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Italo Svevo by Stephen Alcorn, 1984.


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Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal (2002). Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion. London; Sterling, Va., Pluto Press.
Until the emergence of bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, Hizbu'llah was probably the most reviled Islamic organization in the world, blamed for everything from kidnapping Americans in the 1980s to the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina. This, the first book-length treatment of Hizbu'llah, tells a somewhat different story of the radical political party. It is something of an against-all-odds tale: a radical political group comprising a religious minority (Shi'a Muslims) manages to drive an occupying force of overwhelming military superiority (the Israelis) out of southern Lebanon. It's the story you are not likely to hear in the West, and Ghorayeb's analysis of Hizbu'llah's political and religious development, and its current structure, is fascinating.

Sabin, Roger (1996). Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels
. London, Phaidon Press.
Arts journalist Sabine provides a British eye view of the origins of the comic strip and the comics industry with this heavily illustrated, comprehensive, brisk and lucidly written historical overview. Eschewing the usual antecedents (for example, the Bayeux Tapestry in Normandy), he starts with 17th-century English execution broadsheets (mass-produced woodcuts of public beheadings and the like) and the satirical engravings of Hogarth before locating the beginnings of the modern comic strip in such illustrated 19th-century British humor magazines as Punch. He is particularly enlightening when discussing the little-known, superbly illustrated Ally Sloper's Half Holiday from 1884, both a magazine and cartoon character that predate Richard Outcault's 1896 strip The Yellow Kid, usually credited with launching the modern American strip. Although there's much about British strips and publishers that will be new to American readers, Sabine does not slight U.S. comics, and his binational discussions of the industry's notoriously exploitative working conditions and women's comics is invaluable. This excellent treatment ends with a look at new alternative artists, the impact of Japanese comics (or manga) and animation (anime) and the current transformation of the comics market and comics distribution.

Sacco, Joe (2009). The Fixer and Other Stories
. Montréal; New York, N.Y., Drawn & Quarterly.
A new softcover that collects Sacco's landmark short stories on the Bosnian War that previously comprised the hardcover editions of The Fixer and War's End.

Sacco, Joe (2009). Footnotes in Gaza
. New York, Metropolitan Books.
Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, has long been a notorious flashpoint in the bitter Middle East conflict. Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah―cold-blooded massacre or dreadful mistake―reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war.

In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in the daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. As in Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, his unique visual journalism renders a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, Footnotes in Gaza―Sacco's most ambitious work to date―transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.

Sacco, Joe (2012). Journalism
. New York, Metropolitan Books.
Over the past decade, Joe Sacco, "our moral draughtsman" (Christopher Hitchens), has increasingly turned to short-form comics journalism to report from the sidelines of wars around the world. Collected here for the first time, Sacco's darkly funny, revealing reportage confirms his standing as one of the foremost war correspondents working today. Deeply humane, disturbing portraits of war, oppression, and sectarian tension… Sacco's work is a reminder of the hidebound nature of much international reporting, and of the potential for creative disruption in the field.

Sacco, Joe, Edward W. Said, et al. (2001). Palestine
. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphic Books.
Based on several months of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s (where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews), Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, who has often been called the first comic book journalist.

Sacco's insightful reportage takes place at the front lines, where busy marketplaces are spoiled by shootings and tear gas, soldiers beat civilians with reckless abandon, and roadblocks go up before reporters can leave. Sacco interviewed and encountered prisoners, refugees, protesters, wounded children, farmers who had lost their land, and families who had been torn apart by the Palestinian conflict.

Sacco, Joe (2000). Safe Area Goražde
. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics Books.
Safe Area Gorazde is Joe Sacco's 240-page opus about the war in the former Yugoslavia. Sacco spent four months in Bosnia in 1995-1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stories rarely found in conventional news coverage. The book focuses on the Muslim enclave of Gorazde, which was besieged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. Sacco spent four weeks in Gorazde, entering before the Muslims trapped inside had access to the outside world, electricity or running water.

Sacco, Nicola, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, et al. (1997). The Letters of Sacco and Vanzetti
. New York, Penguin Books.
This is the most important testament to a now largely forgotten tragedy of American politics. Sacco and Vanzetti were essentially convicted and executed for being unpatriotic foreigners, regardless of the crime they were accused of [for which no specific evidence was presented against them]. They waited for seven years in prison before their execution, during which time they wrote these letters. Their English, though it improved through the years, was never fully accomplished. But the results are extraordinary. The letters express ideas about life, society, faith, politics and human feelings, and the often clumsy and misused language actually makes the expression more lucid and more beautiful. The path of trial, appeal and final sentencing runs through clearly, and as the end approaches the letters are inexpressibly heartbreaking, as when Sacco asks his wife to tell his daughter "that I love her so much, and again, so much." This book has been in and out of print since the late 1920's, and is often unavailable in libraries because patrons steal it. It is a blessing that Penguin has brought it back.

Sachs, Jeffrey (2005). The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time
. New York, Penguin Press.
Marrying vivid eyewitness storytelling with concrete analysis, Jeffrey Sachs provides a conceptual map of the world economy and the different categories into which countries fall, explaining why wealth and poverty have diverged and evolved as they have and why the poorest nations have been so markedly unable to escape the cruel vortex of poverty. Sachs plunges into the messy realities of economies, leading his readers through his work in Bolivia, Poland, Russia, India, China, and Africa, and concludes with an integrated set of solutions to the tangled economic, political, environmental, and social issues that most frequently hold societies back.

Sackheim, Eric, editor; Jonathan Shahn, illus. (2003). The Blues Line: A Collection of Blues Lyrics
. Boston, MA, Da Capo Press.
Transcribed from 78 rpm recordings and preserved here long after many of the records have disappeared, this collection of nearly three hundred songs from more than one hundred singers celebrates the Diversity of feeling and form that defines the blues. Ma Rainey, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, Leadbelly, Memphis Minnie, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters are represented with their lesser-known contemporaries—Barefoot Bill, Barbecue Bob, Bumble Bee Slim, and Black Ivory King. This complete anthology also features lyrics by Blind Blake, Victoria Spivey, Blind Willie Johnson, 'Funny Paper' Smith, Texas Alexander, Lightning Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Ma Yancey, King Solomon Hill, Skip James, Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, Son House, Willie Brown, Mississippi John Hurt, Bukka White, Furry Lewis, Sleepy John Estes, Rev. Gary Davis, Roosevelt Sykes, Peetie Wheatstraw, Sonny Boy Williamson, Kokomo Arnold, Tampa Red, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker, Charlie Patton, and more than 100 others. Dozens of illustrations are included. Originally published in 1969.

Saffron, Inga (2002). Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy
. New York, Broadway Books.
A fascinating journey into the hidden history, culture, and commerce of caviar. Once merely a substitute for meat during religious fasts, today caviar is an icon of luxury and wealth. In Caviar, Inga Saffron tells, for the first time, the story of how the virgin eggs of the prehistoric-looking, bottom-feeding sturgeon were transformed from a humble peasant food into a czar's delicacy-and ultimately a coveted status symbol for a rising middle class. She explores how the glistening black eggs became the epitome of culinary extravagance, while taking us on a revealing excursion into the murky world of caviar on the banks of the Volga River and Caspian Sea in Russia, the Elbe in Europe, and the Hudson and Delaware Rivers in the United States. At the same time, Saffron describes the complex industry caviar has spawned, illustrating the unfortunate consequences of mass marketing such a rare commodity.

Safranski, Rüdiger (2002). Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography
. New York, W.W. Norton.
Biographical details are sparing: neither Nietzsche's birth nor death is described, and there are few juicy bits about his passion for Lou Salomé. Most of the book is a reading of Nietzsche's developing ideas, beginning with his autobiographical sketches in high school and continuing chronologically from his early attachment to Schopenhauer through his hopes for and disappointment in Wagner's music drama, such great achievements as Daybreak and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and his last works before his descent into madness. To close, there is a chapter on the different ways Nietzsche influenced 20th-century artists, the Nazis, Heidegger, Foucault, Rorty and others. Throughout, certain themes recur, elucidated sympathetically but with "ironic reserve," including the death of God, the divided self, the will to power, eternal recurrence, philosophy as art and truth as power play.

Said, Edward W. (1979). Orientalism
. New York, Vintage Books.
Edward Said's evaluation and critique of the set of beliefs known as Orientalism forms an important background for postcolonial studies. His work highlights the inaccuracies of a wide variety of assumptions as it questions various paradigms of thought which are accepted on individual, academic, and political levels.

Said, Edward W. (1994). Culture and Imperialism
. New York, Vintage Books.
A landmark work from the intellectually auspicious author of Orientalism that explores the long-overlooked connections between the Western imperial endeavor and the culture that both reflected and reinforced it. "Said is a brilliant . . . scholar, aesthete and political activist." - Washington Post

Said, Edward W. (1994). Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures
. New York, Pantheon Books.
In this brief lecture series, Said goes beyond speaking up for a cause or a social group to defend the act of speaking up itself. Positioning himself against the "expert" who provides "'objective' advice for pay" (to a government, corporation, or the media), Said articulates a vision of the intellectual "as exile and marginal, as amateur, and as the author of a language that tries to speak truth to power" by "bearing witness" to forgotten, ignored, or suppressed stories. Appreciating the postmodern anxieties that may arise from his bold claims about universal moral principles and the neat separation of truth from power, Said honestly confronts the problem of objectivity. He illustrates his idea of the intellectual with historical, literary, and personal examples, candidly confiding his heroes and villains, and revealing the beliefs and passions behind his own life's work.

Said, Edward W. (1999). Out of Place: A Memoir
. New York, Knopf.
Possibly the best-known Arab American intellectual of his generation, Said offers a riveting account of a tough but successful youth caught between two very different worlds. Said's writings range widely from classical music criticism and political commentary to groundbreaking research in comparative literature; Orientalism (1978), an examination of the way the West perceives the Middle East and Islam, is arguably his most influential book and continues to enjoy worldwide success. To many, especially Middle Easterners, he is also famous for his advocacy of Palestinian self-determination. In this new memoir, Said sheds light on his formative years from his childhood as the son of a wealthy Palestinian Christian businessman in Jerusalem and his days as a young exile in Cairo to his graduate education at Harvard. A sense of sadness permeating this book may result from his having written most of it while recovering from leukemia in the mid-1990s.

Said, Edward W. (2000). Reflections on Exile and Other Essays
. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Said (Culture and Imperialism; Orientalism; Out of Place: A Memoir) views all of culture through the lens of "historical experience," emphasizing how feminism, ethnic and minority experience, and nationalism have broken tradition's grip on literature. Rather than put aside the canonical writers he was raised on, however, he "re-situates" them within their own histories. Given his keenly penetrating and original cast of mind, it is not surprising that Said's personal pantheon of heroes includes those who blur the line between criticism and creation, among them Foucault, Nietzsche, Gramsci, Barthes, Adorno and John Berger, not to mention pianist Glenn Gould, composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo. But his greatest hero is Joseph Conrad, for Conrad found trouble everywhere; if there is savagery in Africa and Asia and Latin America, there is just as much in the great capitals of Europe.

Said, Edward W., Moustafa Bayoumi, et al. (2000). The Edward Said Reader
. New York, Vintage Books.
The Edward Said Reader includes key sections from all of Said's books, from the groundbreaking 1966 study of Joseph Conrad to his new memoir, Out of Place. Whether he is writing of Zionism or Palestinian self-determination, Jane Austen or Yeats, music or the media, Said's uncompromising intelligence casts urgent light on every subject he undertakes. The Edward Said Reader will prove a joy to the general reader and an indispensable resource for scholars of politics, history, literature, and cultural studies: in short, of all those fields that his work has influenced and, in some cases, transformed.

Saint John of the Cross (1991). The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross. Washington, D.C., ICS Publications.
Among the Church's contemplatives, St. John is one of the acknowledged masters of mystical theology. Indeed, perhaps no other writer has had greater influence on Catholic spirituality. Together with St. Teresa of Avila, he founded the Discalced Carmelites, an order devoted to service of the Blessed Mother through prayer and penance.

As a poet, John presented the rich content of his mystical experience in lyric poetry, and by this has contributed a sublime treasure to Spanish literature. In addition, he has left us four major prose works: The Ascent of Mount Carmel; The Dark Night; The Spiritual Canticle; and The Living Flame of Love. The only other writings left are relatively few letters and various maxims and counsels. Written during the last 14 years of his life, after his intellectual and spiritual growth had come to full flower, his extant works show a doctrinal synthesis of the spiritual life that was substantially complete in his mind once he began to write. No essential change of thought occurs in his teaching; there is no "earlier John" to contrast with the "later John." The themes he dwells on also remain constant: union with God, its trinitarian origins and final outcome in glory; Jesus Christ, Word and Beloved; faith, as both the content of the mystery and the obscure way to union; love, the going out from self to live in the other; the active and passive development of the theological life; the communication of God in silent prayer; the appetites, a dynamic of sin and destruction.

Saker, The (2015). The Essential Saker: From the Trenches of the Emerging Multipolar World. Ann Arbor, MI, Nimble Pluribus.
The Saker is the pseudonym of a Russian from an emigre family, brought up in the West and educated in America. He is a professional researcher by trade and has built up an incomparable knowledge of both Russian and US politics. These are some of the most essential articles written by the Saker on his blog. Even though they cover topics ranging from history, to politics, to religion, to military affairs, to social issues, they are all linked by one common thread: the full-spectrum clash between the Western world and what the Saker calls the 'Russian civilizational realm'. The Saker provides facts and analysis that are antidotes to the anti-Russian propaganda that prevails in the West. The Saker is not only a good read; it is also a way of looking at the world. Simply put: the Saker is information that is weaponized and hits all the right targets.

Sale, Tim, Richard Corben, et al. (2013). Solo: The Deluxe Edition. New York, DC Comics.
Originally published in 2004, the 12-issue series Solo gave some of comics' greatest creators the chance to create stories set in the DC Universe and beyond. Each issue featured one artist, including Tim Sale (Batman: The Long Halloween), Paul Pope (Batman Year One Hundred), Darwyn Cooke (DC: The New Frontier, Before Watchmen: Minutemen) and many others. Stories star Batman, Robin, Superman, The Spectre, The Teen Titans and many others, but also include westerns, war stories, science fiction epics, humor and horror, as well as introspective tales from the creators' own lives.

Salgado, Sebastião and Lelia Wanick Salgado (2000). Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York, Aperture.
Concerned by the millions of refugees, migrants and dispossessed, Brazilian Sebastião Salgado photographed in 39 countries in 7 years. Why? "My hope is that, as individuals, as groups, as societies, we can pause and reflect on the human condition at the turn of the millennium. In its rawest form, individualism remains a prescription for catastrophe. We have to create a new regimen of coexistence."

Salibi, Kamal S. (1988). A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered
. London, I.B. Tauris.
Today Lebanon is one of the world's most divided countries. But paradoxically the faction-ridden Lebanese, both Christians and Muslims, have never shown a keener consciousness of common identity. How can this be? In the light of modern scholarship, a famous Lebanese writer and scholar examines the historical myths on which his country's warring communities have based their conflicting visions of the Lebanese nation. He shows that Lebanon cannot afford this divisiveness, that in order to develop and maintain a sense of political unity, it is necesary to distinuish fact from fiction and then build on what is real in the common experience of both groups.

Salih, al-Tayyib (2009). Season of Migration to the North. New York, Review Books.
One of the classic themes followed in this complex novel, translated from the Arabic, is cultural dissonance between East and West, particularly the experience of a returned native. The narrator returns from his studies in England to his remote little village in Sudan, to begin his career as an educator. There he encounters Mustafa, a fascinating man of mystery, who also has studied at Oxford. As their relationship builds on this commonality, Mustafa reveals his past. A series of compulsive liaisons with English women who were similarly infatuated with the "Black Englishman," as he was nicknamed, have ended in disaster. Charged with the passion killing of his last paramour, Mustafa was acquitted by the English courts. As he unravels his complicated, gory and erotic story, Mustafa charges the listener with the custody of his present life. When Mustafa disappears, apparently drowned in the Nile and perhaps a suicide, another door in his secretive life opens to include his wife and children. Emerging from a constantly evolving narrative, in a trance-like telling, is the clash between an assumed worldly sophistication and enduring, dark, elemental forces. An arresting work by a major Arab novelist who mines the rich lode of African experience with the Western world.

Salinger, J. D. (1951). The Catcher in the Rye
. Boston, Little, Brown.
Novel by J.D. Salinger, published in 1951. The influential and widely acclaimed story details the two days in the life of 16-year-old Holden Caulfield after he has been expelled from prep school. Confused and disillusioned, he searches for truth and rails against the "phoniness" of the adult world. He ends up exhausted and emotionally ill, in a psychiatrist's office. After he recovers from his breakdown, Holden relates his experiences to the reader.

Salinger, J. D. (1959). Nine Stories
. New York, Modern Library.
In the J.D. Salinger benchmark "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass floats his beach mate Sybil on a raft and tells her about these creatures' tragic flaw. Though they seem normal, if one swims into a hole filled with bananas, it will overeat until it's too fat to escape. Meanwhile, Seymour's wife, Muriel, is back at their Florida hotel, assuring her mother not to worry--Seymour hasn't lost control. Mention of a book he sent her from Germany and several references to his psychiatrist lead the reader to believe that World War II has undone him.

The war hangs over these wry stories of loss and occasionally unsuppressed rage. Salinger's children are fragile, odd, hypersmart, whereas his grownups (even the materially content) seem beaten down by circumstances--some neurasthenic, others (often female) deeply unsympathetic. The greatest piece in this disturbing book may be "The Laughing Man," which starts out as a man's recollection of the pleasures of storytelling and ends with the intersection between adult need and childish innocence. The narrator remembers how, at nine, he and his fellow Comanches would be picked up each afternoon by the Chief--a Staten Island law student paid to keep them busy. At the end of each day, the Chief winds them down with the saga of a hideously deformed, gentle, world-class criminal. With his stalwart companions, which include "a glib timber wolf" and "a lovable dwarf," the Laughing Man regularly crosses the Paris-China border in order to avoid capture by "the internationally famous detective" Marcel Dufarge and his daughter, "an exquisite girl, though something of a transvestite." The masked hero's luck comes to an end on the same day that things go awry between the Chief and his girlfriend, hardly a coincidence."A few minutes later, when I stepped out of the Chief's bus, the first thing I chanced to see was a piece of red tissue paper flapping in the wind against the base of a lamppost. It looked like someone's poppy-petal mask. I arrived home with my teeth chattering uncontrollably and was told to go straight to bed."

Salinger, J. D. (1961). Franny and Zooey
. Boston, Little.
Volume containing two interrelated stories by J.D. Salinger, published in book form in 1961. The stories, originally published in The New Yorker magazine, concern Franny and Zooey Glass, two members of the family that was the subject of most of Salinger's short fiction. Franny is an intellectually precocious late adolescent who tries to attain spiritual purification by obsessively reiterating the "Jesus prayer" as an antidote to the perceived superficiality and corruptness of life. She subsequently suffers a nervous breakdown. In the second story, her next older brother, Zooey, attempts to heal Franny by pointing out that her constant repetition of the "Jesus prayer" is as self-involved and egotistical as the egotism against which she rails.

Salinger, J. D. (1963). Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour--an Introduction
. Boston, Little.
Like many of the other Glass family stories, Raise High is narrated by Buddy Glass, the second of the Glass brothers, and describes Buddy's visit on Army leave (during World War II, in 1942) to attend the wedding of his brother Seymour, and tells of the events that follow the wedding's non-occurrence.

As the title suggests, Seymour: An Introduction represents an attempt by Buddy Glass to introduce the reader to his brother Seymour, who had committed suicide in 1948. Buddy reminisces from his secluded home. This story, like others concerning the Glass family, touches upon Zen Buddhism, haiku, and the Hindu philosophy of vedanta.

Salucci, Ilario (2005). A People's History of Iraq: Workers' Movements and the Left, 1924-2004
. Chicago, Haymarket Books.
Whether standing up to British occupiers, the monarchy they installed or the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein-who for many years was a friend and ally of the United States-the workers' movement and the Left in Iraq have a rich history of fighting for a more democratic society.

This is the only book of its kind on the history of the Left and workers' movements in Iraq. It includes a valuable analysis of the Iraqi Communist Party, which now is part of the discussion about the future of an independent Iraq. The Italian activist and journalist Ilario Salucci has spent years studying the hidden history of resistance in Iraq.

Salmi, Noelle (2009). Frommer's San Francisco with Kids
. New York, NY, Wiley.
Designed for visitors and locals alike, Frommer's With Kids Guides show how to plan family trips and outings that are fun for kids of all ages.

Salvatore, Nick (1982). Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist
. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
Eugene Victor Debs was one of the most prominent labor activists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was, perhaps, the most admired openly radical public figure in America's history, running for president on the Socialist ticket in five separate elections, including a 1920 campaign conducted from prison. In the 1912 election, he earned 6 percent of the popular vote (and probably would have gotten more were it not for Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose campaign, which was also running on reform sentiments). Yet today he is largely forgotten, at best a footnote in history texts.

This biography by Professor Nick Salvatore does much to remedy the situation. It is a richly detailed recounting of Debs's life which demonstrates that Debs fit within a historical tradition of dissent in American politics. Although a professed socialist, he never gave up his commitment to democratic ideals; instead, he added to them an awareness of class and the effects of corporate capitalism that has continued relevance today.

Sampila, Scott and Brandon Beckner, Stewart Kenneth Moore, artist (2024). Project MK-Ultra: The Complete Edition
. San Diego, California, Clover Press.
Through vivid storytelling, this original graphic novel brings to life the harrowing story of the CIA's mind control program, which used drugs, hypnosis, and other methods to manipulate the behavior of unwitting subjects. With careful attention to historical facts and rampant conspiracy theories, Stewart Kenneth Moore, Scott Sampila, and Brandon Beckner have crafted a gripping narrative that takes readers deep inside the shadowy world of government conspiracies and covert operations. Based on actual events, Project MK-Ultra: The Complete Edition is a zany, pop-culture laced Alice in Wonderland ride exploring the history of LSD through the eyes of a young, hungry journalist whose life is turned upside down when he’s sucked into the absurdity of the CIA’s most guarded top-secret Mind Control Project. Whether you're a fan of graphic novels, true crime, or political history, Project MK-Ultra: The Complete Edition is a must-read that will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew about the dark side of American intelligence.

Samuelsson, Marcus (2016). Red Rooster Cookbook: The Story of Food and Hustle in Harlem
. Boston, A Rux Martin Book, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Southern comfort food and multicultural recipes from the New York Times best-selling superstar chef Marcus Samuelsson’s iconic Harlem restaurant.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 360°: Views on the Collection
. San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This companion to the collection features 208 works chosen by our curators for their cultural - and sometimes, personal - significance, a variety of new and original texts by curators, as well as creative and individual responses by artists, poets, historians, and filmmakers, among others.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Diana C. Du Pont (1985). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Painting and Sculpture Collection
. New York, Hudson Hills Press in association with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Commenorates the 50th anniversary of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Janet C. Bishop, et al. (2009). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art: 75 Years of Looking Forward
. San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A comprehensive record of the museum's evolution, from its founding in 1935 to the present. Among the highlights are Jackson Pollock's first solo exhibition in 1945, Robert Rauschenberg's early work, and the extensive collection of early landscape photography in the West. The book includes more than 300 large-scale plates and 50 text entries on individual works, with special emphasis on art unique to the Bay Area.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Neal David Benezra, et al. (2016). The Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
. San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Published in conjunction with the museum's reopening, this book highlights key works from the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection. The Fishers delved into the work of artists they admired over the course of many years, and as a result the collection is distinguished by significant concentrations of works by Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge, Anselm Kiefer, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, and Andy Warhol, among others. Spanning more than three floors of the museum, the initial installation of the Fisher Collection at SFMOMA honors that strength with numerous monographic galleries and highlights the collection's notable focus on American abstraction; American Pop, Figurative, and Minimal art after 1960; and German art after 1960.

