Random House Freshman Year Reading Catalog by Random House

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Dear Freshman Year Reading Director: 2008 was a year of great change. As you organize your common reading programs for 2009, you will want books that address this new world and prepare students for the challenges ahead. Barack Obama’s historic election was a milestone in U.S. history. We are proud to offer books both by and about him: from his compelling and literary memoir Dreams from My Father, to a primer on the man and his ideas, Barack Obama For Beginners, we have our new president covered from every angle. Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains has become a common reading classic, having been adopted by nearly sixty colleges and universities. His new book, Strength In What Remains, examines yet another extraordinary figure in our world, a person all students can admire and emulate. For programs with environmental themes, the new “Go Green” section includes John Francis’ Planetwalker, which has already been adopted for common reading in hardcover, is soon available in paperback, and Ernest Callenbach’s classic Ecotopia is now revised and updated. And keeping with the theme of books for a changed world, you’ll note we have added a new section “Money Matters”, which includes financial guru Suze Orman’s new 2009 Action Plan. Also new to this year’s list: Things I’ve Been Silent About, by Azar Nafisi author of Reading Lolita In Tehran, a deeply personal memoir of life during the revolution; Resilience, by Alonzo Mourning, an inspirational account of the NBA player’s courageous fight against all odds; Outcasts United, by Warren St. John, a portrait of new small-town America; and Joker One, by Donovan Campbell, one young soldier’s harrowing account of the War in Iraq. The year ahead may be filled with uncertainty and challenge, but getting your students centered around the right book can make all of the difference. Whether the issues are academic, professional, personal or even financial, Random House has a book for every program. So turn the page to find the right book for you. Sincerely,

Michael D. Gentile Director, Academic Marketing Random House, Inc. 1745 Broadway New York, NY 10019 Tel. (212) 782-8387 Fax (212) 940-7381 e-mail: mgentile@randomhouse.com P.S.: Please do not hesitate to phone or e-mail me directly. To find out more about how Random House, Inc. can help you once you’ve made your decision, please turn to the inside back page of the catalog.

Table of Contents LIFE STORIES—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography ....................................1 FICTION TO TALK ABOUT .......................... 30 INSPIRATION AND GUIDANCE....................45 HISTORY AND SOCIETY ..............................50 LIFE & COLLEGE GUIDES ..............................61 GO GREEN......................................................65 MONEY MATTERS ........................................70 INDEX ............................................................72 ORDER FORM ................................................75

Examination Copies Examination copies are available to college professors, instructors, or administrators seeking titles to review for adoption consideration. The exam copy prices are as follows: $3.00 for each paperback priced under $20.00, and 50% off the retail price for all hardcovers and paperbacks priced at or over $20.00. Examination copies are limited to ten per teacher per school year and can only be mailed to valid U.S. addresses. To order, use the order form on the back of this catalog. Examination copies must be prepaid with a check, or money order made payable to Random House, Inc. Offer only valid in the United States. All requests are subject to approval and availability. Please allow 2–4 weeks for delivery.

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God Grew Tired of Us

Author Available

A Memoir by John Bul Dau and Michael Sweeney

his unforgettable book is the first-person account of a miracle—indeed, a whole series of miracles. One of the uprooted youngsters known as the Lost Boys of Sudan, John Bul Dau was 12 years old when civil war ravaged his village and shattered its age-old society, a life of herding and agriculture marked by dignity, respect, and the simple virtues of Dinka tribal tradition. As tracer bullets split the night and mortar shells exploded around him, John fled into the darkness—the first terrified moments of a journey that would lead him thousands of miles into an exile that was to last many years. John’s memoir of his Dinka childhood shows African life and values at their best, while his searing account of hardship, famine, and war also testifies to human resilience and kindness.

Now in Paperback

“This earnest, heart-on-the-sleeve memoir reinforces the preciousness of all human life and should serve as a reality check for the rest of the world.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Selected for Common Reading National Geographic • Tr. Pbk 978-1-4262-0212-4 • 304 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Cazenovia College Otis College of Art and Design Graceland College (IA)

e-Book

Author website: www.johndaufoundation.org/ Excerpt As deafening explosions made the earth vibrate beneath me and hysterical voices penetrated the walls of the hut, I realized what was happening. My village was being shelled. I heard more gunshots and more crying. I knew nobody in the village had a gun, so each report of the automatic rifles could only mean more death for those I loved. I recall having two thoughts. First, I convinced myself that the women in the village had been right: It really was the end of the world. Second, I wondered what had happened to my mother and my siblings. After two hours, the sounds of attack faded. I took stock of my situation. I had just turned 13. I was naked. I carried no food or water. My village had been destroyed. I had become separated from my mother and siblings. Armed men who spoke a foreign tongue combed the forests and grasslands, and if they found me, they most likely would kill me. Excerpted from God Grew Tired of Us by John Bul Dau. Copyright© 2007 John Bul Dau. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission is prohibited.

About the Authors John Bul Dau is a Dinka from Southern Sudan and one of thousands of Lost Boys who fled their homeland during Sudanese civil war. He found shelter at refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya before coming to Syracuse, New York, where he now lives with his wife and his daughter. Michael S. Sweeney is a professor of journalism at Utah State University. He is the author of the acclaimed book Secrets of Victory, which was named 2001 Book of the Year by the American Journalism Historians Association.

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

The Invisible Wall A Love Story That Broke Barriers by Harry Bernstein A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age here are places that I have never forgotten. A little cobbled street in a smoky mill town in the North of England has haunted me for the greater part of my life. It was inevitable that I should write about it and the people who lived on both sides of its ‘Invisible Wall.’ ” The narrow street where Harry Bernstein grew up was seemingly unremarkable, except for the “invisible wall” that ran down its center, dividing Jewish families on one side from Christian families on the other. Only a few feet of cobblestones separated Jews from Gentiles, but socially, they were miles apart. On the eve of World War I, Harry’s family struggles to make ends meet. His father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams. Then Harry’s older sister does the unthinkable: she falls in love with a Christian boy from across the street. When Harry unwittingly discovers their secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, and what he knows to be true in his own heart. A wonderfully charming memoir written when the author was ninety-three, The Invisible Wall is a moving tale of working-class life, and of the boundaries that can be overcome by love.

“T

Ballantine • Tr. Pbk 978-0-345-49610-2 • 336 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

For more titles by Harry Bernstein, see page 22. Excerpt

Chapter One It was one of those rare summer evenings when it did not rain, and the smoke cleared from the atmosphere, leaving the sky a deep blue color, and the air soft and fresh and balmy. It was the kind of evening when people brought their stiff-backed wooden kitchen chairs out to the front to sit and smoke, and perhaps listen to the Forshaws’ gramophone. They were the only people on our street who had one, and they left their door open so that everyone could hear. In the meantime, the sun would sink, a huge red ball, behind the square brick tower of the India Mill. After it disappeared, there would be fiery streaks in the sky, and these would fade gradually as the sky became very pale, and twilight would fall gently, and you would see the glow of pipes or cigarettes along both sides of the street.

Photo © Charles E. Burton

Excerpted from The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein Copyright © 2007 by Harry Bernstein. Excerpted by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author Ninety-eight-year-old Harry Bernstein emigrated to the United States with his family after World War I. He has written all his life but started writing his first published memoir, The Invisible Wall, following the death of his wife, Ruby, several years ago, and has since penned The Dream and The Golden Willow. He lives in Brick, New Jersey.

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Joker One

Author Available

A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood by Donovan Campbell ight after graduating from Princeton University, Donovan Campbell, motivated by his unwavering patriotism and deep sense of faith, decided to join the service, realizing that becoming a Marine officer would allow him to give back to his country, engage in the world, and learn to lead. In this immediate, thrilling, and inspiring memoir, Campbell recounts a timeless and transcendent tale of brotherhood, courage, and sacrifice. When Campbell’s platoon, Joker One, deployed to Ramadi in the spring of 2004, they expected to build schools, train police, and make friends with the citizens. But soon, hundreds of hardcore insurgents launched simultaneous attacks on the Marine forces in Ramadi. Told by the man who led the unit of hard-pressed Marines, Joker One is a gripping tale of a leadership, loyalty, faith, and camaraderie throughout the best and worst of times.

“Donovan Campbell, first as a Marine and then as a writer, shows us that the dominant emotion in war isn’t hatred or anger or fear. It’s love. His story stands as a poignant tribute to his men—their courage, their dedication, their skill, and their love for one another, even unto death. This is a deeply moving book.” —Nathaniel Fick, New York Times bestselling author of One Bullet Away

NEW

Random House • HC 978-1-4000-6773-2 • 336 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Do not order before 3/10/2009. e-Book

Excerpt I found myself fascinated by the interesting geometric designs of the twisted iron rebar in front of me. For a time, my eyes traced each of the dark, thumb-thick strands where they spewed out of the cinder-block walls like the frozen tentacles of some monster from the myths of antiquity. I have no idea how long I spent engrossed in contemplation, because time in and around firefights is somewhat fluid, but eventually I tore myself away from profound admiration of the destruction in front of my eyes. It was difficult, this return to a reality that sometimes seemed more like a myth—or maybe a nightmare— but it was necessary, because the problem immediately at hand was all too real. If I ignored it for too long, I might get everyone around me killed. Excerpted from Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood by Donovan Campbell. Excerpted by permission of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Donovan Campbell graduated with honors from Princeton University and Harvard Business School, finished first in his class at the Marines’ Basic Officer Course, and served three combat deployments—two in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon and a Bronze Star with Valor for his time in Iraq. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

About the Author

FUNNY IN FARSI

Author Available

A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas Winner, Spirit of America Award* *Sponsored by the National Council for the Social Studies, Social Studies School Service. Prior recipients include Jimmy Carter, Rosa Parks, Jim Lehrer, and Mr. (Fred) Rogers.

Finalist, Thurber Prize for American Humor Finalist, PEN/USA Award in Creative Non-Fiction Finalist: Audie Award for Best Recording of a Memoir, 2005 unny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Iranian-born Firoozeh Dumas’s wonderfully engaging family as they grapple with American English, American traditions, and American culture. This is a story of identity, discovery, and the power of familial bonds.

Selected for Common Reading

Random House • Tr. Pbk 978-0-8129-6837-8 • 208 pp. $12.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Author website: www.firoozehdumas.com/

Gallaudet University Salisbury University, Maryland University of Wisconsin, Madison University of Wisconsin, La Crosse Cal State University, Sacramento Cal State University, Bakersfield Fairmont University, West Virginia Bensenville, Illinois—2008 Berkeley Reads—2006 Cape Ann Community Reads—2006 Carlsbad Reads Together—2009 Lamorinda Reads (CA)—2008 One Book, One Whittier—2005 Orange County Reads One Book—2004 Palo Alto Reads—2006 The Big Read, Dayton, Ohio—2008 Wood Dale and Ithasca (IL)—2008

About the Author

Firoozeh Dumas was born in Abadan, Iran, and moved to California at the age of seven. After a two-year stay, she and her family moved back to Iran and resided in Ahvaz and Tehran. Two years later, Dumas returned to California, where she later attended the University of California at Berkeley. Her first book, Funny in Farsi was a finalist for both the PEN/USA Award in 2004 and the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and has been adopted in junior high, high school and college curricula throughout the nation. It has also been selected for common reading programs at several universities.

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Excerpt Chapter 1 Leffingwell Elementary School We arrived in Whittier shortly after the start of second grade; my father enrolled me in Leffingwell Elementary School. To facilitate my adjustment, the principal arranged for us to meet my new teacher, Mrs. Sandberg, a few days before I started school. Since my mother and I did not speak English, the meeting consisted of a dialogue between my father and Mrs. Sandberg. My father carefully explained that I had attended a prestigious kindergarten where all the children were taught English. Eager to impress Mrs. Sandberg, he asked me to demonstrate my knowledge of the English language. I stood up straight and proudly recited all that I knew: “White, yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green.” Excerpted from Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas Copyright © 2003 by Firoozeh Dumas. Excerpted by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Funny in Farsi “Funny with Farsi captured the interest of our entire academic community, particularly our first-year students, because it relates to each reader’s personal stories. Students who are new to campus identify with Dumas’ experiences as the new and different “kid-on-the-block” and the challenges and insights that come with an immigrant and multicultural family. In the book and in person, Dumas uses humor to address important issues in a way that reaches people of all generations and backgrounds. Through her stories, Firoozeh Dumas connects with people and inspires us to connect with each other.” —Sheree Meyer, Ph.D., One Book Program Faculty Coordinator & English Department Chair, and Rod Santos, Coordinator of First Year Programs, California State University, Sacramento

“Funny with Farsi captivated our campus as the book choice for our inaugural New Student Reader Program. Its message of shared humanity, resonated with everyone, regardless of age, background or color. Firoozeh Dumas not only educated our students she entertained them as well as our Fall Convocation speaker. I highly recommend it for any First Year Experience reading program.” —Lawanda Dockins-Gordy, Director New Student Experience and Guerrieri University Center, Salisbury University “Remarkable...what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Also by Firoozeh Dumas

Laughing Without an Accent

NEW

Adventures of a Global Citizen Funny in Farsi author Firoozeh Dumas returns with Laughing Without an Accent to tell more stories about her hilarious, warm, and loving family, and the experience of being not just an American, but a citizen of the world. Whether describing her Iranian family’s wonder at her French husband’s Christmas traditions, or comparing questionable delicacies in international cuisines, Dumas’s wit, warmth, and insight illuminate the universality of the human condition, and show how our differences can become our bonds. Villard Books • HC • 978-0-345-49956-1 • 240 pp. $22.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00 Paperback coming August 2009. Do not order before 8/11/2009. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-49957-8 • 240 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Hurry Down Sunshine

Author Available

A Memoir by Michael Greenberg urry Down Sunshine tells the story of an extraordinary summer when, at the age of fifteen, Michael Greenberg’s daughter was struck mad. It begins with Sally’s visionary crack-up on the streets of Greenwich Village, and continues, among other places, in the out-of-time world of a Manhattan psychiatric ward during the city’s most sweltering months. “I feel like I’m traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,” Sally says in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place her father could not dream of or imagine. Hurry Down Sunshine is the chronicle of that journey, and its effect on Sally and those closest to her—her brother and grandmother, her mother and stepmother, and, not least of all, the author himself. Among Greenberg’s unforgettable gallery of characters are an unconventional psychiatrist, an Orthodox Jewish patient, a manic Classics professor, a movie producer, and a landlord with literary dreams. Unsentimental, nuanced, and deeply humane, Hurry Down Sunshine holds the reader in a mesmerizing state of suspension between the mundane and the transcendent.

Other Press • HC 978-1-590-51191-6 • 240 pp. $22.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $11.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

“[Hurry Down Sunshine] was a gripping and powerful read for me. Through recounting how he and his family embraced and helped his daughter in these extreme circumstances, Mr. Greenberg teaches us all about the power of love, especially in the face of inevitable challenges all adolescents endure and experience…. Should be required professional reading for teachers, counselors in your school, strongly recommended for independent/summer reading for students and their parents.” —Douglas J. Dickson, St. Joseph’s Episcopal School “One of the most gripping and disturbingly honest books I have ever read. The courage Michael Greenberg shows in narrating the story of his adolescent daughter’s descent into psychosis is matched by his acute understanding of how alone each of us, sane or manic, is in our processing of reality and our attempts to get others to appreciate what seems important to us. This is a remarkable memoir.” —Phillip Lopate, author of Two Marriages and Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan

About the Author A native New Yorker, Michael Greenberg is a columnist for the Times Literary Supplement (London), where his wide-ranging essays have been appearing since 2003. His fiction, criticism, and travel pieces have been published in such varied places as O, The Oprah Magazine, Bomb, The Village Voice, and the Boston Review. He lives in New York with his wife and son. 6

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Excerpt On July 5, 1996, my daughter was struck mad. She was fifteen and her crack-up marked a turning point in both our lives. “I feel like I'm traveling and traveling with nowhere to go back to,” she said in a burst of lucidity while hurtling away toward some place I could not dream of or imagine. I wanted to grab her and bring her back, but there was no turning back. Suddenly every point of connection between us had vanished. It didn’t seem possible. She had learned to speak from me; she had heard her first stories from me. Indelible experiences, I thought. And yet from one day to the next we had become strangers. My first impulse was to blame myself. Predictably, I tried to tally up the mistakes I had made, what I had failed to provide her, but they weren’t enough to explain what had happened. Nothing was. Briefly, I placed my hope in the doctors, then realized that, beyond the relatively narrow clinical facts of her symptoms, they knew little more about her condition than I did. The underlying mechanisms of psychosis, I would discover, are as shrouded in mystery as they have ever been. And while this left little immediate hope for a cure, it pointed to broader secrets. It’s something of a sacrilege nowadays to speak of insanity as anything but the chemical brain disease that on one level it is. But there were moments with my daughter when I had the distressed sense of being in the presence of a rare force of nature, such as a great blizzard or flood: destructive, but in its way astounding too. Excerpted from Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg. Excerpted by permission of Other Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Hurry Down Sunshine “The psychotic break of his fifteen-year-old daughter is the grit around which Michael Greenberg forms the pearl that is Hurry Down Sunshine. It is a brilliant, taut, entirely original study of a suffering child and a family and marriage under siege. I know of no other book about madness whose claim to scientific knowledge is so modest and whose artistic achievement is so great.” —Janet Malcolm, author of The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath & Ted Hughes and The Journalist and the Murderer “In this compelling memoir, Greenberg traces Sally’s harrowing journey... a native New Yorker and columnist for the Times Literary Supplement, [Greenberg] writes with unflinching honesty and heart.... A startling piece of writing, by turns sobering and surreal.” —Booklist, starred review

“Vivid yet surprisingly detached prose.... Greenberg’s talent for description... his erudite portrait of bipolar disease as experienced from both inside and out is dazzling.... Bears enlightening and articulate witness to the sheer force of an oft-misunderstood disease.” —Kirkus Reviews “With spare, unemotional prose, Greenberg captures what it’s like to have a mentally ill child and the way the disease strips him of his sense of control over his daughter’s health. He describes the powerful antipsychotic medications that Sally receives, and how she responds. Eventually she is released from the hospital and returns to high school. Greenberg offers no miracle cure: Sally struggles with the disorder today. And to his credit, he does not demonize the overworked but caring doctors who treat his daughter.” —USA Today

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Author Available

The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder A National Bestseller and Top Adoption Title An ALA Notable Book; A New York Times Notable book ulitzer Prize-winner Tracy Kidder tells the true story of medical genius Paul Farmer and shows how one person can effect global progress against seemingly impossible problems—TB, AIDS, poverty—with creativity, knowledge and determination. Mountains Beyond Mountains takes us from Harvard to Haiti, Peru, Cuba, and Russia as Farmer changes minds and practices through his dedication to the philosophy that “the only real nation is humanity”—a philosophy that is embodied in the small public charity he founded, Partners In Health. At the heart of this book is the example of a life based on hope, and on an understanding of the truth of the Haitian proverb “Beyond mountains there are mountains”: as you solve one problem, another problem presents itself, and so you go on and try to solve that one too.

Random House • Tr. Pbk 978-0-8129-7301-3 • 336 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • Audio Edition • e-Book

“Kidder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, writes clearly and engagingly.... This book is being widely used in freshman seminars at colleges across the United States, and it will likely stir debates on such wide-ranging issues as the politics of health care, the role of government funding, and ethics. Highly recommended.” —Choice (American Library Association)

Selected for Common Reading Colleges & Universities Adirondack Comm. Coll., Augustana Coll., Austin Coll., Barton Coll., Bernard M. Baruch Coll., CUNY, Berry Coll., Boise State Univ., Boston Coll., Bowdoin Coll., Brandeis Univ., Butler Univ., Bunker Hill Comm. Coll., California State Univ., California State Univ., Chico, Canisius Coll., Capital Univ., Carleton Coll., Case Western Reserve Univ., Catawba Coll., Chicago State Univ., Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Clark Univ., Colgate Univ., Coast Guard Academy, Dartmouth Coll., Dartmouth Medical School, Dean Coll., Duke Univ., Duquesne Univ. Honors Coll., Emory Univ. Chandler School of Theology, Elon Univ., Eastern Kentucky Univ., Eastern Illinois Univ., Fairfield Univ., Florida Southern Coll., Fordham Univ. Law School, Fort Lewis Coll., Goucher Coll., Gustavus Adolphus Coll., Holyoke Comm. Coll., Hope Coll., Illinois Coll., Illinois Wesleyan Univ., John Carroll Univ., Kalamazoo Comm. Coll., Keene State Univ., Lenoir Rhyne Coll., Lesley Univ., Linfield Coll., Loyola Coll. in Maryland, Loyola Univ., Chicago, Louisiana State Univ., Macalester Coll., Massachusetts Bay Comm. Coll., Massachusetts Coll. of the Liberal Arts, Mt. Holyoke Coll., New Mexico State Univ., Northeastern Univ., Ohio State Univ., Otterbein Coll., Pace Univ., Pellissippi State, Roanoke Coll., Rivier Coll., Rutgers Univ., St. Ambrose Univ. (IA), St. Joseph’s Univ., San Diego State Univ., Skidmore Coll., Smith Coll., Southern New Hampshire Univ., Southern Vermont Coll., Stanford Univ., SUNY Albany, SUNY Brockport, SUNY Oswego, Syracuse Univ., Tufts Univ., Union Theological Seminary, Univ. of California Davis, Univ. of Connecticut, Univ. of Florida, Univ. of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, Univ. of Louisiana at Monroe, Univ. of Minnesota, Univ. of New Haven, Univ. of North Carolina Wilmington, Univ. of South Carolina, Univ. of Tennessee, Univ. of Texas, Tyler, Univ. of Texas, Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics, Univ. of Washington, Valparaiso Univ., Virginia Tech, Westfield State Coll.

High Schools The Groton School, The Hathaway Brown School, The Putney School, Springfield, Mass. Central High School, The Taft School, Tantasqua Regional High School, Sturbridge, MA, The Williston School

Communities & Libraries Ann Arbor Reads, MI, Augusta, ME, Lithgow Library, Boston Public Library, Lowell Lecture Series, MA, Brookline, MA Adult Comm. Lectures, Cambridge Reads, MA, Cleveland City Club Lecture, OH, Concord, MA, Dover, MA, Falmouth, MA, Hamilton-Wenham Library, MA, Hampshire County Bar Assn., MA, Hancock Comm. Foundation, Ohio, Leverett, MA, Minnetonka Library (Library Fndn of Hennepin County, MN), Montalvo Institute, CA, Nieman Foundation, Conference, Keynote Speech (MA), One Book Southeastern CT, Reading Library, MA, Round Top Summer Lecture Series, Damariscotta, ME, San Diego Public Library, CA, Sarasota, FL, Syracuse Public Library, NY, Wellfleet, MA, Weston, MA, Winchester, MA

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Excerpt Chapter 1 Six years after the fact, Dr. Paul Edward Farmer reminded me, “We met because of a beheading, of all things.” It was two weeks before Christmas 1994, in a market town in the central plateau of Haiti, a patch of paved road called Mirebalais. Near the center of town there was a Haitian army outpost—a concrete wall enclosing a weedy parade field, a jail, and a mustard-colored barracks. I was sitting with an American Special Forces captain, named Jon Carroll, on the building’s secondstory balcony. Evening was coming on, the town’s best hour, when the air changed from hot to balmy and the music from the radios in the rum shops and the horns of the taptaps passing through town grew loud and bright and the general filth and poverty began to be obscured, the open sewers and the ragged clothing and the looks on the faces of malnourished children and the extended hands of elderly beggars plaintively saying, “Grangou,” which means “hungry” in Creole. Excerpted from Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder Copyright © 2003 by Tracy Kidder. Excerpted by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Also by Tracy Kidder

My Detachment A Memoir My Detachment is a unique and moving war story, an unromanticized portrait of a young man coming of age in the controversial war that defined a generation. In an astonishingly honest, comic, and moving account of his tour of duty in Vietnam, master storyteller Tracy Kidder writes for the first time about himself. This extraordinary memoir is destined to become a classic. “With a terrible beauty—[My Detachment] tells an old story—the illusions of war—in a new and compelling way.”—USA Today Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7616-8 • 208 pp. • $13.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Strength in What Remains A Journey of Remembrance and Forgiveness

Forthcoming August 2009

The Pulitzer prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains returns with an awe-inspiring story of one young man’s odyssey—from an immigrant delivering groceries to graduating from Columbia University. A brilliant testament to the power of second chances, and an inspiring account of one immigrant’s remarkable American journey. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6621-6 • 304 pp. • $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Coming August 2009. Do not order before 8/25/2009.

