. As he sees it, the standard account of the history textbooks — with the Renaissance giving rise to the Scientific Revolution and thus preparing the way for the Enlightenment — fails to identify the primary causal relationship. Democratic governance and individual rights did not emerge from some amorphous “brew of humanistic and scientific thinking,” he argues, but were “sparked” by science itself — the crucial “innovative ingredient” that “continues to foster political freedom today.”

More..............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

The Poisoner's Handbook

From : The Review

Photo : http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/

In America, these advances ran into somewhat greater obstacles.

Murder provides the crux for a good many of the stories which fascinate us, whether the tale comes from the tabloids or a novelist's imagination. But the act itself often eludes narrative. A cloud of rage, a moment of opportunity, and a weapon in hand leads to death in minutes, even seconds, barely enough time to register that the victim has moved out of the land of the living. Add a dash of poison, however, rationed out in small doses over a long period of time, and murder leaves the realm of second-degree impulse for first-degree pre-meditation. Randomize the efforts and, in recent cases like the 1982 Tylenol murders and the 2001 anthrax attacks, the result is domestic terror, the lack of resolution lingering in the air like the bitter almond smell of cyanide.

More.............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

On the crime beat with St. Clair McKelway

FROM : L.A. Time


PHOTO : http://www.latimes.com/ from Christina Pratt /Bloomsbury







For 37 years, the writer worked the underworld beat for the New Yorker. 'Reporting at Wit's End' displays his craft.

The New Yorker, as J.D. Salinger's recent death served to remind us, has been a crucial outlet for writers for more than 80 years. A.J. Liebling, Lillian Ross, Joseph Mitchell, Calvin Trillin -- these are just a few of the voices the magazine has nourished and encouraged, been defined by and, in turn, helped to define.Still, for every such contributor, there are numerous New Yorker writers whose legacies have drifted away over the decades like so much dust. St. Clair McKelway is one of these. For 37 years, McKelway was one of the New Yorker's most prolific and inventive nonfiction writers. In his time, he was regarded as a master of the long-form profile, a superior chronicler of rapscallions and low-rent hustlers. Indeed, when he was on his game, McKelway might have been the best nonfiction writer the magazine had -- this at a time when Liebling, Mitchell and E.J. Kahn Jr. were also producing signature work.





MORE..........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com





TOP FOR L.A. Time






Nonfiction
1.
Game Change by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (Harper: $27.99) An insider's explanation of how the drama of the U.S. presidential campaign of 2008 unfolded.
4
2.
Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking: $26.95) After being forced to wed, the author tackles her fears of marriage by delving into the history and background of the institution.
4
3.
Just Kids by Patti Smith (Ecco: $27) A memoir of the singer's early days and relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe.
2
4.
I Am Ozzy by Ozzy Osbourne and Chris Ayres (Grand Central : $26.99) The heavy metal singer reminisces on his death-defying life.
2
5.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
59
6.
The Politician by Andrew Young (Thomas Dunne: $24.99) An insider's account of presidential hopeful John Edwards and the scandal that brought him down.
1
7.
Star by Peter Biskind (Simon & Schuster: $30) An intimate biography of Hollywood's leading ladies' man, Warren Beatty.
4
8.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Ultimate Guide by Rick Riordan (Hyperion: $12.99) An illustrated, in-depth guide to all things about Percy Jackson and Greek mythology.
1
9.
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (Harper: $25.99) A year spent trying to be happier by making small changes in various aspects of daily life.
2
10.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.

The Stories of Heinrich von Kleist

From : The Review

Photo : http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/

Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) only wrote eight stories, but they are among the glories of German, and world, literature.

The best known to American readers is almost certainly the novella-length "Michael Kohlhaas," in large part because E. L. Doctorow borrowed from it for the Coalhouse Walker portions of his novel Ragtime. As usual, Kleist hooks the reader with his very first sentence:
Toward the middle of the sixteenth century, there lived on the banks of the Havel a horse dealer by the name of Michael Kohlhaas, the son of a schoolmaster, one of the most upright and at the same time one of the most terrible men of his day.