Sanders, Ed (1980). Fame & Love in New York
. Berkeley, Turtle Island Foundation.

Sanders, Ed (1993). Hymn to the Rebel Cafe
. Santa Rosa, Black Sparrow Press.
Sanders, founder of the rock group The Fugs and editor of Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts, has been connected with almost every aspect of the counterculture. In his writing, he has consistently concentrated on social inequities, the environment and violence while gossiping cheerfully about like-minded poets such as the late Ted Berrigan or Jerome Rothenberg. This volume is not significantly different from earlier work. The poems are still irreverent, still laced with an easygoing, goofy comic quality ("The cafes come The cafes wane / but the best and the final rebel cafe / is inside the human brain"). His message-- "The worst drug / is the culture of greed, demolishment / & destruction of open land "--isn't subtle, but it's hard to disagree with. More than a quarter of the text is given over to the tedious "An East Village Hippie in King Arthur's Court," which interpolates the Camelot characters into the high jinks of Sanders's friends. It is filled with sophomoric jokes (an acid trip is described as "Badus Tripus Ultimatus") and a megalomania that assumes that the reader will willingly follow 61 pages of oblique satiric verse. One rather charming ingredient in the book is the inclusion every so often of Sanders's drawings or doodles.

Sandler, Irving (1970). The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism
. New York, Praeger Publishers.
Sandler focuses on the period, 1940 to 1950 and, more closely, 1947 to 1950. It identifies the accumulation of influences on the painters collectively, as in the years the European Surrealists and Mexican muralists commanded attention in New York, and individually, as the New York artists identified their aspiration and began to influence each other. The postwar milieu, in Sandler’s estimation, demanded a new, personal and "authentic" response from each practitioner: a break with the past and rupture with a public that had only just begun to appreciate the accomplishments of European modernism. By 1942 it was necessary during a period Rothko called "mythmaking" to reject the school of Paris and the social and cultural climate responsible for cubism and geometric abstraction, and to explore primitive symbols, terrific imagery and Jungian forms. In this rejection of European art Sandler finds links to the American regionalist painters, mainly Thomas Hart Benton, an early mentor of Pollock and acquaintance of Newman’s.

The strength of Sandler's method as a historian is his autobiographical presence on the scene, in the studios, his close acquaintance with artists, and his sympathetic eye. He speaks for the complex concerns of the painters he knew.

Sanders, James (2001). Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies
. New York, A.A. Knopf.
A practicing architect, co-scripter of Ric Burns's New York: A Documentary Film and coauthor of that PBS series's companion volume now takes on the many movies showing New York in both location scenes and Hollywood sets. Sanders posits a mythic cityscape within the movie world, and his lengthy book is an attempt to enter, chart and define that world. To bring "the movie city to life in words," Sanders devoted a decade to talking with veteran studio art directors and filmmakers, exploring studio lots, visiting specialized archives in L.A., New York and London, sifting through private collections, tracking rare movie stills and studying the construction drawings used to build sets. The book begins with visions of urban utopias, cities in literature and on canvas and 1890s "actualities" of New York street life, then moves on to Hollywood back lots, where transatlantic liners and the streets of New York were built as standing sets (he later addresses the problems of location filming). The illustrations include beautiful production drawings, demonstrating how studio talents designed dance floors, nightclub interiors, Art Deco apartments, polished penthouses and sprawling skylines. Art departments at RKO and other studios sketched everything from subway kiosks to grand hotels, and Sanders displays their superb drawings of the past and contemporary reality along with gleaming visions of the future. Fact-filled photo captions add to the entertaining and educational text, making this work a delight throughout. 330 photos, extensive notes, bibliography and 13-page filmography. - Publishers Weekly

Sante, Luc, Sean Corcoran, et al. (2018). Stanley Kubrick Photographs: Through a Different Lens
. Köln, Taschen.
Before becoming the critically acclaimed filmmaker responsible for such iconic films as Dr. Strangelove and The Shining, Stanley Kubrick spent five years as a photographer for Look magazine. The Bronx native joined the staff in 1945, when he was only 17 years old, and shot humanist slice-of-life features that celebrate and expose New York City and its inhabitants. Through a Different Lens reveals the keen and evocative vision of a burgeoning creative genius in a range of feature stories and images, from everyday folk at the laundromat to a day in the life of a debutant, from a trip to the circus to Columbia University. Featuring around 300 images, many previously unseen, as well as rare Look magazine tear sheets, this release coincides with a major show at the Museum of the City of New York and includes an introduction by noted photography critic Luc Sante.

Saramago, Jose (2001). All the Names
. New York, Mariner Books.
Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor Jose sets off to follow the thread that may lead him to the woman-but as he gets closer, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would ever have wished. The loneliness of people's lives, the effects of chance, the discovery of love-all coalesce in this extraordinary novel that displays the power and art of Jose Saramago in brilliant form.

Saramago, Jose (1998). Baltasar and Blimunda
. New York, Mariner Books.
Saramago has blended fact and fiction in much the same way as Marquez and others use magical realism, to create an elegantly written, surrealistic reflection on life in 18th century Portugal. It is a time of astonishing excessautos-da-fe, the Inquisition, an outbreak of the plague, colonialismand the two central characters, Baltasar, a soldier just home from the wars, and Blimunda, a clairvoyant who can actually see inside people, are enlisted by the renegade priest, Bartolomeu Lourenco de Gusmao, to help him construct a flying machine. A mad genius, Bartolomeu actually existed and is now considered a pioneer of aviation. The machine does fly, but with disastrous consequences for all involved. This is a dark, philosophical tale that shows off the talents of Portugal's premier contemporary writer.

Saramago, Jose (2011). Blindness
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Saramago, Jose (1994). The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
. New York, Mariner Books.
A brilliant skeptic, Jose Saramago envisions the life of Jesus Christ and the story of his Passion as things of this earth: A child crying, the caress of a woman half asleep, the bleat of a goat, a prayer uttered in the grayish morning light. His idea of the Holy Family reflects the real complexities of any family, and - as only Saramago can - he imagines them with tinges of vision, dream, and omen. The result is a deft psychological portrait that moves between poetry and irony, spirituality and irreverence of a savior who is at once the Son of God and a young man. In this provocative, tender novel, the subject of wide critical discussion and wonder, Saramago questions the meaning of God, the foundations of the Church, and human existence itself.

Saramago, Jose (1996). The History of the Siege of Lisbon
. New York, Harcourt Brace.
"If proofreaders were given their freedom and did not have their hands and feet tied by a mass of prohibitions more binding than the penal code, they would soon transform the face of the world, establish the kingdom of universal happiness, giving drink to the thirsty, food to the famished, peace to those who live in turmoil, joy to the sorrowful, for they would be able to do all these things simply by changing the words." The power of the word is evident in Portuguese author Jose Saramago's novel, The History of the Siege of Lisbon. His protagonist, a proofreader named Raimundo Silva, adds a key word to a history of Portugal and thus rewrites not only the past, but also his own life.

Brilliantly translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero, The History of the Siege of Lisbon is a meditation on the differences between historiography, historical fiction, and "stories inserted into history." The novel is really two stories in one: the reimagined history of the 1147 siege of Lisbon that Raimundo feels compelled to write and the story of Raimundo's life, including his unexpected love affair with the editor, Maria Sara. In Saramago's masterful hands, the strands of this complex tale weave together to create a satisfying whole.

Saramago, Jose (1995). The Stone Raft
. New York, Harcourt Brace.
Portuguese novelist Saramago's surreal political fable follows the adventures of the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula after it literally breaks away from Europe. An inexplicable crack in the Pyrenees Mountains provokes excitement and scientific curiosity. As the geological fracture deepens and widens, the European community begins to disassociate itself from the calamity, and panic ensues among tourists and residents attempting to escape. When Spain and Portugal physically separate from the continent, the detached Iberian peninsula drifts aimlessly and rapidly across the sea. On the rudderless island, a group of disparate residents band together in a corporeal and spiritual bid for survival in a world spinning out of control. A hauntingly lyrical narrative with political, social, and moral underpinnings.

Saramago, Jose (1991). The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis
. New York, Mariner Books.
Ricardo Reis meets dead Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa and encounters two women who may be figments of Pessoa's poetry in this extraordinarily nuanced novel. A dramatic work of great philosophical weight, filtered through a refined contemplative intelligence.

Sarris, Andrew (1996). The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968
. New York, Da Capo Press.
Since its publication in 1968, The American Cinema has been the manifesto of the auteur theory. Written by Andrew Sarris, the theory's chief advocate, the book traces the history of movies by examining the careers of more than 200 film directors. Covering everyone from D.W. Griffith to Francis Coppola, Orson Welles to Roman Polanski, Sarris argues that directorial greatness is marked by a personal style and consistency of excellence that can be traced throughout a career. Sarris's commentary is sometimes worshipful, sometimes acrid, but almost always quotable. Alfred Hitchcock is "the supreme technician of the American cinema." John Huston coasted "on his reputation as a wronged individualist with an alibi for every bad movie." Stanley Kubrick holds "a naive faith in the power of images to transcend fuzzy feelings and vague ideas." Michelangelo Antonioni makes films so pessimistic and alienating that Sarris dubs him "Antoniennui."

You may not agree with all of Sarris's assessments, but this book provides the best possible opportunity to consider auteurism, an approach to cinema that, in an age that reveres Scorsese, Spielberg, and Tarantino, seems more relevant than ever. The book closes with an essay called "The Auteur Theory Revised," Sarris's attempt at a definitive theoretical statement. - Raphael Shargel

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1962). Literature & Existentialism
. New York, Citadel Press.
Sartre's premise: Literature is no longer an activity for itself, nor primarily descriptive of characters and situations, but is concerned with human freedom and its (and the author's) commitment. Literature is committed; artistic creation is a moral activity.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1963). Search for a Method
. New York, Knopf.
Sartre described himself as rescuing Marxism from lazy dogmatism (Search for a Method, pp. 21 and 27). Like his contemporaries in Germany at the Frankfurt School for Social Research, he sought to develop a general critical theory of society. While accepting the reality of economic class, he strongly criticized those who reduced all social conflicts and all personal motivations to class. In his political period, Sartre deepened his psychological explanations of human behavior by contextualizing individual action within wide social structures (class, family, nation, and so on). He held that economic class was only one of many important structural factors that explained human action. Vehemently criticizing all forms of social scientific reductionism, he claimed that the human situation includes birth, death, family, nationality, gender, race and body, to name only the most relevant (Anti-Semite and Jew, pp. 59-60). Like later analytic Marxists, he would claim that "objective interests" are insufficient to explain the intentions of individual agents. Class analysis must be combined with personal history.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1972). Baudelaire: A Study of His Poetry
. New York, New Directions Pub. Co.
Sartre's study of Baudelaire, man of shadows, opium-addict, dandy, frigid disciple of volupte; and then the greatest lyric poet of the age. Sartre lays bare the "lunar landscape of this distressed soul." We see Baudelaire, with anguished intelligence, selecting and arranging his own evil destiny, juggling the values of a world at the turning point of modern times.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1989). No Exit, and Three Other Plays
. New York, Vintage International.
Four plays about an existential portrayal of Hell, the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict and an arresting attack on American racism.

Sartre, Jean-Paul (1992). The Reprieve
. New York, Vintage Books.
An extraordinary picture of life in France during the critical eight days before the signing of the fateful Munich Pact and the subsequent takeover of Czechoslovakia in September 1938. Translated from the French by Eric Sutton.

Sartre, Jean Paul (1983). Between Existentialism and Marxism: Sartre on Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, and the Arts
. New York, Pantheon Books.

Sartre, Jean Paul (1992). The Age of Reason
. New York, Vintage Books.
The first novel of Sartre's monumental Roads to Freedom series, The Age of Reason is set in 1938 and tells of Mathieu, a French professor of philosophy who is obsessed with the idea of freedom. As the shadows of the Second World War draw closer -- even as his personal life is complicated by his mistress's pregnancy -- his search for a way to remain free becomes more and more intense.

Sartre, Jean Paul and Alexandre Dumas (1960). The Devil & the Good Lord, and Two Other Plays
. New York, Knopf.
In June 1951, Sartre's play The Devil and the Good Lord (Le Diable et le Bon Dieu) was first produced at the Theâtre Antoine in Paris. Set during the German Peasants' War, the play recounts the story of Goetz, a military leader who transforms himself from a feared and notorious war criminal into a saint and folk hero through a series of arbitrary acts of clemency and generosity. First sparing the besieged town of Worms from total destruction, Goetz then proceeds to break up his own estates and redistribute the land among the peasantry. Far from being presented as an ethical conversion from Evil to Good, however, Goetz's generosity is twice criticised within the play as a strategem to achieve even greater domination over the beneficiaries of his mercy and munificence.

Sartre, Jean-Paul and Lloyd Alexander (1964). Nausea
. New York, New Directions Publishing Corp.
Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature. Jean-Paul Sartre, philosopher, critic, novelist and dramatist, hold a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. Among readers and critics familiar with the whole of Sartre's work, it is generally recognized that his earliest novel, Le Nausee (first published in 1938), is his finest and most significant. It is unquestionably a key novel of the Twentieth Century and a landmark in Existentialist fiction.

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogues his every feeling and sensation about the world and people around him. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which "spread at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time - the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain." Roquentin's efforts to come to terms with his life, his philosophical and psychological struggles, give Sartre the opportunity to dramatize trhe tents of his Existentialist creed.

Saunders, Frances Stonor (2013). The Cultural Cold War: the CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, Second Edition
. New York, The New Press.
Called "the most comprehensive account yet of the CIA's activities between 1947 and 1967" by The New York Times, the book presents shocking evidence of the CIA's undercover program of cultural interventions in Western Europe and at home, drawing together declassified documents and exclusive interviews to expose the CIA's astonishing campaign to deploy the likes of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Robert Lowell, George Orwell, and Jackson Pollock as weapons in the Cold War. Translated into ten languages, this classic work - now with a new preface by the author - is "a real contribution to popular understanding of the postwar period" (The Wall Street Journal), and its story of covert cultural efforts to win hearts and minds continues to be relevant today.

Savio, Mario; edited by Cohen, Robert (2014). The Essential Mario Savio: Speeches and Writings That Changed America
. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.
The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, California was pivotal in shaping 1960s America. Led by Mario Savio and other young veterans of the civil rights movement, student activists organized what was to that point the most tumultuous student rebellion in American history. Mass sit-ins, a nonviolent blockade around a police car, occupations of the campus administration building, and a student strike united thousands of students to champion the right of students to free speech and unrestricted political advocacy on campus. This compendium of influential speeches and previously unknown writings offers insight and perspective into the disruptive yet nonviolent civil disobedience tactics used by Savio. The Essential Mario Savio is the perfect introduction to an American icon and to one of the most important social movements of the post-war period in the United States.

Saul, Scott (2003). Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties
. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
These days jazz seems so marginalized that it's bracing to read a book that shows so clearly how and why jazz is relevant to larger social, political, and cultural issues. Saul's analysis of the 1960 riot at the Newport Jazz Festival and the different ways jazz critics, social commentators, and black intellectuals and artists--including poet Langston Hughes and bassist Charles Mingus--reacted to it, is some of the most insightful writing on the tensions between consumer culture and jazz culture, and the black-white racial divide that I've ever read. Saul also maps out the connections that artists and critics saw between the progressive politics of the civil rights and Black Power movements and avant-garde music.

Sawyer-Lauçanno, Christopher (1990). An Invisible Spectator: A Biography of Paul Bowles
. New York, Ecco Press.
Paul Bowles's seductive, terrifying, exquisitely detached fictions have inspired writers and iconoclasts from the Beats to the present day. In this brilliant and definitive biography, the result of exhaustive research as well as in-depth interviews with Bowles himself and with those who knew him best, Christopher Sawyer-Lauanno unlocks the mystique that surrounds the man and his work. An Invisible Spectator chronicles Bowles's early years as a composer and rising literary luminary, his marriage to tormented author Jane Bowles, his voluntary exile in North Africa, where he presided over the famous expatriate community of Tangiers--all of it interwoven with vivid depictions of Bowles's intimates, including Truman Capote, Gertrude Stein, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs.

Scahill, Jeremy (2016). The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government's Secret Drone Program
. New York, Simon & Schuster.
Jeremy Scahill and his colleagues at the investigative website The Intercept expose stunning new details about America's secret assassination policy. Classified documents reveal that Washington's fourteen-year targeted killing campaign suffers from an overreliance on flawed signals intelligence, an apparently incalculable civilian toll, and an inability to extract potentially valuable intelligence from terror suspects. This campaign, carried out by two presidents through four presidential terms, has been deliberately obscured from the public and insulated from democratic debate.

Scahill, Jeremy (2007). Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army
. New York, NY, Nation Books.
Meet Blackwater USA, the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing private army on the planet with forces capable of carrying out regime change throughout the world. Blackwater protects the top US officials in Iraq and yet we know almost nothing about the firm's quasi-military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and inside the US. Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes.

Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror.

Scahill, Jeremy (2013). Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield
. New York, NY, Nation Books.
Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that 'the world is a battlefield,' as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America's global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA's Special Activities Division, and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through 'black budgets,' Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals, and direct drone, AC-130, and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy.

Scarfe, Gerald (2019). Scarfe: Sixty Years of Being Rude
. Boston, MA, Little, Brown.
In the stunning retrospective Scarfe, which expands on 2005's Drawing Blood in every way, Gerald Scarfe's work is presented as no book has presented it before. This fully illustrated, 576-page volume reveals the truth of sixty years of politics and culture, packed with images that have defined not only one artist's career, but also twentieth and twenty-first century British life. A showcase of Scarfe's glittering career in design, reportage and showbusiness, Scarfe presents drawings, sculptures and photographs alongside witty and poignant captions and stories. Scarfe's muses: Thatcher, Clinton, Blair, May and Trump, as well as many other titanic figures of our times are all here, revealed as they really are by Scarfe's cutting pen. Carefully curated by the artist himself, this monumental book is the definitive guide to the career of a national treasure.

Scarne, John (2003). Scarne on Card Tricks
. Mineola, N.Y., Dover Publications.
This treasury of card magic presents the exact details of 155 professional card tricks that anyone can learn. The world's number-one card wizard, John Scarne, reworked an exciting series of classic card tricks to eliminate the need for sleight-of-hand. Simple instructions and clear diagrams illustrate Houdini's "Card on the Ceiling," Blackstone's "Card Trick Without Cards," Carlyle's "Piano Card Trick," Milton Berle's "Quickie Card Deal," and Scarne's own "Drunken Poker Deal" and "Knockout Card Trick." Scarne presents all tricks with advice on accompanying patter, offering helpful suggestions about the kinds of words and gestures that give performances a professional gloss.

Schatz, Kate and Miriam Klein Stahl, illustrator (2015). Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries Who Shaped Our History ... and Our Future!
. San Francisco, City Lights.
Like all A-Z books, this one illustrates the alphabet - but instead of "A is for Apple", A is for Angela - as in Angela Davis, the iconic political activist. B is for Billie Jean King, who shattered the glass ceiling of sports; C is for Carol Burnett, who defied assumptions about women in comedy; D is for Dolores Huerta, who organized farmworkers; and E is for Ella Baker, who mentored Dr. Martin Luther King and helped shape the Civil Rights Movement.

And the list of great women continues, spanning several centuries, multiple professions, and 26 diverse individuals. There are artists and abolitionists, scientists and suffragettes, rock stars and rabble-rousers, and agents of change of all kinds.

Schechter, Harold (2008). True Crime : An American Anthology
. New York, Library of America.
Americans have had an uneasy fascination with crime since the earliest European settlements in the New World, and right from the start true crime writing became a dominant genre in American writing. True Crime: An American Anthology offers the first comprehensive look at the many ways in which American writers have explored crime in a multitude of aspects: the dark motives that spur it, the shock of its impact on society, the effort to make sense of the violent extremes of human behavior. Here is the full spectrum of the true crime genre, including accounts of some of the most notorious criminal cases in American history: the Helen Jewett murder and the once-notorious 'Kentucky tragedy' of the 1830s, the assassination of President Garfield, the Snyder- Gray murder that inspired Double Indemnity, the Lindbergh kidnapping, the Black Dahlia, Leopold and Loeb, and the Manson family. True Crime draws upon the writing of literary figures as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne (reporting on a visit to a waxworks exhibit of notorious crimes), Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser (offering his views on a 1934 murder that some saw as a 'copycat' version of An American Tragedy), James Thurber, Joseph Mitchell, and Truman Capote and sources as varied as execution sermons, murder ballads, early broadsides and trial reports, and tabloid journalism of many different eras. It also features the influential true crime writing of best-selling contemporary practitioners like James Ellroy, Gay Talese, Dominick Dunne, and Ann Rule.

Scheer, Robert (2010). The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street
. New York, NY, Nation Books.
Following Ronald Reagan' s obsession with the radical deregulation of financial markets through its apotheosis under the Clinton administration to Obama' s reform efforts--which rely, oddly enough, on Clinton cronies to clean up (and profit from) the mess they made--Scheer (The Pornography of Power) proves that, when it comes to the ruling sway of money power, Democrats and Republicans, Wall Street and Washington make very agreeable bedfellows. Scheer names names (Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Alan Greenspan), while praising those who sounded the alarm and underscoring the foreseeable results of putting Wall Street in the driver' s seat. What grew in this regulatory vacuum, Scheer shows, was a global casino, a mind-bendingly enormous and arcane system of gambling on new financial products worth hundreds of trillions of dollars. By 2007, when the house of cards collapsed, Wall Street alone understood what it had wrought while its government partners remained clueless.

Schelly, William, Joe Kubert, et al. (2011). The Art of Joe Kubert
. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics Books.
A deluxe, full-color coffee table book that honors this legendary creator with beautifully reproduced artwork from every phase of his career as well as critical commentary by the book’s editor, comics historian and Kubert biographer Bill Schelly. Schelly’s text parallels the visual evolution of the artist’s work, tracing his life and career from his early days drawing Hawkman in the Golden Age, to his creation of Tor, his involvement in creating 3-D comics in the 1950s, his tour de force stints on DC’s war comics ― Sgt. Rock, The Unknown Soldier and the groundbreaking Enemy Ace ― in the 1960s, to illustrating the adventures of Tarzan in the 1970s. And before finding a creative safe haven at DC Comics in the ’50s, Kubert drew for many smaller and more obscure companies, including Holyoke, Quality, Fiction House, Harvey, St. John, and others ― all of which are represented, including a 50-page section of comic-book stories in the horror, crime, and SF genres from the pre-Comics Code era, reprinted in full color for the first time.

Schlesinger, Arthur Meier (2002). Robert Kennedy and His Times
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., chronicles the short life of the Kennedy family's second presidential hopeful in "a story that leaves the reader aching for what cannot be recaptured" (Miami Herald). Schlesinger's account vividly recalls the forces that shaped Robert Kennedy, from his position as the third son of a powerful Irish Catholic political clan to his concern for issues of social justice in the turbulent 1960s. Schlesinger, historian and friend of Bobby Kennedy, has had access for the first time to private papers, letters, and journals which make possible a fresh look at both personal relationships and public events. Winner of the 1979 National Book Award for Biography.

Schlesinger, Arthur Meier (2003). The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935, volume two of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s Age of Roosevelt series, describes Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first tumultuous years in the White House. Coming into office at the bottom of the Great Depression, FDR told the American people that they have nothing to fear but fear itself. The conventional wisdom having failed, he tried unorthodox remedies to avert economic collapse. His first hundred days restored national morale, and his New Dealers filled Washington with new approaches to recovery and reform. Combining idealistic ends with realistic means, Roosevelt proposed to humanize, redeem, and rescue capitalism. The Coming of the New Deal, written with Schlesinger's customary verve, is a gripping account of critical years in the history of the republic.