About the Author Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard, studied at the University of Iowa, and served as an army officer in Vietnam. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes. He lives in Massachusetts and Maine.

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Author Available

A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi or two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with their stories they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Reading Lolita in Tehran flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when Nafisi first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members, and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s story offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion, written with a startlingly original voice.

Random House • Tr. Pbk 978-0-8129-7930-5 • 400 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Selected for Common Reading Sweet Briar College (VA) Ashland University Ithaca College

About the Author Azar Nafisi is a professor at Johns Hopkins University. In the 1970s she won a fellowship from Oxford and went on to teach English literature at the University of Tehran, the Free Islamic University, and Allameh Tabatabai University in Iran. She was expelled from the University of Tehran for refusing to wear the veil and left Iran for America in 1997. She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic, has appeared on countless radio and television programs, and is the author of Things I’ve Been Silent About, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Anti-Terra: A Critical Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s Novels. She lives in Washington, D.C. 10

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Excerpt Chapter 1 In the fall of 1995, after resigning from my last academic post, I decided to indulge myself and fulfill a dream. I chose seven of my best and most committed students and invited them to come to my home every Thursday morning to discuss literature. They were all women—to teach a mixed class in the privacy of my home was too risky, even if we were discussing harmless works of fiction. One persistent male student, although barred from our class, insisted on his rights. So he, Nima, read the assigned material, and on special days he would come to my house to talk about the books we were reading. I often teasingly reminded my students of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and asked, “Which one of you will finally betray me?” For I am a pessimist by nature and I was sure at least one would turn against me. Nassrin once responded mischievously, “You yourself told us that in the final analysis we are our own betrayers, playing Judas to our own Christ.” Manna pointed out that I was no Miss Brodie, and they, well, they were what they were. She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth. Yet I suppose that if I were to go against my own recommendation and choose a work of fiction that would most resonate with our lives in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it would not be The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or even 1984 but perhaps Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading or better yet, Lolita. A couple of years after we had begun our Thursday-morning seminars, on the last night I was in Tehran, a few friends and students came to say good-bye and to help me pack. When we had deprived the house of all its items, when the objects had vanished and the colors had faded into eight gray suitcases, like errant genies evaporating into their bottles, my students and I stood against the bare white wall of the dining room and took two photographs. Excerpted from Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi Copyright © 2003 by Azar Nafisi. Excerpted by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Also by Azar Nafisi

Things I’ve Been Silent About

NEW

Memories Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived against the background of a country’s political revolution, a girl’s pain over family secrets, the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval. These and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir, as a gifted storyteller once again transforms the way we see the world and “reminds us of why we read in the first place” (Newsday). Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6361-1 • 352 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Enrique’s Journey

Author Available

The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother by Sonia Nazario A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age hen Enrique was just five years old, his mother Lourdes, seeing no other way out of their poverty in Honduras, decided to make the hazardous trek north. Enrique and his siblings struggled without their mother, until he finally made his way from the rough streets of Tegucigalpa through Mexico and across the dangerous Texan border. Nazario’s expert reporting allows students to encounter each setback alongside Enrique, and the result is as suspenseful and harrowing as it is informative. Enrique’s Journey is a timely account of one anguished family’s experience with an issue of international scope and urgency— illegal immigration—but it is also a timeless, mythic story of a dangerous journey undertaken to make a broken family whole.

“This portrait of poverty and family ties has the potential to reshape American conversations about immigration.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Selected for Common Reading Random House • Tr. Pbk 978-0-8129-7178-1 • 336 pp. $14.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

visit www.enriquesjourney.com

College of Mount St. Joseph, Cincinnati, OH Edgewood College, Madison, WI Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, AR Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID Indiana University, Kokomo, IN Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA Peace College, Raleigh, NC Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg Rockhurst University, Kansas City, MO Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, CA University of Missouri-Kansas City University of North Carolina, Charlotte, NC Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN 2008 Yuma, AZ One Book One City Read 2007 San Diego, CA One Book, One City Read

About the Author

Sonia Nazario has spent 20 years reporting and writing about social issues, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her stories have tackled some of this country’s most intractable problems: hunger, drug addiction, immigration. She has won numerous national journalism and book awards. She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Excerpt The boy does not understand. His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do. Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel, and finally the emptiness. What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is openly affectionate. “Dame pico, mami. Give me a kiss, Mom,” he pleads, over and over, pursing his lips. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. “Mira, mami. Look, Mom,” he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing. Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is five years old. They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is seven. She’s never been able to buy them a toy or a birthday cake. Lourdes, twenty-four, scrubs other people’s laundry in a muddy river. She goes door to door, selling tortillas, used clothes, and plantains. She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique’s playground. They have a bleak future. He and Belky are not likely to finish grade school. Lourdes cannot afford uniforms or pencils. Her husband is gone. A good job is out of the question. Lourdes knows of only one place that offers hope. As a seven-year-old child, delivering tortillas her mother made to wealthy homes, she glimpsed this place on other people’s television screens. The flickering images were a far cry from Lourdes’s childhood home: a two-room shack made of wooden slats, its flimsy tin roof weighted down with rocks, the only bathroom a clump of bushes outside. On television, she saw New York City’s spectacular skyline, Las Vegas’s shimmering lights, Disneyland’s magic castle. Excerpted from Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario Copyright © 2006 by Sonia Nazario. Excerpted by permission of Random House Trade Paperbacks, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Enrique’s Journey “A stirring and troubling book about a magnificent journey... Joseph Campbell would recognize Enrique’s Journey. It’s the stuff of myth... [but] Enrique’s Journey is true.... A microcosm of the massive exodus pouring over the borders of our nations... Enrique's suffering and bravery become universal, and one cannot fail to be moved by the desperation and sheer strength of spirit that guides these lonely wanderers....Enrique’s Journey is about love. It’s about family. It’s about home.... The border will continue to trouble the dreams of anyone who is paying attention.... Enrique’s Journey is among the best border books yet written.” —The Washington Post Book World “Gripping and harrowing... a story begging to be told... readers fed up with the ongoing turf wars between fact and fiction, take note: Here is fantastic stunt reporting that places this sometimes hard-tobelieve story squarely in the realm of nonfiction.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“An amazing tale... for some journalists, research means sitting at a computer and surfing Google.... For Sonia Nazario... it means leaving home for months at a time to sit on top of a moving freight train running the length of Mexico, risking gangsters and bandits and the occasional tree branch that might knock her off and thrust her under the wheels. It means not eating, drinking water or going to the bathroom for 16-hour stretches-all in service to the story.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Gripping... astounding... viscerally conveys the experience of illegal immigration from Central America... [Nazario] has crafted her findings into a story that is at once moving and polemical.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A remarkable feat of 'immersion reporting.’...[Gives] the immigrant... flesh and bone, history and voice... The kind of story we have told ourselves throughout history, a story we still need to hear.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

A Hope in the Unseen

Author Available

An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind t is 1993, and Cedric Jennings is a bright and ferociously determined honor student at Ballou, a high school in one of Washington D.C.’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where the dropout rate is well into double digits and just 80 students out of more than 1,350 boast an average of B or better. At Ballou, Cedric has almost no friends. He eats lunch in a classroom most days, plowing through the extra work he has asked for, knowing that he’s really competing with kids from other, harder schools. Cedric Jennings’s driving ambition—which is fully supported by his forceful mother—is to attend a top-flight college. In September 1995, after years of near superhuman dedication, he realizes that ambition when he begins as a freshman at Brown University. In this updated edition, A Hope in the Unseen chronicles Cedric’s odyssey during his last two years of high school, follows him through his difficult first year at Brown, and now tells the story of his subsequent successes in college and the world of work.

Broadway • Tr. Pbk 978-0-7679-0126-0 • 384 pp. $15.95/$23.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Teacher’s Guide

Selected for Common Reading Carleton College Eastern Illinois University Eastern Kentucky University Florida State University Kent State University Marquette University Marymount University Sacred Heart University St. Bonaventure University University of Illinois at Chicago University of Louisville University of Texas at San Antonio Utah State University Common Reading Program at Texas Tech University Maryland, State-wide Read

About the Author Ron Suskind is a former staff writer for the Wall Street Journal. In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for a two-part series about the high-school years of Cedric Jennings. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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Excerpt The next morning blooms into a radiant, cloudless day, as it ought to be. Freshmen arrive for orientation, ferried by a grand procession of proud parents. Barbara, tired from the drive, gets a late start and, before long, the day feels harried. It’s nearly noon by the time they get to College Hill, a steep slope on top of which Brown sits like a cloud city above the gritty ethnic enclaves, legendary Italian restaurants, and aging factories of Providence. “I wanted to get this all done early. Now look,” she says, sitting in the van near the Brown student union as Cedric, looking at a checklist in his orientation packet, slips out to go get his temporary student ID. “Don’t be all day, Lavar,” she calls after him, all business, “I gotta get back home.” Cedric has drawn a desirable dorm, Andrews Hall. It’s a three-story brick horseshoe on the quieter Pembroke side of campus that was renovated over the summer and now boasts fresh carpeting and new paint. From the Andrews parking lot, they unload the van swiftly, with Cedric helping on this end. While Barbara glances tersely at other parents—mostly white, of course—unloading Lexuses and Range Rovers and Volvo wagons, she notices that Cedric seems to be increasingly relaxed— smiling at some of the other incoming freshmen and offering unsolicited greetings. “These dorms are nice,” Barbara notes over her shoulder to Cedric, who is dragging a trunk full of linens behind her across the second-floor hallway carpet. Remembering Cedric’s complaints about last summer’s dorms, she adds, “And a lot nicer than MIT, ain’t it?” “Lot nicer,” he says, almost shouting. “This place is nothing like MIT.” A small paper square taped to the door of room 216 says “Cedric Lavar Jennings and Robert Burton.” Cedric fumbles with the key and opens the heavy wooden door. “Wow,” he says. “Hmmm, very nice,” Barbara confirms. Excerpted from A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind Copyright © 1998 by Ron Suskind. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for A Hope in the Unseen “Ron Suskind takes us on an unforgettable, peculiarly American journey—a journey which exposes the fault lines of race and class, and yet gives one reason for hope. This is a tale of fierce power—and one which stayed with me long after finishing the book.” —Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River

“A beautiful book of a heroic American struggle.” —David Halberstam in USA Today

“Suskind uses his reporter skills brilliantly, portraying Cedric’s outer and inner life and making an eloquent though unstated plea for affirmative action. Essential reading that provides some small hope for our social ills.” —Library Journal (starred review)

“Absolutely gripping. A sort of suspense novel of the human psyche.... It's beyond good, it's really extraordinary.” —Walter Kirn, National Public Radio

“[An] extraordinary, formula-shattering book.” —New York Times Book Review “A story of sheer human grit that should be read by others as example and inspiration.” —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

“The drama of the story is in the mediations Cedric learns to make between the inherited and the chosen, yet ‘unseen’ parts of his life.” —Kirkus Reviews

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Outcasts United

Author Available

A Refugee Team, An American Town by Warren St. John wenty years ago, Clarkston, Georgia was practically a ghost town, made up of working-class southern families, black and white, and lots of empty apartment blocks. Today, a near-majority of the town is made up of refugees, mostly women and children, from all over the world. They have dramatically changed the town in every way and the only thing the white mayor and the black leader of the city council can agree on is that they both pretty much wish the refugees would go home. Luma Mufleh was raised as a sports-crazy tomboy in a wealthy family in Jordan, but even as a teenager felt stifled as a woman in Muslim society. She moved to Atlanta and started coaching private youth soccer teams for money. One day she took a long drive and found herself in Clarkston, shocked by the site of young boys, black and brown and white, some barefoot, playing soccer on every flat surface they could find. She immediately quit her job and moved to Clarkston and started a team called the Fugees. This is a fast-paced account of a dramatic season in the life of the Fugees, but much more than that. St. John follows the filaments of these children’s memories to tell the dramatic stories that spun them away from their homes: stories of war, political crackdowns, revolutions and ethnic cleansing, long journeys through jungles and deserts, the death or loss of family—all leading them to this small patch of the American South. He also tells the multilayered story of Clarkston, a town that against its will had become the site of a social experiment. It is a story about youth soccer and how it transformed a most unusual small American town. And it’s the story of Luma Mufleh, a bright-burning advocate who tests the limits of what one person can really do to change the lives of many.

T Forthcoming April 2009

Spiegel & Grau • HC 978-0-385-52203-8 • 288 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Do not order before 4/21/2009. Audio Edition • e-Book

About the Author Warren St. John is a reporter for the New York Times and author of the bestseller Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer. Prior to the Times, he was on staff at The New York Observer, Wired and The New Yorker. He’s a graduate of Columbia University and lives in New York. 16

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Excerpt This was the first time I’d ever seen the Fugees play. I’d shown up knowing little about the team other than that the players were refugees and the coach a woman, and that the team was based in a town called Clarkston. In a little more than a decade, the process of refugee resettlement had transformed Clarkston from a simple southern town into one of the most diverse communities in America. And yet few in Atlanta, let alone in the world beyond, had taken notice. Mention the “refugees of Clarkston” and even many Atlantans will ask first if you’re referring to those who had arrived in town from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Next, they’ll likely ask, “Where’s Clarkston?” I came away from that first game intrigued. I had just seen a group of boys from a dozen warravaged countries come together as a team and create improbable beauty on the soccer pitch. How? Their coach, an intense and quiet presence who hid beneath the brim of her Smith College baseball cap and emerged only to dole out ferocious bits of inspiration or wisdom, presented another mystery. There was a palpable sense of trust and camaraderie between the players and their coach, and an equally powerful sense of fragility in all the tension and long silences. In fact, things with the Fugees were more fragile than I could have realized that day. The team had no home field, owing to the myopia of local politicians who felt threatened by the presence of these newcomers. The players’ private lives were an intense daily struggle to stay afloat. They and their families had fled violence and chaos and found themselves in a society with a completely different set of values and expectations. Luma herself was struggling to hold her team—and herself— together. She had volunteered—naively, as she would admit—to help these boys on the field and off, unaware of the scope and intractability of their difficulties: post-traumatic stress, poverty, parental neglect in some cases, grief, shattered confidence, and in more than one instance simple anger at having to live the way they did. Luma, I would learn, had no particular background in social or human rights work. She was just a normal woman who wanted, in her own way, to make the world a better place, and who, it turned out, was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to see that mission through. Luma had vowed to come through for her players and their families or to come apart trying, and on several occasions it seemed the latter outcome was more likely. Excerpted from Outcasts United by Warren St. John Copyright © 2009 by Warren St. John. Excerpted by permission of Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Also by Warren St. John

Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania A Chronicle of Higher Education Top 10 Best College-Sports Books Ever Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer is a cultural anthropology of fandom that goes a long way toward demystifying the universal urge to achieve victory—albeit vicariously. “St. John offers an unsurpassed blend of scholarly heft (he’s gathered all of the scattered research on sports fandom), superb reporting... and gemlike writing (St. John knew Alabama would beat Vanderbilt on a brutally hot day as soon as he saw Vandy’s ‘photonslurping black jerseys’).”—The Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Review Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-609-80713-2 288 pp. • $12.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Look Me in the Eye

Author Available

My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison ver since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them)—had earned him the label, “social deviant.” No guidance came from his mother, who conversed with light fixtures, or his father, who spent evenings pickling himself in sherry. It was no wonder he gravitated to machines, which could, at least, be counted on. Look Me in the Eye is the moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Asperger’s at a time when the diagnosis simply didn’t exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes you inside the head of a boy whom teachers and other adults regarded as “defective,” who could not avail himself of KISS’s endless supply of groupies, (he toured with the band as tech support) and who still has a peculiar aversion to using people’s given names (he calls his wife “Unit Two”). He also provides a fascinating reverse angle on the younger brother he left at the mercy of their nutty parents— the boy who would later change his name to Augusten Burroughs and write the bestselling memoir, Running with Scissors. Ultimately, this is the story of Robison’s journey from his world into ours, and his new life as a husband, father, and successful small business owner— repairing his beloved high-end automobiles. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien, yet always deeply human.

Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk 978-0-307-39618-1 • 320 pp. $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • Audio Edition • e-Book

Author website www.johnrobison.com

About the Author John Elder Robison lives with his wife and son in Amherst, Massachusetts. His company, J E Robison Service, repairs and restores fine European automobiles. 18

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Excerpt A Little Misfit It was inconceivable to me that there could be more than one way to play in the dirt, but there it was. Doug couldn’t get it right. And that’s why I whacked him. Bang! On both ears, just like I saw on The Three Stooges. Being three years old was no excuse for disorderly play habits. For example, I would use my mother’s kitchen spoon to scoop out a ditch. Then, I would carefully lay out a line of blue blocks. I never mixed my food, and I never mixed my blocks. Blue blocks went with blue blocks, and red blocks with red ones. But Doug would lean over and put a red block on top of the blue ones. Couldn’t he see how wrong that was? After I had whacked him, I sat back down and played. Correctly. Sometimes, when I got frustrated with Doug, my mother would walk over and yell at me. I don’t think she ever saw the terrible things he did. She just saw me whack him. I could usually ignore her, but if my father was there, too, he would get really mad and shake me, and then I would cry. Most of the time, I liked Doug. He was my first friend. But some of the things he did were just too much for me to handle. I would park my truck by a log, and he would kick dirt on it. Our moms would give us blocks, and he would heap his in a sloppy pile and then giggle about it. It drove me wild. Our playdates came to an abrupt end the following spring. Doug’s father graduated from medical school and they moved far, far away to an Indian reservation in Billings, Montana. I didn’t really understand that he could leave despite my wishes to the contrary. Even if he didn’t know how to play correctly, he was my only regular playmate. I was sad. I asked my mother about him each time we went to the park, where I now played alone. “I’m sure he’ll send you a postcard,” my mother said, but she had a funny look on her face, and I didn’t know what to make of it. It was troubling. I did hear the mothers whispering, but I never knew what they meant. Excerpted from Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison Copyright © 2007 by John Elder Robison. Excerpted by permission of Three Rivers Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Look Me in the Eye “Robison’s lack of finesse with language is not only forgivable, but an asset to his story.… His rigid sentences are arguably more telling of his condition than if he had created the most graceful prose this side of Proust.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Autism and success are not mutually exclusive… Robison seems likable, honest and completely free of guile, qualities well served by writing that is lean, powerful in its descriptive accuracy and engaging in its understated humor.… It is also emotionally gripping… Robison is a great guide.” —Chicago Tribune

“There’s an endearing quality to Robison and his story… even Robison’s feel-good message about overcoming a troubled childhood en route to success and self-awareness… Look Me in the Eye is often drolly funny and seldom angry or self-pitying… there’s much to praise in its humor, hope, and inspiration.” —Boston Globe “John Robison’s book is an immensely affecting account of a life lived according to his gifts rather than his limitations. His story provides ample evidence for my belief that individuals on the autistic spectrum are just as capable of rich and productive lives as anyone else.” —Daniel Tammet, author of Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Barack Obama Dreams From My Father A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama Dreams from My Father is the best-selling book by prominent national figure Barack Obama. In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. “Fluidly, calmly, insightfully, Obama guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race.”—The Washington Post Book World Selected for Common Reading Boston College University of Illinois at Chicago University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4000-8277-3 • 480 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

The Audacity of Hope Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Barack Obama Echoing themes he sounded in his extraordinary keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Senator Barack Obama, and now President-elect, speaks in this book to Americans of all stripes who are weary of U.S. politics today, and who long for something rooted in the faith and decency of the American Dream. “An upbeat view of the country’s potential and a political biography that concentrates on the senator’s core values.”—Chicago Tribune Selected for Common Reading Endicott College New York Institute of Technology Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-23770-5 • 384 pp. $14.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Barack Obama For Beginners An Essential Guide by Bob Neer Illustrated by Joe Lee Barack Obama For Beginners: An Essential Guide condenses the personal and political history of the first African-American nominee for our nation’s highest office to provide a complete introduction to the Senator from Illinois. The text covers the candidate’s family history and life experiences and beliefs, and discusses his strengths and weaknesses as a campaigner, legislator, and manager of people and resources. For Beginners • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-934389-38-6 • 80 pp. • $7.95/$9.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book 20

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Escape from Saddam

Author Available

The Incredible True Story of One Man’s Journey to Freedom by Lewis Alsamari

Born in Iraq but raised in England, twelve-year-old Lewis Alsamari accompanied his father to Iraq for what was supposed to be a one-month vacation. Six years later, Lewis was still trapped in Iraq and, worse yet, had been conscripted to Saddam Hussein’s military. Risking his life, he escaped across the desert to Jordan, where he saved for passage back to England. However, his story was not over there. After reestablishing himself in England, he received notice that the family he’d left behind in Iraq was being imprisoned, beaten, and tortured for his desertion, and he had to embark on another dangerous journey to free them. Escape from Saddam is a remarkable story of heroism sure to inform and inspire. “A hair-raising and sensitively wrought tale of an Iraqi soldier.... A sharply delineated personal account charged with great emotional power.”—Kirkus Reviews Crown • HC • 978-0-307-39401-9 • 320 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Paperback coming March 2009. Do not order paperback before 3/09/2009. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-39402-6 320 pp. • $13.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Author Available

by Maya Angelou “Students [...] find this book plunges them into a passionate, sensitive life in the midst of troubled and sometimes brutal realities. They found Maya Angelou’s spirit and strength a wellspring of pride in womanhood. Students also experienced the book as writers themselves and learned much about the memoir craft.”—Constance Berman, Director of Professional Studies, Southern Vermont College Berry College and Luther College have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Program. Bantam • Mass Mkt • 978-0-553-27937-5 • 304 pp. $6.99/$9.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38001-9 • 304 pp. $15.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition

Letter to My Daughter by Maya Angelou

Author Available

NEW

“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”—from Letter to My Daughter Dedicated to the daughter she never had but sees all around her, Letter to My Daughter reveals Maya Angelou’s path to living well and living a life with meaning. Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6612-4 • 192 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

American Chica Two Worlds, One Childhood by Marie Arana

Author Available

2001 National Book Award Finalist—Non-Fiction Library Journal Best Books of 2001—Non-Fiction A New York Times Nonfiction Notable Book

Written in the tradition of Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez, this is an informative and resonant portrait of a child coming to terms with her bicultural identity. Throughout, Arana provides an unforgettable look at her two worlds: the diverse terrain of Peru, redolent with ghosts of Incan history and mythology; and the vast prairie lands of Wyoming. “The top rank of memoir... Arana’s writing skills elevate the book to outright lyricism in chapter after chapter.”—The Denver Post Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-31963-8 • 320 pp. $14.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Tears of the Desert A Memoir of Survival in Darfur by Halima Bashir and Damien Lewis NEW