MORE..........

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

L.A. TIME TOP.

Fiction
weeks on list
1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town.
36
2.
First Rule by Robert Crais (Putnam: $26.95) Joe Pike's past catches up with him when an old friend's entire family is killed.
4
3.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Knopf: $25.95) A hacker implicated in two murders must revisit her past to prove her innocence.
24
4.
The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova (Little, Brown: $26.99) The past and present converge in a mystery surrounding a tormented artist.
3
5.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (Henry Holt: $27) The rise of Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell.
14
6.
The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb (W.W. Norton & Co.: $24.95) Graphic depictions from all 50 chapters of the first book of the Bible.
8
7.
Noah's Compass by Anne Tyler (Knopf: $25.95) After being attacked, an unambitious, unemployed teacher loses his memory and embraces the exuberance of a younger woman.
3
8.
Day Out of Days by Sam Shepard (Knopf: $25.95) A collection of short stories set in the American West.
1
9.
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead (Wendy Lamb Books: $15.99) A sixth-grader begins receiving mysterious notes accurately predicting the future.
1
10.
Point Omega by Don DeLillo (Scribner: $24) A defense scholar retreats to the desert joined by his daughter and a filmmaker.

Daring Young Men

Fr0m : The Philadelphia Unquirer


Photo : http://www.philly.com/









Generosity and heroics of the Berlin airlift.

After gigantic sacrifices, the United States was finally able in 1945 to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Only three years later, the United States found itself making even more sacrifices related to Germany, but this time to stave off starvation in West Berlin, a bombed-out city where countless former Nazis lived.
Richard Reeves, a prolific journalist-historian, decided to write a book about what became known as the Berlin airlift because so many Americans today know little or nothing about the seemingly impossible - and highly unlikely - humanitarian mission.

More..........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. The Other Family by Joanna Trollope John Crace
2. Masters of American literature
3. Verbal Valentines: books that make perfect couples
4. An insider's guide to writing for Mills & Boon
5. Letters reveal JD Salinger was writing regularly long after 1965

British Historians and the European Continent

From : The Book

Photo : http://www.tnr.com/

The effects of a great financial crisis ripple in many directions and last long.

After a decade of expansion, for example, austere times lie ahead for British universities, with deep cuts on the horizon. There will be consequences for British scholarship and British culture. Richard Evans’s new study of the historical profession in Britain serves as a timely reminder both of what Britain’s historians have achieved over the past half-century, and what may be lost if their legacy is squandered. In particular, Evans celebrates his colleagues’ outward-looking mindset and their love-affairs with Europe, an engagement that is striking when compared to the introversion of their peers across the Channel, and—though he does not come out and say so—with the parochialism of contemporary British political and cultural life

MORE............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Verbal Valentines: books that make perfect couples
2. Author Dick Francis dies aged 89
3. Arthur Koestler: flawed crusader
4. Arthur Koestler: the indispensable intellectual by Michael Scammell Book extract
5. An insider's guide to writing for Mills & Boon

The Sun-Fish by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Sean O'Brien on an Irish enigma.

Although she has long been famous in Ireland, it is perhaps only in the last 10 years or so that Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin has begun to receive due recognition in Britain. Ní Chuilleanáin's work ­often eludes categories (and sometimes ­interpretation too) but it might be said that she is a storyteller before she is a moralist, and one who both invites and challenges the reader to accept the primacy of imaginative life.

MORE............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Los Angeles Time top books

Fiction1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson ($14.95)

2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold($16.99)

3. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout ($14)

4. Dear John by Nicholas Sparks($7.99)

5. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery ($15)

In My Father's Shadow

From : The Telegraph


Photo : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/





Daughter Remembers Orson Welles by Chris Welles Feder: review
Linda Christmas is fascinated by In My Father's Shadow, by Chris Welles Feder, a memoir about her father, Orson Welles.

The opening of this book is haunting. It contains a description of Orson Welles’s funeral. This was supposed to be a simple service for close family members, but when it was discovered that Welles left no money, it shrank to a dismal affair in a destitute part of LA. The funeral parlour, from the outside, looked like a “hot-sheets motel” and inside offered a small “crummy” room with plastic covered sofas, and no flowers. The speeches





MORE............