Schlesinger, Arthur Meier (2003). The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919-1933, volume one of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s Age of Roosevelt series, is the first of three books that interpret the political, economic, social, and intellectual history of the early twentieth century in terms of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the spokesman and symbol of the period. Portraying the United States from the Great War to the Great Depression, The Crisis of the Old Order covers the Jazz Age and the rise and fall of the cult of business. For a season, prosperity seemed permanent, but the illusion came to an end when Wall Street crashed in October 1929. Public trust in the wisdom of business leadership crashed too. With a dramatist's eye for vivid detail and a scholar's respect for accuracy, Schlesinger brings to life the era that gave rise to FDR and his New Deal and changed the public face of the United States forever.

Schlesinger, Arthur Meier (2003). The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
The Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, volume three of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr's Age of Roosevelt series, concentrates on the turbulent concluding years of Franklin D. Roosevelt "s first term. A measure of economic recovery revived political conflict and emboldened FDR's critics to denounce "that man in the White house." To his left were demagogues - Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and Dr. Townsend. To his right were the champions of the old order - ex-president Herbert Hoover, the American Liberty League, and the august Supreme Court. For a time, the New Deal seemed to lose its momentum. But in 1935 FDR rallied and produced a legislative record even more impressive than the Hundred Days of 1933 - a set of statutes that transformed the social and economic landscape of American life. In 1936 FDR coasted to reelection on a landslide. Schlesinger has his usual touch with colorful personalities and draws a warmly sympathetic portrait of Alf M. Landon, the Republican candidate of 1936.

Schlosser, Eric (2001). Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
Schlosser's incisive history of the development of American fast food indicts the industry for some shocking crimes against humanity, including systematically destroying the American diet and landscape, and undermining our values and our economy. The first part of the book details the postwar ascendance of fast food from Southern California, assessing the impact on people in the West in general. The second half looks at the product itself: where it is manufactured (in a handful of enormous factories), what goes into it (chemicals, feces) and who is responsible (monopolistic corporate executives). In harrowing detail, the book explains the process of beef slaughter and confirms almost every urban myth about what in fact "lurks between those sesame seed buns." Given the estimate that the typical American eats three hamburgers and four orders of french fries each week, and one in eight will work for McDonald's in the course of their lives, few are exempt from the insidious impact of fast food. Throughout, Schlosser fires these and a dozen other hair-raising statistical bullets into the heart of the matter. While cataloguing assorted evils with the tenacity and sharp eye of the best investigative journalist, he uncovers a cynical, dismissive attitude to food safety in the fast food industry and widespread circumvention of the government's efforts at regulation enacted after Upton Sinclair's similarly scathing novel exposed the meat-packing industry 100 years ago. By systematically dismantling the industry's various aspects, Schlosser establishes a seminal argument for true wrongs at the core of modern America. - Publishers Weekly

Schlow, Michael (2005). It's About Time: Great Recipes for Everyday Life
. Hanover, N.H., Steerforth Press.
The reference to time in this work's title has multiple meanings for Schlow, executive chef of Boston's Radius. The author divides his book into eight "times," or moods: Chapter Two, for example, is titled "Time to Get the Family Together," while Chapter Seven, "Time to Look Like a Pro," teaches readers how to pull off dishes that look as if they require far more time to prepare than they actually do (e.g., Tomato Confit). The foods benefit from Schlow's substantial experience in both French and Italian cooking, although the range of cuisines he covers is wide, as the chapter on barbecue attests. Schlow is invested in handing over the reins in the kitchen to readers, not basking in his own glory (he was a James Beard Award winner in his first year of eligibility), so a fair number of the recipes knowingly cater to cooks who are not CIA-trained. Schlow also uses "time" quite specifically; he advocates slow cooking for certain dishes. Slow Roasted Salmon with Cabbage, Bacon and Dill, for example, is cooked in a 250-degree oven. Not all of Schlow's recipes pertain to his subtitle; his Hamachi Tartare with Warm Scallion Compote and Caviar hardly seems like an "everyday life" kind of concoction, but his jazzy, engaging humor may encourage curious readers to attempt his more difficult creations.

Schmidt, Jeff (2000). Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System That Shapes Their Lives
. Lanham, Md., Rowman & Littlefield.
This book details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker, showing how an honest reassessment of what it means to be a professional in today's corporate society can be remarkably liberating. Poignant examples from the world of work reveal the workplace as a battleground for the very identity of the individual. Schmidt contends that professional work is inherently political--that the unstated duty of professionals is to maintain strict ideological discipline. Career dissatisfaction evolves as workers lose control over the political component of their creative work. After reading this insightful book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about their job. Jeff Schmidt lives in Washington, D.C., where he is an editor for Physics Today.

Schneider, Nathan (2018). Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy
. New York, Nation Books.
Cooperatives are jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprises that advance the economic, social, and cultural interests of their members. They often emerge during moments of crisis not unlike our own, putting people in charge of the workplaces, credit unions, grocery stores, healthcare, and utilities they depend on.

Everything for Everyone chronicles this revolution--from taxi cooperatives keeping Uber at bay, to an outspoken mayor transforming his city in the Deep South, to a fugitive building a fairer version of Bitcoin, to the rural electric co-op members who are propelling an aging system into the future. As these pioneers show, co-ops are helping us rediscover our capacity for creative, powerful, and fair democracy.

Schneier, Bruce (1996). Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C
. New York, Wiley.
Cryptographic techniques have applications far beyond the obvious uses of encoding and decoding information. For Internet developers who need to know about capabilities, such as digital signatures, that depend on cryptographic techniques, there's no better overview than Applied Cryptography, the definitive book on the subject. Bruce Schneier covers general classes of cryptographic protocols and then specific techniques, detailing the inner workings of real-world cryptographic algorithms including the Data Encryption Standard and RSA public-key cryptosystems. The book includes source-code listings and extensive advice on the practical aspects of cryptography implementation, such as the importance of generating truly random numbers and of keeping keys secure.

This new edition of the cryptography classic provides you with a comprehensive survey of modern cryptography. The book details how programmers and electronic communications professionals can use cryptography - the technique of enciphering and deciphering messages - to maintain the privacy of computer data. It describes dozens of cryptography algorithms, gives practical advice on how to implement them into cryptographic software, and shows how they can be used to solve security problems. Covering the latest developments in practical cryptographic techniques, this new edition shows programmers who design computer applications, networks, and storage systems how they can build security into their software and systems.

Schneier, Bruce (2003). Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World
. New York, Copernicus Books.
In "Beyond Fear," Bruce Schneier invites us to take a critical look at not just the threats to our security, but the ways in which we're encouraged to think about security by law enforcement agencies, businesses of all shapes and sizes, and our national governments and militaries. Schneier believes we all can and should be better security consumers, and that the trade-offs we make in the name of security - in terms of cash outlays, taxes, inconvenience, and diminished freedoms - should be part of an ongoing negotiation in our personal, professional, and civic lives, and the subject of an open and informed national discussion.With a well-deserved reputation for original and sometimes iconoclastic thought, Schneier has a lot to say that is provocative, counter-intuitive, and just plain good sense. He explains in detail, for example, why we need to design security systems that don't just work well, but fail well, and why secrecy on the part of government often undermines security. A skeptic of much that's promised by highly touted technologies like biometrics, Schneier is also a refreshingly positive, problem-solving force in the often self-dramatizing and fear-mongering world of security pundits.

Schneier, Bruce (2018). Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World
. New York, W.W. Norton & Company.
After exploring the full implications of a world populated by hyperconnected devices, Schneier reveals the hidden web of technical, political, and market forces that underpin the pervasive insecurities of today. He then offers common-sense choices for companies, governments, and individuals that can allow us to enjoy the benefits of this omnipotent age without falling prey to its vulnerabilities.

Schneier, Bruce (2000). Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World
. New York, John Wiley.
Whom can you trust? Try Bruce Schneier, whose rare gift for common sense makes his book Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World both enlightening and practical. He's worked in cryptography and electronic security for years, and has reached the depressing conclusion that even the loveliest code and toughest hardware still will yield to attackers who exploit human weaknesses in the users. The book is neatly divided into three parts, covering the turn-of-the-century landscape of systems and threats, the technologies used to protect and intercept data, and strategies for proper implementation of security systems. Moving away from blind faith in prevention, Schneier advocates swift detection and response to an attack, while maintaining firewalls and other gateways to keep out the amateurs.

Schonberg, Harold C. (1997). The Lives of the Great Composers
. New York, W.W. Norton.
An updated and expanded edition of this perennial favorite, tracing the line of composers from Monteverdi to the tonalists of the 1990s. In this new edition, Harold Schonberg offers music lovers a series of fascinating biographical chapters. Music, the author contends, is a continually evolving art, and all geniuses, unique as they are, were influenced by their predecessors. Schonberg discusses the lives and works of the foremost figures in classical music, among them Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, the Schumanns, Copland, and Stravinsky, weaving a fabric rich in detail and anecdote. He also includes the creators of light music, such as Gilbert and Sullivan and the Strausses. Schonberg has extended the volume's coverage to provide informative and clearly written descriptions of the later serialists such as Stockhausen and Carter, the iconoclastic John Cage, the individualistic Messiaen, minimalist composers, the new tonalists, and women composers of all eras, including Mendelssohn Hensel, Chaminade, Smyth, Beach, and Zwilich. Scattered throughout are many changes and additions reflecting musicological findings of the past fifteen years.

Schor, Gabriele, Elisabeth Bronfen, et al. (2014). Francesca Woodman: Works from the Sammlung Verbund
. New York, NY, D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.
This volume--the most comprehensive monograph published on Francesca Woodman to date--considers her enigmatic photography in the light of the tradition of the tableau vivant and also explores for the first time her poetic use of props (mirror, gloves, wallpaper, etc.) as well as her unusual staging of space. Featuring 80 photographs and 20 previously unpublished works from the collection Sammlung Verbund in Vienna, it is the first publication ever to reproduce all of Woodman's photographs in their original sizes, authentically reconstructing her idiosyncratic technique of placing the image on the photographic paper. Woodman's stark, black-and-white photographs explore an intense curiosity and ambivalence toward the feminine self, but her often playful, surreal and symbolic gestures also demonstrate her ability to incorporate elements of humor into her otherwise sober iconography. This volume unifies all of these themes in her work under the broad concept of tableau vivant, showing how Woodman radically reimagined that tradition. It also includes the first detailed and illustrated biography of her life.

Schou, Nick (2006). Kill the Messenger: How the CIA's Crack-cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb
. New York, Nation Books.
Kill the Messenger tells the story of the tragic death of Gary Webb, the controversial newspaper reporter who committed suicide in December 2004. Webb is the former San Jose Mercury News reporter whose 1996 Dark Alliance series on the so-called CIA-crack cocaine connection created a firestorm of controversy and led to his resignation from the paper amid escalating attacks on his work by the mainstream media. Author and investigative journalist Nick Schou published numerous articles on the controversy and was the only reporter to significantly advance Webb's stories. Drawing on exhaustive research and highly personal interviews with Webb's family, colleagues, supporters and critics, this book argues convincingly that Webb's editors betrayed him, despite mounting evidence that his stories were correct. Kill the Messenger examines the 'Dark Alliance' controversy, what it says about the current state of journalism in America, and how it led Webb to ultimately take his own life.

Schrag, Peter (2006). California: America's High-Stakes Experiment
. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Once blessed with a superb educational system, well-funded infrastructure and competent, vigorous state government, California now wrestles with lousy schools, decrepit public services and government gridlock. This incisive study traces the decline to a state constitution that requires unobtainable legislative super-majorities to pass taxes, spending increases and budgets; to America's nationwide antitax ideology, which was jump-started by California's infamous Proposition 13; and to term limits that have made the legislature a collection of neophytes. With the legislative process paralyzed, the author observes, lawmaking has devolved to ad hoc ballot initiatives - a hoary populist nostrum now exploited by monied special interests - with which voters impose burdensome spending mandates on the state while rejecting the taxes needed to fund them. The result is a chaotic but perpetually stymied" 'hybrid democracy'" dominated by glitzy ad campaigns and Schwarzeneggerian political theater. Journalist Schrag (former editorial page editor for the Sacramento Bee and author of Paradise Lost: California's Experience, America's Future) provides a fascinating guide through the labyrinth of California state politics and probes the intractable social conflict underlying its dysfunctions: the unwillingness of a disproportionately white, Anglo, middle-class electorate to pay for public services for an increasingly brown, immigrant, working-class population. Lucid, evenhanded and thoughtful, Schrag offers one of the best analyses yet of the California train wreck and its troubling implications for America's future.

Schroeder, Carl and Keith Wyatt (2002). Hal Leonard Pocket Music Theory: A Comprehensive and Convenient Source for All Musicians
. Milwaukee, WI, Hal Leonard.
A step-by-step guide to harmony and theory for every musician, thhis music theory book includes thorough, yet to easy-to-understand analysis of: intervals, rhythms, scales, chords, key signatures, transposition, chord inversion, key centers, harmonizing the major and minor scales, extended chords, modulation and much more.

Schultes, Richard Evans and Albert Hofmann (1980). The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens
. Springfield, Ill., Thomas.
By Richard Evans Schultes, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Albert Hofmann, Basel, Switzerland. With Forewords by I. Newton Kugelmass and Henrich Kluver. The Second Edition of this book encompasses all of the advances that have been made in this field since publication of the original text. Newly discovered hallucinogenic plants have been incorporated into the discussions along with new information on some well-known drugs. The authors continue to focus on the botany and chemistry of hallucinogens, although they also consider ethnobotanical, historical, pharmacological and psychological aspects. Initial chapters delineate definition, botanical distribution, and structural types of hallucinogenic plants. Plants of known, possible and dubious hallucinogenic potential are then covered in separate sections. The bibliography for this new edition has been enlarged to accommodate all of the recent activity in botanical and chemical investigation of psychoactive plants. Readers will also appreciate the excellent illustrations that accompany the text.

Schultes, Richard Evans and Siri Von Reis (1995). Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline
. Portland, Or., Dioscorides Press.
The value of biodiversity and the need to preserve the untapped botanical resources of places like the Amazon rain forests is now widely acknowledged. Less widely understood but equally threatened is a key means of access to these resources, the knowledge and use of these plants by local nonliterate peoples whose traditional cultures are fast disappearing. This book explains and promotes ethnobotany, which investigates this knowledge by providing an overview of its history, practice, and value worldwide. Chapters are contributed by an impressive international array of field ethnobotanists, conservationists, and academics. Schultes spent many years as a field ethnobotanist, professor, and director of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, where von Reis is an associate. This is an important, in-depth academic study of a discipline for those with a serious interest in ethnobotany. - Library Journal

Schultes, Richard Evans and Robert F. Raffauf (1990). The Healing Forest: Medicinal and Toxic Plants of the Northwest Amazonia
. Portland, Or., Dioscorides Press.
This enormous work represents nearly half a century of field research in the Northwest Amazon encompassing parts of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. While the Northwest region represents only a small part of the entire Amazonian drainage area, it is in many respects thae most complex and varied part of the forest; it has also been the least studied. The authors, from their backgrounds in ethnobotany and phytochemistry, have included and described nearly 1,500 species and variants, representing 596 genera in 145 plant families. Of these, half have had little or no real investigation of their chemical and pharmacological properties.

Schultes, Richard Evans, Albert Hofmann, et al. (2001). Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers
. Rochester, Vt., Healing Arts Press.
This superbly illustrated, encyclopedic volume provides a much needed, well-balanced scientific perspective on the use of hallucinogenic plants. Richard Evans Schultes, the worlds most eminent ethnobotanist, and Albert Hofmann, the former research director at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, emphasize the need for continued education about both the potential benefits and the inherent dangers involved in the use of hallucinogens.

Schulz, Charles M. (2009). Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years
. Kansas City, MO, Andrews McMeel Publishing.
Andrews McMeel Publishing showcases the Celebrating Peanuts: 60 Years, packed with commentary from throughout Schulz's career, making this book not only a heartwarming tribute but also a collector's item.

Schultz, John (2009). The Chicago Conspiracy Trial, Revised Edition
. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
In 1969, the Chicago Seven were charged with intent to "incite, organize, promote, and encourage" antiwar riots during the Democratic National Convention. The Chicago Conspiracy Trial is an electrifying account of the months-long trial that commanded the attention of a divided nation. John Schultz, on assignment for The Evergreen Review, witnessed the whole trial, from the jury selection to the aftermath of the verdict. In his vivid account, Schultz exposes the raw emotions and judicial corruption that came to define one of the most significant legal events in American history.

Schultz, John (2009). No One Was Killed: The Democratic National Convention, August 1968 [Revised Edition]
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
While other writers contemplated the events of the 1968 Chicago riots from the safety of their hotel rooms, John Schultz was in the city streets, being threatened by police, choking on tear gas, and listening to all the rage, fear, and confusion around him. The result, No One Was Killed, is his account of the contradictions and chaos of convention week, the adrenalin, the sense of drama and history, and how the mainstream press was getting it all wrong..

Schumacher, Michael (1992). Dharma Lion: A Critical Biography of Allen Ginsberg
. New York, St. Martin's Press.
Allen Ginsberg, choreographer of the Beat movement, ambassador of the counterculture and great communicator of several hip generations, attracts attention that crosses natural, generational, sexual and literary boundaries. In this in-depth biography, Schumacher (Reason to Believe) covers Ginsberg's childhood in N.J. where he was born in 1926, his years at Columbia University, his travels, writings, homosexuality and political adventures up until 1981, the last year he was published by fellow poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights, which brought out Howl in 1956 and defended the poem against censorship prosecution. Given access to Ginsberg's private archives and having interviewed more than 100 people in 10 years of research, Schumacher weaves a monumental cultural biography, covering Ginsberg's famous Gallery Six reading, his sojourns to India, expulsion from Cuba and "coronation" in Czechoslovakia. Especially noteworthy is Schumacher's documentation of the circumstances and people surrounding the poet when he composed specific poems. Beat veterans will be delighted with this book, and newcomers well-informed by it. A brief postnote summarizes Ginsberg's activities between 1981 and the present. - Publishers Weekly

Schwartz, Bernard (1997). Decision: How the Supreme Court Decides Cases
. New York, Oxford University Press.
In a book aimed at specialists, veteran court-watcher Schwartz (A History of the Supreme Court) draws on archives, including the files of recently retired Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, and confidential interviews to describe internal court arguments on cases recent and long past. He begins with a close analysis of the arguments-especially what he terms the manipulations of Chief Justice William Rehnquist-in the Webster abortion case, then admiringly describes the leadership of "Super Chief" Earl Warren, who gained all-important unanimity in the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case (1954). Chief Justice Warren Burger, on the other hand, found his work regularly modified by pressure from his colleagues that led to an "opinion by committee" in cases such as the Nixon Watergate appeal. Schwartz also analyzes cases in which associate justices (Brennan, for example) took temporary leadership of the court, and how justices switched votes in crucial cases. He concludes by worrying that judges' young law clerks retain too much power as gatekeepers to the court, and endorses a 1972 proposal by a court-appointed committee to create a new court of appeals to screen all petitions for appeal.

Schwartz, Delmore (2012). In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories
. New York, New Directions.
Collects eight of Delmore Schwartz's finest delineations of New York intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s. As no other writer, he captures the speech, generational conflicts, the mocking self-analysis of educated, ambitious, Depression-stymied young people at odds with their immigrant parents. This unique American dilemma Irving Howe describes in his penetrating, loving foreward as "that interesting point where intellectual children of immigrant Jews are finding their way into the larger world while casting uneasy, rueful glances over their backs." James Atlas, author of a biography of Schwartz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977), has provided an introduction placing the stories (many barely disguised autobiography) in their historical and cultural setting. This edition presents Schwartz to a new generation of American readers, drifting further away from their immigrant roots and anxious to reestablish contact with the many worlds of their fathers.

Schwartz, Delmore (1985). Selected Essays of Delmore Schwartz
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Delmore Schwartz was born December 8, 1913, in Brooklyn. The marriage of his parents Harry and Rose, both Roumanian immigrants, was doomed to fail. Sadly, this misfortune with relationships was also a theme in Schwartz's life. His alcoholism, frequent use of barbiturates and amphetamines, and battles with various mental diseases, proved adverse in his relationships with women. His first marriage to Gertrude Buckman lasted six years; his second, to the young novelist Elizabeth Pollett, ended after his ceaseless paranoid accusations of adultery led him to attack an art critic with whom he believed Elizabeth was having an affair.

Despite his turbulent and unsettling home life as a child, Schwartz was a gifted and intellectual young student. He enrolled early at Columbia University, and also studied at the University of Wisconsin, eventually receiving his bachelor's degree in 1935 in philosophy from New York University. In 1936 he won the Bowdoin Prize in the Humanities for his essay "Poetry as Imitation." In 1937 his short story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" (successfully written in one month during the summer of 1935 after he locked himself in his Greenwich Village apartment) was published in Partisan Review, a left-wing magazine of American politics and culture; the following year this short story would be published by New Directions with other poetry and prose in his first book-length work, also titled In Dreams Begin Responsibilities. It was praised by many, including T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell, and Vladimir Nabokov.

He never finished his advanced degree in philosophy at Harvard, but was hired as the Briggs-Copeland Lecturer, and later given an Assistant Professorship. Frustrated by what he believed was a sense of anti-Semitism within the school, in 1947 Schwartz ended his twelve-year association with Harvard and returned to New York City. His book of short stories The World is a Wedding was published the following year. Time compared Schwartz to Stendhal and Anton Chekhov. By this same time his work was widely anthologized. He was publishing critical essays on other important literary figures and cultural topics, and was the poetry editor at Partisan Review, and later also at New Republic.

His increasingly itinerant nature left him dependent on a series of teaching positions at Bennington College, Kenyon College, Princeton University, the writer's colony Yaddo, and at Syracuse University, in his last years. Among others, he inspired the student Lou Reed, who later dedicated "European Son" on the Velvet Underground's first album to Schwartz. In 1960 Schwartz became the youngest poet ever to win the Bollingen Prize. His friend Saul Bellow wrote a semi-fictional memoir about Schwartz called Humboldt's Gift, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

The last years of his life Schwartz was a solitary, disheveled figure in New York. He drank frequently at the White Horse Tavern, and spent his time sitting in parks and collecting bits of work, quotes, and translations in his journal. Finding himself penniless and virtually friendless, in the summer of 1966 Schwartz checked into the Times Squares hotel, perhaps to focus on his writing. Unfortunately by this time his body had been taxed by years of drug and alcohol abuse. He worked continuously until a heart attack on July 11 seized him in the lobby of the hotel.

Schwartz, Gary (1996). Bets and Scams: A Novel of the Art World
. New York, Marion Boyars.
When art collector and real estate speculator Mitchell Fleishig's Beverly Hills business collapses leaving him deeply in debt to the Mafia, he concocts a scheme to have Lodewijk Alstad, his Dutch art dealer, front him a 17th-century masterpiece. Fleishig's plan--have a hit man eliminate Alstad, sell the painting, pay off the Mafia and live happily ever after. Which means Alstad must avoid death, rescue the painting, and somehow find a way to save Fleishig from the Mob. Schwartz, an art historian who lives in the Netherlands provides an entertaining behind-the-scenes look at the often devious world of art sellers and buyers.