Born to an affluent family, Halima Bashir was lucky enough to get an education. Returning to Darfur as a doctor was supposed to be the beginning of a time of prosperity; then the Janjaweed came. The Sudanese-backed militias raped and tortured the women of Halima’s village, and when she spoke up against it, she was raped and tortured herself. Having fled the massacre of her family and friends, she can now tell her story and give students a glimpse into the genocide and suffering that by so many is often overlooked or unknown. One World • HC • 978-0-345-50625-2 • 336 pp. $25.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

The Dream: A Memoir

A Saint on Death Row

by Harry Bernstein

The Story of Dominique Green by Thomas Cahill

The Dream chronicles memoirist Harry Bernstein’s journey from England and the harsh and bitter childhood spent with a selfless mother and violent father to a willow tree in New York’s Central Park where he met and fell in love with his future wife, Ruby. Aided by an unknown benefactor who gives them a ticket on a steamship to Chicago, the family realizes their American Dream comes with hardships and a family closet full of skeletons. This memoir spotlights the realities of achieving such a dream, and the way in which one man’s pursuit finally led him to find personal peace and happiness. Ballantine • HC • 978-0-345-50374-9 • 272 pp. $24.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 Paperback coming April 2009. Do not order paperback before 4/28/2009. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-50389-3 • 288 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Golden Willow The Story of a Lifetime of Love by Harry Bernstein NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

The Golden Willow demonstrates the powerful and rejuvenating effect writing can have on one’s spirit. Author Harry Bernstein tells the tale of how he coped with the death of his wife of almost 70 years by revisiting his past; penning his memoir, The Invisible Wall; and realizing a dream that he’d long since deferred. This wonderfully inspirational story will inspire students to harness their past experiences and utilize them in pursuit of their own aspirations. Do not order before 4/28/2009. Ballantine • HC • 978-0-345-51102-7 • 208 pp. $25.00/$28.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Feed Me!: Writers Dish

Author Available

About Food, Eating, Weight, and Body Image by Harriet Brown NEW

Feed Me! is a compelling collection of original essays from some of the literary world’s most accomplished authors on the subject of food, weight, and body image—topics that take center stage in the daily lives of everyday Americans. Whether fat or thin, bingeing or dieting, fashion-conscious or rebelliously oblivious, every student can relate to the anxieties of feeding yourself in a culture where disordered eating and distorted self-images are the norm. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-50088-5 • 272 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Author Available

NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

In 2004, Dominique Green was executed by lethal injection in Texas. Arrested at the age of 18 in the fatal shooting of a man during a convenience store robbery, Green admitted to the robbery but stated he did not pull the trigger. An all-white jury sentenced him to death despite obvious errors in the legal procedures. A Saint on Death Row traces Green’s life from a childhood marked by poverty, abuse, and violence to his transformation into a mature man of grace and wisdom. During his long confinement, he inspired dozens of fellow prisoners to ask the forgiveness of people they had harmed and learn to forgive those who had wronged them. In portraying his inspiring journey, Cahill illuminates the moral imperatives too often ignored in the headlong quest for justice. Do not order before 3/10/2009. Nan A Talese • HC • 978-0-385-52019-5 • 128 pp. $18.95/$22.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $9.50 Audio Edition • e-Book

Ms. Cahill for Congress

Author Available

One Fearless Teacher, Her Sixth-Grade Class, and the Election That Changed Their Lives Forever NEW

by Tierney Cahill and Linden Gross In today’s political arena it is a widely accepted aphorism that to win public office, you need money. Well, Tierney Cahill didn’t have much, just $7,000 as opposed to her opponent’s $750,000; but what she did have was worth a whole lot more. Ms. Cahill for Congress is the amazing true story of the Nevada public school teacher and single mother of three who, on a dare from her class, ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. With her students as her campaign managers, Ms. Cahill won the Democratic primary and garnered 30% of the vote in conservative Reno. Despite financial setbacks and personal hardships, this inspiring teacher demonstrated to her students and the rest of the country that if we are to be a democracy rather than an aristocracy, our political offices can’t be sold to the highest bidder. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-50577-4 • 256 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

A Journal for Jordan A Memoir of Love and Loss by Dana Canedy

Author Available

NEW

On October 14, 2006, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King died in Iraq, leaving behind his fiancée, Dana Canedy, and the seven-month-old son he had longed for all his life. He was fortyeight. A Journal for Jordan is a fallen soldier’s hopes and prayers and life lessons for the son he would never know. It is also a mother’s fervent quest to pass on the meaning of his life. “This book is a living, breathing legacy. It’s full of wonderful treasures offered by a unique and spirited father, whose loving words of wisdom to his infant son are a rite of passage that will transform us all. It is written with serene grace: part memoir, part story, all heart.” —James McBride, author of The Color of Water “This tragic story of love and war reminds all Americans that we are fortunate to have people like Sgt. Charles King, willing to die for our country. Dana Canedy bears witness to the enduring power of love, to Sgt. King’s heroism and his unfailing devotion to his family and his men.” —Caroline Kennedy Crown • HC • 978-0-307-39579-5 • 288 pp. $25.95/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00

Author Available

A Memoir of Revolution and Hope by Shirin Ebadi and Azadeh Moaveni

This is the moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work. “The safety and freedom of citizens in democracies is irretrievably bound with the safety and freedom of people like Shirin Ebadi who are fighting to reassert the best achievements of mankind: universal human rights. One of the staunchest advocates for human rights in her country and beyond, Ms. Ebadi, herself a devout Muslim, represents hope for many in Muslim societies that Islam and democracy are indeed compatible.”—Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7528-4 • 256 pp. $14.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Girlbomb

Author Available

A Halfway Homeless Memoir by Janice Erlbaum

Audio Edition • e-Book

Forbidden Bread

Iran Awakening

Author Available

by Erica Johnson Debeljak NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

This funny, intelligent memoir involves the author leaving behind a successful career as an American financial analyst to pursue Ales Debeljak, a womanizing Slovenian poet who catches her attention at a cocktail party. The story begins in New York City but quickly migrates, along with the author, to Slovenia. As she struggles to forge an identity in her new home, Slovenia itself undergoes the transformation from a communist to a capitalist society. Set against the dramatic backdrop of the Slovenian Ten Day War and the much longer Yugoslav wars of succession, Forbidden Bread shows a worldly and courageous woman coming to grips with her new life and family situation in a rapidly changing European landscape. Do not order before 4/7/2009. North Atlantic Books • 978-1-55643-740-3 • 304 pp. $15.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

A wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in 1980s New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves. Villard Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7456-0 • 272 pp. $13.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Have You Found Her

Author Available

A Memoir by Janice Erlbaum Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Janice Erlbaum went back to volunteer. Now thirty-four-years old and a successful writer, she’d changed her life for the better; now she wanted to help someone else—someone like the girl she’d once been. Written with startling candor and immediacy, Have You Found Her is the story of one woman’s quest to save a girl’s life—and the hard truths she learns about herself along the way. Villard Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7457-7 • 368 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Journey From the Land of No

Author Available

A Girlhood Caught in Revolutionary Iran by Roya Hakakian This memoir of a young IranianAmerican poet and journalist is the story of one deeply intelligent young girl’s attempt to find an authentic voice of her own during a time of familial and national upheaval. “Poet and documentary filmmaker Hakakian presents a lyrically poignant account of her coming-of-age years in revolution-beset Iran.... Reflecting on growing up both Jewish and female in an increasingly restrictive environment, she is able to offer a unique perspective on the search for spiritual sustenance in a rapidly constricting society. It is both a joy and a privilege to bear witness to one young girl’s remarkable emotional and artistic metamorphosis within a stunningly repressive culture.”—Booklist Indiana University–Kokomo and SUNY Potsdam have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs.

The Chimp Who Would Be Human by Elizabeth Hess

Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38277-8 • 384 pp. $13.00/$15.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Little Heathens

e-Book

Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish

A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari

Author Available

Now in Paperback

The young life of Daoud Ibarahaem Hari—his friends call him David—has been one of non-stop bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide underway in Darfur. Most of the reporting on the great tragedies of our day have been written by journalists, and after-the-fact. Rarely, in a conflict of this magnitude, has there been an eyewitness voice to the events as they are still happening. Daoud Hari is that voice. The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of how one person can make a difference in the world—an on-the-ground account of one of the biggest stories of our time. Because he chose language and storytelling as his weapons—while others around him were taking up arms—he has given us a true and necessary portrait of a deeply troubled region of our world. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7917-6 • 224 pp. $13.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • Audio Edition • e-Book

Visit The Translator website to learn more about Daoud Hari, view photos and a video, and learn how you can help: www.randomhouse.com/ rhpg/features/thetranslator/

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Author Available

Could an adorable chimpanzee raised from infancy by a human family bridge the gap between species—and change the way we think about the boundaries between the animal and human worlds? Here is the strange and moving account of an experiment intended to answer just those questions, and the astonishing biography of the chimp chosen to see it through. Endearing and compelling, this book will change the way your students think about communication. “The author uses Nim’s troubled life to raise profound questions about the dividing line between humans and other animals and about what we owe to the creatures we use in research.” —Scientific American

Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-609-81030-9 256 pp. • $13.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Translator

Nim Chimpsky

Author Available

Now in Paperback Iowa Reader Literary Award for Nonfiction One of the 10 Best Books of the Year, The New York Times Book Review

Little Heathens offers a loving but realistic portrait of a “hearty-handshake Methodist” family that gave its members a remarkable legacy of kinship, kindness, and remembered pleasures. Recounted in a luminous narrative filled with tenderness and humor, Kalish’s memoir of her childhood shows how the right stuff can make even the bleakest of times seem like “quite a romp.” "Not only trustworthy and useful, but also polished by real, rare happiness. It is a very good book, indeed. In fact, it's averyveryverygoodbook."—Elizabeth Gilbert, The New York Times Book Review Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38424-6 • 304 pp. $12.00/$14.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers

Author Available

Edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint Selected as the winners of Random House’s national contest, “20 by 20” is a stunning collection of essays ranging from comic to poignant, personal to political, by the newest, brightest young writers you haven’t heard of... yet. With grace, wit, humor, and urgency, these writers invite us into their lives and into their heads. Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers is a rich, provocative read as well as a bold statement from a generation just now coming into its own. Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Lasell College (MA). Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7566-6 • 304 pp. $13.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L’Amour From his decision to leave school at fifteen to roam the world, to his recollections of life as a hobo on the Southern Pacific Railroad, as a cattle skinner in Texas, as a merchant seaman in Singapore and the West Indies, and as an itinerant bare-knuckled prizefighter across small-town America, here is Louis L’Amour’s memoir of his lifelong love affair with learning—from books, from yondering, and from some remarkable men and women—that shaped him as a storyteller and as a man. With this book, L’Amour proves to even the most skeptical reader that success stories can come out of all of life’s experiences. Bantam • HC • 978-0-553-05703-4 • 240 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Bantam • Mass Mkt • 978-0-553-28652-6 • 272 pp. $5.99/$7.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Greatest Gift The Courageous Life and Martyrdom of Sister Dorothy Stang by Binka Le Breton NEW

In 1982, Sister Dorothy Stang moved to a small town in the Amazon to work with an organization to protect poor farmers and their land from loggers and land developers. Inspired by deep religious conviction, Sister Dorothy gave of herself generously. The Greatest Gift presents not only the story of her tragic death, but the powerful and beautiful lessons of her life. Doubleday • HC • 978-0-385-52218-2 • 256 pp. $21.95/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00 e-Book

Crystal Clear The Inspiring Story of How an Olympic Athlete Lost His Legs Due to Crystal Meth and Found a Better Life by Eric Le Marque

Author Available

NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

Olympic and World Championship hockey player Eric Le Marque offers a firsthand account of his eight-day fight for survival on Mammoth Mountain in the High Sierra—and, in unflinchingly honest terms, his struggle with the drug use that brought him loss of limbs and to the brink of death and, ultimately, back to the person he was meant to be. Do not order before 4/28/2009. Delacorte Press • HC • 978-0-553-80765-3 • 256 pp. $24.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 e-Book

The Girl in the Red Coat by Roma Ligocka and Iris Von Finckenstein

Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Coastal Carolina University (SC).

Translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo As a child in German-occupied Poland, Roma Ligocka was known for the bright strawberry-red coat she wore: a beacon in a tide of gathering darkness. Fifty years later, Roma, an artist living in Germany, attended a screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Schindler’s List,” and instantly recognized herself as “the girl in the red coat,” the only splash of color in the film. Thus begins a harrowing journey into the past, as Ligocka seeks to reclaim her life and unite the pieces of a shattered childhood. “This is not only a Holocaust memoir but also a story of one woman’s quest for contentment.”—Booklist, (American Library Association)

Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-6968-9 • 224 pp. $12.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-33740-3 • 304 pp. $13.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

e-Book

Goat: A Memoir

Author Available

by Brad Land “With a uniquely hip narrative style, gritty with plenty of heart, Land recounts what it’s like to pledge a fraternity in order to gain his peer’s respect and admiration.... Immensely readable, Land’s tough yet tender book speaks to the fears and isolation of young alienated adults with compelling power, candor, and compassion.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Heavy Metal Islam Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam by Mark LeVine

Author Available

by Somaly Mam NEW

In Heavy Metal Islam, Mark LeVine explores the influence of Western music on the Middle East through interviews with musicians and fans. The result is a revealing tour of contemporary Islamic culture through the evolving music scene and the fusion of two cultures in the Middle East and Northern Africa. “Using music as a prism to observe social relations, he expertly describes the political upheaval and social confusion in the Middle East that Westerners ignore or seldom understand. This examination of the changing and evolving cultures in a key global region is highly recommended.” —Library Journal

As a girl she was sold into sexual slavery, but now she rescues others. The true story of a Cambodian heroine. In the vein of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone, Somaly Mam’s life is an unforgettable and inspiring story of triumph over unthinkable adversity, and puts a face and voice to a human-rights disaster of global proportions: the sprawling sex trade industry of Southeast Asia. Written in exquisite, spare, unflinching prose, The Road of Lost Innocence recounts the experiences of her early life, tells the story of her awakening as an activist as well, and her harrowing and brave fight against the powerful and corrupt forces that steal the lives of young girls.

Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-35339-9 304 pp. • $13.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-385-52621-0 • 208 pp. $22.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $11.50

e-Book

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Six Months in Sudan

by Malcolm X

NEW—Forthcoming May 2009

This autobiography, now an established classic of modern American literature, is unparalleled in its unsparing portrait of race and racism in America. The result of a unique collaboration between Alex Haley and Malcolm X, it is the life story of an activist whose voice and philosophy resonate from every page. “[...an] excellent source for learning about the diverse center of America.” —Professor Syble Simon, English Dept., Houston Community College-Central

In 2006, James Maskalyk, a young, single ER physician, gave up a successful practice at one of Toronto’s finest hospitals to join Doctors Without Borders. After months of waiting, he received his assignment: a small village called Abyei, sandwiched in between two military compounds on the border of northern and southern Sudan. A memoir of volunteerism that recalls Three Cups of Tea and Mountains Beyond Mountains, Six Months in Sudan is written with humanity, conviction, and piercing insight. Maskalyk chronicles the unthinkable cost of war for one community, and one man’s courageous effort to bring about lasting change.

Ballantine • Mass Mkt • 978-0-345-35068-8 • 496 pp. $7.99/$10.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-37671-8 • 544 pp. $15.00/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody A widely hailed and adopted social and historical commentary, this contemporary classic is the autobiography of a young black girl growing up in the Deep South. Moody details the suffering of growing up in a racist society and candidly reveals the soul of a black girl who had the courage to challenge the stereotypes she encountered. Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Indiana University Southeast. Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-33781-6 • 432 pp. $14.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Laurel • Mass Mkt • 978-0-440-31488-2 • 384 pp. $6.99/$8.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Road of Lost Innocence

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

by Dr. James Maskalyk

Do not order before 5/26/2009. Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-385-52651-7 • 352 pp. $24.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Visit us online at our Freshman Reading website at www.FreshmanYearReading.com Our website includes a searchable database of Freshman Reading titles by theme, excerpts, and a complete list of our titles that have been adopted by colleges and universities.

High Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler by Brian O’Dea

Author Available

NEW—Forthcoming May 2009 Winner of the 2007 Arthur Ellis Award for Best Non-Fiction Crime Writing

Brian O’Dea turned to using and selling drugs as a teen and soon was operating a $100 million business. Eventually, he quit the trade and drugs and began working with recovering addicts, but was arrested after authorities caught up with him and sentenced him to 10 years in jail. O’Dea candidly recounts his incredible experiences, from smuggling cocaine in Bogota to the bureaucracy of the prison system in a story of intrigue, and ultimately, redemption. O’Dea regularly speaks in schools and universities about his life as part of a Consequences of Choice lecture. Do not order before 5/5/2009. Other Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-590-51310-1 • 358 pp. $14.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Road to Rescue The Untold Story of Schindler’s List by Mietek Pemper Translated by David Dollenmayer NEW

Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film Schindler’s List popularized the true story of a German businessman who used his Nazi connections to save 1,200 Jewish prisoners from death during the Holocaust. But the lists came to light by a secret strategy designed by a young Polish Jew at the Plaszów concentration camp who gained access to classified documents while employed by the commandant Amon Göth. The Road to Rescue stands as a historically authentic testimony of one man’s unparalleled courage, wit, defiance, and bittersweet victory over the Nazi regime. Other Press • HC • 978-1-590-51286-9 • 272 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

The Eaves of Heaven A Life in Three Wars by Andrew X. Pham NEW

From Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam, winner of the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, a son’s memoir of his Vietnamese father’s experiences over the course of three wars. Harmony • HC • 978-0-307-38120-0 • 256 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

Pretty Is What Changes: Impossible

Author Available

Choices, The Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny by Jessica Queller Now in Paperback

In Pretty Is What Changes, Jessica Queller journeys to the place where the cutting edge of biotechnology meets real life and real patients. Eleven months after her mother succumbed to cancer, Queller had herself tested for the BRCA “breast cancer” gene mutation. The results came back virulently positive, putting her at a terrifyingly elevated risk of developing breast cancer before the age of fifty and ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Thirty-five, unattached, and yearning for marriage and a family of her own, she faced an agonizing choice: a lifetime of vigilant screenings and a commitment to fight the disease when caught, or its radical alternative —a prophylactic double mastectomy that would effectively restore life to her, even as it would challenge her most closely held beliefs about body image, identity, and sexuality. “By turns inspiring, sorrowful and profoundly moving, Queller’s sense of humor and grace transform the most harrowing of situations into a riveting and heartfelt memoir.”—Kirkus Reviews Do not order before 4/7/2009. Spiegel & Grau • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-52041-6 • 256 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Exactly As I Am: Celebrated

Author Available

Women Share Candid Advice with Today’s Girls on What It Takes to Believe in Yourself by Shaun Robinson NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

Drawing on many interviews and meetings with such celebrities as Eva Mendes, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, Mandy Moore, and Oprah Winfrey, Exactly as I Am is an exploration of what it takes to believe in oneself. With the help of these many voices, Robinson shows students—particularly young women—how to stay grounded, develop positive self-esteem, and face and overcome failures, setbacks, and challenges. She shines a spotlight on many issues, including the importance of having a mentor or role model, the support of family and friends, and achieving a balance between accepting how women look and appreciating who they are inside. Do not order before 3/31/2009. Ballantine • HC • 978-0-345-51195-9 • 144 pp. $20.00/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $10.00 e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Hunger of Memory The Education of Richard Rodriguez by Richard Rodriguez

Author Available

NEW

Best Books For A Transformative New Year, NPR

Hunger of Memory is the fascinating autobiography of a Mexican-American student who pays the price for social assimilation and academic success with painful alienation from his past, his parents, and his culture. “His story is extraordinarily sensitive and compassionate, yet disarmingly objective, a genuine act of human and religious faith. Few have presented with such skill the indestructible intimacy of family love and its resilience under the stress of change. This book provides new understanding of the dynamism of language in establishing a person’s private and public identity.”—Prof. Walter J. Ong, St. Louis University “Superb autobiographical essay... Rodriguez offers himself as an example of the long labor of change: its costs, its loneliness, but also its triumph.” —The New York Times Book Review Dial Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38251-8 • 224 pp. $14.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Bantam • Mass Mkt • 978-0-553-27293-2 • 208 pp. $6.99/$9.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

When Skateboards Will Be Free

The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder

Author Available

A Memoir of a Political Childhood by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

For the first time in his life, after years of refusing offers from publishers, Warren Buffet, the most successful investor in history, has agreed to cooperate on a book about himself: one that is both a history of his ideas and the lively biography of the man himself. By giving biographer Alice Schroeder unprecedented access, he has enabled her to write a book resonant with the practical wisdom, human insight, unparalleled business strategies, and variegated experiences of a richly lived life. Bantam • HC • 978-0-553-80509-3 • 544 pp. $30.00/$34.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $15.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Wildflower: A Story of

Author Available

Love, Murder, and the Woman Who Tried to Save Kenya by Mark Seal NEW—Forthcoming May 2009

Veteran journalist Mark Seal takes us deep into Africa to tell the story of Joan Root, a renowned Kenyan-born ecological activist who was brutally and mysteriously murdered in her sleep. With something for everyone—adventure, wilderness, love, passion, deception and corruption—students will be introduced to a remarkable real-life heroine. Do not order before 5/26/2009. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6736-7 • 256 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 e-Book

NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

With a profound gift for capturing the absurd in life, and a deadpan wisdom that comes from having survived a bizarre childhood in the Socialist Worker’s Party, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh poises himself perfectly between farce and tragedy. His story is one of a struggle to make sense of oneself in the world, and to find a place within a fractured family left behind by history. “Skateboards is a brave, honest and elegant book. It felt like the story was being whispered in my ear. I haven’t read a memoir in quite a while that has so skillfully made sense of an American childhood.”—Colum McCann Do not order before 3/24/2009. Dial Press • HC • 978-0-385-34068-7 • 304 pp. $22.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00 e-Book

Black Wave

Author Available

A Family’s Adventure at Sea and the Disaster That Saved Them by John Silverwood, Jean Silverwood and Malcolm McConnell NEW

Black Wave is an exhilarating, true-life adventure of one family’s extraordinary sea voyage of self-discovery, tragedy, and triumph. Successful businessman John Silverwood and his wife, Jean, both experienced sailors, wanted to give their four children a taste of thrilling life on the high seas. Their journey aboard the fiftyfive-foot catamaran Emerald Jane began on Long Island Sound ended almost two years later in treacherous waters off a remote atoll in French Polynesia, where they meet the terrifying brunt of the ocean’s anger. The family, already plagued by typical problems intensified by time spent at sea, found themselves banding together for survival. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6655-1 • 240 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

e-Book

The Souvenir A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War by Louise Steinman

Author Available

NEW

The Souvenir is the true story of Louise Steinman, who, after her parents’ deaths, discovered nearly 500 letters her father had written to her mother during his service in the Pacific War and a Japanese flag mysteriously inscribed to Yoshio Shimizu. Setting out to determine the identity of Shimizu and the origins of the flag, Steinman discovered the unexpected: a hidden side of her father. The Souvenir is ultimately an evocative testament to the ways in which war changes one generation and shapes another. “Throughout The Souvenir, Steinman deftly interweaves her father’s story with her own, and adds depth to both narratives by subtly slipping in insights gleaned from research on the psychological impact of combat. The result is an exceptional book that draws its strength from the complexities it explores.” —The New York Times Book Review Penn State has adopted this title for its Freshman Year Reading Program. North Atlantic Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-55643-701-4 300 pp. • $15.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

A True Story of Love and Defiance by Jo Tatchell

by Alissa Torres Illustrated by Sungyoon Choi

Winner, Gold Medal in Autobiography/Memoir from ForeWord Magazine

The Poet of Baghdad

American Widow

Author Available

Shortlisted for The Costa Biography Award 2006 Long-listed for The Samuel Johnson Prize 2007

Written by Jo Tatchell, a journalist who has spent many years in the Middle East and who is a close friend of Nabeel Yasin’s, The Poet of Baghdad is the gripping story of a family and its fateful encounter with history. From a warm, lighthearted look at the Yasin family before the Saddam dictatorship, to the tale of Nabeel’s persecution and daring flight, and the suspense-filled account of his family’s rebellion against Saddam’s regime, The Poet of Baghdad is an intimate, illuminating, deeply human chronicle of a country and a culture devastated by political repression and war. “Jo Tatchell’s moving narrative, from Nabeel’s mouth, tells of endurance, literary resistance and the courage of a loving, close-knit family oppressed by tyranny and war. Behind the deadly statistics and political rhetoric, voices such as his inspire us to pity and pride.”—The Times (London) Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-2697-3 • 368 pp. $14.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

After a two-year, whirlwind courtship, Alissa and Eddie were married. With Alissa over seven months pregnant, Eddie knew he had to land his dream job—and he did. On September 10, 2001, Eddie started at Cantor and Fitzgerald. The next day he was gone. Forced to deal with unspeakable loss, Alissa became one of the “terrorist widows.” A memoir in graphic novel form, Torres’ story will especially resonate among all students as one of tragedy, hardship, and extraordinary strength. Villard Books • HC • 978-0-345-50069-4 • 224 pp. $22.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace

Translator Available

The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram by Dang Thuy Tram Translated by Andrew X. Pham Now in Paperback

“Last night, I dreamed that Peace was established...”—Dang Thuy Tram, Vietnam, June 4, 1968 Written from 1968–1970, this diary of a young, idealistic Vietnamese female doctor describes the horrors of war and her devotion to family, country, and the Communist party. Her last entry was made the day before she died protecting her hospital. “Urgent, simple prose that pierces the heart.”—Kirkus Reviews Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-34738-1 256 pp. • $12.95/$14.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Hands of My Father

Author Available

A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg NEW

“Does sound have rhythm?” my father asked. “Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?” Such were the kinds of questions posed to Myron Uhlberg, the hearing son of deaf parents as he helped his father decipher, and understand, the elusive nature of sound. This challenge, among many others, shaped Uhlberg’s atypical childhood during the remarkably eventful period spanning the Depression, World War II, and the early fifties. His is a story that illuminates similarities and differences within one’s closest community: a family. Bantam • HC • 978-0-553-80688-5 • 256 pp. $23.00/$25.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50 e-Book

Life Stories—Memoir, Biography, and Autobiography

Mister Pip A Novel by Lloyd Jones Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in the UK Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize American Library Association Literary Awards ALA Notable Book Alex Award—YALSA YALSA Best Books for Young Adults n a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.” Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.