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

A Nation of Racist Dwarfs

From : Slate

Photo : http://www.slate.com/

Kim Jong-il's regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought.

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial "minder" whom I'll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world's most hysterical and operatic leader-cult. One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he'd heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity.

MORE.............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Redcoats Coming, Nobody Home

From : The wall street Journal


Photo : http://online.wsj.com/

Thomas Jefferson's wartime 'dark period' was marked by inglorious retreats .












The war must have seemed very far away from Monticello on those evenings in 1779 when Thomas Jefferson joined a Hessian prisoner of war in a violin duet, with Martha Jefferson accompanying them on the pianoforte, while Baroness Riedesel, the regal wife of the captive Hessian commander, led the party in dances. Jefferson that January had welcomed the arrival in the Charlottesville, Va., area of nearly 4,000 British and Hessian prisoners taken in the Battle of Saratoga, believing they would provide a boost to the local economy.





MORE..........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Literature's most mind-blowing drugs
2. The greatest literary hoax ever?
3. Markus Zusak's top 10 boxing books
4. Maya by Alastair Campbell John Crace
5. The bestselling author no one in Britain knows

Pass impasse

From : The Economist


Photo : http://www.economist.com/

The giant neighbours are more rivals than partners.






FOR a book about two countries whose most recent war was five decades ago, “Prospects for Peace” seems a quirky subtitle. Jonathan Holslag, a Brussels-based think-tanker, argues that, since China’s swift and bloody humiliation of India in 1962, the neighbours have “tottered at least five times on the verge of war”. But the last time troops massed on the border was in 1986. Since then the territorial dispute that sparked the war has been “put to one side”. Bilateral trade has boomed, and hundreds of thousands of Indians and Chinese now visit the other country each year, including a succession of senior politicians toasting a beautiful friendship.
As Mr Holslag explains, however, the relationship is still marked





MORE.................





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Neil Gaiman to write Dr Who episode
2. The bestselling author no one in Britain knows
3. Take your seats for the great Station Bookswap
4. Masters of American literature
5. Neil Strauss tells Emma Forrest 'all the right moves' for bedding ladies

The Crusades: The War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge

From : The Guardian


Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/






Helen Castor does battle with the convoluted politics of the crusades.






This is a gruelling book. Context can be everything in historical interpretation, as Thomas Asbridge makes clear in a brief but compelling epilogue on the ideological legacy of the crusades; and in the shadow of the Haiti earthquake, these hundreds of pages of death and destruction resonate with an immediately visceral horror. But for those who have the stomach, Asbridge's lengthy narrative builds into a haunting and thought-provoking story. The suffering he describes was, unlike Haiti's agony, deliberately inflicted; and the question he seeks to answer is: why?





MORE............





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

TOP FOR L. A. Time

Fiction
Weeks on list
1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town.
24
2.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper: $26.99) A writer's escapades encompassing 1930s Mexican artist communities and Cold War America.
1
3.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ( Henry Holt: $27) The rise of Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell.
2
4.
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown : $27.99) An LAPD detective travels to Hong Kong to solve the murder of a Chinese immigrant.
5
5.
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $25.99) Harvard professor Robert Langdon uses his symbology skills to find a missing Freemason in Washington, D.C.
9
6.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $13.95) Greg desires to spend summer vacation indoors despite his mother's wishes for outdoor family fun.
5
7.
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (Random House: $28) A father and son on the run in 1950s Northeast logging communities.
2
8.
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor: $29.99) Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, attempts to unite kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle.
3
9.
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday: $24) A collection of short stories set in the same locale as "A Time to Kill."
1
10.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (Riverhead: $25.95) A woman acquaints herself with the songwriter whose album caused the breakup of her recent relationship.
5
11.
Pursuit of Honor by Vince Flynn (Atria: $27.99) Two counterterrorism operatives deal with the fallout from a deadly terrorist attack.
5
12.
Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy (Knopf : $28.95) A bank heist sets off an escapade through '60s L.A. with run-ins with the mob, the FBI and Howard Hughes.
7
13.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules by Jeff Kinney (Amulet : $12.95) Greg navigates middle school while trying to keep his brother from revealing a secret.
2
14.
The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (Knopf: $28.95) An Istanbul bourgeois pursues a shopgirl, collecting objects associated with her.
1
15.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Knopf: $25.95) A hacker implicated in two murders must revisit her past to prove her innocence.
13
Nonfiction
1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.
3
2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.
4
3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
50
4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.
7
5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.
1
6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.
2
7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.
5
8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.
1
9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.
1
10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.
8