Schwartz, Stephen (1998). From West to East: California and the Making of the American Mind
. New York, Free Press.
From its beginnings, California has embodied the new, maintains Schwartz in this ambitious, unorthodox history. By the time the U.S. annexed the state in 1848 after the war with Mexico, California already had a cosmopolitan identity utterly different from that of other West Coast states, he further argues. The era after the 1848-50 Gold Rush saw a waning of Hispanic traditions and Native cultures, and conflicts between farms and railroads, whites and nonwhite immigrants, as well as the rise of a bohemian subculture by the 1890s. Schwartz, a San Francisco Chronicle correspondent, aims to write a "hidden" or "secret" history of Californians' forging of a nonconformist cultural identity. He sometimes overstates his case, but his entertaining narrative offers new vistas on the Golden Gate State as a crucible of American experience. Along with thumbnails of Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Ambrose Bierce, Lincoln Steffens and avant-garde composers Harry Partch and Henry Cowell, he peoples his saga with social activists, utopians, cranks, artists, anarchists, Wobblies and Hollywood communists. Although Schwartz extols a postwar California mindset shaped by Henry Miller, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan and the Beats, he opines that the post-1965 California scene has "produced little of lasting value in the literary and artistic fields."

Sciver, Noah Van (2020). The Complete Works of Fante Bukowski
. Seattle, Fantagraphics.
From the dive bars of Denver, Colorado, to the seedy motels of Columbus, Ohio, Fante Bukowski has lived a literary tradition as identifiable and essential to American writings as it is currently at odds with contemporary mores: a tradition of toxic masculinity, white privilege, Daddy issues, alcoholism, and narcissism, all in the name of art. This landmark volume compiles the trilogy of works that have preserved Bukowski's legacy—Fante Bukowski, Fante Bukowski Two, and Fante Bukowski Three: A Perfect Failure—as chronicled by acclaimed cartoonist Noah Van Sciver.

The Complete Works of Fante Bukowski also puts back into circulation Bukowski's first self-published chapbook, 6 Poems, painstakingly restored for this collection after the entire original print run was destroyed in a motel fire—what few copies were circulated now command collectors prices in the rare books market. Novelist Ryan Boudinot (Blueprints of the Afterlife) pens a new introduction to this volume as well, which is bookended with a selection of Bukowski "visual tributes" by many notable visual artists who have been influenced by Bukowski's oeuvre.

Scott, James C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
. New Haven, Yale University Press.
An analysis of diverse failures in high-modernist, authoritarian state planning. It covers projects such as collectivization in Russia and the building of Brasilia, arguing that any centrally-managed social plan must recognize the importance of local customs and practical knowledge.

Scott, Peter Dale (1993). Deep Politics and the Death of JFK
. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy--of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic. Scott (English/UC at Berkeley; coauthor, Cocaine Politics, 1991, etc.) advances the idea that each decade has produced its own adjustment to prolonging and deepening the cold war but that this adjustment can't be seen merely as an effort of nefarious power grabbers but rather as a synergism emerging from many interrelated political layers reacting to each other. The author is less interested in actual facts than in working toward public control of political life. To do this, he uses a huge magnifying glass he calls ''deep politics''--the study of ''political practices and arrangements that are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.'' The JFK assassination, he contends, is only one of four incapacitating political crises in Washington since WW II: The others are McCarthyism, Watergate, and the Iran-contra scandal, which, along with the JFK killing, have striking continuities in personnel, supranational ties, and outcome. Scott warns: "I am not suggesting that the four crises were part of some single conspiracy, only that we recognize that in all cases the outcome was roughly the same: a prolongation of a system committed to the Cold War.'' His chief villain is J. Edgar Hoover, the real power behind McCarthyism, McCarthy himself having been a weak arm of systematic governmental violence that increased during Hoover's incumbency and that involved organized crime, assassination of black leaders, CIA assassinations, and much, much more. A kind of Rosetta stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics. - Kirkus Reviews

Scotti, Anthony J. (2007). Professional Driving Techniques: The Essential Guide to Operating a Motor Vehicle with Confidence and Skill
. Palm Coast, Fla., PhotoGraphics.
The essential guide to operating a motor vehicle with confidence and skill. You ll learn how to maintain your vehicle and it s driver in optimum condition for taking to the road, and how to maintain vehicle control in both everyday and emergency situations in a variety of road and weather conditions. The text also features how to recognize the five major accident situations and the human and mechanical failures that usually cause them; the basics of vehicle dynamics and why the vehicle sometimes does what it wants to do, not what the driver wants it to; the finer points of vehicle control in everyday driving (timing, maneuvering, spotting hazards) and in emergency situations such as when there are five seconds or less between the driver and a potentially serious situation; how to operate the controls with precision, accuracy, and in the proper sequence; the necessity of both mental and physical readiness and the adverse effects of fatigue and stress. Also covers road rage, braking and traction systems, including electronic stability control, safe driving and auto maintenance tips.

Scranton, Roy (2015). Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization
. San Francisco, City Lights Publishers.
In this bracing response to climate change, Roy Scranton combines memoir, reportage, philosophy, and Zen wisdom to explore what it means to be human in a rapidly evolving world, taking readers on a journey through street protests, the latest findings of earth scientists, a historic UN summit, millennia of geological history, and the persistent vitality of ancient literature. Scranton responds to the existential problem of global warming by arguing that in order to survive, we must come to terms with our mortality. He draws on his experiences in Iraq to confront the grim realities of climate change.

Scranton, Roy (2016). War Porn
. New York, NY, Soho Press.
In War Porn three lives fit inside one another like nesting dolls: a restless young woman at an end-of-summer barbecue in Utah; an American soldier in occupied Baghdad; and Qasim al-Zabadi, an Iraqi math professor, who faces the US invasion of his country with fear, denial, and perseverance. As War Porn cuts from America to Iraq and back again, as home and hell merge, we come to see America through the eyes of the occupied, even as we see Qasim become a prisoner of the occupation. Through the looking glass of War Porn, Scranton reveals the fragile humanity that connects Americans and Iraqis, torturers and the tortured, victors and their victims.

Scruton, Roger (1996). A Dictionary of Political Thought
. London, Macmillan.
A profound and incisive guide to political ideas.

Seale, Bobby (1991). Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton
. Baltimore, Md., Black Classic Press.
In October of 1966, in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government, and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation -- a party whose agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines.

This book derives from tape recordings made by Bobby Seale in the early autumn of 1968 and the autumn and winter of 1969-70. The first series was made with the cooperation of the editors of Ramparts magazine. The second series was made in the San Francisco County Jail. Art Goldberg, formerly an editor of Ramparts, was responsible for the editing of the transcribed tapes; however, Mr. Seale supervised the preparation of the final manuscript and every word is his.

With an earnest intentness upon clarifying Black Panther philosophy ("not racist, not pro-violence") and Black Panther practice ("they do not murder former members"), with wonderfully direct language and endearing hero worship of the charismatic Huey P. Newton, "the baddest motherfucker ever to set foot in history," Seale sets forth the whole turbulent career of the Black Panther Party and his own fortunes as Huey's partner and Black Panther Chairman. Seale can fling rhetoric with the best of them; but, surprisingly, what shines through the whole account as convincingly as the anger and the ardor is a touching, almost naive sincerity and faith.

Seale, Patrick and Maureen McConville (1989). Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East
. Berkeley, University of California Press.
British journalist Seale (The Struggle for Syria) here fashions a political portrait of President Hafiz al-Asad that emphasizes his patience, caution and courage without obscuring his conspiratorial past or his selective ruthlessness. He describes Asad's rise from peasant origins to national leadership in a bloodless coup, analyzes the view from Damascus of Syria's role in the wars with Israel and Asad's continuing efforts to block piecemeal settlements with Israel by other Arab countries. Double-crossed, according to Seale, by his Egyptian partner Anwar Sadat during the 1973 October War, Asad was then "duped" by Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy and "robbed" of the fruits of the war. Asad is quoted as claiming that his goal is not Syrian supremacy but a balance of power, and that a fair peace will come about only when the Arabs achieve strategic parity with the Jewish state. An admiring but not uncritical biography of Israel's most dangerous enemy, this book sheds light on an enigmatic leader.

Searle, Ronald and Matt Jones (2016). Ronald Searle's America
. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics Books.
Dispatched to America in the early ’60s, the golden age of illustrative reportage, Ronald Searle spent several years covering everything―in the form of drawings in his trademark satirical and virtuosic style – from sports to politics, for magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and TV Guide. Topics included Palm Springs, Las Vegas, the Presidential contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon – as seen through the eyes of a caustic Englishman. Full-color illustrations throughout.

Sebald, Winfried Georg (2001). Austerlitz
. New York, Random House.
Over the course of a thirty-year conversation unfolding in train stations and travelers' stops across England and Europe, W.G. Sebald's unnamed narrator and Jacques Austerlitz discuss Austerlitz's ongoing efforts to understand who he is. An orphan who came to England alone in the summer of 1939 and was raised by a Welsh Methodist minister and his wife as their own, Austerlitz grew up with no conscious memory of where he came from.

W.G. Sebald embodies in Austerlitz the universal human search for identity, the struggle to impose coherence on memory, a struggle complicated by the mind's defenses against trauma. Along the way, this novel of many riches dwells magically on a variety of subjects-railway architecture, military fortifications; insets, plants, and animals; the constellations; works of art; the strange contents of the museum of a veterinary school; a small circus; and the three capital cities that loom over the book, London, Paris, and Prague-in the service of its astounding vision.

Sebald, Winfried Georg (2003). On the Natural History of Destruction
. New York, Random House.
Much has been written about the Allied bombing of Germany during World War II, often focusing on the resilient, rubble-picking survivors or the questionable ethics of leveling Dresden. This book focuses upon the air war's lingering fallout for the German psyche, particularly the awkward silence of German writers on the subject of their nation's destruction. Postwar German writing, Sebald argues, is "looking and looking away at the same time" as writers struggle with their nation's guilt and victimhood, but also with the destruction of their own authority as writers in a morally discredited society. The author explores, among others, novelist Alfred Andersch's egotistical apologies and confessions and Peter Weiss' attempt to "attain absolution in heroic, self-destroying work." Himself a German writer and prolific literary scholar, Sebald approaches his subject with sensitivity, yet avoids neither descriptions of horrible carnage nor criticism of writers too preoccupied with absolving themselves of blame to faithfully portray a destroyed Germany. The result is a balanced explication of devastation and denial, and a beautiful coda for Sebald, who passed away in December 2001.

Sebald, Winfried Georg and Michael Hulse (1996). The Emigrants
. New York, New Directions.
Composed of four compelling portraits of Jewish emigres whose lives have been scarred by exile, dislocation and persecution, this unusual work of fiction is pervaded by a sensibility and a degree of circumstantial detail so authentic that it could pass for historical documentation. That Sebald has invested his fictional creations with both dignity and pathos is a mark of his achievement here. A narrator provides perspective on the lives he relates. Retired surgeon Henry Selwyn was born Hersch Seweryn and changed his name after arrival in England; his disclosure of his true origins to his Swiss wife causes an irreparable rift in their marriage and an essential loss of identity in the now aimless man. Paul Bereyter, fired from his post as schoolteacher in Germany because he is one-quarter Jewish, serves six years in the Germany army and is haunted by the bestial violence he witnesses. Ambros Adelwarth escapes Germany, finally settling in the U.S. Concealing his traumas from family members, he commits himself to a sanitarium at age 67 and undergoes electroshock therapy, longing for extinction. German-born artist Max Ferber, a recluse in Manchester, England, suffers claustrophobia stemming from the deportation and murder of his parents by Nazis. Though none of the protagonists is thrown into a concentration camp, they are all haunted by the effects of the Holocaust. Two of them eventually commit suicide, all suffer shame and guilt, claustrophobia and depression. Photographs interwoven with the restrained text add to the cumulative effect, which is that of an eerie memento. Long after the Nazis have fallen, these exiled individuals endure existential agony and emotional breakdowns. German novelist and literary scholar Sebald, who has lived in England since 1970, won the Berlin Literature Prize for this work. - Publishers Weekly

Sebald, Winfried Georg and Michael Hulse (1998). The Rings of Saturn
. New York, New Directions.
As he did so brilliantly in The Emigrants, German author Sebald once again blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction in this meditative work. Sebald's unnamed, traveling narrator is making his way through the county of Suffolk, England, and from there back in time. We learn that he has recently been hospitalized, an event that "marked the beginning of a fissure that has since riven my life." Sunk in his own thoughts, he becomes obsessed with the ubiquitous evidence of disintegration he views in the landscape and history of the small coastal towns, from the moribund herring industry to the lost art of silk production. He spirals deeper into his own considerably learned historical memory to explore, for example, slavery, the Chinese opium wars, Joseph Conrad's life on the high seas and Chateaubriand's memories of estranged love. It comes as no surprise that the "parlous loftiness" of the 17th-century metaphysician Thomas Browne holds particular fascination for our narrator who, like Browne, writes "out of the fullness of his erudition," pursuing his train of thought in sentences "that resemble processions or a funeral cortege in their sheer ceremonial lavishness." Numerous photographs that illustrate the people, places and objects discussed in the text add to the curious beauty of this brooding, elegiac novel.

Seidman, David (2011). The Complete Sailor: Learning the Art of Sailing
. Camden, ME, International Marine/McGraw-Hill.
A masterful blend of straightforward text with delightful and instructive illustrations. A great walk-through for the novice, both entertaining and thorough.

Seidman, David and Paul Cleveland (2001). The Essential Wilderness Navigator
. Camden, Me., Ragged Mountain Press.
Seidman, a world traveler and master kayaker, charts the subtleties of map interpretation (especially the ups and downs of contour lines) and offers instruction on how to use a compass for taking bearings and walking a course. Other techniques for finding your way in the woods are explained: estimating distances by finger angles or winking, adjusting your compass for true north, and finding directions from the motions of the sun and stars.

Seigel, Jerrold E. (1986). Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830-1930
. New York, N.Y., U.S.A., Viking.
Seigel has written an important work, one which monitors the development of an extraordinary counterculture through all its evolutions and ambiguities during a constantly changing period of French history. Bohemian Paris was, of course, a uniquely creative entity; its art, ideas, literature, and lifestyles influenced (and were influenced by) the bourgeois world that was simultaneously taking shape. Seigel combines a sophisticated command of French history with an authoritative understanding of those who populated Bohemian Paris, such as Courbet, Rimbaud, Zola, and Cocteau.

Seigel, Jerrold E. (2012). Modernity and Bourgeois Life: Society, Politics, and Culture in England, France and Germany since 1750
. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
What does it mean to be modern? In the nineteenth century a consensus emerged that Western Europe was giving birth to a new form of life in which bourgeois activities, people, attitudes and values played a key role. Jerrold Seigel offers a magisterial account of the development of European modernity.

Sekyi-Otu, Ato (1996). Fanon's Dialectic of Experience
. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
With the flowering of postcolonialism, we return to Frantz Fanon, a leading theorist of the struggle against colonialism. In this thorough reinterpretation of Fanon's texts, Ato Sekyi-Otu ensures that we return to him fully aware of the unsuspected formal complexity and substantive richness of his work. A Caribbean psychiatrist trained in France after World War II and an eloquent observer of the effects of French colonialism on its subjects from Algeria to Indochina, Fanon was a controversial figure--advocating national liberation and resistance to colonial power in his bestsellers, Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth.

But the controversies attending his life--and death, which some ascribed to the CIA--are small in comparison to those surrounding his work. Where admirers and detractors alike have seen his ideas as an incoherent mixture of Existentialism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis, Sekyi-Otu restores order to Fanon's oeuvre by reading it as one dramatic dialectical narrative. Fanon's Dialectic of Experience invites us to see Fanon as a dramatist enacting a movement of experience--the drama of social agents in the colonial context and its aftermath--in a manner idiosyncratically patterned on the narrative structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. By recognizing the centrality of experience to Fanon's work, Sekyi-Otu allows us to comprehend this much misunderstood figure within the tradition of political philosophy from Aristotle to Arendt.

Seldes, Barry (2009). Leonard Bernstein: The Political Life of an American Musician
. Berkeley, University of California Press.
From his dazzling conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly. In this fresh and revealing biography of Bernstein's political life, Barry Seldes examines Bernstein's career against the backdrop of cold war America--blacklisting by the State Department in 1950, voluntary exile from the New York Philharmonic in 1951 for fear that he might be blacklisted, signing a humiliating affidavit to regain his passport--and the factors that by the mid-1950s allowed his triumphant return to the New York Philharmonic. Seldes links Bernstein's great concert-hall and musical-theatrical achievements and his real and perceived artistic setbacks to his involvement with progressive political causes. Making extensive use of previously untapped FBI files as well as overlooked materials in the Library of Congress's Bernstein archive, Seldes illuminates the ways in which Bernstein's career intersected with the twentieth century's most momentous events. This broadly accessible and impressively documented account of the celebrity-maestro's life deepens our understanding of an entire era as it reveals important and often ignored intersections of American culture and political power.

Sepeda, Toni and Donna Leon (2009). Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective
. New York [Berkeley, CA], Grove Press. Distributed by Publishers Group West.
Follow Commissario Guido Brunetti, star of Donna Leon's mystery series, on over a dozen walks that highlight Venice's churches, markets, bars, cafes, and palazzos. Important locations from the novels are highlighted and major themes and characters are explored, accompanied by excerpts from the novels.

Serge, Victor and Willard R. Trask (2004). The Case of Comrade Tulayev
. New York, New York Review Books.
One cold Moscow night, Comrade Tulayev, a high government official, is shot dead on the street, and the search for the killer begins. In this panoramic vision of the Soviet Great Terror, the investigation leads all over the world, netting a whole series of suspects whose only connection is their innocence - at least of the crime of which they stand accused. But The Case of Comrade Tulayev, unquestionably the finest work of fiction ever written about the Stalinist purges, is not just a story of a totalitarian state. Marked by the deep humanity and generous spirit of its author, the legendary anarchist and exile Victor Serge, it is also a classic twentieth-century tale of risk, adventure, and unexpected nobility to set beside Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Andre Malraux's Man's Fate.

Serge, Victor (2002). Memoirs of a Revolutionary. Iowa City; University of Iowa Press.
Victor Serge knew Lenin, Trotsky, Kropotkin, Bosch, Bukharin, Bakayev, Nin - as well as the writers Gide, Romain Rolland, Boris Pasternak, Saint-Exupery, Andre Malraux and Alexei Tolstoi. He participated in revolutionary activity not only in Russia, but in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona - and, finally, Mexico. As with most revolutionaries, was despised when he did not toe the party line, which was most of the time. "In 1918," he writes in the last chapter of Memoirs of a Revolutionary. "I was nearly torn to pieces by my French workmates because I defended the Russian Revolution at the moment of the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. Twenty years later, I was nearly torn to pieces by the same workers because I denounced the totalitarianism which had sprung from that Revolution." He arrived in Russia in 1919, and immediately become involved in a number of vital functions: serving in a special defense battalion, teaching in schools for workers, writing and translating many manifestos, and - as a commissar - he was in charge of investigating Czarist police archives. During this period, he wrote a book on Soviet literary life and also translated a number of works by Lenin and Trotsky into French. Although not yet a member of the Bolshevik Party, Serge was asked to help in the founding of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1919. As the Revolution turned more bureaucratic, he remained loyal to its founding principals, and was gradually ostracized. In 1923 he became a member of the Left Opposition, created to protest the end of the earlier guiding principals: freedom of speech, freedom to organize, and the end of capital punishment. In 1933, Serge was sent to the concentration camp in Orenburg in Central Asia and was ousted from Russia in 1936 just before the most fearsome of Stalin's purges. Memoirs of a Revolutionary is clear-headed, free of cant, and not without drama. Since Serge was part of the inner circle, and since his memory of those days is so crystalline, we are with him at the center of power in the early days of the Revolution.

Serge, Victor (2008). Unforgiving Years. New York; New York Review Books.
Born in Brussels of Russian revolutionary exiles, Serge (1890-1947) has long had a reputation as polemicist and journalist, but this powerful novel of the descent into WWII makes a strong case for his political fiction. In the pressured atmosphere just preceding the outbreak of war, a secret agent, D., breaks with the Organization, Stalin's spy network, and escapes from Paris with his lover, Nadine. With extreme paranoia that he cloaks in exquisite manners, D. tells only one person where they are going: an old comrade named Daria. In the next, flash-forward section, Daria, having been arrested, is released from exile in a Soviet backwater and thrust into the siege of Leningrad. The third section opens in 1945 Berlin, where Daria witnesses a host of Germans, injured and half crazy, try to survive aerial bombardment, a moment that, as W.G. Sebald noted, has been deeply underserved by literature. In the final section, Daria escapes Europe and follows D. and Nadine to Mexico, escaping (she thinks) the long reach of Stalin's agents. Serge remains sophisticated even during the book's more noirish moments, and action sequences form an inseparable part of his hypnotic, prophetic vision.

Serra, Tony (2014). Tony Serra: The Green, Yellow and Purple Years in the Life of a Radical Lawyer
. Kensington, CA, Grizzly Peak Press.
A wonderful accounting of some of the most riveting trials of famed criminal defense attorney in his own words from the Black Panthers, S.L.A., New World Liberation Front, Nuestra Familia, Earth First, Hells Angels, Mob and Native Americans. Serra wrote the book while in serving in a Federal Prison Camp for the willful failure to pay income tax.

Serra, Tony (2012). Walking the Circle: Prison Chronicles
. Kensington, CA, Grizzly Peak Press.
Tony Serra's Walking the Circle: Prison Chronicles is a wonder, as is the author. Not since Clarence Darrow has a trial lawyer attracted such envious attention in court. Not since Byron has there been a more poetic, passionate defender of liberty. Tony's book almost makes you want to spend time in jail.

Server, Lee; Edward Gorman, et al. (1998). The Big Book of Noir
. New York, Carroll & Graf Publishers.
Noir is big, so The Big Book of Noir jam-packs its pages with articles, interviews, excerpts, opinion, and gossip that chronicle its history and explore noir in all its forms: movies, detective stories, television and radio shows, comic books, and graphic novels.

Seuss [aka Dr. Seuss; born Theodor Seuss Geisal] (2004). Your Favorite Seuss: 13 Stories Written and Illustrated by Dr. Seuss with 13 Introductory Essays
. New York, Random House Children's Books.
A compilation of more than a dozen previously published Dr. Seuss books, plus essays by nine authors and other book lovers, including Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss. The stories included are: And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, Horton Hears a Who!, McElligot's Pool, If I Ran the Zoo, Happy Birthday to You!, Dr. Seuss's Sleep Book, Yertle the Turtle, The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, The Sneetches, and Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Seves, Richard Pérez. (2018). Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground
. Pennsylvania, USA, Schiffer Publishing.
Tracing the rise of commercial fetish art from its shadowy beginnings in the 1940s to its acceptance in the 1970s, this illustrated biography explores the unconventional life and art of Eric Stanton, a pioneering sexual fantasist who helped shape the movement. With more than 400 rare images and interviews with Stanton's family and closest associates, this biography chronicles the infamous circle of patrons, publishers, and cult icons populating his subterranean world, including Irving Klaw, John Willie, Bettie Page, Steve Ditko, and Gene Bilbrew. It is the untold, secret history of a misunderstood culture, the abuses of government authority, social intolerance, and gangsters. But above all, it is a tale about survival against all odds and an artist who had the courage to stay true to himself.

Seymour, Bruce (1996). Lola Montez: A Life
. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Lola Montez made up her name, her life, and her career. Born in 1821 to Anglo-Irish parents as Eliza Gilbert, Lola left a disastrous marriage and fell into an affair that left her original name tarnished."Reborn" as Spanish noblewoman and dancer Lola Montez, she went on to travel Europe and conquer, among others, Franz Liszt and King Ludwig I of Bavaria. She died in America at the age of 40 of complications of a stroke and pneumonia, leaving behind a bizarre tangle of truth, half-truth, and lies about her adventures. It is this tangle that author Seymour set himself to unravel over a period of four years of research. Since no thorough biography of Montez has been done in over 20 years and since all previous works relied perhaps too heavily on Montez's version of her life, Seymour's work fills the gap by providing the definitive biography of yet another Victorian woman who was definitely not Victorian in her actions.