Dial Press • Tr. Pbk 978-0-385-34107-3 • 272 pp. $12.00/NCR. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Author website: www.randomhouse.com/bantamdell/misterpip/

About the Author Lloyd Jones was born in New Zealand in 1955. His previous novels and collections of stories include the award-winning The Book of Fame, Biografi, a New York Times Notable Book, Choo Woo, Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance and Paint Your Wife. Lloyd Jones lives in Wellington.

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Excerpt Chapter One EVERYONE CALLED HIM POP EYE. EVEN IN those days, when I was a skinny thirteen-year-old, I thought he probably knew about his nickname but didn’t care. His eyes were too interested in what lay up ahead to notice us barefoot kids. He looked like someone who had seen or known great suffering and hadn’t been able to forget it. His large eyes in his large head stuck out further than anyone else’s—like they wanted to leave the surface of his face. They made you think of someone who can’t get out of the house quickly enough. Pop Eye wore the same white linen suit every day. His trousers snagged on his bony knees in the sloppy heat. Some days he wore a clown’s nose. His nose was already big. He didn’t need that red lightbulb. But for reasons we couldn’t think of he wore the red nose on certain days—which may have meant something to him. We never saw him smile. And on those days he wore the clown’s nose you found yourself looking away because you never saw such sadness. He pulled a piece of rope attached to a trolley on which Mrs. Pop Eye stood. She looked like an ice queen. Nearly every woman on our island had crinkled hair, but Grace had straightened hers. She wore it piled up, and in the absence of a crown her hair did the trick. She looked so proud, as if she had no idea of her own bare feet. You saw her huge bum and worried about the toilet seat. You thought of her mother and birth and that stuff. At two-thirty in the afternoon the parrots sat in the shade of the trees and looked down at a human shadow one-third longer than any seen before. There were only the two of them, Mr. and Mrs. Pop Eye, yet it felt like a procession. The younger kids saw an opportunity and so fell in behind. Our parents looked away. They would rather stare at a colony of ants moving over a rotting pawpaw. Some stood by with their idle machetes, waiting for the spectacle to pass. For the younger kids the sight consisted only of a white man towing a black woman. They saw what the parrots saw, and what the dogs saw while sitting on their scrawny arses snapping their jaws at a passing mosquito. Us older kids sensed a bigger story. Sometimes we caught a snatch of conversation. Mrs. Watts was as mad as a goose. Mr. Watts was doing penance for an old crime. Or maybe it was the result of a bet. The sight represented a bit of uncertainty in our world, which in every other way knew only sameness. Excerpted from Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones Copyright © 2007 by Lloyd Jones. Excerpted by permission of Dial Press Trade Paperback, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Mister Pip “One of the best books of the year! Poetic, heartbreaking, surprising. Matilda is a young girl in Bougainville, a tropical island where the horror of civil war lurks. Mr. Watts, the only white person, is the self appointed teacher of the tiny school where the only textbook is the Dickens novel Great Expectations. Storytelling, imagination, courage, beauty, memories and sudden violence are the main elements of this extraordinary book.” —Isabel Allende, author of The House of Spirits

“Mister Pip is a powerful and touching story about one man’s role in transforming the lives of young people. Although these children live on an island left behind by the modern world, their plight reminded me of the challenges my very own students faced in the innercity. This novel demands we take note of the sheer power of education and literature to transform the lives of young people—whatever their circumstances and wherever in the world they may be.” —Erin Gruwell, author of The Freedom Writers Diary

“Mister Pip is sheer magic, a story about stories and their power to transcend the limits of imagination and reside in the deep heart’s core. Lloyd Jones is a brave and fierce writer, and he has given us Dickens brand new again.” —Keith Donohue, author of The Stolen Child

Fiction to Talk About

Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands

Author Available

by Susan Carol McCarthy 2003 Chautauqua South Fiction Award 2003 San Diego Magazine’s Book Award for Fiction 2002 Deadly Pleasures’ Best U.S. First Novel nspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands is a novel that tackles race politics in the pre-Civil Rights South unlike any other book in recent memory. A wise and luminous story about a northern family, a southern town, and the senseless murder that sparks an extraordinary act of courage, the book is told from the point of view of a little girl who is witness to the extraordinary turn of events that begins with the lynching of a black man. From the arrival of noteworthy figures such as Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP, and Mr. Hoover’s FBI, to the expressed opinions and actions of the everyday town citizen, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands will give students a solid sense of the events, people, and national mood of this volatile and chaotic period in American history.

Selected for Common Reading Bantam • Tr. Pbk 978-0-553-38103-0 • 288 pp. $13.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Website: www.susancarolmccarthy.com/index.htm

Fairfield Central High School, Winnsboro, SC, Senior Class Read 2008 Fairview High School, Erie County, PA, Freshman Class Read 2008 Lake Highland Preparatory School, Orlando, FL, All School Read 2008 The Pingry School, Martinsville, NJ, Seventh Grade Summer Read 2008 Paul J. Hagerty High School, Oviedo, FL, Junior Class Read 2008 Seabreeze High School, Daytona Beach, FL, Junior Class Read 2008 South Broward High School, Hollywood, FL, Senior Summer Read 2008 Tolland High School, Tolland, CT, Freshman Honors Read 2008 Timber Creek High School, Orlando, FL, AP Freshmen Read 2008 West Orange High School, Winter Springs, FL, Sophomore Read 2008 Liberty Middle School, Madison, AL, Eighth Grade Summer Read 2008 Rock Ledge High School, Rock Ledge, MI, All School Read 2007 Lake Mary High School, FL, Senior Class Read 2006, 2007, 2008 Winter Springs High School, FL, Freshmen Class Read 2006, 2007, 2008 Michigan State University and East Lansing Reads 2007 Colonial High School, Orlando, FL, Freshmen Summer Read 2007 Lawton Chiles High School, Tallahassee, FL, AP Juniors & Seniors Read 2007 Terrace Community Middle School, Temple Terrace, FL, All School Read 2006 Academy at the Lakes, Land O’ Lakes, FL, All School Read 2006 Tampa-Hillsborough Reads 2005 Niceville-Okaloosa County Libraries Malcolm County Libraries St. Augustine-St. Johns County Reads

About the Author Susan Carol McCarthy was born and raised by her citrus-growing parents in central Florida. After successful stints at larger ad agencies in Atlanta and San Francisco, McCarthy married a Californian and settled in San Diego as a full-time freelancer. Her widely acclaimed, award-winning debut novel, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands, was inspired by true events, as was her celebrated second book, True Fires. She currently resides in California. 32

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Excerpt Chapter 1 Luther’s on the back porch knocking on the door. Inside my cocoon of bedcovers, first thoughts, like moths, flutter. Temperature’s dropped and the men have come to work the smudge pots. I see them in my mind, dark, bundled bodies shuffling, soft calls anticipating the all-night battle against a freeze, gloved hands passing shiny thermoses filled with fresh, hot coffee, maybe something stronger. No, no, the dusky wings whisper: winter’s gone, the trees long into bloom, new fruit already the size of sweet peas. I wake with a start. What is Luther doing here, now? There it is again, his distinctive tappety-tap-tap. Across the hall, Mother and Daddy’s voices arc in surprise, recognition, then concern. Daddy’s feet hit the floor. I hear him yank on pants, belt buckle jangling, jerk open their door, and stride to the back. In my room Buddy’s tags jingle at the window, nose pressed against the screen, tail gently slapping wood. I slip down beside him as, suddenly, the porch light slants across the tangerine tree outside my window. A breeze carries the scent of blossoms and the sound of voices into my room. “Good Lord, Luther, what is it?” Daddy asks. “It’s Marvin, Mist’ Warren. He ain’t come home. Armetta’s about worried herself to death. The boy went out ‘round eight, telling his mamma he’d be back ‘fore midnight. Ah been looking for him since one. Run into Jimmy Lee just now, swears he saw Klanners cruising the Trail where Marvin’s s’posed to be.” “The Klan? Where on the Trail?” “Joe’s Jook, up to Wellwood. Marvin’s sweet on one of them girls up there.” “Marvin had any run-ins with the Klan?” “Nawser, but the girl say he left ‘round ‘leven.” “What do you think?” Excerpted from Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands by Susan Carol McCarthy Copyright © 2002 by Susan Carol McCarthy. Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Lay That Trumpet in Our Hands “Reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird, McCarthy’s debut novel is an engrossing story of one girl’s coming of age during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.” —Library Journal

Also by Susan Carol McCarthy

True Fires A Novel Inspired by true events in Central, Florida, 1954, this is the moving story of a family exiled from school and community by discriminatory segregation laws. A gripping read, True Fires plumbs the depths of small-town prejudices and politics and exposes one of the grimmest faces of injustice. This book is excellent for discussions of American history, segregation, and civil rights. “In McCarthy's insightful, fervent second novel... flawless dialogue, warm characters and compassionate wit service a moving story about the powers of love and justice.”—Publishers Weekly Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38104-7 • 320 pp. • $13.00/$18.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Fiction to Talk About

The Guardians

Author Available

A Novel by Ana Castillo rom American Book Award-winning author Ana Castillo comes a suspenseful, moving new novel about a sensuous, smart, and fiercely independent woman. Eking out a living as a teacher’s aide in a small New Mexican border town, Tía Regina is also raising her teenage nephew, Gabo, a hardworking boy who has entered the country illegally and aspires to the priesthood. When Gabo’s father, Rafa, disappears while crossing over from Mexico, Regina fears the worst. After several days of waiting and with an ominous phone call from a woman who may be connected to a smuggling ring, Regina and Gabo resolve to find Rafa. Help arrives in the form of Miguel, an amorous, recently divorced history teacher; Miguel’s gregarious abuelo Milton; a couple of Gabo’s gangbanger classmates; and a priest of wayward faith. Between the ruthless “coyotes” who exploit Mexicans while smuggling them to America and the border officials who are out to arrest and deport the illegal immigrants, looming threat is a constant companion on the journey. Ana Castillo brilliantly evokes the beautiful, stark desert landscape and creates vivid characters with strong voices and resilient hearts. “Like Sandra Cisneros’s acclaimed The House on Mango Street,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver when reviewing So Far from God, “Castillo’s writing is seasoned with Mexican aphorisms [and] rich symbolism.... Impossible to resist.” The Guardians serves as a remarkable testament to enduring faith, family bonds, cultural pride, and the human experience.

Random House • Tr. Pbk 978-0-8129-7571-0 • 240 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

“Castillo writes fiction and poetry of earthy sensuality, wry social commentary, and lyrical spiritualism that confront the cruel injustices accorded women and Mexicans in America, legal and otherwise…. In this tightly coiled and powerful tale…. At once shatteringly realistic and dramatically mystical, Castillo’s incandescent novel of suffering and love traces life’s movement toward the light even in the bleakest of places.” —Booklist (starred review)

About the Author Ana Castillo is the author of Peel My Love Like an Onion, So Far from God (a New York Times Notable Book), Sapogonia, and The Mixquiahuala Letters (winner of the American Book Award), as well as the short-story collection Loverboys. Her books of poetry include My Father Was a Toltec, I Ask the Impossible, and Watercolor Women Opaque Men (a novel in verse). She is the recipient of a Carl Sandburg Prize and a Southwestern Booksellers Award. She lives in New Mexico. 34

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Young Adult Literature with a Powerful Message The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne

Now a Major Motion Picture

Winner, Two Irish Book Awards The Bisto Book of the Year Award (Ireland) The Qué Leer Award (Spain) Berlin 1942 When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences. David Fickling Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-75153-7 • 240 pp. $8.99/$10.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Author Available

About the Author John Boyne is a fulltime writer living in Dublin. He was writerin-residence at the University of East Anglia in Creative Writing and spent many years working as a bookseller.

Now in Paperback

An Honor book in the 2007 Michael L. Printz Award It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.... Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist—books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul. “The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night. It seems poised to become a classic.”—USA Today “The Book Thief has been marketed as an older children's book in some countries and as an adult novel in others. It could and—dare I say?— should certainly be read by both. Unsettling, thought-provoking, lifeaffirming, triumphant and tragic, this is a novel of breathtaking scope, masterfully told. It is an important piece of work, but also a wonderful page-turner. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”—Philip Ardagh, The Guardian Knopf Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-84220-7 • 576 pp. $11.99/$15.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

About the Author Markus Zusak won a 2005 Printz Honor for I Am the Messenger, which was also nominated for the LA Times Book Award. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

Fiction to Talk About

The Story of Forgetting A Novel by Stefan Merrill Block

Author Available

NEW Short-Listed for The 2008 Mercantile Library’s John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize Chosen as “Best First Novel” in the 2008 Rome International Festival of Literature

“[An] emotional roller coaster... The Story of Forgetting is as true to the anguish of [its] questions as it is ablaze with love and vitality... Mr. Block taps into the life force that gives [his characters] a human, heart-wrenching answer... a fresh, beguiling novel.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6679-7 • 320 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Paperback coming April 2009. Do not order before 4/14/2009. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7982-4 • 320 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Brothers A Novel by Da Chen

Brothers, by bestselling memoirist Da Chen, is a sprawling, dynamic family saga, complete with assassinations, love affairs, narrowly missed opportunities, and the ineluctable fulfillment of destiny. “From Shaolin to the sugarloaf mountains of Gwangdong to Tiananmen Square and the skyscrapers of New York: an epic novel that neatly distills modern Chinese history. Da Chen’s elegantly written novel ends on the promise of redemption...” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4000-9729-6 448 pp. • $14.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Finn

e-Book

A Novel by Jon Clinch

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Winner of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

Internationally acclaimed, Fahrenheit 451 is Ray Bradbury’s landmark novel of a future society where books are outlawed and only one man awakens to the evils of censorship. “Frightening in its implications... Mr. Bradbury’s account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.”—The New York Times Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Illinois Central College and Randolf-Macon College. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-41001-6 • 192 pp. $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Del Rey • Mass Mkt • 978-0-345-34296-6 • 208 pp. $6.99/$8.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide

Author Available

In this masterful debut by a major new voice in fiction, Jon Clinch takes us on a journey into the history and heart of one of American literature’s most brutal and mysterious figures: Huckleberry Finn’s father. The result is a deeply original tour de force that springs from Twain’s classic novel but takes on a fully realized life of its own. “Finn is as dark, as brutal, as ambivalent, and as insane as the history and legacy of American racial slavery. It is also graceful, imaginative, and relentlessly intelligent.”—Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7714-1 • 320 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide

The Book of Daniel A Novel by E.L. Doctorow Nominated for a National Book Award

Wonder Boys: A Novel by Michael Chabon

Author Available

NEW

The work that established Pulitzer Prize-winning Chabon as “the young star of American letters” and lead critics to compare him to Cheever and Nabokov, Wonder Boys follows literary professor and author Grady Tripp. When Crabtree, Tripp’s editor and friend, shows up with his protégé, desperate for a complete novel—and finds his friend’s only half done at 2611 pages—the three set out on one uproarious adventure after another. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7921-3 • 384 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Rich in characters, from elderly grandmothers of immigrant culture, to covert radicals of the McCarthy era, to hippie marchers on the Pentagon, this is a book that spans the quartercentury of American life after World War II and examines the nature of Left politics in this country. Random House • Tr. Pbk. • 978-0-8129-7817-9 • 320 pp. $15.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The March

Going to See the Elephant

A Novel by E.L. Doctorow

Author Available

by Rodes Fishburne

Winner of The National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of The Pen/Faulkner Award

by E.L. Doctorow

On a windy September day, twenty-fiveyear-old Slater Brown stands in the back of a bicycle taxi hurtling the wrong way down the busiest street in San Francisco. Slater has come to “see the elephant,” to stake his claim to fame and become the greatest writer ever. But this city of gleaming water and infinite magic has other plans in this astounding first novel—at once a love story, a feast of literary imagination, and a dazzlingly original tale of passion, ambition, and genius in all their guises.... A great book for students who may have “elephant”inspired aspirations themselves.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Delacorte Press • HC • 978-0-385-34239-1 • 304 pp. $22.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00

Published in 1975, Ragtime changed our very concept of what a novel could be. An extraordinary tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in the era between the turn of the century and the First World War.

e-Book

Random House • Tr. Pbk. • 978-0-8129-7818-6 • 336 pp. $14.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Sheriff Lucian Wing confronts a series of challenges to his settled way of life, his work, his society, and his marriage in this gripping, darkly funny and wise follow-up to Castle Freeman Jr.’s celebrated novel Go With Me. Wing is an experienced pragmatist who enforces the law with a steady hand and generous tolerance. Things are not going normally, however, in the sheriff’s small corner of southern Vermont. The sheriff’s response to these diverse forces calls on all the personal resources he has cultivated during his life’s work: patience, tact, cunning, and humor.

The March stunningly renders the countless lives swept up in the violence of a country at war with itself. The great march in E. L. Doctorow’s hands becomes an unforgettable reading experience with awesome relevance to our own times. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7615-1 • 384 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Ragtime

Teacher’s Guide

Gardens of Water A Novel by Alan Drew

Author Available

NEW

Powerful, emotional, and beautifully written, Alan Drew’s stunning first novel brings to life two unforgettable families—one Kurdish, one American—and the sacrifice and love that bind them together. “Drew’s first novel takes readers to Turkey, a geographical location not common as a setting in American fiction, and his absorbing narrative is obviously derived from his own intense experiences in that place. A fresh reworking of the Romeo-and-Juliet theme.... A richly detailed, finely plotted demonstration of culture clash.”—American Library Association Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7844-5 • 368 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • Audio Edition • e-Book

All That I Have: A Novel by Castle Freeman, Jr. NEW

Freeman Jr.’s previous book Go With Me was adopted at Castleton State College. Steerforth • HC • 978-1-58642-151-9 • 176 pp. $22.95/$25.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines Gaines’s now-classic novel—written as an autobiography—spans one hundred years of Miss Jane’s remarkable life, from her childhood as a slave on a Louisiana plantation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. It is a story of courage and survival, history, bigotry, and hope—as seen through the eyes of a woman who lived through it all. “Stunning. [N]o black novel about the South exudes quite the same refreshing mix of wit and wrath, imagination and indignation, misery and poetry.”—Life Dial Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-34278-0 • 272 pp. $13.00/$15.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Fiction to Talk About

Bombingham by Anthony Grooms

Author Available

From the war-torn rice fields of Vietnam to the riot-filled streets of Birmingham, Alabama, Bombingham is the affecting story of a middle-class black family shattered by its personal chaos. As young African-American Walter Burke struggles to make sense of his presence in Vietnam, he wonders if the victory of the civil rights movement meant nothing more than being sent into a battlefield of another kind.

A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar NEW

Selected for Common Reading at Marquette University, Alabama A&M University and SUNY Oswego

Nidali, the rebellious daughter of an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, narrates the story of her childhood in Kuwait, her teenage years in Europe (to where she and her family fled the 1990 Iraqi invasion) and her family’s last flight to Texas. Nidali mixes humor with a sharp, vibrant portrait of an eccentric middle-class family, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters as various cultures, people, and places come together to create an ever-changing concept of “home.”

One World/Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-45293-1 320 pp. • $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Other Press • HC • 978-1-590-51272-2 • 304 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

Into The Forest

When We Were Romans

by Jean Hegland Into the Forest follows two young sisters

A Novel by Matthew Kneale

struggling to make sense of their world when their near-future society collapses. Hegland’s exploration of the sisters’ relationship as they go deeper into the forest reveals the full dimension of their bond, and what it means to be human and alive in this new world.

NEW

Bowling Green State University has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-37961-7 • 256 pp. $15.00/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Odyssey

Translator Available

by Homer Translated by Charles Stein Poet Charles Stein employs a less formal, phrase-by-phrase translation to this new version. Famous episodes such as the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and the Cyclops, are rendered with previously unseen energy and empathy. The poem’s second half—where Odysseus, returned home to take revenge on his wife’s suitors—has extraordinarily subtle, “novelistic” features that are made more transparent in this version. Summaries preceding each chapter and a list of recommended websites help expand the experience. North Atlantic Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-55643-728-1 656 pp. • $22.95/$25.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.50

Narrated in young, nine-year-old Lawrence’s perfectly rendered voice, When We Were Romans powerfully evokes the emotions and confusions of childhood—the triumphs, the jealousies, the fears, and the love. “Like Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird and Christopher in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, young Lawrence brings readers into his world, powerfully connecting us to the drama of his childhood.”—Pat Conroy, author of The Prince of Tides and Beach Music Nan A Talese • HC • 978-0-385-52625-8 • 240 pp. $23.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 e-Book

American Youth

Author Available

A Novel by Phil LaMarche Now in Paperback

American Youth is the powerful tale of a teenager in southern New England who is confronted by a terrible moral dilemma following a firearms accident in his home. This tragedy earns him the admiration of a sinister gang of boys at his school and a girl associated with them. Set in a town riven by social and ideological tensions—an old rural culture in conflict with newcomers— this is a classic portrait of a young man struggling with the idea of identity and responsibility in an America ill at ease with itself. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7740-0 • 256 pp. $14.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Gifted A Novel by Nikita Lalwani

Author Available

“A triumph... fluid, original, clever, glitteringly vivid, funny.... All the conventional pieties and forms of Indian immigrant identity and trauma are so wittily preempted, and yet there’s a sure grasp, at the serious core of the novel, of the deep reverberations of politics and history. I couldn’t bear it when it ended.”—Tessa Hadley, author of The Master Bedroom Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7794-3 • 304 pp. $14.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Beaufort by Ron Leshem Translated by Evan Fallenberg By turns subversive and darkly comic, brutal and tender, Ron Leshem’s debut novel is an international literary sensation, winner of Israel’s top award for literature and the basis for a prizewinning film. Charged with brilliance and daring, hypnotic in its intensity, Beaufort is at once a searing coming-of-age story and a novel for our times—one of the most powerful, visceral portraits of the horror, camaraderie, and absurdity of war in modern fiction. The basis for the Academy Award-nominated film of the same name. “Stark and searing and stitched with black humor... Beaufort makes several statements: courage, yes; camaraderie, sure; but also the futility of war.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38529-8 • 368 pp. $12.00/$14.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Open Door by Elizabeth Maguire The Open Door is a moving novel inspired by the life of Constance Fenimore Woolson, one of the most respected American authors of the nineteenth century. After years of supporting her mother and brother through her writing, Constance Woolson sails for Europe with a letter of introduction to Henry James, the writer she admires above all others. Constance and Henry James eventually meet in Florence. Constance’s courageous, open nature is at odds with James’s more secretive one. Friction, transgression, and revenge both private and public are central to their story.