Creating a Postwar World

From : The Wall Street Journal


Photo : http://online.wsj.com/







Hour by hour with Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt.

Sixty-five years ago this week, as Soviet and Allied forces headed toward Berlin in the final months of World War II, three political leaders remade the modern world. Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met near the city of Yalta, on the coast of the Black Sea, to determine the fate of postwar Europe.
The decisions they arrived at, and the agreements they made, proved so momentous that Yalta soon became a symbol of the political failures that led to the Cold War. The captive nations of Eastern Europe in particular blamed Yalta for putting them under the control of the Soviet Union. In communist Poland, where I grew up, one often heard about naïve and sickly FDR—only two months away from death—delivering the motherland into Uncle Joe's clutches. Countless Estonians, Hungarians and Czechs felt the same way.








MORE.........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Neil Gaiman to write Dr Who episode
2. Masters of American literature
3. Anthony Julius on Diana, Dina and the new antisemitism Interview
4. Defacing books: effluence of engagement
5. What Darwin Got Wrong Book review

In and Out of History

From : The Book

Photo : http://www.tnr.com/

The Metamorphosis of Tintin or Tintin for Adults by Jean-Marie Apostolides
Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline.

To really write for children, you have to think like a child. And to read a children’s book, you probably have to let go of grown-up reasoning. These thoughts occurred to me as I read two newly-translated books about Tintin and his creator, Georges Remi, better known to the world as Hergé. (The pen name is composed of Remi’s initials backwards, pronounced as in French.) There is much to be learned from these studies and others by “Tintinologists”—about Hergé, about the “world” of Tintin, even about twentieth-century politics. But as I read Pierre Assouline’s well-written biography of Hergé and Jean-Marie Apostolidès’s erudite study of the Tintin books, a version of the question we Jews love to ask kept coming to mind: Are they good for Tintin?
As Assouline

MORE.............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Twitter haiku: a great new way to deliver bad news
2. Scott of the Antarctic's final diary published online
3. England is 'cesspit' breeding Islamists, says Soyinka
4. Who stole our reading time?
5. Sam Baker's top 10 literary stepmothers

36 ARGUMENTS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

From : The Washington Post

Photo :

FICTION
Book review: '36 Arguments for the Existence of God' by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

.

Are you a person of faith offended by claims that your savior is just another fanciful invention, like an elf or a unicorn? Or are you an atheist singed by predictions that you'll burn in hell?
Or are you just weary of this shrill, fruitless debate that surely hasn't changed a single mortal soul?
Well, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters!" Amid the multitude of bestselling books by atheists and apologists preaching to their respective choirs, here finally is an answer to prayer and reason: a brainy, compassionate, divinely witty novel by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein called "36 Arguments for the Existence of God."

More............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

The Asian nuclear dynamic

From : The Hindu

Photo : http://www.hindu.com/

THE LONG SHADOW

— Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia: Edited by Muthiah Alagappa; Oxford University Press, YMCA Library Building, Jai Singh Road, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 995.
It is almost 65 years since the mushroom cloud rose over Hiroshima in August 1945 and ever since, the apocalyptic nuclear weapon that paradoxically kept the ‘uneasy peace’ in the Cold War continues to cast a very long shadow. In the context of the post-9/11 turbulence, it is pertinent that much of the regional instability engulfing large parts of Asia has a linkage with the nuclear weapon — either factual or illusory — and Iraq is an abiding instan ce of the United States’ certitude proving to be a catastrophic policy blunder.