Seymour, Richard (2014). Against Austerity: How We Can Fix the Crisis They Made
. London, Pluto Press.
Five years into capitalism's deepest crisis, which has led to cuts and economic pain across the world, Against Austerity addresses a puzzling aspect of the current conjuncture: why are the rich still getting away with it? Why is protest so ephemeral? Why does the left appear to be marginal to political life? In an analysis which challenges our understanding of capitalism, class and ideology, Richard Seymour shows how 'austerity' is just one part of a wider elite plan to radically re-engineer society and everyday life in the interests of profit, consumerism and speculative finance. But Against Austerity is not a gospel of despair. Seymour argues that once we turn to face the headwinds of this new reality, dispensing with reassuring dogmas, we can forge new collective resistance and alternatives to the current system. Following Brecht, Against Austerity argues that the good old things are over, it's time to confront the bad new ones.

Seymour-Smith, Martin (1985). The New Guide to Modern World Literature
. New York, P. Bedrick Books.
Martin Seymour-Smith was a polymath who was fluent in dozens of languages and had reading capability in nearly 200. He is opinionated, insightful, contrarian, and absolutely individual in his comments about authors and books ranging from the more familiar bodies of western literature to the literatures of languages and cultures nearly unknown to most western readers.

He is always stimulating and informative, and covers a broad sweep of poetry as well as prose with challenging opinions which are guaranteed to make you eager to read and judge for yourself. This book is a sort of summation of the lifetime reading of a critic and lover of great literature who is unlikely to be equalled in our age. No mincing of words, no prefacing of his judgments with the uncertainties of "in my opinion" or other hedging phrases. Refreshing in its total honesty, daunting in its intellectual depth and breadth, no other book of modern literary criticism comes close to it.

Shabazz, Rashad (2015). Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago
. Chicago, University of Illinois Press.
A geographic study of race and gender, Spatializing Blackness casts light upon the ubiquitous--and ordinary--ways carceral power functions in places where African Americans live. Mining forgotten facts from sources as diverse as maps and memoirs, Rashad Shabazz explores the myriad architectures of confinement, policing, surveillance, urban planning, and incarceration. In particular, he investigates how the ongoing carceral effort oriented and imbued black male bodies and gender performance from the Progressive Era to the present. The result is an interdisciplinary study that highlights the racialization of space, the role of containment in subordinating African Americans, the politics of mobility under conditions of alleged freedom, and the ways black men cope with, and resist, spacial containment.

This project traces how architectures of confinement, policing, surveillance, migration, and mass incarceration orient and imbue Black male bodies and gender performance with the stigmata of carceral punishment. As the northern city with the largest 20th century influx of southern Blacks, Chicago provides a powerful case study to understand how urban planning, architecture, crowded living quarters, surveillance, and policing function to regulate Black men's bodies. Rashad Shabazz makes an important contribution to the growing work on Black (bodily) geographies and the complex entanglements between the emergence of the US prison regime (and prison industrial complex) and the densely historical complexities of Black subjectivity formation. By first illustrating how Black men's geographies have been delineated throughout the twentieth century in Black Chicago in spaces such as interracial sex districts, cramped kitchenettes, segregated house project, and prisons, Shabazz is then able to analyze and generalize the impact this mapping has had on the formation of Black masculinity, Black cultural production, and Black men's health in Black spaces beyond Chicago. Shabazz employs various methods (history, sociology, and literary criticism), theories (poststructuralism and critical theory), and disciplines (human geography, critical race studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and epidemiology) to highlight the importance of the racialization of space, the role of containment in subordinating Black people, the politics of mobility under conditions of 'freedom,' and to ultimately discuss how Black men resist spacial containment.

Shaffer, Peter (2001). Amadeus
. New York, Perennial.
0riginating at the National Theatre of Great Britain, Amadeus was the recipient of both the Evening Standard Drama Award and the Theatre Critics Award. In the United States, the play won the coveted Tony Award and went on to become a critically acclaimed major motion picture winning eight Oscars, including Best Picture.

Now, this extraordinary work about the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is available with a new preface by Peter Shaffer and a new introduction by the director of the 1998 Broadway revival, Sir Peter Hall. Amadeus is a must-have for classical music buffs, theatre lovers, and aficionados of historical fiction.

Shakur, Assata (2001). Assata: An Autobiography
. Chicago, Ill., Chicago Review Press.
This black activist's memoir is like a freeze frame of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though the polemical rhetoric may at times seem dated, the book is a compelling tale of the impact of white racism on a sensitive and powerful young black woman. Born Joanne Chesimard, she took an African name to confirm her commitment to black liberation, joined militant organizations, and was ultimately convicted of the murder of a New Jersey highway patrol officer in 1977. Her descriptions of life in prison and the vagaries of the court system are especially wrenching. Living now in Cuba as an escaped felon, she continues her plea for revolution.

Shahzad, Syed Saleem (2011). Inside Al-Qaeda and the Taliban: Beyond Bin Laden and 9/11
. London, Pluto Press.
President Obama may have delivered on his campaign promise to kill Osama bin Laden, but as an Al-Qaeda strategist, bin Laden has been dead for years. This book introduces and examines the new generation of Al-Qaeda leaders who have been behind the most recent attacks. A path breaking book that enhances considerably our understanding of the complexities of Al-Qaeda. Not only is the author clearly familiar with the personalities that form the top tactical and strategy formulation tier today, but his ability to garner various strands of information due to an impressive field experience in Afghanistan makes it one of the most authentic and thought provoking memoirs that seek to throw light on new terrorist initiatives in the region.

Shakespeare, William; Stanley Wells, et al. (2005). The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd Edition
. Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press.
Hailed by The Washington Post as "a definitive synthesis of the best editions" and by The Times of London as "a monument to Shakespearean scholarship,The Oxford Shakespeare is the ultimate anthology of the Bard's work: the most authoritative edition of the plays and poems ever published. Now, almost two decades after the original volume, Oxford publishes this thoroughly updated second edition, including for the first time the texts of The Reign of Edward III and Sir Thomas More, recognizing these two plays officially as authentic works by Shakespeare. The editors reconsidered every detail of the text in the light of modern scholarship and they thoroughly re-examined the earliest printed versions of the plays, firmly establishing the canon and chronological order of composition. All stage directions have been reconsidered in light of original staging, and many new directions for essential action have been added. This superb volume also features a brief introduction to each work. The editors have added a wealth of secondary material, including an essay on language, a list of contemporary allusions to Shakespeare, an index of Shakespearean characters, a glossary, a consolidated bibliography, and an index of first lines of the Sonnets.

Shapiro, Nat and Nat Hentoff (1966). Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told By the Men Who Made It
. New York,, Dover Publications.
There is no more fascinating and lively history of jazz than this firsthand telling by the men who made it. It should be read and re-read by all jazz enthusiasts, musicians, students of music and culture, students of American history, and other readers.

Sharaf, Myron R. (1994). Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich
. New York, Da Capo Press.
"What is amazing is that Sharaf has managed to turn a definitive biography into such absolutely compulsive reading." - Colin Wilson

Shattuck, Roger (1974). Marcel Proust
. New York, Viking Press.
Among the handful of genuine classics produced in this century, Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is the most oceanic -- and the least read. The inordinate length of Proust's novel (3000 pages) goes a long way toward explaining the scarcity of readers. Even Russian novelists usually limit themselves to half that length. Balzac's one-hundred-volume print-out of all French society comes in separate packages; the links between the volumes serve as a special reward for the perservering. The first two sections of Proust's novel, "Combray" and "Swann in Love," can stand separately and have earned many admirers. Yet true believers insist that there is no substitute for the cumulative effect of the whole work. Understandably, many readers hesitate to make the investment of time and attention required to assimilate even a fraction of the whole.

Compounding the challenge of sheer magnitude, there is Proust's style. His transcontinental sentences contribute to the appearance of a motionless plot. The original French is no easier than the translations. How can one follow a story line (if there really is one) through such labyrinthine prose? Furthermore, Proust originally planned to publish his novel in two compact volumes in rapid succession. The five-year interval of war that occurred after the appearance of the first volume and the tremendous expansion of the text it led to, forced him to change his plans. Published between 1913 and 1927 in multiple installments, the Search is basically divided into seven volumes of very unequal length. For a decade and a half critics tried to judge the whole from a few parts. As a result, Proust had to serve as the sole qualified guide to his own uncompleted work. Endless letters, several newspaper interviews, and over a hundred pages in his last volume are devoted to rebutting his critics and explaining how he was constructing the vast edifice. The opening sections, he insists, give a distorted impression of the whole. Everything hangs on the conclusion. Gradually, Proust's description of his work has been validated by three generations of critics. But for fifteen years his work appeared piecemeal in the face of enormous odds against comprehension. It looks almost like a conspiracy against readers.

Shattuck, Roger (1984). The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature & the Arts
. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux.
One of the great polymaths of our time focuses on the often disputed contributions of modern, primarily French, art and literature to contemporary culture. Emphasizing individual works and artists over theory and method, and with an authoritativeness characteristic of all his writing, Roger Shattuck embraces a wide range of themes, including politics, theatricality, the dynamics of artistic movements and the nature of consciousness. The essays here range from his celebrated analyses of Dada and the 1935 International Writers' Congress, to fresh considerations of 19th- and 20th-century literature, to groundbreaking studies of Monet, Magritte and the art writings of Meyer Shapiro.

Shaw, George Bernard (2008). Back to Methuselah
. Book Jungle.
George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856. Before becoming a playwright he wrote music and literary criticism. Shaw used his writing to attack social problems such as education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege. Shaw was particularly conscious of the exploitation of the working class. Back to Methuselah is a series of five plays: In the Beginning: B.C. 4004 (In the Garden of Eden), The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas: Present Day The Thing Happens: A.D. 2170, Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, and As Far as Thought Can Reach: A.D. 31,920. The plays discuss mortality. In the first play Adam and Eve loose their immortality. In the second two brothers decide to live for more than 200 years. In the third everybody begins to live much longer. The fourth play shows an ordinary mortal man meeting the immortals in Ireland. And in the final play life gives up the material plane.

Shaw, Bernard and Sandie Byrne (2002). George Bernard Shaw's Plays: Mrs Warren's Profession, Pygmalion, Man and Superman, Major Barbara: Contexts and Criticism
. New York, W.W. Norton.
This collection presents a cross-section of Shaw's most important theater work - Mrs. Warren's Profession, Man and Superman, Major Barbara, and Pygmalion. Each play is fully annotated.
"Contexts and Criticism" features all-new material on the author and his work, from traditional critical readings to more theorized approaches, among them essays on Shaw's Fabianism and his alleged feminism. Contributors include Leon Hugo, Sally Peters, Tracy C. Davis, John A. Bertolini, Stanley Weintraub, and J. Ellen Gainor.

Shaw, Bernard and Louis Crompton (1978). The Great Composers: Reviews and Bombardments
. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Music history and criticism.

Shaw, Jeffrey, Peter Weibel, et al. (2003). Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film
. Cambridge, Mass.; London, MIT Press.
Throughout the history of cinema, a radical avant-garde has existed on the fringes of the film industry. A great deal of research has focused on the pre- and early history of cinema, but there has been little speculation about a future cinema incorporating new electronic media. Electronic media have not only fundamentally transformed cinema but have altered its role as a witness to reality by rendering "realities" not necessarily linked to documentation, by engineering environments that incorporate audiences as participants, and by creating event-worlds that mix realities and narratives in forms not possible in traditional cinema. This hybrid cinema melds montage, traditional cinema, experimental literature, television, video, and the net. The new cinematic forms suggest that traditional cinema no longer has the capacity to represent events that are themselves complex configurations of experience, interpretation, and interaction.

Drawing on a broad range of scholarship, this book examines the shift from monolithic Hollywood spectacles to works probing the possibilities of interactive, performative, and net-based cinemas. The post-cinematic condition, the book shows, has long roots in artistic practice and influences every channel of communication.

Shaw, Randy (2018). Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America
. Oakland, CA, University of California Press.
Generation Priced Out is a call for action on one of the most talked about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing out the working and middle-class from urban America. Telling the stories of tenants, developers, politicians, homeowner groups, and housing activists from over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis, Generation Priced Out criticizes cities for advancing policies that increase economic and racial inequality. Shaw also exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials' access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Defying conventional wisdom, Shaw demonstrates that rising urban unaffordability and neighborhood gentrification are not inevitable. He offers proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive outcomes.

Shea, Robert and Robert Anton Wilson (1984). The Illuminatus! Trilogy
. New York, N.Y., Dell Pub. Co.
The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson primarily between 1969 and 1971. The trilogy is a satirical, postmodern, science fiction-influenced adventure story; a drug-, sex- and magic-laden trek through a number of conspiracy theories, both historical and imaginary, which hinge around the authors' version of the Illuminati. The narrative often switches between third and first person perspectives and jumps around in time. It is thematically dense, covering topics like counterculture, numerology and Discordianism.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy covers a wide range of subjects within its 805 pages. These include discussions about mythology, current events, conspiracy theories and the Cthulhu Mythos.

Sheaffer, Louis (2002). O'Neill, Volume 1: Son and Playwright
. New York, Cooper Square Press.
When Louis Sheaffer began the research for his book about O'Neill and his work, the playwright had been dead for three years and many of the people who knew him were still alive. Sheaffer spent the next sixteen years of his life researching and writing the book. He later said that he researched for nine years before he ever wrote a line. Sheaffer's research was exhaustive. For example, he spent nearly half a year examining every issue of the New London newspapers, the Telegraph and the Day, from the mid-1880s to the 1920s, roughly the period during which the O'Neill family lived or owned property in New London. In order to investigate O'Neill's freshman year at Princeton in 1910, Sheaffer wrote to all 179 surviving members of his class to solicit their recollections nearly fifty years later.

Louis Sheaffer must have had an extraordinary ability to get people to talk. His research files include the records of interviews with and letters from hundreds of people who knew O'Neill personally or professionally, including many who had been very close to him. But Sheaffer recognized that even his two-volume work was not the last word on the subject since so much material was still closed to researchers during the period when he was writing his biography. Nevertheless, new information about the life of O'Neill has not substantially changed the portrait of the playwright that Sheaffer wrote in which he captured his subject with so much sympathy and insight. In that sense Sheaffer's O'Neill remains the definitive biography.

The first volume, O'Neill, Son and Playwright, which takes the reader to 1920 and the New York premiere of Beyond the Horizon, was published in 1968 by Little, Brown & Company. It won the George Freedley Award from the Theater Library Association. The second volume, O'Neill, Son and Artist, was published in 1973 and was awarded the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for biography. During the period of his research, Sheaffer was supported by three Guggenheim Fellowships, grants-in-aid from the American Council of Learned Societies, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, residencies at Yaddo and the McDowell Colony, as well as financial support from his parents and brother.

Sheaffer, Louis (2002). O'Neill, Volume 2: Son and Artist
. New York, Cooper Square Press.
The most lauded playwright in American history, Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) won four Pulitzer Prizes and a Nobel Prize for a body of work that includes The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, Desire Under the Elms, and Long Day's Journey into Night. His life, the direct source for so much of his art, was one of personal tumult from the very beginning. The son of a famous actor and a quiet, morphine-addicted mother, O'Neill had experienced alcoholism, a collapse of his health, and bouts of mania while still a young man. Based on years of extensive research and access to previously untapped sources, Sheaffer's authoritative biography examines how the pain of O'Neill's childhood fed his desire to write dramas and affected his artistically successful and emotionally disastrous life.

Sheckley, Robert (2012). Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley
. New York, New York Review Books.
Robert Sheckley was an eccentric master of the American short story, and his tales, whether set in dystopic cityscapes, ultramodern advertising agencies, or aboard spaceships lighting out for hostile planets, are among the most startlingly original of the twentieth century. Today, as the new worlds, alternate universes, and synthetic pleasures Sheckley foretold become our reality, his vision begins to look less absurdist and more prophetic. This retrospective selection, chosen by Jonathan Lethem and Alex Abramovich, brings together the best of Sheckley's deadpan farces, proving once again that he belongs beside such mordant critics of contemporary mores as Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, and Thomas Pynchon.

Sheehan, Helena (2017). The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left
. New York, Monthly Review Press.
Deeply grounded in philosophy and Marxist theory, Sheehan shows in plain language that the leadership of Syriza proved vacuous in theory and opportunist in practice. Her intellectual and political honesty will be a benchmark in the debate in the coming years. --Costas Lapavitsas, Professor of Economics at University of London and Syriza MP from January to August 2015

Sheehy, Barry (2017). Montreal, City of Secrets: Confederate Operations in Montreal During the American Civil War
. Montreal, Baraka Books.
During the American Civil War, the Confederate government’s largest foreign secret service base was in Montreal. Montreal, then the largest city in British North America, has kept secret its unique role in the U.S. Civil War ever since. Based on original archival research, Barry Sheehy challenges core tenets of the Civil War narrative.

Shelden, Michael (1991). Orwell: The Authorized Biography
. New York, NY, HarperCollins.
Using the pen name George Orwell, Eric Blair produced lucid memoirs (Down and Out in Paris and London and Homage to Catalonia), novels (Animal Farm and 1984), and dozens of essays marked by clear, precise writing and political commitment. But Blair was plagued by feelings of inadequacy, bad health, and the premature death of his wife; in 1950, at the age of 46 and at the height of his literary powers, he died of tuberculosis. Shelden has been given access to new material on Blair, but details on the writer's childhood and adolescence remain sketchy and contradictory. The book is more informative on Blair's adulthood, when Shelden provides anecdotes and quotations from personal and professional letters.

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft (1994). Frankenstein
. New York, Dover Publications.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Gothicism. While stay-ing in the Swiss Alps in 1816 with her lover Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and others, Mary, then eighteen, began to concoct the story of Dr. Victor Frankenstein and the monster he brings to life by electricity. Written in a time of great personal tragedy, it is a subversive and morbid story warning against the dehumanization of art and the corrupting influence of science. Packed with allusions and literary references, it is also one of the best thrillers ever written. Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus was an instant bestseller on publication in 1818. The prototype of the science fiction novel, it has spawned countless imitations and adaptations but retains its original power.

Shelnutt, Eve (1982). The Formal Voice
. Santa Barbara, Black Sparrow Press.

Shelton, Robert (1997). No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan
. New York, Da Capo Press.
Years in the making (some interviews conducted for it date back to the mid '60s), and much of it based on Shelton's personal experience, this hefty book supplants Anthony Scaduto's Bob Dylan as the definitive biography. Shelton was the popular-music columnist for the New York Times from 1958 to 1968, in which capacity he wrote the first attention-drawing reviews of Dylan's coffeehouse gigs in 1961; the position also brought him into close contact with many of the music-industry principals he writes about. A friend of Dylan's and a fan, Shelton succeeds in making this opaque and often irritating person comprehensible, even likable. Dylan has always shrouded himself in mysterioso antics, railed against inconstant friends and fallen into the trap of being one himself (notable instance: turning his back on Joan Baez) and delighted in giving out meaningless, perverse and nasty interviews. Shelton manages to locate the authentic Dylan: the pilgrim seeking enlightenment and salvation, the husband and father, the genius who wrote songs as beautiful as "Blowin' in the Wind," "Don't Think Twice" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," and as apocalyptic and prophetic as "Maggie's Farm," "Desolation Row" and "Hard Rain." The author incorporates a number of lines from Dylan's work into his text, which discusses the man's life and career under subject headings, a format that keeps him from following a strictly chronological order. The book is nevertheless comprehensive and clear. This is first-rate biography and a marvelous re-creation of the music scene of the '60s and later. The text is supplemented with brief analyses of every song, a song index, discography and bibliography, and 16 pages of black-and-white photos.

Shepard, Sam (1984). Fool for Love and Other Plays
. Toronto; New York, Bantam.
Eight plays: Fool for Love -- Angel City -- Melodrama Play -- Cowboy Mouth -- Action -- Suicide in B-flat -- Seduced -- Geography of a Horse Dreamer.

Shepard, Sam and Joseph Chaikin (2005). Seven Plays
. New York, Dial Press.

Sherman, William T. (1990). Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman
. New York, Library of America: Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press.
This volume presents the text of the corrected, expanded, and slightly revised version of the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, published by D. Appleton and Company in 1886.

Sherman began to write his memoirs at least as early as 1873 but feared they would be too controversial for publication. He finally decided to go ahead with the project and on January 23, 1875, wrote his brother, Senator John Sherman, about his decision: "You will be surprised and maybe alarmed, that I have at last agreed to publish in book form my Memoirs of a period from 1846-65, in two volumes. I have carefully eliminated everything calculated to raise controversy, except where sustained by documents embraced in the work itself, and then only with minor parties."

The Memoirs proved to be very controversial, and Sherman received numerous letters, ranging from praise to demands for extensive revisions. After consulting with friends and family, he decided that, though he would correct factual errors in future printings, he would not actually revise the work. Instead, he announced his intention to bring out a "second edition" that would include an appendix of letters in which other people would have the opportunity to give their own versions of the events he described. A few corrections were made in the cheaper one-volume version brought out by Appleton the next year. Sherman collected material for the "second edition" but did not work on it until after his retirement from the army in 1884. To the 1875 printing he added a second preface, two new chapters, one at the beginning and the other at the end, an appendix to volume I, two appendixes to volume II, and an index. Sherman corrected further factual errors and made a few revisions. Portraits were also added, as well as maps that had been unavailable at the time of the 1875 printing. By the spring of 1885 his work was completed, but he asked D. Appleton and Company to delay publication until after the Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant was published in 1885-86. The expanded, corrected, and slightly revised version of the 1875 printing was published by D. Appleton and Company in New York as the Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, "Second edition, revised and corrected, in two volumes," in 1886. Sherman made no further corrections or revisions, and though later versions were issued containing additional conclusions and tributes, and are described on the title pages as "third edition," or "fourth edition," all of them are printed from the same plates as the 1886 version, or from the original uncorrected 1875 printing, as in the case of the 1891 Appleton version, which appeared after Sherman had transferred the publication rights in 1890 to Clemens's publishing firm, Charles L. Webster & Company.

Sherzai, Dean and Ayesha Sherzai (2017). The Alzheimer's Solution: A Breakthrough Program to Prevent and Reverse the Symptoms of Cognitive Decline at Every Age
. New York, NY, HarperOne.
A program for reversing the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline from neurologists and codirectors of the Brain Health and Alzheimer's Prevention Program at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Over 47 million people are currently living with Alzheimer's disease worldwide. While all other major diseases are in decline, deaths from Alzheimer's have increased radically. What you or your loved ones don't yet know is that 90 percent of Alzheimer's cases can be prevented. Based on the largest clinical and observational study to date, neurologists and codirectors of the Brain Health and Alzheimer's Prevention Program at Loma Linda University Medical Center, Drs. Dean and Ayesha Sherzai, offer in The Alzheimer's Solution a comprehensive program for preventing Alzheimer's disease and improving cognitive function. Alzheimer's disease isn't a genetic inevitability, and a diagnosis does not need to come with a death sentence. Ninety percent of grandparents, parents, husbands, and wives can be spared. Ninety percent of us can avoid ever getting Alzheimer's, and for the 10 percent with strong genetic risk for cognitive decline, the disease can be delayed by ten to fifteen years. This book reveals how the brain is a living universe, directly influenced by nutrition, exercise, stress, sleep, and engagement. In other words: what you feed it, how you treat it, when you challenge it, and the ways in which you allow it to rest. These factors are the pillars of the groundbreaking program you'll find in these pages, which features a personalized assessment for evaluating risk, a five-part program for prevention and symptom-reversal, and day-by-day guides for optimizing cognitive function. You can prevent Alzheimer's disease from affecting you, your family, friends, and loved ones. Even with a diagnosis, you can reverse cognitive decline and add vibrant years to your life.