Angry Black White Boy A Novel by Adam Mansbach

Author Available

From the acclaimed author of Shackling Water comes the first great race novel of the twenty-first century, an incendiary and ruthlessly funny satire about violence, pop culture, and American identity. “...[A] revelation, a wise and funny riff on hip hop and the racial divide that has always plagued America. I found that [Angry White Black Boy] could get a class talking, at the deepest level, about hardest issues, with a common language of youth culture. Mansbach’s writing is masterful, his references are erudite but accessible, and his vision is unflinching.”—Rick Ayers, Berkeley High School, co-author, Great Books for High School Kids: A Teacher’s Guide to Books That Can Change Teens’ Lives “Whether the subject is critical race studies, whiteness, hip hop, literature, or the race novel tradition, Angry Black White Boy makes an excellent teaching tool. Savvy, provocative, and rich with allusions, Mansbach’s text provides plenty of material for discussion and debate.”—Wayne Marshall, Ethnomusicologist, Harvard University Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4000-5487-9 352 pp. • $12.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The End of the Jews A Novel by Adam Mansbach

Author Available

From the author of Angry Black White Boy, this is an ambitious and affecting family drama elevated by Mansbach’s imaginative storytelling techniques and deep empathy for his characters. Boldly reworking the story of Jewish assimilation around the tale of a family of fierce individuals, this is the story of anyone willing to fight for love, art, and a place in the world. Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-385-52044-7 • 320 pp. $23.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 Paperback coming March 2009. Do not order before 3/17/2009. Spiegel & Grau • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-52042-3 • 320 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Other Press • HC • 978-1-590-51283-8 • 248 pp. $23.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00

Fiction to Talk About

In the Country of Men

The Speed of Dark

by Hisham Matar

A Novel by Elizabeth Moon

Now in Paperback Winner 2007—Commonwealth Writers’ Prize of Europe and South Asia Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

In the Country of Men is the story of a young boy growing up in a terrifying and bewildering world where his best friend’s father disappears and is next seen on state television at a public execution; where a mysterious man sits outside the house all day and asks strange questions; where his mother burns all their books when it seems his father has finally disappeared for good. Soon the whispers and fears, secrets and lies will become so intense that Suleiman can bear them no longer, and, in his terrified effort to save his family, he may end up betraying his friends, his parents and ultimately himself. Dial Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-34043-4 • 256 pp. $12.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen

Author Available

Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw, E. J. Watson. “In every way, Shadow Country is a bravura performance, at once history, fiction, and myth—as well as the capstone to the career of one of the most admired and admirable writers of our time.”—The New York Review of Books “Magnificent and capacious.... I’ll just say right here that the book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go. Matthiessen has made his three-part saga into a new thing.... Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with Watson’s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate... a breathtaking saga.”—The Los Angeles Times Modern Library • HC • 978-0-679-64019-6 • 912 pp. $40.00/$45.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $20.00

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Winner, 2004 Nebula Award

The Speed of Dark is an exploration into the world of Lou Arrendale, an autistic man who is offered a chance to try a brand-new experimental “cure” for his condition. Now Lou must decide if he should submit to a surgery that might completely change the way he views the world... and the very essence of who he is. A fascinating work of fiction ideal for discussions about choice and its consequences. Ohio State University and State University of New York Oswego have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-44754-8 • 368 pp. $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Del Rey • Mass Mkt • 978-0-345-48139-9 384 pp. • $6.99/$10.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Last Town on Earth

Author Available

A Novel by Thomas Mullen

NEW Winner, 2008 National Book Award for Fiction

e-Book

Author Available

Now in Paperback

Set against the backdrop of one of the most virulent epidemics that America ever experienced—the 1918 flu epidemic—Thomas Mullen’s powerful, sweeping first novel is a tale of morality in a time of upheaval. A chance encounter, and the shots that are fired as a result, will have deafening reverberations throughout the town of Commonwealth, escalating until every human value—love, patriotism, community, family, friendship—not to mention the town’s very survival, is imperiled. Bowling Green State Universiy has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7592-5 432 pp. • $13.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

The Age of the Conglomerates

Author Available

A Novel of the Future by Thomas Nevins NEW

Forty years in the future, in a world where Big Brother runs amok, a powerful political party known as the Conglomerates has emerged, vowing to enforce economic martial law at any cost. Dr. Christine Salter, director of genetic development at a New York medical center, is in charge of “genetic contouring,” the much-in-demand science of producing the ideal child. But Christine is increasingly troubled by odd events, including the fact that her latest assignment—making the Conglomerate chairman more youthful through genetic engineering—is an especially dangerous task. Filled with incredible extremes and economical, sociological and biological hyperboles, this book will surely spark great discussion among your students. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-50391-7 • 304 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Ishmael An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn

Author Available

Winner of the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship, Ishmael is a Platonic dialogue in the form of a novel of ideas. The narrator is a truth seeker who answers an ad in a local newspaper from a teacher looking for serious pupils, only to find himself alone in an abandoned office with a full-grown gorilla. Ishmael, the gorilla, is a creature of immense wisdom, and his story extends backward and forward over the life span of the Earth, from the birth of time to a future there is still time to save. The International School of the Americas, University of Arizona (Tuscon), and University of Wisconsin—Madison have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-37540-4 • 272 pp. $17.00/$24.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

My Ishmael

Author Available

by Daniel Quinn Raising new issues and entirely new approaches to old problems, My Ishmael continues the visionary journey begun in Ishmael. This time, Ishmael’s student is feisty, strong-willed Julie, and Ishmael’s first reaction is to send her home to grow up. However, her concerns about the future of the world are legitimate and compelling, and even Ishmael cannot refute her arguments. Ishmael soon realizes that adopting new methods means adopting new goals; the result is a far different journey for Julie. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-37965-5 • 304 pp. $17.00/$24.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Things They Carried

Author Available

by Tim O’Brien Winner of France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger Finalist, Pulitzer Prize Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age A Booklist Best of the Best

Winner of a National Book Award in 1979 for Going After Cacciato, O’Brien again shows his literary mettle with this brilliant collection of short stories, many of which have won literary recognition. Each of the twenty-two tales relates the exploits and personalities of a fictional platoon of American soldiers in Vietnam. “Not since Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five has the American soldier been portrayed with such poignancy and sincerity.”—Library Journal Appalachian State University, Bowling Green State University, Gustavus Adolphus College, James Madison University, Miami University (Ohio), Pacific University, University of Wisconsin, Osh Kosh, Pacific University (OR), SUNY Stony Brook University, Texas State University, Valparaiso University, Whittier College, Yeshiva University, California State University, Northridge; Hamline University, University of Virginia’s College at Wise, among other colleges, have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs. Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-0289-2 • 272 pp. $14.95/$22.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Fiction to Talk About

My Jim A Novel by Nancy Rawles

Author Available

ALEX Award Winner (American Library Association) A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age

A deeply moving recasting of one of the most controversial characters in American literature, Huckleberry Finn’s Jim. Written in the great literary tradition of novels of American slavery, My Jim is told in the incantatory voice of Sadie Watson, an ex-slave who schools her granddaughter with lessons of love she learned in bondage. To help her granddaughter confront the decisions she needs to make, Sadie mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. A nuanced critique and reinvention of Twain’s great American novel, My Jim stands on its own as a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love. “In a spare, naturalistic style that’s reminiscent of oral history... Rawles covers territory Twain did not: Jim’s early life in captivity, his seemingly endless struggle for freedom, his love for his wife and children, his impossible anguish upon separation.”—The New York Times Book Review Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4000-5401-5 192 pp. • $12.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque This is the classic anti-war novel about young German soldiers during World War I. Twenty-year old Paul Baumer’s world of work, duty, culture, and progress is shattered with the first bombardment in the trenches, and he vows to fight against the principle of hate that pits young men of the same generation against each other. Few other books have ever achieved such dramatic acclaim or enduring success. Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at St. Louis Community College. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-449-91149-5 • 304 pp. $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Ballantine • Mass Mkt • 978-0-449-21394-0 • 304 pp. $6.99/$9.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Enchantress of Florence

Author Available

A Novel by Salman Rushdie NEW

Rushdie’s latest masterpiece is a novel about East meeting West, Florence at the dawn of the Renaissance, a great lost Empire, the meaning of political power and its proper uses, and the power of love to overcome time. Vivid, gripping, irreverent, bawdy, profoundly moving, and completely absorbing, The Enchantress of Florence is a dazzling book full of wonders by one of the world’s most important living writers. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-679-64051-6 • 368 pp. $14.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Satanic Verses A Novel by Salman Rushdie

Author Available

A new edition of Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie's fifth and best-known novel, as relevant as ever: the metamorphoses, dreams, and revelations of two men after their plane explodes in a hijacking over the English Channel. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7671-7 • 576 pp. $16.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

For more Salman Rushdie books, visit our website.

Driving Sideways

Author Available

A Novel by Jess Riley NEW

Leigh Fielding wants a life. Having spent the past five years on dialysis, she has one simple wish: to make it to her thirtieth birthday. Now, thanks to the generosity of the late Larry Resnick and his transplanted kidney, it looks like her wish may come true. With her newfound vitality (and Larry’s kidney) in tow, Leigh hits the road for an excursion that will carry her from Wisconsin to California, with a few stops in between. Yet Leigh’s itinerary takes a sudden detour when she picks up a seventeenyear-old hitchhiker, Denise, a runaway with a bunch of stories and a couple of secrets. Driving Sideways is a hilarious and original journey of friendship, hope, and discovery. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-50110-3 • 352 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

The God of Small Things

The Sparrow: A Novel

A Novel by Arundhati Roy

by Mary Doria Russell

Winner of the prestigious Booker Prize in 1997, The God of Small Things was Arundhati Roy’s stunning debut. Set in 1969, Rahel and Estha are twins born of a wealthy Indian family. The story shifts between two times: the present, where Rahel visits her mute brother, and the past, one day in December that tore the family apart. As vivid as it is powerful, Roy’s novel is reminiscent of Faulkner, Rushdie, and Márquez—a sure-fire contemporary classic that should be added to every student’s reading library. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7965-7 • 352 pp. $15.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Dreamers of the Day

Author Available

NEW

A schoolteacher from Ohio, Agnes has come into a modest inheritance that allows her to take the trip of a lifetime to Egypt and the Holy Land. Arriving at the Semiramis Hotel just as the Peace Conference convenes, she finds herself in the company of Winston Churchill and other dignitaries who have come to decide upon the fate of the Arab world— a fate that still resonates today. An engrossing piece of historical fiction, this book will both entice students and educate them about the lasting effects of political decisions. “A remarkably vivid account of a woman’s accidental witness to history.” —Kirkus Reviews Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-48555-7 • 288 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

e-Book

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Author Available

A Novel by Lisa See A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age

Lily is haunted by memories of who she once was, and of a person, long gone, who defined her existence. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is a brilliantly realistic journey back to an era of Chinese history that is as deeply moving as it is sorrowful. With the period detail and deep resonance of Memoirs of a Geisha, this lyrical and emotionally charged novel delves into one of the most profound human relationships: friendship. A moving exploration of the power of memory, the dangers of oppression, and the redemptive powers of language.

Audio Edition • e-Book Author Available

Set in Italy during the dramatic finale of World War II, Mary Doria Russell tells the little-known but true story of the network of Italian citizens who saved the lives of forty-three thousand Jews during the war’s final phase. The result of five years of meticulous research, A Thread of Grace is an ambitious, engrossing novel about ordinary people taking heroic risks in the face of a powerful evil. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-449-00413-5 • 464 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Knox College has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program.

Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-6806-4 288 pp. • $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Audio Edition • e-Book

A Novel by Mary Doria Russell

“If you have to send a group of people to a newly discovered planet to contact a totally unknown species, whom would you choose? How about four Jesuit priests, a young astronomer, a physician, her engineer husband, and a child prostitute-turned-computerexpert? That’s who Mary Doria Russell sends in her new novel, The Sparrow. This motley combination of agnostics, true believers, and misfits becomes the first to explore the Alpha Centuri world of Rakhat with both enlightening and disastrous results.... Vivid and engaging...”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-449-91255-3 • 448 pp. $14.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

A Novel by Mary Doria Russell

A Thread of Grace

Author Available

Shanghai Girls A Novel by Lisa See

Author Available

NEW—Forthcoming May 2009

Through arranged marriages, two sisters May and Pearl, leave Shanghai in 1937 to find a new life in Los Angeles. The struggles between cultures drive this story of the struggles of two women to find a new life while being bound to the old. Do not order before 5/26/2009. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6711-4 • 256 pp. $25.00/$28.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Audio Edition • e-Book

Fiction to Talk About

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

HomeSpun

A Novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

NEW

January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb. As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society was born as a spur-of-themoment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island. Both a fun and thought-provoking read, the novel boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters. Dial Press • HC • 978-0-385-34099-1 • 288 pp. $22.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00 Paperback coming May 2009. Do not order before 5/5/2009. Dial Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-34100-4 • 304 pp. $13.00/$15.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

www.guernseyliterary.com/

The Bonesetter’s Daughter by Amy Tan A Chinese-American woman discovers her tormented mother’s memoirs of life as a girl in China, and uncovers family secrets long kept hidden. “The Bonesetter’s Daughter dramatically chronicles the tortured, devoted relationship between LuLing Young and her daughter Ruth.... A strong novel, filled with idiosyncratic, sympathetic characters, haunting images, historical complexity, significant contemporary themes, and suspenseful mystery.”—Los Angeles Times “The Bonesetter’s Daughter tells a compelling tale of family relationships; it layers and stirs themes of secrets, ambiguous meanings, cultural complexity and self-identity; and it resonates with metaphor and symbol.” —The Denver Post Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-45737-0 • 400 pp. $14.95/$22.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Ballantine • Mass Mkt • 978-0-8041-1498-1 • 416 pp. $7.99/$10.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

by Nilita Vachani Spanning three generations, from India’s struggle for independence against British rule, up to the present day, HomeSpun traces the lasting imprints of war and the search for peace at levels that are both historical and familial. Setting in motion an irreversible chain of events, a cast of unforgettable characters criss-cross and affect one another in unlikely ways: a Bombay movie producer with a love for pakoras; a fighter pilot who never should have been one; a war correspondent who stumbles upon a disquieting truth; and, at the heart of the story, a young girl whose fractured quest for family brings her full circle. Other Press • HC • 978-1-590-51285-2 • 376 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives. A seminal work in literature, Vonnegut’s bestselling novel reflects the mythic journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know. Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-33384-9 • 288 pp. $14.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Laurel • Mass Mkt • 978-0-440-18029-6 • 224 pp. $7.99/$11.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide

http://www.kurtvonnegut.com/

Farewell, Shanghai by Angel Wagenstein Translated by Elizabeth Frank and Deliana Simeonova At the outset of World War II, a group of Jewish refugees flee Nazi Germany for Shanghai. A magnet for every human ambition and vice, Shanghai is a city of dazzling wealth and wretched poverty. There, they enter the world of refugees who must either starve or eke out an impoverished living, but they are determined to live intelligently, upholding the high culture, humor, and —insofar as they can—the elegance of their former lives. Other Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-590-51308-8 • 400 pp. $13.95/$15.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Reclaiming Virtue

Author Available

How We Can Develop the Moral Intelligence to Do the Right Thing at the Right Time for the Right Reason by John Bradshaw acked by ancient Greek philosophers and his lifelong study of human development to the most recent discoveries of neuroscience, John Bradshaw shows that each of us has, what he calls, an inborn moral intelligence. Examples of “magnificent moral moments” drawn from history and literature are interwoven with revealing personal stories, illustrating both the heights of human ethical behavior and the difficulty of acting on what we know to be right. This is a great book for cultivating a morally conscious and caring student body.

NEW Also by John Bradshaw

Creating Love A New Way of Understanding Our Most Important Relationships Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-37305-9 • 400 pp. $17.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Homecoming Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-35389-1 • 304 pp. $17.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Family Secrets

Bantam • HC 978-0-553-09592-0 • 512 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Forthcoming April 2009. Do not order before 4/28/2009.

The Path from Shame to Healing Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-37498-8 • 320 pp. $17.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

John Bradshaw has touched and changed millions of lives with his nationally televised PBS series and his bestselling books. He was educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood and took advanced degrees in psychology, philosophy, and theology before becoming a professional counselor. He is the author of several major bestsellers. He lives in Houston, Texas, and gives lectures and workshops nationwide.

Inspiration and Guidance

About the Author

Resilience Faith, Focus, Triumph by Alonzo Mourning with Dan Wetzel hether petitioning himself into foster care as an eleven-year-old, tirelessly studying his way onto the dean’s list at Georgetown University, making it as an allstar center in the NBA, or returning to peak form after organ-transplant surgery, Alonzo Mourning has shown enormous inner strength. His faith, determination, and courage are what have driven and sustained him throughout his extraordinary life. In 2000, Mourning was on top of the world: He had a new contract, an Olympic gold medal, and a second beautiful child—all that and the fame and wealth he had earned playing the game he loved. But in September of that year, he was diagnosed with a rare and fatal kidney disease. Over the next couple of years, as his health faltered, he retired, unretired, and retired again—and sought to make sense of the rest of his life. Finally in 2003, after a frantic search for a donor match, Mourning had a new kidney and a new outlook. He vowed to make this second chance count by dedicating his life to others. He resolved that he would consider the disease a blessing, a revelation of God’s plan for him. Although he battled his way back to the NBA, winning a championship with the Miami Heat in 2006, Mourning believed that the most important and fulfilling part of his life still lay ahead. Basketball, it turned out, was just the vehicle that would allow him to devote his talents and energies to a greater cause. Alonzo Mourning’s return to basketball glory, already familiar to sports fans and non-sports fans alike, has inspired millions of patients suffering from kidney disease and living with dialysis, as well as organ donors around the world. By sharing his experiences of the physical, emotional, and spiritual roller coaster of illness and recovery, Mourning hopes to deliver a message of faith and fire, hurdles and hope, trust and triumph. Resilience is a story about the meaningful everyday lessons that he longs to share and about the things that truly matter in life.

NEW

Ballantine • HC 978-0-345-50701-3 • 256 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 e-Book

About the Author Alonzo Mourning is known as one of the most intense and intimidating players in the history of the NBA, a seven-time All-Star and two-time defensive player of the year during his 11 year NBA career. He won a gold medal for the United States in the 2000 Olympics and the NBA championship for the 2006 Miami Heat, where he is the franchise’s all-time leading scorer. He was also a three-time All American at Georgetown where he earned a sociology degree. Mourning is a national spokesman for the National Kidney Foundation and operates Alonzo Mourning Charities, including Zo’s Fund for Life. 46

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Tuesdays with Morrie

The Places That Scare You

An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life’s Greatest Lesson by Mitch Albom

A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chödrön

A National Bestseller and Top Adoption Title

NEW

After learning of his former professor’s terminal illness, Mitch Albom flew to Brandeis University, reunited with his old friend, and returned every Tuesday thereafter to visit with him. Morrie Schwartz turned these visits into one final “class:” a lesson in how to live. This book is a magical chronicle of Mitch and Morrie’s time together.

Pema Chödrön teaches that we always have a choice: we can let the circumstances of our lives render us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can use them to become kinder. In Places That Scare You, Pema provides students with the tools necessary to deal with the problems and difficulties that life throws their way—how to awaken their basic goodness, connect with others, and accept themselves and their peers for who they are.

Concordia University, State University of New York—New Paltz, University of Buffalo, University of North Dakota, among other colleges, have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs. Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-0592-3 • 208 pp. $12.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Shambhala • Mass Mkt • 978-1-59030-449-5 • 208 pp. $6.99/$8.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition

Reader’s Guide • Audio Edition

Lives of Moral Leadership What Should I Do With My Life?

Author Available

The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question by Po Bronson “What should I do with my life?” Author Po Bronson was asking himself that very question when he decided to write this book—an inspiring exploration of how people successfully transform their lives and a template for how we can answer this question for ourselves. With humor, empathy, and insight, Bronson probes the depths of people who learned how to hear the whisper and overcame fear and confusion to find larger truths about their lives. This book includes nine new stories not included in the hardcover. “Brimming with stories of sacrifice, courage, commitment and, sometimes, failure, the book will support anyone pondering a major life choice or risk without force-feeding them pat solutions.”—Publishers Weekly Rutgers College and Sam Houston State University have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-75898-0 • 432 pp. $14.95/$22.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Ballantine • Mass Mkt • 978-0-345-48592-2 • 464 pp. $7.99/$10.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Men and Women Who Have Made a Difference by Robert Coles Coles explains how to be a moral leader and shows how the intervention of one person can change the course of history, as well as influence the day-today quality of life in homes, schools, communities, and the nation. With eloquent prose and compelling anecdotes, Coles explores how each student can and should engage in a continual process of personal and national leadership development. Boston College has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-75835-5 • 272 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Freedom Writers Diary

Author Available

How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them by The Freedom Writers with Erin Gruwell An uplifting true account of an idealistic twenty-three-year-old teacher assigned to a room of ‘unreachable, atrisk’ students, The Freedom Writers Diary details a life-changing journey through ignorance and misunderstanding, and includes powerful excerpts from the students’ own diaries. This book is not only inspiring; it offers timely social commentary as well. Western New England College has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Main Street Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-49422-9 304 pp. • $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Inspiration and Guidance

The Way to God

Thank You For Arguing

by Mahatma Gandhi

What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion by Jay Heinrichs

NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

Mahatma Gandhi became famous as the leader of the Indian independence movement, but he called himself “a man of God disguised as a politician.” The Way to God demonstrates his enduring significance as a spiritual leader whose ideas offer insight and solace to seekers of every practice and persuasion. Collecting many of his most significant writings, the book explores the deep religious roots of Gandhi’s worldly accomplishments and reveals—in his own words—his intellectual, moral, and spiritual approaches to the divine. Do not order before 3/17/2009. North Atlantic Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-55643-784-7 104 pp. • $12.95/$14.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Roadtrip Nation

Author Available

A Guide to Discovering Your Path In Life by Nathan Gebhard, Mike Marriner and Joanne Gordon In this engaging career guide, two recent college graduates travel the U.S. in an RV, in search of something other than a standard career path. From learning how to make cold calls to formulating stimulating interview questions, Roadtrip Nation gives readers practical advice on finding the vocation that works for them. This book, which includes interviews with 140 people who offer their own candid career stories, is ideal for students as they embark on their studies and prepare for their future occupations. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-49638-6 • 272 pp. $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Author Available

In funny, accessible prose, expert Jay Heinrichs demonstrates the importance of rhetoric in the modern world, while teaching readers how to line up its powers for their own benefit. “I use his Daily Figaro site all the time for my classes. It’s a lot of fun; he uses current politics, Monty Python, etc. to elucidate rhetorical devices. I’m also making my way through his book. It’s excellent. An easy read, it presents Rhetoric and Argumentation for the general public. Despite, maybe because, of its ‘populist’ approach, I will make it required reading next semester.”—David Kaufmann, Ph.D., Dept. of English, Tulane University “Clever, passionate, erudite.... A useful primer.”—Publishers Weekly Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-34144-0 336 pp. • $13.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Visit www.thankyouforarguing.com for video demonstrations, author information, and more.