MORE................

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Living Dolls

From : The Guardian

Photo : http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter
Natasha Walter's excellent book on the effects on women of our hypersexualised times could go further, says Jessica Valenti .

In her 1998 book, The New Feminism, Natasha Walter argued that the feminist adage the "personal is political" needed to ditch the "personal" and focus on broader political goals. Feminists shouldn't worry so much about sexual objectification, Walter said; young women didn't want to be told what to wear and who to sleep with. Walter now says that she was "entirely wrong".

MORE...............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. England is 'cesspit' breeding Islamists, says Soyinka
2. Please, please, please, let me get the memoirs I want
3. Old media wins battle in ebook war as Amazon raises prices to match Apple
4. The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis John Crace
5. Faber editor bids to woo Morrissey to 'the House of Eliot'

Art as Manifesto

From : The hoover Institution

Photo : http://www.hoover.org/

Nicholas Fox Weber. The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism. Knopf, 544 pages. $40 .

Bauhaus is back. With the 90-year anniversary of the founding of the famed German school of art and craft and design — the school that calls to mind sharp corners and flat roofs, glass and steel and exposed materials, simple furniture and bold painting — have come the exhibitions, retrospectives, and commemorations. Among these is a book by the art historian and writer Nicholas Fox Weber that seeks to illuminate new aspects of the Bauhaus through new descriptions of its major players.
This is all to the good, for to understand the Bauhaus it is necessary to understand the people who ran it. This may seem an odd claim to make considering that one of the school’s most cherished and foundational ideals was that personality, in the slimier, egotistic sense of the word, had no place within its walls or in its work — but that, alas, was an ideal. In reality, the brief and tumultuous history of the Bauhaus’s existence (1919 to 1933) is a history of a handful of artists and craftsmen, and their philosophies and ideas, working with and against one another to create the shifting and singular styles that would irrevocably change the world’s understanding of art, architecture, and design.

More .................

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

From The L. A. Times
Nonfiction
1.
What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) A collection of the author's writings of everyday and extraordinary people.
3
2.
SuperFreakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow: $29.99) More funny, informative facts and questions to ponder.
4
3.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown: $27.99) An exploration of the background of high achievers.
50
4.
Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom (Hyperion: $23.99) Albom's observations of a rabbi and a pastor on an eight-year journey of faith.
7
5.
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (Little, Brown : $25.99) An examination and behind-the-scenes look at factory farming.
1
6.
Save the Deli by David Sax (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt : $24) The history behind and search for the best delis across America.
2
7.
Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon (Harper: $26.99) A collection of autobiographical essays reflecting on what it means to be a man and father.
5
8.
It's Your Time by Joel Osteen (Free Press: $25) Finding inspiration and faith during difficult times.
1
9.
The Queen Mother by William Shawcross (Publisher: $40) The biography of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and a century of devotion to the British monarchy.
1
10.
Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer (Doubleday: $27.95) A chronicle of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger whose death in Afghanistan stunned the power structure.

Coyote at the Kitchen Door

From : The Los Angeles Times


Photo : http://www.latimes.com/

"Over the years, coyotes ate many of Michael Soulé's cats."

So begins Caroline Fraser's engaging new book, "Rewilding the World: Dispatches From the Conservation Revolution." Soulé, a prominent biologist, discovered that where human and coyote populations overlap, the droppings -- "scats" -- of one in five coyotes contained domestic cat fur.It wasn't, however, just anxiety over his cats that prompted Soulé to research coyotes in the canyons outside his native San Diego. As the canyons were declared "empty wastelands" by developers and chopped into housing developments, Soulé worried over the dissolution of a unique ecosystem.He found, not surprisingly, that numbers of native birds -- wrentits, spotted towhees, California quail -- were decreasing. He also discovered something surprising, and perhaps counterintuitive on the surface: In canyons where coyotes persisted, the bird populations were more robust. Coyotes, it turned out, controlled not just their own prey but also other predators (like cats) with different prey bases (like birds), thus affecting populations of animals with which coyotes don't normally interact.