Shippey, T. A. (1992). The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories
. Oxford [England]; New York, Oxford University Press.
In "Swarm," Bruce Stirling takes the reader inside the Nest, a vast honeycomb of caverns within an asteroid orbiting Betelgeuse, peopled by hundreds of thousands of large, insectlike aliens, including eight-legged, furred workers the size of Great Danes, and horse-sized warriors with heavy, fanged heads. In "The Screwfly Solution," Raccoona Sheldon creates a world much like modern America, except that something--an insect virus, a mass religious delusion, or an alien--is infecting men worldwide, converting their sexual drive into homicidal rage against women. J.G. Ballard in "Billennium" portrays the end result of unchecked population growth, a claustrophobic city of 30 million people, where by law the unmarried must live in cubicles four meters square. These three tales, though strikingly different, have one thing in common--each evokes a world that is uniquely the author's own. Indeed, to read any science fiction writer is to enter into another world. It may be a world far off in space or time, or it may be right here, right now, but with a twist--an invention, or event, or visitor--that suddenly changes everything.

In The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories, Tom Shippey has brought together thirty classic science fiction tales, each of which offers a unique vision, an altered reality, a universe all its own. Here are some of the great names in science fiction--H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Frederik Pohl, Brian Aldiss, Ursula K. Le Guin, Thomas Disch, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, and David Brin. To give readers a sense of how the genre's range, vitality, and literary quality evolved over time, Shippey has organized these stories chronologically. Readers can sample H.G. Well's 1903 story "The Land Ironclads" (which predicted the stalemate of trench warfare and the invention of the tank), Jack Williamson's "The Metal Man," a rarely anthologized gem written in 1928, Clifford D. Simak's 1940s classic, "Desertion," set on "the howling maelstrom that was Jupiter," Frederik Pohl's 1955 "The Tunnel Under the World," with its gripping first line, "On the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream"), right up to the current crop of writers, such as cyberpunks Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, whose 1982 story "Burning Chrome" foreshadows the idea of virtual reality, and David Brin's "Piecework," written in 1990. In addition, Shippey provides an informative introduction, examining the history of the genre, it major themes, and its literary techniques. Here then is a galaxy of classic science fiction tales, written by the stars of the genre. Anyone with a serious interest in science fiction--and everyone who has entertained a curiosity about the genre--will find this volume enthralling.

Shirer, William L. (1976). Twentieth Century Journey : A Memoir of a Life and the Times: A Native's Return, 1945-1988
. New York, Simon and Schuster.
Shirer's autobiography begins with his formative years in Chicago and Cedar Rapids, and his years as a young reporter in Paris. Along the way the young Shirer was exposed to many notables, and his portraits of acquaintances like Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, Isadora Duncan and Eamon De Velera are fascinating. From such humble origins grew the career of one of the greatest print and broadcast journalists of the mid-century. Until December of 1940, Shirer roamed from one European capital to another as a foreign correspondent, first for the Chicago Tribune and subsequently for the Paris edition of the New York Herald, the Universal News Service, and finally for the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). He spent much of this time in Vienna, Berlin and Prague, reporting on Adolph Hitler and the Nazis during crucial phases of their rise to power.

Shirer, William L. (1985). Twentieth Century Journey : A Memoir of a Life and the Times: The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940
. Toronto; New York, Bantam Books.
When it comes to writing history, Shirer extols the values of first-hand observation. Personal impressions and anecdotes have enlivened his books and accounted in part for their popularity. Thus the chronicler of the Third Reich (The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich) and the Third French Republic (The Collapse of the Third Republic) approached the writing of his memoirs: "I hoped to make it not so much a memoir of myself, but of the times I had lived through," he writes. This second volume covering the Cold War years brings his journey to the present. Highlights include his unhappy separation from CBS in 1947 and the ordeal of Americans in the McCarthy era. Shirer also fills in background on his best-selling books. Shirer's relative isolation from historical events during this period lessens the value of this volume, but his reflections in the preface and introduction help to balance the commonplace observations. Sure to be in demand in public libraries.

Shirer, William L. (1990). The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
. New York, Simon & Schuster.
Since its publication in 1960, William L. Shirer's monumental study of Hitler's German Empire has been widely acclaimed as the definitive record of this century's blackest hours. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich offers an unparalleled and thrillingly told examination of how Adolf Hitler nearly succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print around the globe, it has attained the status of a vital and enduring classic.

Shirer, William L. (2002). Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941
. Baltimore, Md., Johns Hopkins University Press.
Berlin Diary (1934-1941) is a first-hand account of the rise of the Third Reich and it's road to war, as witnessed by the American journalist William L. Shirer. Shirer, a radio reporter for CBS, covered Germany till the Nazi press censors made it impossible for him to work. Most of the names of persons in this book are disguised under false initials to discourage the Gestapo when the book was first published in 1941. The contents of this book provided most of the material for his next book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - a definitive guide to Nazi Germany.

Shirley, John (1996). City Come a-Walkin'
. Asheville, NC, Eyeball Books.
Stu Cole is struggling to keep his nightclub, Club Anesthesia, afloat in the face of mob harassment when he's visited by a manifestation of the city of San Francisco, crystallized into a single enigmatic being. This amoral superhero leads him on a terrifying journey through the rock and roll demimonde as they struggle to save the city.

Shirley, John (2000). Eclipse.
New York, N.Y., Babbage Press.
A Song Called Youth - Book 1: Like many works defining the wild cyberpunk fringe in the 1980s, this depiction of a near-future dystopia, here revised and updated since its 1985 debut, seems almost acceptably mainstream today. But Shirley's spiky prose and edgy attitudes, which lately have cultivated a following among horror readers (Wetbones; Really, Really, Really, Really Weird Stories), still hook the reader's attention. Tapping anxieties about rising global nationalism, Shirley presents a Goya-esque vision of war-torn western Europe, bombed out and unstable in the early years of the 21st century from a resurgence of Russian militarism and the collapse of NATO. The Second Alliance, a government-sanctioned multinational police force, has rushed in to restore order and revealed itself a nightmarish incarnation of every fascist and fundamentalist power fantasy. The only defense against the Alliance's creeping totalitarianism is the New Resistance, a polyglot pick-up team of rebels that includes Rick Rickenharp, a tripping retro guitarist whose artistic and political sensibilities are sinuously intertwined, and John Swenson, a mole whose soul is blackened through his infiltration of the Alliance. Stitched together from vivid swatches of action and intrigue alternating kaleidoscopically between Earth sites and the orbiting FirStep space colony, the novel offers a thrashy punk riff on science fiction's familiar future war scenario and lays a solid foundation for the subsequent volumes of Shirley's "A Song Called Youth" trilogy.

Shirley, John (2000). Eclipse Corona
. New York, N.Y., Babbage Press.
A Song Called Youth - Book 3: After being discredited in the United States, the Second Alliance makes its final stand in Europe. About to unleash genocide as it tries to unite Western Europe under its Christian Fundamentalist Fascism, only the New Resistance (NR) stands in its way. And high in Earth orbit, the NR's chief financial sponsor has his own sinister plans for humanity. Again, Shirley delivers the goods with his fine, fast-paced lyrical prose. His "A Song Called Youth" trilogy is one of the classics of cyberpunk literature.

Shirley, John (2000). Eclipse Penumbra 2
. New York, N.Y., Babbage Press.
A Song Called Youth - Book 2: John Shirley gives a fascinating, riveting tale about 21st Century Fascism attempting to take hold in the United States and Western Europe, in the waning phases of a conventional war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dissent and treachery are rife in the leadership of the Christian Fascist Second Alliance (SA) and its primary opposition, the New Resistance (NR). The SA's grip on Western Europe grows tighter as it bids to win control of FirStep, the orbiting space colony. A splendid tale filled with mesmerizing characters that is among the finest works of cyberpunk fiction.

Shlain, Leonard (1993). Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light
. New York, Quill/W. Morrow.
Leonardo da Vinci's complex sequential drawings, of pigeon wings fluttering in flight and of patterns made by fast-flowing water, anticipated time-lapse photography by 300 years. Surrealist painters' space-time distortions seemingly foreshadowed Einstein's theory of relativity. Franz Kline and Kazimir Malevich attempted to make abstract paintings devoid of image, color and light years before physicists fully accepted the notion that black holes could exist. Using these and other examples, Shlain, a Northern California surgeon, advances his thesis that art is precognitive: artists conjure up revolutionary images and metaphors comprising preverbal expressions of the novel concepts later formulated by physicists. He roots his theory in brain research and in a Jungian archetypal unconscious said to be stored in DNA strands. His provocative discussion is rigorous enough to appeal to the skeptical scientist yet wholly accessible and engaging to the art lover or general reader. Many potential connections between art and science are brought into full focus, aided by scores of art reproductions, photographs and diagrams.

Short, Philip (2000). Mao: A Life
. New York, Henry Holt.
In an epic biography, Short draws on a wealth of hitherto untapped sources to fashion an uncanny portrait of Mao Zedong. His Mao is a warrior-poet who gradually lost vital components of his humanity in his exclusive devotion to a cause. By Short's reckoning, Mao's megalomaniacal ambition led to such disasters as the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the collectivization and production drive that ended in apocalyptic failure as 20 million Chinese starved to death, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969), during which hundreds of thousands were tortured, arrested or executed. Short (The Dragon and the Bear), who has lived in China, tries hard to judge Mao in a Chinese rather than Western context, noting that Mao presided over an "era when China's history was so compressed that changes which, in the West, had taken centuries to accomplish, occurred in a single generation." Though Short describes Mao as a ""visionary, statesman, political and military strategist of genius," he also points out that Mao's rule "brought about the deaths of more of his own people than any other leader in the history of any country in the world.".

Silver, Alain and James Ursini (2001). Film Noir Reader 3: Interviews with Filmmakers of the Classic Noir Period
. New York, Limelight Editions.
An anthology of 22 seminal and contemporary essays on the art of noir in film, drawing together definitive studies and ruminations on the philosophy and techniques that made movies like The Maltese Falcon classics. The essays include the first English translation of Towards a Definition of Film Noir, by Borde and Chaumeton, and Paul Shrader's Notes on Film Noir. Other critical discussions examine narrative structure, lighting, the evolution of the femme fatale, and the neo-noir rebirth of the genre in films like Reservoir Dogs and Gun Crazy. Lots and lots of black and white (of course) photographs make this a film buff's dream collection

Silver, Alain and Elizabeth Ward (1992). Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style
. Woodstock, N.Y., Overlook Press.
This 3rd edition of Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style provides descriptions and analysis for nearly 300 film noirs produced from 1927 to 1976, concentrating on the classic period, 1940-1958. The authors are strict in defining film noir as a movement and a style - not a genre - molded specifically by the social, economic, technical, and aesthetic circumstances in post-WWII America, and therefore confined to that era. They exclude genre and foreign films produced in the post-war era that other critics might include.

The authors introduce the book by defining the uniquely American classic noir style and discussing some of its common characteristics. The Encyclopedia, itself, is 314 pages long and organized alphabetically by film title. The entry for each of the nearly 300 classic noir films included provides, wherever applicable: the film's title (including working and alternate titles), it's year of release, director, producer, screenwriter(s), director of photography, music director, persons responsible for special effects, sound, score, set decoration, costumes, make-up, the production designer and/or art director, assistant director, and editor. This is followed by a cast list -divided into main and "bit" cast, the date filming was completed, the date the film was released, running time, a plot summary, and a critical analysis by one of the book's 18 contributors. The plot and analysis do contain spoilers, including endings and surprise twists, which is probably necessary to provide analysis and to define the film as "noir".

Film Noir has five informative appendices that explore topics and films not covered in the main section. Appendix A is a lengthy essay explaining the rationale for excluding genre films from the film noir movement. It addresses The Gangster Film, The Western, The Period Film, and The Comedy separately, discussing films reflecting the noir style and what they share and do not share with film noir. Appendix B is a series of lists: A chronology of film noir, listed by year, 1927-1976. Directors listed alphabetically with their films. The same for Writers, Directors of Photography, Composers, Producers, Actors & Actresses, and Releasing Companies, each category with its own list. The criterion for inclusion in the lists is participation in at least 2 film noirs. Appendix C is a survey of Other Studies in Film Noir. It comments on significant articles and books published on the subject of film noir, from 1955's seminal work by Borde & Chaumeton, A Panorama of American Film Noir, through 1992, when the latest edition of this book was published. Appendix D discusses Additional Films from the Classic Period which were not included in the earlier editions of the book, because they were unavailable or overlooked. Here, 50 films are discussed according to their characteristic noir elements -femme fatale, alienation and despair, maniacs and mayhem, etc. Appendix E is a lengthy discussion of Neo-Noir,1966-1992, including a filmography. In the back of the book, you will find a comprehensive Index of films, names, book titles, and most references you might want to locate in Film Noir.

Silverstein, Shel (2000). Where the Sidewalk Ends: The Poems & Drawings of Shel Silverstein
. New York, N.Y., HarperCollins.
A boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale are only two of the characters in a collection of humorous poetry illustrated with the author's own drawings. Silly, silly Shel Silverstein. For more than 25 years, he has taken children exactly where they want to go with poetry: into the world of nonsense and wordplay. Take Instructions, for example:

If you should ever choose
To bathe an armadillo,
Use one bar of soap
And a whole lot of hope
And seventy-two pads of Brillo
.
Is there a moral? A higher meaning? A lesson? Most certainly not--except perhaps in bathing armadillos. The late poet's collection of verse and pen-and-ink drawings is the bestselling children's poetry book of all time. Now, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of this literary marvel, a special new edition is here, complete with a CD featuring 10 of his nuttiest poems. The compilation, "recited, sung, and shouted" by Silverstein himself, features highlights from his Grammy Award-winning album, including Ickle Me, Pickle Me, Tickle Me Too, With His Mouth Full of Food, Crocodile's Toothache, and Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Geoffrey Sainsbury (2006). A Man's Head
. New York, Penguin Books.
Set in the oppressively squalid streets of Paris, A Man's Head features Simenon's famed detective as he tracks a killer on the run, while the writer's sharp prose evokes the atmosphere of Parisian luxury hotels, seedy bars, and dark alleys.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Marc Romano (2003). Dirty Snow
. New York, New York Review Books.
Dirty Snow, widely acknowledged as one of Simenon's finest books, is a study of the criminal mind comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. It tells the story of Frank, a pimp, a petty thief, and collaborator in occupied France. Through the long and unrelenting cold and darkness of a long winter Frank pursues all the possibilites of perdition until at last there is nowhere left to go. Hans Koning has described Dirty Snow as "one of the very few novels to come out of German-occupied France that gets it exactly right." Simenon maps a no man's land of the spirit in which human nature is driven to destruction - and redemption, perhaps, as well - by forces beyond its control.

Simenon, Georges; by Anna Moschovakis (2007). The Engagement
. New York, New York Review Books.
On the outskirts of Paris, a prostitute is found murdered in a vacant lot. In a seedy apartment house nearby lives pasty, fat Mr. Hire. Mr. Hire, who earns his living through a petty postal scam, is a convicted pornographer, a peeping Tom, and, once a week, the unlikely star of a Parisian bowling club, where people think he works for the police. He is a faceless man of regular habits who keeps to himself and gives his neighbors the creeps. After the murder, Mr. Hire's concierge points a finger at him: he was out late the night of the crime. The police have the suspect under 24-hour surveillance. They are only waiting for him to make the inevitable mistake and give himself away. Except that creepy Mr. Hire is in fact an innocent man, whose only mistake is to have fallen head-over-heels in love with the wrong girl.

One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon's extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Helen Sebba (2007). The Friend of Madame Maigret
. New York, Penguin Books.
In The Friend of Madame Maigret, Simenon's economic prose brilliantly portrays the Marais quarter of Paris and those who haunt its narrow streets as Inspector Maigret attempts to prove that a murder has actually been committed without a corpse anywhere to be found. As the investigation becomes increasingly complex, seemingly unconnected characters are drawn into the case, and Maigret begins to wonder if his wife's earlier strange encounter with a woman and her baby may be the missing link.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Robert Baldick (2006). Lock 14
. New York, Penguin Books.
In Lock 14, Simenon plunges Maigret into the unfamiliar canal world of shabby bars and shadowy towpaths, drawing together the strands of a tragic case of lost identity.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Eileen Ellenbogen (2007). Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard
. New York, Penguin Books.
In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island. Told in Simenon's spare, unsentimental prose, Inspector Cadaver is a haunting exploration of provincial hypocrisy and snobbery, in which Maigret encounters a rival sleuth from his past. In Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard, Simenon's tenacious detective pieces together the life of a man who for three years lived a secret life, until he is found stabbed to death in an alleyway.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Marc Romano and D. Thin (2005). The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
. New York, New York Review Books.
Kees Popinga is a solid Dutch burgher whose idea of a night on the town is a game of chess at his club. Or so it has always appeared. But one night this model husband and devoted father discovers his boss is bankrupt and that his own carefully tended life is in ruins. Before, he had looked on impassively as the trains to the outside world swept by; now he catches the first train he can to Amsterdam. Not long after that, he commits murder. Kees Popinga is tired of being Kees Popinga. He's going to turn over a new leaf - though there will be hell to pay.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Jean Margaret Stewart (2004). Monsieur Monde Vanishes
. New York, New York Review Books.
Monsieur Monde is a successful middle-aged businessman in Paris. One morning he walks out on his life, leaving his wife asleep in bed, leaving everything. Not long after, he surfaces on the Riviera, keeping company with drunks, whores and pimps, with thieves and their marks. A whole new world, where he feels surprisingly at home, at least for a while. Georges Simenon knew how obsession, buried for years, can come to life, and about the wreckage it leaves behind. He had a remarkable understanding of how bizarrely unaccountable people can be. And he had an almost uncanny ability to capture the look and feel of a given place and time. Monsieur Monde Vanishes is a subtle and profoundly disturbing triumph by the most popular of the twentieth century's great writers.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Nigel Ryan (2007). My Friend Maigret
. New York, Penguin Books.
In My Friend Maigret, Inspector Maigret investigates the murder of a small-time crook on a Mediterranean island.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Norman Denny (2006). Red Lights
. New York, New York Review Books.
It is Friday evening before Labor Day weekend. Americans are hitting the highways in droves; the radio crackles with warnings of traffic jams and crashed cars. Steve Hogan and his wife, Nancy, have a long drive ahead - from New York City to Maine, where their children are in camp. But Steve wants a drink before they go, and on the road he wants another. Soon, exploding with suppressed fury, he is heading into that dark place in himself he calls "the tunnel." When Steve stops for yet another drink, Nancy has had enough. She leaves the car.

On a bender now, Steve makes a friend: Sid Halligan, an escapee from Sing Sing. Steve tells Sid all about Nancy. Most men are scared, Steve thinks, but not Sid. The next day, Steve wakes up on the side of the road. His car has a flat, his money is gone, and there's one more thing still left for him to learn about Nancy, Sid Halligan, and himself.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Geoffrey Sainsbury (2006). Strangers in the House
. New York, New York Review Books.
Dirty, drunk, unloved, and unloving, Hector Loursat has been a bitter recluse for eighteen long years, ever since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child to run off with another man. Once a successful lawyer, Loursat now guzzles burgundy and buries himself in books, taking little notice of his teenage daughter or the odd things going on in his vast and ever-more-dilapidated mansion. But one night the sound of a gunshot penetrates the padded walls of Loursat's study, and he is forced to investigate. What he stumbles on is a murder.

Soon Loursat discovers that his daughter and her friends have been leading a dangerous secret life. He finds himself strangely drawn to this group of young people, and when one of them is accused of the murder, he astonishes the world by taking up the young man's defense. In The Strangers in the House, Georges Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Marc Romano and Lawrence Goldtree Blochman (2003). Three Bedrooms in Manhattan
. New York, New York Review Books.
An actor and a divorcee meet in a deserted New York City afterhours bar. With little in common save loneliness, middle age, and a presentiment of escape, they improvise a love story. The fragility and fear that drive their experiment from moment to moment, bedroom to bedroom, transform this boy-meets-girl into a literary potboiler in which risk becomes salvation. Georges Simenon - supreme master of the modern psychological story - has been praised by writers from Ernest Hemingway to Andre Gide.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Marc Romano (2005). Tropic Moon
. New York, New York Review Books.
A young Frenchman, Joseph Timar, travels to Gabon carrying a letter of introduction from an influential uncle. He wants work experience; he wants to see the world. But once in the oppressive heat and glare of the equator, Timar doesn't know what to do with himself, and no one seems inclined to help except Adèle, the hotel owner's wife, who takes him to bed one day and rebuffs him the next, leaving him sick with desire. But then, in the course of a single night, Adèle's husband dies and a black servant is shot, and Timar is sure that Adèle is involved. He'll cover for the crime if she'll do what he wants. The fix is in, but Timar can't even begin to imagine how deep. Tropic Moon is an incomparable picture of degeneracy and corruption in a colonial outpost.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by John Petrie (2008). The Widow
. New York, New York Review Books.
The Widow is the story of two outcasts and their fatal encounter. One is the widow herself, Tati. Still young, she's never had an easy time of it, but she's not the kind to complain. Tati lives with her father-in-law on the family farm, putting up with his sexual attentions, working her fingers to the bone, improving the property and knowing all the time that her late husband's sister is scheming to kick her out and take the house back. The other is a killer. Just out of prison and in search of a new life, Jean meets up with Tati, who hires him as a handyman and then takes him to bed. Things are looking up, at least until Jean falls hard for the girl next door.

The Widow was published in the same year as Camus' The Stranger, and Andre Gide judged it the superior book. It is Georges Simenon's most powerful and disturbing exploration of the bond between death and desire.

Simenon, Georges; tr. by Linda Asher (2006). The Yellow Dog
. New York, Penguin Books.
The small French town of Concarneau is a summer resort. In winter it becomes the deserted, rainswept scene for a series of murder attempts that attract the interest of Maigret. While his assistant Leroy uses "science" and "deductions" to trace the murderer, Maigret's instincts unerringly guide him to the real killer past a labyrinth of fascinating characters: a paranoid failed medical doctor turned real-estate shark; a passive, working class waitress whose heart secretly burns a torch of passion; an aristocratic politician who pressures Maigret to "make some arrests"; and a snarling stray dog that knows the murderer's real identity.

Simmons, Dan (1989). Hyperion
. New York, Doubleday.
On the world called Hyperion, beyond the law of the Hegemony of Man, there waits the creature called the Shrike. There are those who worship it. There are those who fear it. And there are those who have vowed to destroy it. In the Valley of the Time Tombs, where huge, brooding structures move backward through time, the Shrike waits for them all. On the eve of Armageddon, with the entire galaxy at war, seven pilgrims set forth on a final voyage to Hyperion seeking the answers to the unsolved riddles of their lives. Each carries a desperate hope--and a terrible secret. And one may hold the fate of humanity in his hands.

Simmons, Dan (1990). The Fall of Hyperion
. New York, Doubleday.
This densely plotted book concludes the futuristic tale begun in Hyperion. Earth has long since been destroyed, and humans now occupy more than 150 worlds linked by the Web, an instantaneous travel system created and operated by artificial intelligences (AIs--self-aware, highly advanced computers). These worlds are about to war with the Ousters, a branch of humanity that has disdained dependency on the AIs. At risk are the planet Hyperion, its mysterious Tombs that travel backward in time, and the Shrike, its god/avatar of pain or retribution. The narrative focuses on the government of the Web and its leader, Meina Gladstone, as observed by Joseph Severn, a cybernetic re-creation of the poet John Keats, and seven Shrike pilgrims, who may affect the war's outcome. Simmons pits good against evil, with the religions of man and those of the machines battling for supremacy. Despite his grand scale, however, he fashions intensely human individuals whom the reader will take to heart.