The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit

Author Available

How to Bounce Back from Life’s Hardest Hits by Azim Khamisa and Jillian Quinn NEW

A great life-preparedness book for both new and continuing students, The Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit, consists of the 30 keys to emotional resiliency and their corresponding strategies that internationally honored promoter of peace, Azim Khamisa, and inspirational speaker, Jillian Quinn, reveal they themselves have used to transcend their own heart-wrenching personal losses. Nutritious food-for-thought, these techniques will teach your students to reframe loss as a bridge rather than an abyss; to appreciate that forgiveness is a practice, not an event; to question the value of consistency and find opportunities in instability. Ballantine • HC • 978-0-345-50603-0 • 288 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Character is Destiny Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember by John McCain with Mark Salter In Character Is Destiny, John McCain and Mark Salter show us why, by telling the stories of celebrated historical figures and lesser-known heroes whose values exemplify the best of the human spirit. He illustrates these qualities with moving stories of triumph against the odds, righteousness in the face of iniquity, hope in adversity, and sacrifice for a cause greater than self-interest. DeSales College has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7445-4 336 pp. • $15.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Wishcraft

Author Available

How to Get What You Really Want by Barbara Sher and Annie Gottlieb

Make the Impossible Possible

Author Available

One Man’s Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary by Bill Strickland and Vince Rause “Success is the point where your most authentic talents, passion, values, and experiences intersect with the chance to contribute to some greater good.” —Bill Strickland Through lessons from his own life experiences, and those of countless others who have overcome their circumstances and turned their lives around, MacArthur Fellowship “genius” award winner Bill Strickland’s Make the Impossible Possible shows how all of us can build on our passions and strengths, dream bigger and set the bar higher, achieve meaningful success and help mentor and inspire the lives of others. Currency • HC • 978-0-385-52054-6 • 240 pp. $23.95/$29.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

Barbara Sher’s timeless message of how we can learn to make real changes in our lives is one that will continue to resonate with generations of students. The book’s powerful program shows them how to put their vague yearnings and dreams to work—with concrete results. Some steps include: discovering strengths and skills, diagramming the path to goals and mapping out target dates for meeting them, and charting progress day by day. “One of the most popular books among those who want their lives to count for something. Barbara Sher is to be commended, for making hope practical.” —Richard Nelson Bolles, Author of What Color Is Your Parachute? Do not order before 3/24/2009. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-46518-4 • 272 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Light of Conscience

Author Available

How a Simple Act Can Change Your Life by Bill Shore In this inspirational meditation on the power of conscience, Shore—director of the antipoverty organization Share Our Strength—shows how a simple act and moment of purpose can change lives, communities, and the world.

Standing Tall

Author Available

A Memoir of Tragedy and Triumph by C. Vivian Stringer and Laura Tucker Now in paperback

“As much as I love basketball... it has always been a vehicle for me to instill values and selfrespect in the girls I coach... I am the last stop before the young women I coach take their place in society, and it is a responsibility I take seriously. My goal is to give them the confidence to dream big and the skills to overcome any challenges they face, whether it’s under the basket or in the boardroom.” —C. Vivian Stringer With nothing more than true grit, hard work, and a dream, this coalminer’s daughter became one of the winningest and most beloved coaches in basketball, and has shown countless young women that the impossible is possible. This is her extraordinary life story. Crown • HC • 978-0-307-40609-5 * 304 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Paperback coming March 2009. Do not order before 3/3/2009. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-40627-9 304 pp. • $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7363-1 • 288 pp. $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Inspiration and Guidance

Boom! Talking About the Sixties: What Happened, How It Shaped Today, Lessons for Tomorrow by Tom Brokaw n Boom!, Tom Brokaw, one of America’s premier journalists and the acclaimed author of The Greatest Generation, gives us an epic portrait of another defining era in America: the tumultuous Sixties. The voices and stories of both famous people and ordinary citizens come together in this “virtual reunion” as Brokaw takes us on a memorable journey through a remarkable time, exploring how individuals and the national mood were affected by a controversial era and showing how the aftershocks of the Sixties continue to resound in our lives today. In the reflections of a generation, Brokaw also discovers lessons that might guide us in the years ahead. Race, politics, war, feminism, popular culture, and music are all delved into here. Brokaw explores how members of this generation have gone on to bring activism and a Sixties mindset into individual entrepreneurship, and we hear stories of how this formative decade has shaped our perspectives on business, the environment, politics, family, and our national existence. Remarkable in its insights, wonderfully written and reported, this revealing book lets us join in these frank conversations about America then, now, and tomorrow.

Now in Paperback

Random House • Tr. Pbk 978-0-8129-7511-6 • 688 pp. $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • Audio Edition • e-Book

Author website: www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/brokaw

“[Tom Brokaw] approaches this magnum opus with warmth, curiosity and conviction, the same attributes that worked so well for his Greatest Generation.” —The New York Times Also by Tom Brokaw

The Greatest Generation Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7529-1 • 464 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

The Greatest Generation Speaks Letters and Reflections Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7530-7 • 272 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

About the author Tom Brokaw, a native of South Dakota, graduated from the University of South Dakota with a degree in political science. He began his journalism career in Omaha and Atlanta before joining NBC News in 1966. Brokaw was the White House correspondent for NBC News during Watergate, and from 1976 to 1981 he anchored Today on NBC. He was the sole anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw from 1983 to 2005. Brokaw has won every major award in broadcast journalism, including two DuPonts, a Peabody Award, and several Emmys. He lives in New York and Montana. 50

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Jonathan Kozol

Author Available

Letters to a Young Teacher Now in Paperback

In this collection of his letters to Francesca, a first-year teacher in a Boston elementary school, Jonathan Kozol reflects on what he calls the “beautiful profession” she has chosen while he also tries to guide her through the unexpected challenges she encounters. Together they confront the disheartening resegregation of our schools and the obsessive testing mania that is turning many schools into little more than test-prep factories. But they also share the happiness of teaching children, celebrating the many moments of sheer jubilation in Francesca’s class as her students begin to flourish in the hands of their hardworking teacher. Letters to a Young Teacher is an enticing invitation to the classroom and bound to become a classic among educators. Johns Hopkins University has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program.

Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-39372-2 • 304 pp. $12.95/$14.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Shame of the Nation The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America “The nation needs to be confronted with the crime that we’re committing and the promises we are betraying. This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable.”—The Shame of the Nation Over the past several years, Jonathan Kozol has visited nearly sixty public schools. Virtually everywhere, he has found that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the fifteen years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In The Shame of the Nation, Kozol makes a powerful and persuasive argument that America needs to finally face the ongoing problems with its urban schools. Filled with the passionate voices of children and their teachers and some of the most revered and trusted leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation is a triumph of firsthand reporting. “Segregation is back, and only a writer of Jonathon Kozol’s wisdom and passion can assess its terrible price, one child at a time. It isn’t easy, but before we can craft a solution, we have to feel the shame.”—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4000-5245-5 • 432 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Rachel and Her Children Homeless Families in America Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-34589-9 • 320 pp. $13.95/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

History and Society

The Mercury 13

Author Available

The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight by Martha Ackmann

Foreword by Lynn Sherr In 1961, just as NASA launched its first man into space, a group of women underwent secret testing in the hopes of becoming America’s first female astronauts. They passed the same battery of tests as did the Mercury 7 astronauts, but they were summarily dismissed by the boys’ club at NASA and on Capitol Hill. A provocative tribute to these extraordinary women, The Mercury 13 is an unforgettable story of determination, resilience, and inextinguishable hope in the face of adversity. Eastern Kentucky University and University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, among other colleges, have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Program. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-75893-5 • 280 pp. $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

How to Win a Cosmic War

Author Available

God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror by Reza Aslan NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

Why do they hate us? An entire cottage industry has arisen to answer this question. But what no one has really figured out is, who exactly are they? How to Win a Cosmic War lays out, for the first time, a comprehensive definition of the movement behind and surrounding al-Qaeda and other like groups, which Aslan dubs Jihadism, and explores the war they are fighting—a Cosmic War—with no earthly agenda. This is a perfect book to help students engage in and explore cultural and religious ideologies that directly affect our world today. Do not order before 4/21/2009. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6672-8 • 336 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Audio Available • e-Book

e-Book

Super Crunchers Islam A Short History by Karen Armstrong

Author Available

Includes a new Epilogue by the author and a new pronunciation guide. In this compact volume, Armstrong offers a thoughtful and engaging history of Islam, currently the world’s fastestgrowing faith. Islam is an informative and provocative exploration of a history, a religion and a culture which will inspire and inform discussions of current and historical events. “A valuable corrective to the hostile caricatures of Islam that circulate in the English-speaking world.... Engaging and provocative.”—The New York Times Modern Library • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-6618-3 • 272 pp. $14.95/$21.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

For more titles by Karen Armstrong, visit www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart by Ian Ayres Now in paperback

Number crunching affects your life today in ways you might never imagine. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that know your tastes better than you do, to a physician’s diagnosis and even your child’s education, a new breed of decision makers—the “super crunchers”—is calling the shots. And these super crunchers are delivering staggeringly accurate results. In this book, economist Ian Ayres shows how today’s best organizations are analyzing massive databases at lightening speed to provide greater insights into human behavior. He shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate us. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38473-4 • 320 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Available • e-Book

Author AUTHORS AVAILABLE FOR CAMPUS VISITS Available Many of the authors whose books are listed in this catalog are available to speak on campus in association with a Freshman Reading Program. Please feel free to contact us at rhacademic@randomhouse.com to help arrange for a campus visit.

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Nine Lives Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum

Author Available

NEW

Originating in a heralded series of New Yorker articles, Nine Lives tells the story of New Orleans through the lives of nine characters over forty years, bracketed by two epic hurricanes. It brings back to life the doomed city, its wondrous subcultures, and the rich and colorful lives that played themselves out within its borders. The nine lives Baum portrays are windows into every strata: outsider artists and Mardi Gras Kings, jazzplaying coroners and transsexual barkeeps. These lives are possible only in New Orleans yet stand as portraits of the diversity that creates a city, and the unity and community that brings it together in the face of tragedy. Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-385-52319-6 • 288 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Nobodies

Author Available

Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy by John Bowe NEW

In Nobodies, John Bowe travels from the agricultural quagmires of Florida to the factories and brothels of Saipan, filing a first-hand report on the working conditions that our government and our corporations depend on but are trying their best to ignore. Bowe delivers a sobering look at the moral costs of the cheap goods—from orange juice to cut-rate fashions—to which our economy has grown so accustomed. This is rich and vibrant reporting—not a polemic but a presentation of things as they are on the underside of American commerce. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7184-2 • 336 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach

Author Available

In the tradition of Huxley, Orwell and Verne, Callenbach’s controversial and thought-provoking novel describes a future in which the West Coast states have seceded to form Ecotopia, their own environmentally-sound nation. “Callenbach gives us a vivid, comprehensive, positive vision of an ecologically sustainable world. Essential reading for all who care about the earth’s future.”—Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point Muskingum College has selected this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-34847-7 • 192 pp. $16.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Operation Homecoming

Author Available

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families Edited by Andrew Carroll The first book of its kind, Operation Homecoming is the result of a major initiative launched by the National Endowment for the Arts to bring distinguished writers to military bases and inspire U.S. Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen and their families to record their wartime experiences. Encouraged by such authors as Tom Clancy, Mark Bowden, Bobbie Ann Mason, Tobias Wolff, Jeff Shaara, and Marilyn Nelson, American military personnel and their loved ones wrote candidly about what they saw, heard, and felt while in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as on the home front. Taken together, these almost one hundred never-before-published eyewitness accounts, private journals, short stories, letters, and other personal writings become a dramatic narrative that shows the human side of warfare. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6562-2 • 416 pp. $26.95/$35.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.50 e-Book

History and Society

Factory Girls: From Village to

Farewell, My Subaru

City in a Changing China by Leslie Chang

An Epic Adventure in Local Living by Doug Fine

NEW

Former Wall Street Journal Beijing correspondent Leslie Chang investigates the lives of female Chinese migrant workers—an enormous and growing population upon whom much of the world’s economic growth depends. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago. “Chang’s deeply affecting book tells the story of the invisible foot soldiers who made China’s stirring rise possible.” —The New York Times Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-385-52017-1 • 256 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Author Available

Now in Paperback

Did you know it takes more water to sustain a vegetable crop in New Mexico for a year than it would to sustain a Bangladeshi village of 500? Did you know almost all components of a solarpowered water pump are made in Japan or Denmark? Did you know it takes 16,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly an organic banana from Honduras to Silver City, NM? Neither did Doug Fine. Farewell, My Subaru is the hilarious and inspirational account of a Long Island suburbanite’s attempt to go green— extreme green—in the middle of nowhere New Mexico. Villard Books • HC • 978-1-4000-6644-5 • 224 pp. $24.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 Paperback coming March 2009. Do not order before 3/24/2009. Villard • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7789-9 • 224 pp. $15.00/$17.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Working Life The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work by Joanne B. Ciulla Joanne Ciulla, a philosopher and academic (a Fellow at Harvard and Wharton, and a visiting scholar at Oxford), traces the philosophical and cultural conceptions of work and workers over the years. In this critique of work in America, Ciulla explores such topics as the relationships among various kinds of work, the roles of consumption and leisure, and beliefs about what constitutes meaningful work, a meaningful life, and happiness. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-609-80737-8 288 pp. • $13.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Author Available

Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country by Howard Fineman Journalist Howard Fineman illustrates that there are 13 main American arguments—and every debate we have had in the political arena from our founding to today has evolved from one of these 13 arguments. If you understand these arguments, you will understand every political, social, and cultural debate that arises in America today—what it means, where it comes from, and how we can form our own views of the issues.

Where the Girls Are

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6544-8 • 256 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

Growing Up Female with the Mass Media by Susan J. Douglas

Paperback coming March 2009. Do not order before 3/10/2009. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7635-9 • 336 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Where the Girls Are is a tour through the confusing and contradictory images of women in American pop culture. Douglas looks back at the television programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reports of the past four decades to reveal the decidedly mixed messages conveyed to girls and women coming of age in the United States. In a provocative analysis of our postwar cultural heritage, Douglas deconstructs these ambiguous messages and fathoms their influence on her own life and the lives of her contemporaries.

Audio Edition • e-Book

Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-2530-2 368 pp. • $16.00/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Thirteen American Arguments

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The Innocent Man

A Tribe Apart

by John Grisham

A Journey into the Heart of American Adolescence by Patricia Hersch

Now in Paperback

In 1982, a 21-year-old waitress in Ada, Oklahoma named Debra Sue Carter was raped and murdered, and for five years the police could not solve the crime. For reasons that were never clear, they suspected former local baseball star Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz, whom they wound up charging with capital murder. With the prosecution’s case built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts, Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence, and Williamson was sent to death row. This book is a disturbing account of the very real flaws in the criminal justice system and a must-read for those interested in law, justice, and bureaucracy.

Author Available

Author Patricia Hersch journeyed deep inside the hearts, minds, and lives of eight “average” teenagers from the suburban community of Reston, Virginia, spending three years immersed in the teenage subculture to show us how American youth have fashioned a culture of their own. As Hersch clearly shows in her compelling book, it is a culture of unequaled freedom and baffling complexity, with rules but no structure, values but no clear morality, codes but no consistency—in every sense, “a tribe apart.” This book is fascinating reading for all ages; it is particularly resonant, especially for college students who have only recently left the world Hersch describes.

Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Greensboro College.

Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-43594-1 • 416 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Dell • Mass Mkt. • 978-0-440-24383-0 • 448 pp. $7.99/$11.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Breach of Faith Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City by Jed Horne

Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-34091-5 • 400 pp. $16.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition

A Briefer History of Time

Author Available

by Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age

Stephen Hawking’s worldwide bestseller, A Brief History of Time, is a landmark volume in scientific writing. In an engaging voice, Hawking addresses and explains compelling, fascinating subjects such as: the nature of space and time; the role of God in creation; and the history and future of the universe. But it is also true that, in the years since its publication, readers have repeatedly told Professor Hawking of their great difficulty in understanding some of the book’s most important concepts. This difficulty is the origin of and the reason for A Briefer History of Time. Here, Hawking makes his masterpiece’s content even more accessible to readers, and updates it with the latest scientific observations and findings.

Author Available

Hurricane Katrina shredded one of the great cities of the South, and as levees failed and the federal relief effort proved lethally incompetent, a natural disaster became a man-made catastrophe. As an editor of New Orleans’ daily newspaper, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Times-Picayune, Jed Horne had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama of the city’s collapse into chaos and its continuing struggle to survive. “...[A] splendid mix of reporting and commentary.... Horne, with a sure grasp of local politics and culture, provides a [clear] sense of why things fell apart so completely in New Orleans.”—New York Times Book Review Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Louisiana State University. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7650-2 • 464 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Selected as 2006 Common Reading Title at University of California—Berkeley Bantam • HC • 978-0-553-80436-2 • 176 pp. $25.00/$35.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Audio Edition • e-Book

History and Society

Last Chance in Texas The Redemption of Criminal Youth by John Hubner

Author Available

The Much Too Promised Land

Author Available

America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller

Now in Paperback A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age

Now in Paperback

A powerful, bracing, and deeply spiritual look at intensely troubled youth, Last Chance In Texas gives a stirring account of the way one remarkable prison rehabilitates its inmates. “Their emotional stories—poignant, shocking, and sometimes difficult to read—are interlaced with fascinating insights into the criminal justice system. Readers of this eye-opening account will find themselves reflecting on their own attitudes about juvenile justice as it’s administered today.” —Booklist

Having participated in every peace negotiation between Israel and the Arabs from Bush 41 to Clinton to Bush 43, and having served as a key advisor to six Secretaries of State, Miller has a unique and incomparable understanding of the Arab-Israeli peace process and America’s place in it. Now, using his own experience and new exclusive interviews with world leaders, he reflects on America’s role in the historic peace process and offers practical solutions for the future. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38414-7 • 416 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-75998-7 • 304 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Inheriting the Holy Land

e-Book

Oil on the Brain Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank by Lisa Margonelli

Author Available

Oil on the Brain is a smart, surprisingly funny account of the oil industry—the people, economies, and pipelines that bring us petroleum, brilliantly illuminating a world we encounter every day. “I selected Oil on the Brain as the summer reading for the incoming Class of 2011 at Dartmouth. This informative and engaging multidisciplinary analysis of oil—where it comes from and what happens as it gets to the end user— will serve as the starting point for a discussion of our dependence on fossil fuel and some impacts of its extraction and use. She was great one-on-one, in the classroom with under-graduates, with faculty in an informal session and in her keynote speech that led off a conference on energy.”—Andrew J. Friedland, The Richard and Jane Pearl Professor in Environmental Studies Chair, Environmental Studies Program Dartmouth College Selected as part of the One Book, One College: Common Reading Program at Dartmouth College. Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-1697-4 • 352 pp. $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Author Available

An American’s Search for Hope in the Middle East by Jennifer Miller Writing with fierce honesty, Jennifer Miller has created an extraordinary synthesis of history, reportage, and coming-of-age memoir in Inheriting the Holy Land. Her groundbreaking perspective on the conflict is presented through interviews with young Israelis and Palestinians and conversations with some of the most influential officials involved in the Middle East, including Shimon Peres, Yasir Arafat, James Baker, Benjamin Netanyahu, Colin Powell, Ehud Barak, and Mahmoud Abbas. This book will open eyes, open hearts, and open minds. Dartmouth College has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-46925-0 • 320 pp. $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Counterfeiter How a Norwegian Jew survived the Holocaust by Moritz Nachtstern

The Day the Earth Caved In

Author Available

An American Mining Tragedy by Joan Quigley

NEW

A secret Nazi project, Operation Bernhard, was devised to destabilize the British and, later, American economies by creating millions of counterfeit banknotes. A team of typographers and printers was pulled out of the rows of prisoners on their way to the gas chambers to execute this plan. One of the prisoners, Moritz Nachtstern, describes in harrowing detail how he helped create exquisite forgeries while working as slowly as possible, both to frustrate the Nazi plan and to save his own life. Adding to Holocaust texts already in classroom use, this book will bring to light a new story of survival while highlighting universal themes of determination, creativity, and bravery in the face of colossal odds.