MORE...........





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

From the L.A. Time

Fiction
Weeks on list
1.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town.
24
2.
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper: $26.99) A writer's escapades encompassing 1930s Mexican artist communities and Cold War America.
1
3.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel ( Henry Holt: $27) The rise of Henry VIII's advisor Thomas Cromwell.
2
4.
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown : $27.99) An LAPD detective travels to Hong Kong to solve the murder of a Chinese immigrant.
5
5.
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown (Doubleday: $25.99) Harvard professor Robert Langdon uses his symbology skills to find a missing Freemason in Washington, D.C.
9
6.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days by Jeff Kinney (Amulet: $13.95) Greg desires to spend summer vacation indoors despite his mother's wishes for outdoor family fun.
5
7.
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving (Random House: $28) A father and son on the run in 1950s Northeast logging communities.
2
8.
The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson (Tor: $29.99) Rand al'Thor, the Dragon Reborn, attempts to unite kingdoms and alliances in preparation for the Last Battle.
3
9.
Ford County by John Grisham (Doubleday: $24) A collection of short stories set in the same locale as "A Time to Kill."
1
10.
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby (Riverhead: $25.95) A woman acquaints herself with the songwriter whose album caused the breakup of her recent relationship.

Ayn Rand: engineer of souls

From : New Criterion


Photo : http://www.newcriterion.com/






A critical account of the "Chernyshevsky of individualism."

My copy of The Concept of Benevolence by T. A. Roberts, in the series New Studies in Practical Philosophy, was deaccessioned from a university library. The librarian took advantage of the fact that it had not been borrowed since October 17, 1977, only four years after its publication, to disembarrass his institution of yet another book so uselessly cluttering up the library shelves. It was carefully endorsed with ugly withdrawal stamps to reduce its resale value to an absolute minimum. Perhaps the librarian was a follower of Ayn Rand, the apostle of selfishness, who did not want youth corrupted by stray thoughts of altruism. Going from the loan history of the book (and from my casual observations of British youth), there was never much danger of this, but it is always better to be safe than sorry and therefore to treat selfishness as if it were an endangered species.

MORE..............





For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

'Stephen Fry in America'

From : The Washington Time

Photo : http://washingtontimes.com/

STEPHEN FRY IN AMERICA: FIFTY STATES AND THE MAN WHO SET OUT TO SEE THEM ALL

By Stephen Fry
William Morrow, $34.99
314 pages

In 1831, French politician and thinker Alexis de Tocqueville visited the still growing United States, traveled widely and took copious notes. He assembled those notes in two volumes, published five years apart, titled "Democracy in America," that are still studied and quoted today. The title "Stephen Fry in America" echoes de Tocqueville's classic, but also puts the reader on notice that the ambition here is scaled back. This isn't an attempt to understand America, Mr. Fry says, as much as to experience it. And it's supposed to be as much a window into the author as subject.

MORE............

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com

Last 24 hours

1. Martin Amis: 'I don't want to tread carefully'
2. Lost Man Booker prize longlist to award best omitted novels of 1970
3. The top 100 books of all time
4. Largest book in the world goes on show for the first time
5. Those remaining literary recluses in full
More top stories

THREE PIGS

From : The Book

Photo : http://www.tnr.com/

The Three Pigs
by David Wiesner
Clarion Books, 40 pp., $16

Children love stories, and so we provide them. In the contemporary West we rely on books, but this was not always our way: as long ago as 1936, Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller” lamented the passing of the art of oral narration. The ancient art of oral storytelling endures in many parts of the globe. In southeast India, for example, I sat on the floor of a Chennai nursery and listened to a story, enthralled. Here, by contrast, we buy or borrow children’s books, or take them out of the attic, and read them to our offspring. In considering a growing trend in American books for children, I find it hard to push aside the question of why children love stories. An outstanding example will serve: a Caldecott Medal-winning picture book The Three Pigs, by David Wiesner.

MORE...........

For more E- Books , Please go to Bookyards.com