Simon, David (2006). Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets
. New York, Henry Holt and Company.
An epic nonfiction police procedural, covering one year with a Baltimore homicide squad--and a dizzying circus of mayhem. David Simon, a police reporter for the Baltimore Sun, spent the year 1988 with three homicide squads, accompanying them through all the grim and grisly moments of their work--from first telephone call to final piece of paperwork. The picture that emerges through a masterful accumulation of details is that homicide detectives are a rare breed who seem to thrive on coffee, cigarettes, and persistence, through an endlessly exhausting parade of murder scenes. As the Washington Post writes, "We seem to have an insatiable appetite for police stories. David Simon's entry is far and away the best, the most readable, the most reliable and relentless of them all. An eye for the scenes of slaughter and pursuit and an ear for the cadences of cop talk, both business and banter, lend Simon's account the fascination that truth often has."

Simpson, Brooks D., Stephen W. Sears, et al. (2011). The Civil War:Told by Those Who Lived It
. New York, N.Y., The Library of America.
One is grateful for what may be the most valuable scholarly work yet to appear during the sesquicentennial – the four-volume anthology of Civil War writings, published by the Library of America since 2011 at the pace of one volume per year. To read through these pages is to experience something like walking through a museum without benefit of text panels or audio tour. Each volume opens with a short introduction summarizing the main events of the year, and concludes with chronologies, biographical, textual, and brief explanatory notes – just enough to give some context but barely a hint of interpretation. As the great Civil War scholar David Potter once wrote, “hindsight [is] the historian’s chief asset and his main liability.” This is Civil War history without hindsight. –Andrew Delbanco

Simpson, Christopher (2014). Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War
. New York, Open Road Media.
Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the U.S. government's extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson's book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.

Simpson, N. F. (1978). One Way Pendulum: A Farce in a New Dimension
. Ann Arbor, Mich., University Microfilms International.
Absurdist play centering on the Groomkirby family, an almost normal family, living in a normal semi-detached house - but not quite. Mr. Groomkirby has a long held fascination with the British legal and is now converting his living room into a replica of the Old Bailey so that he can host his own legal cases; Mrs Groomkirby invites a neighbour each week to eat her leftovers, she always buys the same food each week, never more, never less; Grandmother sits by the living room window and believes she is on a train journey in India. Meanwhile, the son, Kirby Groomkirby is in the attic with his collection of speak-your-weight machines, teaching them to sing the Hallelujah Chorus.

Sinclair, Iain (1993). Downriver, or, the Vessels of Wrath: A Narrative in Twelve Tales
. New York, Random House.
In his U.S. debut Sinclair, a British poet, filmmaker, rare book dealer and jack-of-all-trades, puts his varied background to work in a dextrous, multifaceted novel of the London docklands. The narrator, among other sordid locals, has been hired by a movie production company to ferret out the "real" old-time docklands. Told as 12 stories set in the near future but riddled with spectres of the past, this novel attempts to do for this down-and-out area what Joyce did for Dublin: eulogize it with language so abstract and imagery so densely allusive as to simulate the layering of historical detail upon a specific locale. The result is nearly incomprehensible, but that's part of the fun; and Sinclair goes out of his way to entertain. His separate narratives introduce a bizarre assortment of sexual encounters and violent deaths, each as vivid and incoherent as any nightmare. Filled with the ghosts and wrecks of London history, inhabited by grubby barflies and Cockney wharf-rats, this teeming novel seems as rich, fecund and ultimately mesmerizing as the muddy Thames.

Sinclair, Upton (1997). Oil!: A Novel
. Berkeley, University of California Press.
In Oil! Upton Sinclair fashioned a novel out of the oil scandals of the Harding administration, providing in the process a detailed picture of the development of the oil industry in Southern California. Bribery of public officials, class warfare, and international rivalry over oil production are the context for Sinclair's story of a genial independent oil developer and his son, whose sympathy with the oilfield workers and socialist organizers fuels a running debate with his father. Senators, small investors, oil magnates, a Hollywood film star, and a crusading evangelist people the pages of this lively novel.

Sinclair, Upton (2003). The Jungle
. Tucson, AZ, See Sharp Press.
For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic novel has remained almost entirely unknown. When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the meat-packing industry and much of Sinclair's most pointed social and political commentary. The text of this new edition is as it appeared in the original uncensored edition of 1905. It contains the full 36 chapters as originally published, rather than the 31 of the expurgated edition.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (2009)). The Abominable Man
. New York, Vintage.
The gruesome murder of a police captain in his hospital room reveals the unsavory history of a man who spent forty years practicing a horrible blend of strong-arm police work and shear brutality. Martin Beck and his colleagues feverishly comb Stockholm for the murderer, a demented and deadly rifleman, who has plans for even more chaos. As the tension builds and a feeling of imminent danger grips Beck, his investigation unearths evidence of police corruption. That's when an even stronger sense of responsibility and something like shame urge him into taking a series of drastic steps, which lead to a shocking disaster.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (2010). Cop Killer
. New York, Vintage.
The shocking ninth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo finds Beck investigating parallel cases that have shocked a small rural community. In a country town, a woman is brutally murdered and left buried in a swamp. There are two main suspects: her closest neighbor and her ex-husband. Meanwhile, on a quiet suburban street a midnight shootout takes place between three cops and two teenage boys. Dead, one cop and one kid. Wounded, two cops. Escaped, one kid. Martin Beck and his partner Lenart Kollberg are called in to investigate. As Beck digs deeper into the murky waters of the young girl's murder, Kollberg scours the town for the teenager, and together they are forced to examine the changing face of crime.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1977). The Fire Engine That Disappeared
. New York City, Vintage Books.
The lightning-paced fifth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by the internationally renowned crime writing duo, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, finds Beck investigating one of the strangest, most violent, and unforgettable crimes of his career.

The incendiary device that blew the roof off a Stockholm apartment not only interrupted the small, peaceful orgy underway inside, it nearly took the lives of the building's eleven occupants. And if one of Martin Beck's colleagues hadn't been on the scene, the explosion would have led to a major catastrophe because somehow a regulation fire-truck has vanished. Was it terrorism, suicide, or simply a gas leak? And what if, anything, did the explosion have to do with the peculiar death earlier that day of a 46-year-old bachelor whose cryptic suicide note consisted of only two words: "Martin Beck"?

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1992). The Laughing Policeman
. New York City, Vintage Books.
This Swedish husband and wife team produced ten mystery stories between 1965 and 1975, when Per Wahloo died at the sadly early age of 49. This is the fourth, published in 1968, by which time they were already well into their stride, with setting (Stockholm), characters and their relationships well established. In 1971 it won the Edgar Award for mystery fiction, the only translated novel ever to have done so. On a cold wet November night Inspector Martin Beck and his colleague Detective Inspector Lennart Kollberg are killing time before going off duty when the shocking news reaches them that at three minutes past 11 a bus crashed in a quiet part of the city, with a driver and eight passengers on board. Eight are dead, one is dying - none of them injured in the crash, all of them murdered - mown down by machine-gun. It's a scene of appalling carnage, the first mass-murder in Sweden and, almost as shocking to Beck and Kollberg, one of the victims is an able young policeman who worked under Beck. So what was he doing on a bus at that time of night, in that part of the city? Was it an accident that caused him to be part of the massacre, or was he following up clues to a case? Had he been the target - or did the gunman have someone different in his sights? And has the killer himself escaped, or was his one of the bodies which now met their appalled gaze? The Homicide Squad is determined to solve this case, and soon it transpires that the answer lies with an unsolved murder, many years ago consigned to the dusty archives. This is an outstanding detective story which becomes more gripping with every page.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1992). The Locked Room: The Story of a Crime
. New York City, Vintage Books.
A woman robs a bank. A corpse is found shot through the heart in a room locked from within--no firearm in sight. To the eerily intuitive Inspector Martin Beck, these seemingly disparate cases are facets of the same puzzle, and solving it is of vital importance. Only by finding out what happened in the locked room can Beck--haunted by a near-fatal bullet wound and the demise of a soulless marriage--escape from an airtight prison of his own. From its classic premise, The Locked Room accelerates into an engrossing novel of the mind. Exploring the ramifications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, and set against the backdrop of the inspired deductions and monstrous errors of Martin Beck and the Stockholm Homicide Squad, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance and gravity of real life.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1993). The Man on the Balcony: The Story of a Crime
. New York City, Vintage Books.
The chilling third novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, finds Martin Beck investigating a string of child murders. In the once peaceful parks of Stockholm, a killer is stalking young girls and disposing their bodies. The city is on edge, and an undercurrent of fear has gripped its residents. Martin Beck, now a superintendent, has two possible witnesses: a silent, stone-cold mugger and a mute three year old boy. With the likelihood of another murder growing as each day passes, the police force work night and day. But their efforts have offered little insight into the methodology of the killer. Then a distant memory resurfaces in Beck's mind, and he may just have the break he needs.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1993). The Man Who Went up in Smoke
. New York City, Vintage Books.
The masterful second novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, finds Beck searching for a well-known Swedish journalist who has disappeared without a trace.

Inspector Martin Beck of the Stockholm Homicide Squad has his summer vacation abruptly terminated when the top brass at the foreign office pack him off to Budapest to search for Alf Matsson, a well-known Swedish journalist who has vanished. Beck investigates viperous Eastern European underworld figures and--at the risk of his life--stumbles upon the international racket in which Matsson was involved. With the coolly efficient local police on his side and a predatory nymphet on his tail, Beck pursues a case whose international implications grow with each new clue.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1977). Murder at the Savoy
. New York City, Vintage Books.
The shocking sixth novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by the internationally renowned crime writing duo by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, finds Beck investigating a brutal assassination.

When Viktor Palmgren, a powerful Swedish industrialist is shot during his after-dinner speech in the luxurious Hotel Savoy, it sends a shiver down the spine of the international money markets and terrifies the tiny town of Malmo. No one in the restaurant can identify the gunman, and local police are sheepishly baffled. That's when Beck takes over the scene and quickly picks through Palmgren's background. What he finds is a web of vice so despicable that it's hard for him to imagine who wouldn't want Palmgren dead, but that doesn't stop him and his team of dedicated detectives from tackling one of their most intriguing cases yet.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (1993). Roseanna
. New York City, Vintage Books.
According to Per Wahloo, the ten books he wrote with his wife, Maj Sjowall, about Inspector Martin Beck were intended to be a left-wing assault on the sacred cows of Swedish society. They are also, however, entertaining tales of mystery that allow non-Swedes to slip under the skin of another culture while having a frighteningly good time. In this first book of the series, the body of a young woman is discovered as a dredger digs a canal. There seems to be little chance of Beck identifying the woman, let alone discovering who killed her. But by combining time-honored methods of police procedure with a few local twists, Beck manages to do just that.

Sjowall, Maj and Per Wahloo (2010). The Terrorists
. New York, Vintage.
The final novel in the Martin Beck mystery series by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo is a masterful, all consuming tale that rushes toward a thrilling, unexpected climax. An American senator is visiting Stockholm and Martin Beck must lead a team to protect him from an international gang of terrorists. However, in the midst of the fervor created by the diplomatic visit, a young, peace-loving woman is accused of robbing a bank. Beck is determined to prove her innocence, but gets trapped in the maze of police bureaucracy. To complicate matters a millionaire pornographer has been bludgeoned to death in his own bathtub. Filled with the twists and turns and the pulse pounding excitement that are the hallmarks of the Martin Beck novels, The Terrorists is the stunning conclusion to the incredible series that changed crime fiction forever.

Skelly, Katie (2018). The Agency
. Seattle, Washington, F.U. Press.
Skelly’s cartooning is fun, stylish, colorful, and lends itself well to erotic subject matter and situations. Playful at all times and inherently positive in its attitude about all things consensual, these strips are celebratory, and most show that stepping outside one’s comfort zone can often lead to unexpected delights.

Skelly, Katie (2017). My Pretty Vampire
. Seattle, Washington, Fantagraphics Books Inc.
Clover ― the 'pretty' vampire of the title ― is a Bardot-esque blonde who dreams of the (now-dead) girl she once was four years ago before becoming a fanged bloodsucker. She is being kept prisoner by her brother, Marcel, who fears Clover will be hunted by the outside world (and who may have other, more selfish motivations as well). Clover’s curiosity, however, will not be suppressed: impetuous, sensual, strong-willed, and fearless, she plans her escape. The resultant havoc would make Dario Argento proud. Full-color illustrations throughout.

Skinn, Dez (2004). Comix: The Underground Revolution
. New York; Berkeley, Calif., Thunder's Mouth Press; Distributed by Publishers Group West.
While mainstream comics have graced newsstands since the 1930s, there has long been an underground comics scene brewing deep beneath the surface. Underground comic books (which took the name "comix," using the "x" to signify their adult nature) erupted in the 1960s as a reaction to ultraconservative and patriotic comics produced by the large corporations that featured characters like Captain America and Superman. Bored with moralistic tales, artists such as Robert Crumb, creator of Zap Comix and Fritz the Cat; and Gilbert Shelton, creator of The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, produced a new and revolutionary style, freely attacking politicians, the war in Vietnam, and corporate America. Comix is an homage to both the motivation and the talent of the artists working then and now in the genre. Beautifully illustrated throughout with original artworks from the likes of R. Crumb, Denis Kitchen, and Gilbert Shelton, the book graphically expresses a range of attitudes on topics ranging from sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll to politics, big business, and women's liberation. This is the first book to explore the artwork and countercultural legacy of comix, key events in the history of this medium, and biographies of its most influential artists and writers.

Sklar, Robert (1994). Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies
. New York, Vintage Books.
Hailed as the definitive work upon its original publication in 1975 and now extensively revised and updated by the author, this vastly absorbing and richly illustrated book examines film as an art form, technological innovation, big business, and shaper of American values. 80 black-and-white photos.

Slezkine, Yuri (2017). The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution
. Princeton; Oxford, Princeton University Press.
On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction. The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman's Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine's gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin's purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children's loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 550 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building's residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.

Slonimsky, Nicolas (1989). Lectionary of Music
. New York, McGraw-Hill.

Smedley, Agnes (1977). China Fights Back: An American Woman with the Eighth Route Army
. Westport, Conn., Hyperion Press.
An American woman's view of the Chinese war against the Japanese invasion, from her travels with the Red Army, originally published in the 1930s. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Hesperides Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork. Contents Include: From Yenan to Sian - From Sian to the Front - With the Roving Headquarters of Chu Teh - Battles and Raids with the Forces of Lin Piao - Travelling with the Headquarters Staff of the Eighth Route Army - Sights, News, Interview and Bombardment - A Breathing Spell and a Journey - The New Year Begins.

Smil, Vaclav (2008). Oil: A Beginner's Guide
. Oxford, England, Oneworld Publications.
Without oil, there would be no globalisation, no plastic, little transport, and a global political landscape that few would recognise. In this captivating book Vaclav Smil explains all matters related to the 'black stuff', from its discovery in the earth, right through to the political maelstrom that surrounds it today. Packed with fascinating facts and insight, this book will provide readers with the science and politics behind the world's most controversial resource.

Smith, Anna Deavere (1993). Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and Other Identities
. New York, Anchor Books/Doubleday.
Derived from interviews with a wide range of people who experienced or observed New York's 1991 Crown Heights racial riots, Fires In The Mirror is as distinguished a work of commentary on current Black-White tensions as it is a work of drama.

Smith, Clive Stafford (2007). The Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Fighting the Lawless World of Guantanamo Bay
. New York, Nation Books.
Human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith is one of the few people in the world who has had independent access to the prisoners at Guantanamo, representing more than fifty. Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side is his remarkable account of his descent into the darkly comic world of Guantanamo, a legal black hole in which the bleakness of the surroundings are punctuated by moments of humor and absurdity. From the absence of security at the airport, to the army protecting iguanas on the roads, Eight O'Clock Ferry to the Windward Side goes beyond the headlines to tell the true story of life at Guantanamo.

By bearing witness to the prisoner's stories, Smith also asks what is done to our understanding of American democracy when the rule of law is jettisoned in the name of combating terrorism.

Smith, David N. and Phil Evans (2014). Marx's Capital Illustrated
. Chicago, IL, Haymarket Books.
Imagine Karl Marx as a cartoonist, ready to set the record straight about his much maligned classic, Das Kapital. Impossibly difficult? Not in the least. Hopelessly outdated? Far from it. Though first published in 1867, Capital remains keenly relevant. Society continues to run on investment and profit, labor and technology. And predictions that once might have seemed rash-global economic crisis, societies nearing bankruptcy-are now simply facts. Capital remains the fullest attempt to explain these facts, and Marx's Capital Illustrated brings this attempt to vibrant life, proceeding all the way from the ABCs to the pertinence of Marx's theory of crisis for today's global woes. Marx's Capital Illustrated is valuable and in some respects more so than all the interpretations and popularizations I have read." - C.L.R. James.

Smith, Denis Mack (1994). Mazzini
. New Haven, Yale University Press.
This book by one of the most distinguished historians of Italy is the first modern biography in English of Giuseppe Mazzini, one of the leading figures in the political and intellectual world of mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Denis Mack Smith reexamines Mazzini's ideological impact and portrays him as a vigorous proponent of patriotism, a pre-eminent figure in the struggle for Italian independence and unity, and a fascinating personality whose ideas brought him into contact with Marx, Carlyle, Mill, and Bakunin. "Denis Mack Smith's new biography easily surpasses its predecessors in any language. This is not surprising, since Mack Smith is one of the finest living writers of historical biographies and the most distinguished living historian of the Risorgimento." - Derek Beales, New York Review of Books. "This is the definitive biography: the job will not need to be done again." - A. L. Rowse, London Evening Standard. "The doyen of historians of modern Italy, Mack Smith has written a book which has all the usual admirable qualities of his earlier work, combining an accessible and fluent narrative style with lightly worn but meticulous scholarship. It is to be hoped that Mack Smith's book heralds a reassessment, not just of Mazzini's place in nineteenth-century Italian history, but also of his intellectual contribution to the creation of a Europe of the nations that remains as urgent in our time as it was in his." - Richard Bellamy, Times Literary Supplement.

Smith, Denis Mack (1997). Modern Italy: A Political History
. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press.
A magisterial study that will continue to be the benchmark for political histories of modern Italy. Mack Smith (Oxford University) is considered the foremost historian of modern Italy in the English-speaking world, the author of biographies on Mussolini, Garibaldi, Mazzini and Victor Emanuele, and Cavour. Mack Smith has also written on Italy's unification and its monarchy. First published in 1959, the present work is fully updated (to 1996) and has been substantially rewritten. It is the most comprehensive and accessible study we have of modern Italy.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2002). December 6: A Novel
. New York, Gallery Books.
Amid the imperialist fervor of late 1941 Tokyo, Harry Niles is a man with a mission -- self-preservation. But Niles was raised by missionary parents and educated in the shadows of Tokyo's underworld -- making his loyalties as dubious as his business dealings.

Now, on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Niles must decide where his true allegiances lie, as he tries to juggle his Japanese mistress and an affair with the wife of a British diplomat; avoid a modern-day samurai who is honor-bound to kill him; and survive the Japanese high command, whose plans for conquest may just dictate his survival.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2007). Gorky Park: An Arkady Renko Novel
. New York, Ballantine Books.
A triple murder in a Moscow amusement center: three corpses found frozen in the snow, faces and fingers missing. Chief homicide investigator Arkady Renko is brilliant, sensitive, honest, and cynical about everything except his profession. To identify the victims and uncover the truth, he must battle the KGB, FBI, and the New York City police as he pursues a rich, ruthless, and well-connected American fur dealer. Meanwhile, Renko is falling in love with a beautiful, headstrong dissident for whom he may risk everything.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2001). Havana Bay: An Arkady Renko Novel
. New York, Ballantine Books.
When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries. In this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world, and a reason to relish his own life again.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2007). Polar Star: An Arkady Renko Novel
. New York, Ballantine Books.
Arkady Renko has made too many enemies and now he toils in obscurity on a Russian factory ship in the middle of the Bering Sea. But when a female crew member is picked up dead with the day's catch, Arkady becomes obsessed with the case and once again discovers more than he wants to know and certainly more than he bargained for.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2007). Red Square: An Arkady Renko Novel
. New York, Ballantine Books.
Back from exile in the hellish reaches of the Soviet Union, homicide investigator Arkady Renko discovers that his country, his Moscow, even his job, are nearly dead. But his enemies are very much alive, and foremost among them are the powerful black-market crime lords of the Russian mafia. Hounded by this terrifying new underworld, chased by the ruthless minions of the newly rich and powerful, and tempted by his great love, defector Irina Asanova, Arkady can only hope desperately for escape. But fate has something else in store.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2000). Rose
. New York, Ballantine Books.
For Jonathon Blair, a mining engineer and explorer, the color and rigors of the Dark Continent are far more suitable than the foggy drizzle of his home in Wigan, Lancashire. When he returns from Africa's Gold Coast in 1872, he finds England utterly depressing and turns to drink to ease his melancholy. His patron, a Bishop and mine owner, agrees to send him back if he can clear up the mysterious disappearance of a local curate engaged to marry his daughter. As he sleuths around the cultured homes of Wigan, through ill-cobbled alleys and into the depths of the mines, he meets the alluring Rose Malyneaux. Used to relying on himself, Blair finds that Rose's instincts provide more answers than he could have hoped for.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2008). Stalin's Ghost: An Arkady Renko Novel
. New York, Gallery Books.
Investigator Arkady Renko, the pariah of the Moscow prosecutor's office, has been assigned the thankless job of investigating a new phenomenon: late-night subway riders report seeing the ghost of Joseph Stalin on the platform of the Chistye Prudy Metro station. The illusion seems part political hocus-pocus and also part wishful thinking, for among many Russians Stalin is again popular; the bloody dictator can boast a two-to-one approval rating. Decidedly better than that of Renko, whose lover, Eva, has left him for Detective Nikolai Isakov, a charismatic veteran of the civil war in Chechnya, a hero of the far right and, Renko suspects, a killer for hire. The cases entwine, and Renko's quests become a personal inquiry fueled by jealousy.

The investigation leads to the fields of Tver outside of Moscow, where once a million soldiers fought. There, amidst the detritus, Renko must confront the ghost of his own father, a favorite general of Stalin's. In these barren fields, patriots and shady entrepreneurs -- the Red Diggers and Black Diggers -- collect the bones, weapons and personal effects of slain World War II soldiers, and find that even among the dead there are surprises.

Smith, Martin Cruz (1987). Stallion Gate
. New York, Ballantine Books.
In a New Mexico blizzard, four men cross a barbed-wire fence at Stallion Gate to select a test site for the first atomic weapon. They are Oppenheimer, the physicist; Groves, the general; Fuchs, the spy. The fourth man is Sergeant Joe Pena, a hero, informer, fighter, musician, Indian. These four men -- and a cast of soldiers, roughnecks and scientists -- will change history forever.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2014). Tatiana
. New York, Simon & Schuster.
In Smith's riveting seventh Arkady Renko novel (after 2010's Three Stations), Renko, now a Senior Investigator for Very Important Cases, looks into the apparent suicide of crusading investigative journalist Tatiana Petrovna, who fell from a window to her death in Moscow. Renko's bosses have no problem accepting the suicide theory, but Renko and his loyal partner and friend, Det. Sgt. Victor Orlov, continue to search for answers. Smith spins a complex plot involving the Russian mafia, a teenage genius struggling to crack the code of Petrovna's notebook, and an excursion to Kaliningrad, the isolated Russian enclave on the Baltic. While Petrovna may be a candidate for sainthood (she's evidently modeled on real-life reporter Anna Politkovskaya), the most intriguing character after Renko is contemporary Russia-freer than it was at the height of the cold war, but at least as corrupt and vastly more unequal-into which Smith offers many insights.