The dramatic story of a Pennsylvania mine ablaze for over 40 years, the small town it fractured, and the outrageous government neglect it revealed. In astonishing detail, award-winning journalist Joan Quigley shows us what happens to a small community when natural disaster strikes, and what it means to call a place home. “Quigley’s scene-by-scene narrative reads like fiction but inspires outrage in the muckraking tradition of Lincoln Steffens and Rachel Carson.”—The New York Times

Osprey • HC • 978-1-84603-289-9 • 288 pp. $24.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50

Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and

The Botany of Desire A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

Author Available

Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers’ genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires—sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control—with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind’s most basic yearnings, simultaneously questioning common assumptions about human needs, desires, and our relationship to nature. Assumption College and Bellevue Community College have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading Programs. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-76039-6 304 pp. • $13.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Teacher’s Guide • e-Book

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6180-8 • 272 pp. $25.95/$32.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Paperback coming April 2009. Do not order before 4/14/2009. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7130-9 • 288 pp. $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Author Available

Redemption of the Black Athlete by William C. Rhoden Provocative and controversial, Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States. Rhoden makes the cogent argument that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations—where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings—to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. “Few writers can match Bill Rhoden as a commentator on the vexing subject of race and sports in America.” —Arnold Rampersad, author of Jackie Robinson: A Biography Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-35314-6 304 pp. • $13.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Border Crosser: One Gringo’s Illicit Passage from Mexico into America by Johnny Rico NEW—Forthcoming June 2009

Posing as a journalist covering “that whole border issue,” Johnny Rico spends time with illegal immigrants, the Minutemen, the Tucson Border Patrol, and humanitarian groups. Through these contacts, he brings intrigue to the immigration debate in a quest to find the answer to his biggest question: Where is it the easiest to cross the border without getting in trouble? Do not order before 6/23/2009. Ballantine • HC • 978-0-345-50383-1 • 256 pp. $25.00/$28.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

History and Society

Kabul Beauty School An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson

Author Available

Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7673-1 • 320 pp. $14.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Author Available

The Tragedy at Virginia Tech by Lucinda Roy NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

No Right to Remain Silent offers a unique, inside perspective on the Virginia Tech tragedy that raises urgent questions about the safety of our undergraduate institutions and the responsibility of higher education. By reading about the laws, policies, behavior, and security protocols that need to be addressed, students will be more knowledgeable about matters that so directly and vastly impact their lives on campus. For anyone eager to gain insight and understanding into the shocking tragedy that gripped the Virginia Tech campus—and the world—in April 2007. Do not order before 3/31/2009. Harmony • HC • 978-0-307-40963-8 • 320 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Creating a Future for Earth by Robert Sardello

Author Available

NEW

Soon after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this wartorn nation. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, Rodriguez founded the Kabul Beauty School and welcomed the first class in 2003. She stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Kabul Beauty School is the remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who came together to learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

No Right to Remain Silent

Love and the Soul

With economies in peril, war in the Middle East, genocides, global warming, and a host of other grim phenomena, the world has never seemed so besieged. In this timely, thoughtful book, Robert Sardello explains how the soul can engage with the outer world to produce radical change. The key is to learn to identify with the plight of the Earth by developing a true sense of individual imagination in conjunction with the soul of the world. Love and the Soul helps readers imagine a revitalized Earth by exploring the significance of grieving, the transformative power of radical receptivity, the creative power of dreaming, and a new basis for community. North Atlantic Books • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-55643-753-3 400 pp. • $18.95/$22.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

No Pity People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement by Joseph P. Shapiro “Joseph Shapiro has crafted an interesting book from which everyone can benefit. For those wanting to understand the background against which the Americans with Disabilities Act was framed, this is an excellent primer. At the same time, seasoned veterans of the movement will find within a refreshing review of the personalities and activities of the Disabilities Civil Rights Movement. And for parents seeking a glimpse of possibilities for their child, this book cannot fail to inspire.”—I. King Jordan, president, Gallaudet University Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-2412-1 400 pp. • $16.95/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Heirloom Notes from an Accidental Tomato Farmer by Tim Stark

Author Available

NEW

Heirloom is not just a success story of a government consultant turned organic farmer, it is rich detail and rueful humor full of passionate affection for the land and people that Tim Stark brings to his wonderful book. And his stories of the triumphs (fleeting and infrequent) and tribulations (constant and numerous) of the farming life are ironically entertaining and instructive. In a time which, more than ever, we are concerned about what we eat and where it comes from, and about the support of local, sustainable, humanscale agriculture, this book could not be more pertinent—to our diets and to our American identity. Broadway • HC • 978-0-7679-2706-2 • 240 pp. $24.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12..00 Paperback coming July 2009. Do not order before 7/14/2009. Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-2707-9 • 240 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Great Derangement

Author Available

Now in Paperback

Author Matt Taibbi gets to the dark heart of the perilous state of the national psyche by audaciously inserting himself into four defining subcultures: The Military, where he joins a mission to nowhere in Baghdad; The System, where he follows the money-slicked path of legislation in Congress; The Resistance, where he doubles as chief public antagonist and undercover member of the 9/11 Truth Movement; and The Church, where he infiltrates a politically influential apocalyptic mega-ministry in Texas. Together these four interwoven adventures paint a portrait of a nation dangerously out of touch with reality but desperately searching for answers in all the wrong places. Spiegel & Grau • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-52062-1 • 352 pp. $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

www.spiegelandgrau.com/matttaibbi

Inside the Hottest Business, Media and Technology Success of Our Time Updated Edition for Google’s 10th Birthday by David Vise and Mark Malseed In The Google Story, Pulitzer Prizewinning journalists David Vise and Mark Malseed present the story behind one of the most remarkable and profitable business stories of our time —one that has had an incredible impact on the everyday lives of students everywhere. Based on scrupulous research and extensive access to Google insiders, the book follows the creation and growth of Google, detailing the business acumen and computer expertise that started the company on its groundbreaking course. It also analyzes the unorthodox approach that has enabled Google to challenge Microsoft’s dominance and shake up Wall Street. Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38366-9 • 336 pp. $14.00/$18.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion by Matt Taibbi

e-Book

The Google Story

Blood Done Sign My Name

Author Available

A True Story by Timothy B. Tyson Winner, Grawemeyer Award for Religion 2007 A 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Public Library Book to Remember

In the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird, Blood Done Sign My Name is a classic work of conscience. Tim Tyson’s riveting narrative of a fiery summer of racial conflict and one family’s struggle to build bridges in a time of destruction is a complex rendering of a true story, in which violence and faith, courage and evil, despair and hope all mingle to powerful effect. “Admirable and unexpected... a riveting story that will have his readers weeping with both laughter and sorrow.” —Chicago Tribune “Blood Done Sign My Name is a most important book and one of the most powerful meditations on race in America that I have ever read.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer Selected for Common Reading at Furman University, Queens University of Charlotte, University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, University of Wisconsin at Richland, University of Wisconsin’s College of Letters and Science, and Villanova University Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4000-8311-4 368 pp. • $14.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

History and Society

Covering The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights by Kenji Yoshino

Author Available

Winner, 2006 Myers Outstanding Book Award Winner, 2006 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award

In Covering, one of the country’s most brilliant young legal scholars fashions a new paradigm of civil rights. Drawing on his experiences as a gay JapaneseAmerican, Yale Law Professor Kenji Yoshino argues that the culturally sanctioned suppression of our authentic selves is a harm from which the law should sometimes protect us. More profoundly, he claims that law will be less important to the civil rights of the future than a common culture of authenticity. A moving memoir and a penetrating analysis of today’s cultural mores, Yoshino’s lucid prose is accessible and thought-provoking. “Yoshino argues convincingly in this book that covering is going to become more and more a civil rights issue as the nation (and the nation’s courts) struggle with an increasingly multiethnic America.”—San Francisco Chronicle Yale University ,University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Commonwealth University have adopted this book for their Freshman Year Reading program. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-76021-1 • 304 pp. $15.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Evolution for Everyone

Author Available

How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives by David Sloan Wilson Polls show that more than half of all Americans don't believe in evolution. And most people who do accept evolution don't appreciate its relevance to the world today. In lively prose, renowned evolutionist David Sloan Wilson explodes the great misconceptions that have made the theory of evolution seem daunting, irrelevant, or even dangerous. And he shows how evolutionary principles can be applied to almost every aspect of human life—from crime to laughter, from politics to pregnancy— providing a wealth of insights both intriguing and useful. Evolution for Everyone cuts through the rhetoric to present a simply revolutionary way of thinking about human beings and their place in the world. Delta • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-34092-2 • 400 pp. $15.00/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Medical Apartheid

2007 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Black Caucus of the American Library Association (2007 nonfiction award) PEN/Oakland Award 2007 Gustavus Myers Award

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. “This is an important book. The disgraceful history it details is a reminder that people in power have always been capable of exploiting those they regard ‘other’...”—The New York Times Harlem Moon • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-1547-2 • 512 pp. $15.95/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

www.medicalapartheid.com

The Lucifer Effect

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Author Available

Understanding How Good People Turn Evil by Philip Zimbardo Winner, the William James Book Award of the Society for General Psychology (Division 1 of the American Psychological Association) Now in Paperback

In The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo—creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment —tells the full story of this landmark study, in which a group of college-student volunteers was randomly divided into “guards” and “inmates” and then placed in a mock prison environment. Within a week the study was abandoned, as ordinary college students were transformed into either brutal, sadistic guards or emotionally broken prisoners. Illuminating the psychological causes behind such disturbing metamorphoses, Zimbardo enables us to better understand a variety of harrowing phenomena, from corporate malfeasance to organized genocide to the abuse and torture in Abu Ghraib. He presents an engrossing study of how situational forces and group dynamics can make monsters out of decent men and women. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7444-7 • 576 pp. $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Author Available

The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

www.zimbardo.com www.prisonexperiment.org

Basic Black

Author Available

The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life) by Cathie Black rom Cathie Black, former president of then-startup USA Today and current president of Hearst Magazines, comes Basic Black, an indispensable and intimate career guide for anyone trying to land her dream job, ace her interview, or nail her project. In the anecdotal, exuberant, down-to-earth voice that is her trademark, Cathie Black explains how she achieved “the 360° life”—a blend of professional accomplishment and personal contentment.

“Cathie Black is exactly the kind of mentor every woman needs: a talented executive at the top of her game willing to tell it like it really is. Imagine having a private lunch with one of the most powerful women in business, and then feast on her wonderful book. Basic Black is among the very best insider accounts of how to succeed as a leader.” —Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School professor and author of Confidence and America the Principled

NEW

Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk 978-0-307-35113-5 • 304 pp. $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

A Note from Cathie Black... Everyone owes it to herself or himself to figure out what you really enjoy doing. If you’re doing something you like, you’ll be better at it. Whether you’re just starting out, gaining experience or contemplating a mid-career change, it makes sense to step back and examine what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Not everyone has a passion, but everyone has things they like doing.

Important tips I’ve learned along the way: • • • • • • • •

Be who you are in whatever you do. Find something that excites you. The only person who can hold you back is you, so believe in yourself. Don’t take yourself too seriously. You are bound to make mistakes, but you’ll gain respect if you can laugh at yourself. Take credit when it is yours, because you will get the blame when things fail. Don’t personalize things that are not personal. The worst case scenario is rarely as bad as you think. Take calculated—not crazy—risks.

Life and College Guides

The Identity Code The 8 Essential Questions for Finding Your Purpose and Place in the World by Larry Ackerman

Author Available

Showing Up for Life Thoughts on the Gifts of a Lifetime by Bill Gates, Sr. and Mary Ann Mackin Foreword by Bill Gates

In this passionate and provocative book, Larry Ackerman shows students how to discover their true purpose in life by better understanding their own identities. Ackerman’s solution takes the form of eight penetrating questions, which allow students to carefully consider their own personalities, beliefs and goals. The questions are accompanied by engaging stories and concrete exercises to guide students in their introspection.

NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

Manchester College has adopted this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program.

Do not order before 4/28/2009.

Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6417-5 • 208 pp. $21.95/$29.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00

Through a wide-ranging arpeggio of stories and anecdotes, lessons and insights, inveterate do-gooder Bill Gates, Sr.—lawyer, activist, husband, father, philanthropist—conveys the values and principles he's learned in life, has instilled in his children, and which he now practices on a world stage as the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Doubleday • HC • 978-0-385-52701-9 • 208 pp. $23.95/$27.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

e-Book

Ask For It

Made to Stick Author Available

How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever Now in Paperback

Drawing from the stories of real women, the authors present an innovative approach to negotiation that explains how women can identify important goals, takes them step by step through the entire planning and preparation process, and offers strategic advice on the negotiation stage—with tips on managing emotions, confidence-building techniques, and the implementation of an effective collaborative style.

Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

Author Available

Updated with a New Chapter

by Chip Heath and Dan Heath Why do some ideas thrive while others die? And how do we improve the chances of worthy ideas? In Made to Stick, accomplished business educators Chip and Dan Heath tackle these vexing questions head-on. A new chapter includes advice for teachers on how to make their lessons stick with students. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6428-1 • 336 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 Teacher’s Guide • Audio Edition • e-Book

madetostick.com

Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38455-0 • 336 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Working Life The Promise and Betrayal of Modern Work by Joanne B. Ciulla In The Working Life, scholar and ethics professor Joanne Ciulla examines what “work” has come to mean in the new “Information Age”; how it has come to take a new, and all-encompassing, providence over the average American’s life; and what factors have transformed the relationship between the company and the employee from one of mutual loyalty and trust to one of insecurity, transience, and deceit. This thoughtful and provocative study evaluates the current state of affairs in corporate America. The Working Life is an informative and thought-provoking book for this country’s future workforce. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-609-80737-8 288 pp. • $13.95/$19.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

The Virginia Woolf Writers’ Workshop

Author Available

Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing by Danell Jones In this brilliantly imagined book, author Danell Jones mines the diaries, essays, correspondence, and fiction of a literary legend to create an unforgettable master class in the art of writing. Using Virginia Woolf’s own words, this inspiring, instructive, and entertaining guide will entertain and educate both the budding writer and the hard-working student while, at last, giving Woolf a classroom of her own. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38492-5 • 176 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business

In Pursuit of the Common Good

by Earvin “Magic” Johnson

Twenty-Five Years of Improving the World, One Bottle of Salad Dressing at a Time by Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner

NEW

As a young man, Earvin “Magic” Johnson admired his father and other small-town entrepreneurs who created jobs and served as leaders in his Midwestern community. He worked for them, watched them, and his interest in building communities through economic development grew even while his basketball career flourished. Earvin made the transition from great athlete to greater entrepreneur through hard work and by avidly pursuing opportunities. 32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business will inspire and enlighten readers who wish to make a similar impact with their careers and business endeavors. Crown • HC • 978-0-609-60828-9 • 320 pp. $25.95/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 e-Book

Improv Wisdom

Author Available

Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson Improv Wisdom shows how to apply the maxims of improvisational theater to real-life challenges—whether it’s dealing with a demanding boss, a tired child, or one of life’s unceasing surprises. Patricia Madson distills thirty years of experience into thirteen simple strategies, including “Say Yes,” “Start Anywhere,” “Face the Facts,” and “Make Mistakes, Please,” helping readers to loosen up, think on their feet, and take on everything life has to offer with skill, chutzpah, and a sense of humor. Harmony/Bell Tower • HC • 978-1-4000-8188-2 160 pp. • $16.00/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $8.00

The Hardball Handbook

Author Available

NEW

This picaresque saga is the story of Newman’s Own, a multi-million dollar company that has used its proceeds to establish eight camps around the world for children with cancer and other lifethreatening diseases. The authors describe how they hurdled obstacle after obstacle to create the first company to mass-market all-natural products, eliminating the chemicals, gums, and preservatives that existed in food at the time. Told in alternating voices, Paul Newman and A.E. Hotchner have written a zany tale that is a business model, an inspirational book, and just plain delightful reading for all students. Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-2997-4 • 272 pp. $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Success Advice for Achieving Your Goals from Remarkably Accomplished People Edited by Jena Pincott Success is a collection of insights from more than 400 remarkably successful people in all fields—including business, politics, entertainment, and the arts. The high achievers quoted in the book share one crucial belief: success is possible as long as there’s passion. Students who know where they want to be—but not how to get there—will find an ideal guide in Success. Random House Reference • HC • 978-0-375-42589-9 256 pp. • $14.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $7.50

How to Win at Life by Chris Matthews

e-Book

NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life

In The Hardball Handbook, Matthews focuses on four areas—friendship, rivalry, reputation, and success—and shows how your students can cull the best traits of others and apply them. Matthews takes students on a raucous road trip through political history and gleans the best—and worst—behaviors of some of the most notable characters. Written in the assertive, good-natured style that is Matthew’s trademark, each chapter has something to teach.

by Princeton Review For all students, college is a time of exploration, a time to find oneself and come to grips with one’s self-identity. The Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life addresses the specific challenges that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students face during their college years. Princeton Review • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-76623-7 416 pp. • $13.95/$17.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Do not order before 4/14/2009. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-7597-0 • 224 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Life and College Guides

Guide to College Majors, 2009 Edition by Princeton Review Choosing an undergraduate major is a difficult decision that impacts a student’s college years and future career path. Guide to College Majors is fully revised and updated to include the most current information possible on more than 350 of the most popular majors. Every profile of a major includes: • An overview of the major • Career options and salary potential information • Tips on the best high school prep work • Sample college curriculum for the major • Fun facts and interesting trivia Princeton Review • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-375-42903-3 848 pp. • $21.00/$23.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Dare to Prepare How to Win Before You Begin by Ronald M. Shapiro and Gregory Jordan

Author Available

Ron Shapiro will teach your students how to get long-term results in our short-term world using eight disciplines of preparation, including: understanding objectives, utilizing precedents to help understand circumstances and obstacles, knowing alternatives, and setting strategy after goals are assembled. This is a perfect book for teaching students the organizational and other life skills necessary to succeed in college and in life. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-45180-4 304 pp. • $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Doctor’s Complete College Girls’ Health Guide

Author Available

by Jennifer Wider, M.D. This frank and friendly guide contains complete and up-to-date health information on a wide range of pertinent health and social issues ranging from the most serious to the most minor—from substance abuse, depression and eating disorders to colds and the flu. University of Kentucky has adopted this title. Bantam • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-553-38342-3 • 368 pp. $15.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint

Author Available

How to Sell Yourself and Your Ideas by Christopher Witt When it comes to giving a speech or making a presentation, all too often we fall back on tools such as PowerPoint. Chris Witt has helped hundreds of executives take their game to another level by relying more on great speaking skills than tools such as PowerPoint. Through both contemporary and historical examples, Chris provides practical advice on how students can improve communication by understanding ideas, such as: understanding that they are the message, learning how to identify, influence and inspire, and knowing how to speak less and say more. Witt’s wisdom will enhance every student’s communication skills—a necessity for success in the classroom and business world. Crown • HC • 978-0-307-40770-2 • 256 pp. $21.95/$25.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $11.00 e-Book

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Ecotopia

Author Available

Updated Edition by Ernest Callenbach novel both timely and prophetic, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia is a hopeful antidote to the environmental concerns of today, set in an ecologically sound future society. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as the “newest name after Wells, Verne, Huxley, and Orwell,” Callenbach offers a visionary blueprint for the survival of our planet... and our future. Ecotopia was founded when northern California, Oregon, and Washington seceded from the Union to create a “stable-state” ecosystem: the perfect balance between human beings and the environment. Now, twenty years later, this isolated, mysterious nation is welcoming its first officially sanctioned American visitor: New York Times-Post reporter Will Weston. Skeptical yet curious about this green new world, Weston is determined to report his findings objectively. But from the start, he’s alternately impressed and unsettled by the laws governing Ecotopia’s earth-friendly agenda: energy-efficient “mini-cities” to eliminate urban sprawl, zero-tolerance pollution control, tree worship, ritual war games, and a woman-dominated government that has instituted such peaceful revolutions as the twenty-hour workweek and employee ownership of farms and businesses. His old beliefs challenged, his cynicism replaced by hope, Weston meets a sexually forthright Ecotopian woman and undertakes a relationship whose intensity will lead him to a critical choice between two worlds.

Bantam • Tr. Pbk 978-0-553-34847-7 • 192 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

“Callenbach gives us a vivid, comprehensive, positive vision of an ecologically sustainable world. Essential reading for all who care about the earth’s future.” —Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics and The Turning Point

Freshman Year Reading adoptions Muskingum College (OH)

About the Author Ernest Callenbach is also the author of Ecotopia Emerging, The Ecotopian Encyclopedia, and Publisher’s Lunch. He is the co-author of The Art of Friendship and Humphrey the Wayward Whale (with Christine Leefeldt) and of A Citizen Legislature (with Michael Phillips). He edits natural history books and the journal Film Quarterly at the University of California Press, and lectures on environmental topics all over the world.

Go Green

Planetwalker

Author Available

22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence. by John Francis, Ph.D. 2007 Gold Winner—Nautlilus Book Awards in the categories of Ecology/Environment and Independent Press hen the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years. It began as a silent environmental protest, but as a young AfricanAmerican man, walking across the country in the early 1970s, his idea of “the environment” expanded beyond concern about pollution and loss of habitat to include how we humans treat each other and how we can better communicate and work together to benefit the earth. Through his silence and walking, he learned to listen, and along the way earned college and graduate degrees in science and environmental studies. The United Nations appointed him goodwill ambassador to the world’s grassroots communities and the U.S. government recruited him to help address the Exxon Valdez disaster. Was he crazy? How did he live and earn all those degrees without talking? An amazing human-interest story with a vital message, Planetwalker is also a deeply personal and engaging coming-of-age odyssey—the positive experiences, the challenging times, the characters encountered, and the learning gained along the way.

National Geographic • HC 978-1-4262-0275-9 • 288pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Paperback coming April 2009. Do not order before 4/1/2009. National Geographic • Tr. Pbk 978-1-4262-0405-0 • 288 pp. $16.95/$20.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Selected for Common Reading http://www.planetwalk.org/

Marian University, WI University of South Carolina Upstate

About the Author John Francis, Ph.D. is the Founder and Director of Planetwalk, a nonprofit environmental education organization. He travels around the world speaking on pilgrimage and change, and on Planetlines, an environmental studies curriculum based on the walking pilgrimage, which he is developing for K-12 schools and universities. 66

www.FreshmanYearReading.com

Excerpt On January 17, 1971, I witnessed a crude oil spill of nearly a half-million gallons in the waters near the Golden Gate Bridge. The oil spill was my first experience with a major environmental insult. As I drove my car over the Golden Gate I felt some responsibility for the mess washing up onto the shore. It was nearly a year afterwards, still feeling this responsibility, that I gave up the use of motorized vehicles and started walking. My community took note. Then to end the almost constant bickering and arguments with my friends as to the question of whether one person walking could make a difference, I stopped speaking and spent a day in silence. My life altered. As that day of silence stretched out before me, I realized I had begun a pilgrimage, an outer and inner journey, walking and sailing around-the-world, as part of my education dedicated to raise environmental consciousness, and promote earth stewardship and world peace. ***** Leaving my Northern California home in 1983, I walked in silence across the United States. During my silent walk I studied the environment formally in institutions of higher learning and informally on the trails, roads, and highways that stretched throughout the villages, towns, and cities across America. When I started learning about the environment, it was the pollution of an oil spill that prompted me to action. Later I learned there were other issues besides pollution that demanded attention, like over population, and the loss of species and habitat. People talked and organizations worked on issues of conservation, restoration, preserving wilderness and now climate change. Yet, as important as those issues are, listening from my silence, environment for me became more. In this scenario people are part of the environment, not just caretakers, and we are at the core of our environmental troubles. Environment then, is also about human and civil rights, economic equity, gender equality, and from the standpoint of a pilgrim on the road, environment is about how we treat each other when we meet each other. ***** How I came to be on this journey, as well as the meaning of pilgrimage for me, and society, is the subject of this book. Of course, we are all pilgrims of one kind or another and I hope that my story will help you begin, complete, or enhance your own pilgrimage. I use the pages from my daily journals to look back. This is how it begins. Excerpted from PlanetWalker by John Francis Copyright © 2008 by John Francis. Excerpted by permission of National Geographic Society. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise for Planetwalker “It’s a remarkably insightful, poetic, and inspiring story, one that’s sure to make readers think more carefully about their own styles of living.” —Booklist “Planetwalker is an inspiring story that will make teens think and may help them to realize that global change is possible through individual action.” —School Library Journal

“First John Francis stopped riding in cars. Then he stopped talking. More than three decades, two continent-spanning hikes, and countless trail miles later, he’s still following his remarkable path of protest—only now he's not alone.” —Backpacker Magazine “Francis took himself all across America, across the world, and back. And he took himself to a place where one man could truly and remarkably make a mighty difference.” —American Way Magazine

Go Green

Green Volunteers

Ecological Intelligence

The World Guide to Voluntary Work in Nature Conservation (7th edition) by Fabio Ausenda

How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything by Daniel Goleman

NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

Green Volunteers lists over 200 projects worldwide for those who want to experience active conservation work as a volunteer. Projects are in a variety of habitats and countries, lasting from one week to one year or more. Projects involve volunteer work in wildlife rehabilitation centers, national parks, and protected areas, and general conservation work with a variety of animal species. The guide has 3 indexes set up by geographical area, animal species, and project cost, all to help prospective volunteers choose their favorite conservation project. Almost all the projects are open to anyone without previous conservation experience, and most projects do not have language requirements.

Bestselling author Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence) draws on cutting edge research into psychology, neuroeconomics and the science of the environment to show us a fresh way out of the largest crisis of our time— the environmental crisis that looms over us all. The book will explore the breathtaking new resources and information that are becoming available to help us make decisions about what to buy—what the author calls Radical Transparency— information that gives consumers full disclosure of a product's hidden impacts on the environment. By knowing where and how products are produced, shipped, distributed and packaged, we can better appreciate the environmental footprint a product or company has on the planet. New scanable information about the products we buy will allow a more powerful alignment of consumers’ values with their purchasing power, helping to change the way corporations create things.

Do not order before 3/31/2009. Universe • Tr. Pbk • 978-88-89060-14-8 • 256 pp. $16.95/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

The Blue Zones Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest By Dan Buettner In this expanded edition of the bestseller, longevity expert Dan Buettner draws on his research from extraordinarily long-lived communities —Blue Zones—around the globe to highlight the lifestyle, diet, outlook, and stress-coping practices that will add years to readers’ lives. Includes coverage of a new Blue Zone! National Geographic • HC • 978-1-4262-0274-2 304 pp. • $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 Paperback coming May 2009. Do not order before 5/19/2009. National Geographic • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4262-0400-5 304 pp. • $14.95/$17.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

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Author Available

Do not order before 4/21/2009. Doubleday • HC • 978-0-385-52782-8 • 288 pp. $26.00/$30.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.00 e-Book

You Can Save the Earth 7 Reasons Why & 7 Simple Ways —A Book to Benefit the Planet Edited by Hatherleigh Press You Can Save the Earth is the perfect book to pick up for your common reading program as today’s students will be the next guardians of the planet. While many books on sustainability and climate change focus only on disasters and what has gone wrong, You Can Save the Earth provides a roadmap for students with real-life, simple solutions to many of our global problems, and emphasizes steps that can be taken on an individual basis or local level to promote environmental awareness and conservation. Hatherleigh Press • HC • 978-1-57826-280-9 • 144 pp. $12.95/$14.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $6.50

Mindfully Green

Plenty

A Personal and Spiritual Guide to Whole Earth Thinking by Stephanie Kaza

Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon

There has been a flood of attention given to the small actions we can take to live in a more environmentally friendly way—from reducing water use to conserving electricity. In this unique book, Stephanie Kaza, professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Vermont, tells us how to affect real environmental change in the world. Influenced by her background in Buddhism, she offers a simply applied philosophy for engaging in environmental action in real, practical, and scientifically-based ways. Students will find new methods to evaluate their own relationship to the environment, think more deeply about their impact on the natural world, engage in environmental change, and make living green a personal practice.

The remarkable, amusing, and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment. Using this food-focused experiment as a way to think about globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and community, the authors reveal a meaningful way to relate to the very essence of human survival: the food we eat. “A funny, warm, and seductive account of how we might live better—better for this earth, better for the community, better for our bellies!”—Bill McKibben

Shambhala • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-59030-583-6 • 144 pp. $14.00/$16.50 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Author Available

One Book, One Community Choice in Alliance, OH Colorado Mountain College has selected this book for its Freshman Year Reading Program. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-34733-6 272 pp. • $13.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

www.100milediet.org/

The Green Book

Author Available

The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen “It’s exciting to have a book like this where you can flip through and go see what you can do, what you can do instead of what you should have done....” —Cameron Diaz With wit and authority, authors Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen provide hundreds of everyday environmental solutions, pinpointing the tiniest adjustments that have the biggest impact upon the health of our great green globe. Perfect for younger readers. With celebrity contributions from: Justin Timberlake, Tiki Barber, Tyra Banks, Owen Wilson, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Ellen DeGeneres, Will Ferrell, and many others. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-38135-4 224 pp. • $12.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

Also of Interest Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying

Author Available

by David Bach and Hillary Rosner Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-2973-8 • 192 pp. $14.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

Living Like Ed A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life by Ed Begley, Jr. Clarkson Potter • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-39643-3 • 240 pp. $18.00/$21.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Ready, Set, Green Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-Living

Author Available

by Graham Hill and Meaghan O'Neill Villard • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-50308-4 • 240 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Six Degrees Our Future on a Hotter Planet

e-Book

by Mark Lynas

For more details, visit http://www.readthegreenbook.com/

Now in paperback National Geographic • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4262-0385-5 336 pp. • $16.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

True Green: 100 Everyday Ways you Can Contribute to a Healthier Planet by Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin National Geographic • Tr. Pbk • 978-1-4262-0113-4 128 pp. • $19.95/$24.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

For additional titles, visit www.randomhouse.com/academic

Tornado Hunter: Getting Inside the Most Violent Storms on Earth By Tim Samaras and Stefan Bechtel Forthcoming May 2009. Do not order before 5/19/2009. National Geographic • HC • 978-1-4262-0302-2 • 272 pp. $24.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.00

Go Green

Money Matters Help Students Learn to Manage Their Money Now that students are off to their first year of college, here are some books to help them to develop the self-confidence and personal skills needed to successfully manage their money.

Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan

Fight For Your Money

by Suze Orman

NEW—Forthcoming March 2009

NEW

In Fight For Your Money, David Bach, financial guru and consumer advocate, has written the ultimate guide to making smarter financial decisions and protecting yourself from companies that want to separate you from your hardearned income. Starting with an A to Z list of items for which you are paying too much—your cell phone, cable bill, cars, credit cards, insurance, airfare, hotels and many more—Bach shows how you are being taken. Then the “Fight for Your Money Toolkit” shows you how to fight back, with sample letters, call scripts, and real-life stories of ordinary people who have fought back and won.

The credit crunch, the stock market freefall, the staggering toll of home foreclosures and job losses. The economic crisis that struck in 2008 has left no one untouched and everybody concerned. The nation’s go-to expert on financial matters, Suze Orman, believes that 2009 is a critical year for your money. There are safeguards to put in place, actions to take, costly mistakes to avoid, and even opportunities to be had, so that you are protected during the bad times and prepared to prosper when things take a turn for the better. Spiegel & Grau • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-385-53093-4 • 208 pp. $9.99/$11.99 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 Audio Edition • e-Book

by David Bach

Do not order before 3/3/2009. Broadway • HC • 978-0-7679-2984-4 • 448 pp. $26.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $13.00 e-Book

Also by Suze Orman

Women & Money

Also by David Bach

A groundbreaking new study by the best-selling author Suze Orman probes the complex relationship between women and money, addressing the impact of psychological practices and financial behavior on women's finances and offering practical solutions to create a fundamental change in how women handle their money.

The Automatic Millionaire

Spiegel & Grau • HC • 978-0-385-51931-1 • 272 pp. $24.95/$30.00 Can •. Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

In The Automatic Millionaire popular financial writer David Bach champions automated transactions and a slow, gradual approach to wealth accumulation. Bach suggests making use of automated payroll deductions for pre-tax retirement funds—hence the book’s title—and accelerated mortgage payments as ways to ensure a wealthy retirement, even for those without extraordinary incomes. For millions of Americans discouraged by the economy, and for the 97 million Americans who haven’t yet saved a dollar for their future, The Automatic Millionaire will be a life-changing book. Broadway • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-7679-2382-8 • 272 pp. $12.95/NCR • Exam Copy: $3.00

For more books by Suze Orman, visit www.randomhouse.com/academic 70

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For more books by David Bach, visit www.randomhouse.com/academic

The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Financial Life

Author Available

by Karen Blumenthal NEW—Forthcoming April 2009

For anyone on his or her financial own, or about to be—students still in school or recent graduates about to start a job, this is a valuable guide to starting on the right path for life-long, responsible money management and financial freedom. Do not order before 4/7/2009. Three Rivers Press • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-307-40708-5 336 pp. • $14.95/$16.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

Fooled by Randomness The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill—the world of business—Fooled By Randomness is an irreverent, iconoclastic, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in all of our lives. Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6793-0 • 368 pp. $27.00/$32.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.75 e-Book

Also by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Black Swan Adventure Capitalist by Jim Rogers Former Wall Streeter Rogers continues the travelogue-cum-financial-musings he pioneered in Investment Biker in this tale of globe trotting and reflection. Adventure Capitalist follows Rogers as he and his fiancée travel for three years, visiting 116 countries and covering 152,000 miles in a revamped Mercedes. Random House • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-8129-6726-5 392 pp. • $16.00/$19.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00 e-Book

The Smart Cookies’ Guide to Making More Dough

Author Available

How Five Young Women Got Smart, Formed a Money Group, and Took Control of Their Finances by The Smart Cookies and Jennifer Barrett In this fresh, accessible guide, five dynamic young women describe how they formed a money club with the intent of developing strategies for getting out of debt and improving their individual financial situation, sharing their proven recipe for success with their personal stories, easy-to-follow steps, and strategies for meeting any goal, from eliminating debt to becoming a smart spender. Delacorte Press • HC • 978-0-385-34244-5 • 256 pp. $24.00/NCR • Exam Copy: $12.00 e-Book

Author Available

The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Random House • HC • 978-1-4000-6351-2 • 400 pp. $27.00/$32.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $13.75 e-Book

Also available: If You Had a Million Dollars . . . Questions About Your Money and Your Life by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell NEW Villard • HC • 978-0-345-50495-1 • 144 pp. $12.95/$14.95 Can. • Exam Copy: $6.50

Stay Rich for Life

Author Available

by Ed Slott How to Have More Money Today, More Money for Retirement, and More Money for your Loved Ones NEW Ballantine • HC • 978-0-345-51442-4 • 288 pp. $25.00/$28.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $12.50 e-Book

Stay Rich For Life Workbook

Author Available

by Ed Slott NEW Ballantine • Tr. Pbk • 978-0-345-51443-1 • 256 pp. $15.00/$17.00 Can. • Exam Copy: $3.00

For more Money Matters titles visit www.randomhouse.com/academic

Money Matters

Author/Title Index 32 Ways to Be a Champion in Business......63

Bowe, John ................................................53

Ebadi, Shirin ..............................................23

Ackerman, Laurence ..................................62

Boy in the Striped Pajamas ........................35

Ecological Intelligence ................................68

Ackmann, Martha ......................................52

Boyne, John ..............................................35

Ecotopia ..............................................53, 65

Adventure Capitalist ..................................71

Bradbury, Ray ............................................36

Education of a Wandering Man ..................25

Age of the Conglomerates, The ..................41

Bradshaw, John..........................................45

Enchantress of Florence, The......................42

Albom, Mitch ..............................................47

Breach of Faith ..........................................55

End of the Jews, The ..................................39

All Quiet on the Western Front ....................42

Briefer History of Time, A............................55

Enrique’s Journey ......................................12

All That I Have ............................................37

Brokaw, Tom ..............................................50

Erlbaum, Janice..........................................23

Alsamari, Lewis ..........................................21

Bronson, Po ................................................47

Escape from Saddam ................................21

American Chica ..........................................21

Brothers ....................................................36

Evolution for Everyone ................................60

American Widow ........................................29

Brown, Harriet ............................................22

Exactly As I Am ..........................................27

American Youth ..........................................38

Buettner, Dan ............................................68

Factory Girls ..............................................54

Angelou, Maya............................................21

Cahill, Thomas............................................22

Fahrenheit 451 ..........................................36

Angry Black White Boy ..............................39

Cahill, Tierney ............................................22

Family Secrets............................................45

Arana, Marie ..............................................21

Callenbach, Ernest................................53, 65

Farewell Shanghai ......................................44

Armstrong, Karen ......................................52

Campbell, Donovan ......................................3

Farewell, My Subaru ..................................54

Ask For It....................................................62

Canedy, Dana ............................................23

Feed Me! ..................................................22

Aslan, Reza ................................................52

Carroll, Andrew, ed. ....................................53

Fight For Your Money..................................70

Audacity of Hope, The ................................20

Castillo, Ana ..............................................34

Fine, Doug ..................................................54

Ausenda, Fabio ..........................................68

Chabon, Michael ........................................36

Fineman, Howard ......................................54

Autobiography of Malcolm X ......................26

Chang, Leslie T. ........................................54

Finn............................................................36

Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The ..37

Character Is Destiny ..................................49

Fishburne, Rodes........................................37

Automatic Millionaire , The ........................70

Chen, Da ....................................................36

Fooled by Randomness ..............................71

Ayres, Ian ..................................................52

Chodron, Pema ..........................................47

Forbidden Bread ........................................23

Babcock, Linda and Sara Laschever ..........62

Ciulla, Joanne B. ..................................54, 62

Forty Million Dollar Slaves ..........................57

Bach, David ..........................................69, 70

Clinch, Jon ................................................36

Francis, John..............................................66

Barack Obama for Beginners......................20

Coles, Robert..............................................47

Freedom Writers Diary, The ........................47

Bashir, Halima ............................................21

Coming of Age in Mississippi......................26

Freedom Writers, The ................................47

Basic Black ................................................61

Counterfeiter ..............................................57

Freeman, Castle Jr. ....................................37

Baum, Dan ................................................53

Covering ....................................................60

Funny in Farsi ..............................................4

Beaufort ....................................................39

Creating Love ............................................45

Gaines, Ernest J. ......................................37

Begley, Ed Jr...............................................69

Crystal Clear ..............................................25

Gandhi, Mahatma ......................................48

Bernstein, Harry......................................2, 22

Dare to Prepare ..........................................64

Gardens of Water........................................37

Black Swan, The ........................................71

Dau, John Bul ..............................................1

Gates, Bill Sr...............................................62

Black Wave ................................................28

Day the Earth Caved In, The ......................57

Black, Cathie ..............................................61

Debeljak, Erica Johnson ............................23

Gay and Lesbian Guide to College Life, The ........................................................63

Block, Stefan Merrill ..................................36

Doctorow, E.L. ..........................................36

Gebhard, Nathan ........................................48

Blood Done Sign My Name ........................59

Gifted ........................................................39

Blue Zones, The..........................................68

Doctor’s Complete College Girls’ Health Guide, The..............................................64

Blumenthal, Karen ......................................71

Douglas, Susan J. ......................................54

Girlbomb ....................................................23

Bombingham..............................................38

Dream, The ................................................22

Go Green, Live Rich ....................................69

Bonesetter’s Daughter, The ........................44

Dreamers of the Day ..................................43

Goat ..........................................................25

Book of Daniel, The ....................................36

Dreams from My Father..............................20

God Grew Tired of Us....................................1

Book Thief, The ..........................................35

Drew, Alan..................................................37

God of Small Things, The............................43

Boom! ......................................................50

Driving Sideways........................................42

Going to See the Elephant ..........................37

Border Crosser ..........................................57

Dumas, Firoozeh ......................................4, 5

Golden Willow, The ....................................22

Botany of Desire, The ................................57

Eaves of Heaven, The ................................27

Goleman, Daniel ........................................68

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Girl in the Red Coat, The ............................25

Author/Title Index Google Story, The ......................................59

Into the Forest ............................................38

Make the Impossible Possible ....................49

Great Derangement, The ............................59

Invisible Wall, The ........................................2

Malcolm X ..................................................26

Greatest Generation Speaks, The................50

Iran Awakening ..........................................23

Mam, Somaly ............................................26

Greatest Generation, The ............................50

Ishmael ......................................................41

Mansbach, Adam........................................39

Greatest Gift, The........................................25

Islam ..........................................................52

Map of Home, A..........................................38

Green Book, The ........................................69

Jarrar, Randa..............................................38

March, The ................................................37

Green Volunteers ........................................68

Johnson, Earvin “Magic” ............................63

Margonelli, Lisa ..........................................56

Greenberg, Michael ......................................6

Joker One ....................................................3

Maskalyk, James, Dr. ................................26

Grisham, John ............................................55

Jones, Danell..............................................62

Matar, Hisham ............................................40

Grooms, Anthony ........................................38

Jones, Lloyd ..............................................30

Matthews, Chris ........................................63

Guardians, The ..........................................34

Journal for Jordan, A ..................................23

Matthiessen, Peter......................................40

Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, The............................................44

Journey from the Land of No......................24

McCain, John ............................................49

Kabul Beauty School ..................................58

McCarthy, Susan Carol ........................32, 33

Guide to College Majors, 2009 Edition ........64

Kalish, Mildred Armstrong ..........................24

McFarlane, Evelyn ......................................71

Hakakian, Roya ..........................................24

Kaza, Stephanie..........................................69

McKay, Kim ................................................69

Hands of My Father ....................................29

Kellogg, Matt and Jillian Quint, eds. ..........25

Medical Apartheid ......................................60

Hardball Handbook, The..............................63

Khamisa, Azim............................................48

Mercury 13, The ........................................52

Hari, Daoud ................................................24

Kidder, Tracy ............................................8, 9

Miller, Aaron David......................................56

Hatherleigh Press, ed. ................................68

Kneale, Matthew ........................................38

Miller, Jennifer............................................56

Have You Found Her ..................................23

Kozol, Jonathan ..........................................51

Mindfully Green ..........................................69

Hawking, Stephen ......................................55

Lalwani, Nikita............................................39

Mister Pip ..................................................30

Heath, Chip ................................................62

LaMarche, Phil ..........................................38

Moody, Anne ..............................................26

Heavy Metal Islam ......................................26

L’Amour, Louis ............................................25

Moon, Elizabeth ..........................................40

Hegland, Jean ............................................38

Land, Brad..................................................25

Mountains Beyond Mountains ......................8

Heinrichs, Jay ............................................48

Last Chance in Texas..................................56

Mourning, Alonzo........................................46

Heirloom ....................................................59

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace ..................29

Ms. Cahill for Congress ..............................22

Hersch, Patricia ..........................................55

Last Town on Earth, The ............................40

Much Too Promised Land, The....................56

Hess, Elizabeth ..........................................24

Laughing Without an Accent ........................5

Mullen, Thomas ..........................................40

High ..........................................................27

Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands ..................32

My Detachment ............................................9

Hill, Graham ..............................................69

Le Breton, Binka ........................................25

My Ishmael ................................................41

Homecoming ..............................................45

Le Marque, Eric ..........................................25

My Jim ......................................................42

Homer ........................................................38

Leshem, Ron ..............................................39

Nachtstern, Moritz ......................................57

Homespun..................................................44

Letter to My Daughter ................................21

Nafisi, Azar ..........................................10, 11

Hope in the Unseen, A ................................14

Letters to a Young Teacher ........................51

Nazario, Sonia ............................................12

Horne, Jed..................................................55

Levine, Mark ..............................................26

Neer, Bob....................................................20

How to Win a Cosmic War ..........................52

Light of Conscience, The ............................49

Nevins, Thomas ..........................................41

Hubner, John ..............................................56

Ligocka, Roma............................................25

Newman, Paul ............................................63

Hunger of Memory ....................................28

Little Heathens ..........................................24

Nim Chimpsky ............................................24

Hurry Down Sunshine ..................................6

Lives of Moral Leadership ..........................47

Nine Lives ..................................................53

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings ..............21

Living Like Ed ............................................69

No Pity ......................................................58

Identity Code, The ......................................62

Look Me in the Eye ....................................18

No Right to Remain Silent ..........................58

If You Had a Million Dollars . . . ..................71

Love and the Soul ......................................58

Nobodies ....................................................53

Improv Wisdom ..........................................63

Lucifer Effect, The ......................................60

O’Brien, Tim ..............................................41

In Pursuit of the Common Good..................63

Lynas, Mark................................................69

Obama, Barack ..........................................20

In the Country of Men ................................40

Made to Stick ............................................62

O’Dea, Brian ..............................................27

Inheriting the Holy Land..............................56

Madson, Patricia Ryan ................................63

Odyssey, The ..............................................38

Innocent Man, The......................................55

Maguire, Elizabeth......................................39

Oil on the Brain ..........................................56

Author/Title Index

Author/Title Index Open Door, The ..........................................39

Sayrafiezadeh, Said ....................................28

Thank You for Arguing ................................48

Operation Homecoming ..............................53

Schroeder, Alice..........................................28

Things I’ve Been Silent About, The..............11

Orman, Suze ..............................................70

Seal, Mark..................................................28

Things They Carried, The ............................41

Outcasts United ..........................................16

Secrets of the Bulletproof Spirit, The ..........48

Thirteen American Arguments, The ............54

Pemper, Mietek ..........................................27

See, Lisa ....................................................43

Thread of Grace, A......................................43

Pham, Andrew X. ........................................27

Shadow Country ........................................40

Tornado Hunter ..........................................69

Pincott, Jena ..............................................63

Shaffer, Mary Ann ......................................44

Torres, Alissa ..............................................29

Places That Scare You, The ........................47

Shame of the Nation, The ..........................51

Tram, Dang Thuy ........................................29

Planetwalker ..............................................66

Shanghai Girls ............................................43

Translator, The ............................................24

Plenty ........................................................69

Shapiro, Joseph P. ....................................58

Tribe Apart, A..............................................55

Poet of Baghdad, The ................................29

Shapiro, Ronald M. ....................................64

True Fires ..................................................33

Pollan, Michael ..........................................57

Sher, Barbara ............................................49

True Green..................................................69

Pretty Is What Changes ..............................27

Shore, Bill ..................................................49

Tuesdays with Morrie ................................47

Princeton Review..................................63, 64

Showing Up for Life....................................62

Queller, Jessica ..........................................27

Silverwood, John ........................................28

Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers ......................25

Quigley, Joan..............................................57

Six Degrees................................................69

Tyson, Timothy B. ......................................59

Quinn, Daniel..............................................41

Six Months in Sudan ..................................26

Uhlberg, Myron ..........................................29

Rachel and Her Children ............................51

Slaughterhouse-Five ..................................44

Vachani, Nilita ............................................44

Ragtime ....................................................37

Slott, Ed......................................................71

Virginia Woolf Writers’ Workshop, The ........62

Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer ..............17

Vise, David and Mark Malseed....................59

Rawles, Nancy............................................42

Smart Cookies’ Guide to Making More Dough, The ............................................71

Reading Lolita in Tehran ............................10

Smart Cookies, The ....................................71

Wagenstein, Angel ......................................44

Ready, Set, Green ......................................69

Smith, Alisa and J.B. Mackinnon ................69

Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint ............64

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan................43

Wall Street Journal. Guide to Starting Your Financial Life, The ..........................71

Reclaiming Virtue........................................45

Snowball, The ............................................28

Washington, Harriet A. ..............................60

Remarque, Erich Maria ..............................42

Souvenir, The..............................................29

Way to God, The ........................................48

Resilience ..................................................46

Sparrow, The ..............................................43

What Should I Do with My Life? ................47

Rhoden, William C. ....................................57

Speed of Dark, The ....................................40

When Skateboards Will Be Free..................28

Rico, Johnny ..............................................57

St. John, Warren ..................................16, 17

When We Were Romans ............................38

Riley, Jess ..................................................42

Standing Tall ..............................................49

Where the Girls Are ....................................54

Road of Lost Innocence, The ......................26

Stark, Tim ..................................................59

Wider, Jennifer MD ....................................64

Road to Rescue, The ..................................27

Stay Rich For Life Workbook ......................71

Wildflower ..................................................28

Roadtrip Nation ..........................................48

Stay Rich for Life........................................71

Wilson, David Sloan....................................60

Robinson, Shaun ........................................27

Steinman, Louise........................................29

Wishcraft....................................................49

Robison, John Elder....................................18

Story of Forgetting, The ..............................36

Witt, Christopher ........................................64

Rodriguez, Deborah ....................................58

Strength in What Remains ............................9

Women & Money ........................................70

Rodriguez, Richard ....................................28

Strickland, Bill ............................................49

Wonder Boys ..............................................36

Rogers, Elizabeth........................................69

Stringer, C. Vivian ......................................49

Working Life, The..................................54, 62

Rogers, Jim ................................................71

Success......................................................63

Yoshino, Kenji ............................................60

Roy, Arundhati ............................................43

Super Crunchers ......................................52

You Can Save the Earth ..............................68

Roy, Lucinda ..............................................58

Suskind, Ron ..............................................14

Zimbardo, Philip ........................................60

Rushdie, Salman ........................................42

Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan..................70

Zusak, Markus............................................35

Russell, Mary Doria ....................................43

Taibbi, Matt ................................................59

Saint on Death Row, A ................................22

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas ..............................71

Samaras, Tim ............................................69

Tan, Amy ....................................................44

Sardello, Robert..........................................58

Tatchell, Jo ................................................29

Satanic Verses, The ....................................42

Tears of the Desert ....................................21

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Vonnegut, Kurt............................................44

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