Smith, Martin Cruz (2004). Wolves Eat Dogs
. New York, Gallery Books.
In his groundbreaking Gorky Park, Martin Cruz Smith created an iconic detective of contemporary fiction. Quietly subversive, brilliantly analytical, and haunted by melancholy, Arkady Renko survived, barely, the journey from the Soviet Union to the New Russia, only to find his transformed nation just as obsessed with corruption and brutality as was the old Communist dictatorship.

In Wolves Eat Dogs, Renko returns for his most enigmatic and baffling case: the death of one of Russia's new billionaires, which leads him to Chernobyl and the Zone of Exclusion -- closed to the world since 1986's nuclear disaster. It is still aglow with radioactivity, now inhabited only by the militia, shady scavengers, a few reckless scientists, and some elderly peasants who refuse to relocate. Renko's journey to this ghostly netherworld, the crimes he uncovers there, and the secrets they reveal about the New Russia make for an unforgettable adventure.

Smith, Ray (1984). How to Draw and Paint What You See
. New York, Knopf: Distributed by Random House.
Based on a step-by-step, do-it-yourself introduction system in which each painting is especially chosen to illustrate a particular technique such as principles of line, shading, and color. Over 500 illustrations.

Smith, Wendy (1990). Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940
. New York, Grove Weidenfeld.
Widely considered America's finest acting ensemble during the 1930s, the Group Theatre, with its self-defined mission to reconnect theater to the world of ideas and actions, staged plays that confronted social and moral issues. Brought strikingly to life here by New York-based writer-editor Smith, members Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Stella and Luther Adler, Clifford Odets, Elia Kazan and an ill-assorted band of idealistic actors living hand to mouth are seen welded in a collective of creativity that was also a tangle of jealousies, love affairs and explosive feuds. While the Group, "on Broadway but not of it," never resolved the contradiction of working in commercial theater with a noncommmercial philosophy, this prodigiously researched, definitive chronicle demonstrates that its quest for emotional truth revolutionized the craft of acting. A shrewd mix of history, criticism, biography and gossip, the book reveals that the company meant different things to different members: for Stella Adler, raised on European classics in Yiddish theater, playing a faded Southern belle held little attraction, neither did the ensemble's communal life; playwright Odets looked to the Group for artistic and spiritual salvation; Clurman, flamboyant, often arrogant but approachable, held the others together. Smith forthrightly deals with the still controversial issue of the Group's politicization, tracing members' growing radicalism and ties to workers' theaters around the country. From its birth in the Depression to its breakup as Hitler's armies overran Europe, the Group's 10-year saga, as told here, is dramatic and inspirational, illuminating the actors' efforts to make art a force for change, to integrate work and personal life.

Smollett, Tobias George, George Cruikshank, et al. (1895). Humphrey Clinker
. London, G. Bell & Sons.
In the last month of 1769, Smollett's health compelled him, once more, to leave England. He went to Italy, and, in the spring of 1770, settled in a villa near Leghorn. Here, he wrote his last and most agreeable novel, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker. In its way, this is another picaresque story, insomuch as, during its progress, the characters (who relate everything in letters to their friends) pursue their travels in England and Scotland. But its tone and temper (owing, possibly, to the influence of Sterne, possibly, to the pacific mood which often blesses the closing days of even the angriest men) are very different from those of Roderick Random and of Peregrine Pickle. Smollett the humourist, of whom we have had but brief glimpses in his earlier works, is more evident here than anywhere else. Matthew Bramble, the outwardly savage and inwardly very tender old bachelor, his sister Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, smart Jery Melford, their nephew, and his sister Miss Lydia, Mrs. Winifred Jenkins, the maid, and Humphrey Clinker himself, the "methodist" manservant whom they pick up on their travels - all these are characters more deeply and kindly seen than any of their predecessors except Hawser Trunnion. The best among them all is Lismahago, the Scottish soldier, needy, argumentative, proud, eccentric - a figure of genuine comedy, among whose many descendants must be reckoned one of great eminence, Dugald Dalgetty. The novel is planned with a skill unusual in Smollett's fiction. In Richardson, the device of telling the story in letters leads to wearisome repetitions and involutions. Smollett contrives to avoid much repetition; and the story, though loosely built, as picaresque novels must be, goes steadily and clearly forward to reach a more or less inevitable ending. This was his last work. He died at his villa in September, 1771, and is buried in the English cemetery at Leghorn. After his death, his Ode to Independence - not a great poem, but a vigorous expression of his sturdy temperament - was published; and, in 1795, there appeared under his name a curious pamphlet, foretelling the revolt of America and the French revolution. Whether he wrote this pamphlet or not, he had shown a prevision hardly less remarkable in certain political forecasts to be found in his Travels.

Smyth, Fiona (2018). Somnambulance
. Toronto, Koyama Press.
A comics collection by Canadian cartoonist, painter, and illustrator Fiona Smyth. Over thirty years of comics that feature Fiona's world of sexy ladies, precocious girls, and vindictive goddesses is revealed in all its feminist glory. This is recommended reading for sleepwalkers on a female planet.

Each overstuffed, vibrating, oversexed panel seems to freeze and burrow into the page or into your skull, distracting you from the next image, which, in turn, distracts you from the next, and the next. These are comics in which the panels don’t so much work together as lovingly fight for dominance.

Snicket, Lemony, Carson Ellis, et al. (2009). The Composer Is Dead
. New York, HarperCollins.
An inspector seeks to solve a murder mystery at the symphony by questioning each of the musical instruments. This irreverent picture book is built somewhat along the lines of Who Killed Cock Robin?, but imbued with Snicket's charmingly snide wit. The Composer is dead ('This is called decomposing') and the Inspector is called in to uncover the murderer, or murderers. The sections of the orchestra are personified as the Inspector interrogates the Violins and Woodwinds and Trumpets and even the Conductor. Each has an alibi, though by the end it becomes clear that they are all complicit in the butchering of countless dead composers. The artwork alternates between silhouettes of instruments, the indignant Inspector accusingly pointing his finger, and chaotic, playful interpretations of waltzes and marches as notes and ligatures swirl about. An accompanying CD features a comically dramatic reading by Snicket set against a mishmash of music that integrates motifs from various classical sources. The whole slightly macabre package is great fun, and while many youngsters will miss the clever wordplay and wry twist at the end, this still winds up being a fairly good overview of each orchestral section's role in bringing music to life. Or death. Grades K-3.

Snyder, Gary (1969). Earth House Hold; Technical Notes & Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries
. New York, New Directions Pub. Corp.
Earth House Hold (a play on the root meaning of 'ecology') is drawn from Gary Snyder's essay and journal comments on the environment.

Snyder, Gary (1970). Regarding Wave
. New York, New Directions Pub. Corp.
Poems Snyder wrote for his wife and child.

Snyder, Gary (1978). Myths & Textsv. New York, Published for J. Laughlin by New Directions Pub. Corp.

The poet's primeval devotion to the land and to work shapes his texts and creates his myths.

Snyder, Gary (1983). Axe Handles: Poems
. San Francisco, North Point Press.
This book was Snyder's first collection of poetry after Turtle Island, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1974. The poems in Axe Handles reveal the roots of community in the family, and also explore the transmission of cultural values and knowledge. Above all, these are poems about language--that is, language as the preeminent manifestation of culture. In the title poem, we read: "I am an axe / And my son a handle, soon / To be shaping again, model / And tool, craft of culture, / How we go on."

Snyder, Gary (1983). Passage through India.
San Francisco. Eugene, OR, Grey Fox Press; Distributed by the Subterranean Co.

Snyder, Gary and William Scott McLean (1980). The Real Work: Interviews & Talks, 1964-1979
. New York, New Directions Pub. Corp.
This collection is a companion volume to "Earth House Hold," his earlier group of interviews published up to 1969. The Real Work pulls together interviews from The Berkeley Barb, Road Apple, and East West publications, as well as an interview with John Jacoby of Southern Methodist University on the forms and functions of poetry. It's as far-ranging a collection as Snyder's lifelong interests -- the "real work" of living, creating, and conserving, the connection between spirituality and what Snyder calls "the bioregional ethic." For more formal essays on the individual's role in conservation, Snyder's 1990 book, "The Practice of the Wild," continues many of the themes explored in "The Real Work."

Snyder, Gary, Gary Snyder, et al. (1965). Riprap; & Cold Mountain Poems
. San Francisco, Four Seasons Foundation; distributed by City Lights Books.
Forty-five years ago, Gary Snyder's first book of poems, Riprap, was published by Origin Press in a beautiful paperbound edition stitched Japanese-style. Around that time Snyder published his translations of Chinese poet Han-Shan's Cold Mountain Poems in the sixth issue of the "Evergreen Review." Thus was launched one of the most remarkable literary careers of the last century.

"His greatest strength-a quiet and profound elegance, an ability to write a simple phrase that seems to have been echoing through human consciousness for three or four thousand years." - Lewis MacAdams, California Magazine

Soanes, Catherine, F. G. Fowler, et al. (2002). The Pocket Oxford English Dictionary
. Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press.
This is a reissue of the ninth edition of the world's longest-established and best-selling pocket English dictionary. It is one of the new generation Oxford dictionaries derived from the database of the highly-acclaimed New Oxford Dictionary of English and is particularly user friendly with its elegant open design, with different elements starting on new lines. It offers excellent coverage of English as an international language, the defining style is straightforward and non-technical, and thousands of examples illustrate idiomatic usage. All irregular noun, verb, and adjectival inflections are spelled out in full, while guidance on grammar and good usage is provided by in-text notes. Additional features include Wordbuilder boxes giving information on related words and thematic tables on subjects such as countries, chemical elements, and nationalities.

Sobel, Dava (1995). Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time
. New York, Walker.
The thorniest scientific problem of the eighteenth century was how to determine longitude. Many thousands of lives had been lost at sea over the centuries due to the inability to determine an east-west position. This is the engrossing story of the clockmaker, John "Longitude" Harrison, who solved the problem that Newton and Galileo had failed to conquer, yet claimed only half the promised rich reward.

Soley, Lawrence C. (2002). Censorship, Inc.: The Corporate Threat to Free Speech in the United States
. New York, Monthly Review Press.
A comprehensive examination of the vast array of corporate practices which restrict free speech in the United States today in fields as diverse as advertsing and the media, the workplace, community life, and the environment. Soley also shows how these threats to free speech have been resisted by activism, legal argument, and through legislation.

Solnit, Rebecca (1990). Secret Exhibition: Six California Artists of the Cold War Era
. San Francisco, City Lights Books.
Secret Exhibition chronicles a vital California art movement, focusing on six artists - Wallace Bergman, Jess, Bruce Conner, Jay DeFeo, Wally Hendrick, and George Herms - who broke new ground with provocative work, especially in assemblage and mixed-media projects. This important though relatively little-documented 1950s' avant-garde flourished on the West Coast, where the artists were free to create art that was as subversive as it was uncommercial. The story of these artists and their close associates - Beat Generation poets, experimental filmmakers, and musicians who were also breaking away from formalism and convention - is told here against the backdrop of the Korean and Vietnam wars, postwar growth, and the rise of a vigorous counterculture. With first-hand accounts by writers and artists, passages from letters, poems, and ephemeral publications, Secret Exhibition brings together a complex picture of an exciting era; and more than a hundred illustrations in black and white and color make it a visual record of an essential chapter in contemporary American art.

Solnit, Rebecca and Susan Schwartzenberg (2000). Hollow City: The Siege of San Francisco and the Crisis of American Urbanism
. London; New York, Verso.
"San Francisco has been for most of its 150-year existence both a refuge and an anomaly. Soon it will be neither. Gentrification is transforming the city by driving out the poor and those who have chosen to give their lives over to unlucrative pursuits such as art, activism, social experimentation, and social service." So begins this impassioned cry to save the soul of Baghdad by the Bay (and any American cities under siege by ill-planned overdevelopment). A San Francisco resident who lives in a rent-controlled apartment, Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking) presents a lively mix of research, personal anecdotes, photos and art to show how the industrious development of high-end condos, hotel/office space and dot-com businesses over the past decade has increased the city's economic base at the expense of many of its long-term residents, not to mention its character. Between 1996 and 1997, rental prices went up 37%; last year, some neighborhoods faced a 20% increase within six months. Evictions happen at the rate of five per day, and "70% of those evicted leave the city," leading to the attrition not only of the poor but of the middle class, as well as independent and small businesses. Charting the history of the vibrant San Francisco arts and activist scenes - from the early days of literary bohemia in the 1870s to the 1950s beatniks to the famed political theater of the San Francisco Mime Troupe - Solnit methodically shows how difficult it will be for them to remain viable under the city's new managers. Passionate, potent and to the point, Solnit's polemic embodies American political and social writing at its best. Readers who share her outlook will find it richly satisfying.

Solomon, Steven (1995). The Confidence Game: How Unelected Central Bankers Are Governing the Changed Global Economy
. New York, Simon & Schuster.
Former Forbes reporter Solomon believes that the tiny, secretive circle of unelected central bankers who manage the world's money supply and shape key financial policies wields too much power. The central bankers include U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, German Bundesbank president Karl Otto Pohl and Bank of England governor Eddie George and their compeers in Japan, Switzerland, France, Italy and Canada. In a gripping and disturbing report, Solomon credits central bankers with major accomplishments: beating back inflation in the early 1980s, staving off financial depression during the Third World debt crisis of 1982, checking the near free fall of the dollar, and rescuing shaky banking systems following the 1987 crash of the U.S. stock market. But Solomon is alarmed by central bankers' failure to cope with the rise of "stateless" capital, and he stresses that political reforms are needed to democratically regulate this "floating monetary nonsystem" driven by investors' whims or manias. Through some 300 interviews with bankers, finance ministers, politicians and investors, Solomon has pierced the tight-lipped, shadowy world of central banking in a dramatic expose.

In The Confidence Game, journalist Steven Solomon penetrates the closed circles of some of the most powerful and least known figures in the global economy-the central bankers. As interest rates, exchange rates, and financial crises make headlines, the spotlight has increasingly turned on these notoriously secretive unelected men who create and manage the world's money from behind the walls of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the German Bundesbank, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and the enigmatic Bank for International Settlements in Switzerland.

After traveling around the world twice and gaining the confidence of scores of central bank governors, finance ministers, political leaders, and top financiers-including Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, George Shultz, Helmut Schmidt, Karl Otto Pohl, Hans Tietmeyer, Yasushi Mieno, Gordon Richardson, Nigel Lawson, Jacques de Larosiere, and Edouard Balladur-Solomon tells the dramatic story of how the world economy and politics have been transformed by the eruption of high-speed, volatile global money flows, and how the global monetary system has often teetered on the brink of catastrophe. With never-before reported details of frantic international phone calls and secret negotiations conducted behind closed doors, The Confidence Game vividly informs us how central bankers and world leaders dealt with the LDC debt crisis of the early 1980s, the near collapse of the dollar, the 1987 stock market crash and its ripple effect around the world, the boom and bust of the Japanese "bubble economy," and the global recession of the early 1990s. With national politics increasingly held hostage to maintaining the confidence of global financial markets, democratic governments are transferring more and more governing authority and political independence to these unelected central bankers-with expectations of economic prosperity that are unlikely to be met.

Sontag, Susan (2000). In America: A Novel
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
As she did in The Volcano Lover, Sontag crafts a novel of ideas in which real figures from the past enact their lives against an assiduously researched, almost cinematically vivid background. Here again her signal achievement is to offer fresh and insightful commentary on the social and cultural currents of an age, with a distinctive understanding of how historical events forged character and destiny. If the story of renowned Polish actress Maryna Zalewska cannot compare in drama to that of Admiral Nelson and the Hamiltons (as a protagonist, Maryna remains somewhat shadowy and elusive), Sontag succeeds in conveying how the political and intellectual atmosphere of Poland and the U.S. in the late 19th century affected her heroine's life. Beautiful, famous and restless at 35, Maryna decides to leave her native land, suffering under Russian occupation. She convinces her husband, Count Bogdan Demboski, her would-be lover, journalist Ryszard Kierul, and various other members of the Warsaw intelligentsia to emigrate to America, where, influenced by Fourier's social philosophy, they will establish an experimental farm commune in southern California. Predictably, the community fails to prosper and falls into debt; idealism gives way to disillusionment; Maryna decides to resume her career, achieving immediate acclaim; and the romantic triangle moves to a new stage. Meanwhile, Sontag makes meaningful associations between a woman's need for freedom and independence, a nation's suffering under a conqueror's heel and the common human quest for "newness, emptiness, pastlessness... this dream of turning life into pure future" that colored many immigrants' views of America. She leads readers into the book via a long, breathless, one-paragraph prologue, narrated as if in a fever dream; indeed, it is not until many pages into the novel that the date and the geographical setting are established. Exemplary at imagining an actor's needs, impulses and sources of inspiration, Sontag also conveys the theatrical world of the time (East Lynne was the most popular play; Sarah Bernhardt reigned in Paris) almost palpably. There are few dramatic peaks and valleys in Maryna's story, but the historical backdrop--with pithy and evocative descriptions of American cities at the turn of the last century, cameo portraits of salty frontier types, and snippets of Western lore--supplies the vigor that the main plot often fails to engender. While this book does not exert the passionate energy of The Volcano Lover, it is a provocative study of a woman's life and the historical setting in which she moves.

Sorrentino, Christopher (2005)). Trance
. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
1974: A tiny band of self-styled urban guerrillas, calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army, abducts a newspaper heiress, who then abruptly announces that she has adopted the guerrilla name "Tania" and chosen to remain with her former captors. Has she been brainwashed? Coerced? Could she be sincere? Why would such a nice girl disavow her loving parents, her adoring fiancé, her comfortable home? Why would she suddenly adopt the SLA's cri de coeur, "Death to the Fascist Insect that Preys Upon the Life of the People"? Soon most of the SLA are dead, killed in a suicidal confrontation with police in Los Angeles, forcing Tania and her two remaining comrades--the pompous and abusive General Teko and his duplicitous lieutenant, Yolanda--into hiding, where they will remain for the next sixteen months.

Trance, Christopher Sorrentino's mesmerizing and brilliant second novel, traces this fugitive period, leading the reader on a breathtaking, hilarious, and heartbreaking underground tour across a beleaguered America, in the company of scam artists, visionaries, cultists, and a mismatched gang of middle-class people who typify the guiding conceit of their time, that of self-renovation. Along the way he tells the story of a nation divided against itself--parents and children, men and women, black and white; a story of hidebound tradition and radical change, of truth and propaganda, of cynicism and idealism; a story as transfixing and relevant today as it was then.

Sorrentino, Gilbert (1981). Selected Poems, 1958-1980
. Santa Barbara, Black Sparrow Press.

Sorrentino, Gilbert (1985). Odd Number
. San Francisco, North Point Press.
Real estate hustles, art swindles, pornographic films, satanic cults seem expected elements in today's novels, and we find all of them in Odd Number. But Sorrentino, the inveterate prose experimenter, uses his unique narrative style to craft the mundane into the marvelous. Throughout, an unnamed interrogator questions unnamed witnesses and, as their testimony progresses, slowly develops a picture of their complicated business, social, and sexual relationships. This halting movement toward clarity is encumbered, however, by a steady shifting between speakers which eventually merges all individual voices into a single, vivid portrayal of the events they describe. Such intricate masterful writing may not please everyone, but those readers who dive into Odd Number's roiling prose will emerge with many pearls.

Southam, B. C. (1996). A Guide to the Selected Poems of T.S. Eliot
. San Diego, Harcourt Brace.
A readers' guide to Eliot's personally chosen collection, Selected Poems. Specific information about the poems and their development is included, along with a chronology of the poet's life and work.

Southern, Terry (1990). Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes
. New York, Citadel Press.
This collection of Southern's short pieces -- two dozen hilarious, well-observed, and devastating sketches that expose the hypocrisy of American social mores -- is widely recognized as an underground classic

Southern, Terry and Mason Hoffenberg (1996). Candy
. New York, Grove Press.
Maxwell Kenton's bawdy masterpiece, first published by the Olympia Press in 1958 and the subject of innumerable lawsuits, piracies and bad film adaptations since, is a modern take on Candide (from authors Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg in tandem). Candy Christian, a beautiful girl who just happened to be born on Valentine's Day, writes a paper on Contemporary Human Love for her instructor, Professor Mephesto, saying that "to give of oneself--fully--is not merely a duty prescribed by an outmoded superstition, it is a beautiful and thrilling privilege."

Southern, Terry, Nile Southern, et al. (2001). Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995
. New York, Grove Press.
With this outstanding, volatile melange of short pieces, Nile Southern repositions his father "the conduit between the Beatles and the Beats" as a Class Four hurricane in the Hipster Pantheon. Labeled "the Mt. Rushmore of modern American humor" by Saturday Night Live head writer Michael O'Donoghue (who hired him), Southern (1924-1995) is best remembered for his Oscar-nominated screenplays (Easy Rider; Dr. Strangelove) and novels (Candy; The Magic Christian). He also unleashed assorted anarchic articles, reviews (in the Nation), short stories and photo captions (Virgin: A History of Virgin Records, his last book). The opening interview from 1986 is followed by four stories that animate characters via expressive, askew vernacular. Letters to Lenny Bruce and George Plimpton, plus a hilarious commentary on female orgasms mailed to Ms. in 1972, are included. The famed pie-throwing sequence deleted by Kubrick from Dr. Strangelove is described in detail in "Strangelove Outtake: Notes from the War Room." Southern's sharp Esquire piece on the 1968 Chicago police attacks on protesters remains potent. Affectionate portraits of pranksters, poets and friends Plimpton, Maurice Girodias, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, Vonnegut, Frank O'Hara make the closing pages sparkle. Readers will be grateful to Nile Southern for unearthing Terry's "unclassifiable schools of literary invention" from mini-storage for this variegated, entertaining book.

Spang, Rebecca L. (2000). The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture
. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.
Why are there restaurants? Why would anybody consider eating to be an enjoyable leisure activity or even a serious pastime? To find the answer to these questions, we must accompany Rebecca Spang back to France in the eighteenth century, when a restaurant was not a place to eat but a thing to eat: a quasi-medicinal bouillon that formed an essential element of prerevolutionary France's nouvelle cuisine. This is a book about the French Revolution in taste and of the table--a book about how Parisians invented the modern culture of food, thereby changing their own social life and that of the world. During the 1760s and 1770s, those who were sensitive and supposedly suffering made public show of their delicacy by going to the new establishments known as "restaurateurs' rooms" and there sipping their bouillons. By the 1790s, though, the table was variously seen as a place of decadent corruption or democratic solidarity. The Revolution's tables were sites for extending frugal, politically correct hospitality, and a delicate appetite was a sign of counter-revolutionary tendencies. The restaurants that had begun as purveyors of health food became symbols of aristocratic greed. In the early nineteenth century, however, the new genre of gastronomic literature worked within the strictures of the Napoleonic police state to transform the notion of restaurants and to confer star status upon oysters and champagne. Thus, the stage was set for the arrival of British and American tourists keen on discovering the mysteries of Frenchness in the capital's restaurants. From restoratives to Restoration, Spang establishes the restaurant at the very intersection of public and private in French culture--the first public place where people went to be private. Rebecca L. Spang is Lecturer in Modern European History at University College London. She is the author of Gothic Gastronomics.

Speake, Jennifer (1997). The Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases
. Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press.
Drawing 8,000 words and phrases from more than 40 languages, this new Oxford dictionary defines just about any word or phrase that has made its way into English. English has steadily absorbed foreign words, and through the nineteenth century, French and Latin have dominated the imports. The twentieth century opened English to words on a worldwide basis, many of which reflect an increasingly eclectic lifestyle, having to do with fashion, cuisine, and recreation. This dictionary "records the influx of words from a variety of other languages into both American and British English." Words that have been introduced in the twentieth century are emphasized.

Entries range from common words that seem to be completely absorbed (condominium, massage, polka) to the clearly foreign but not uncommon (bon vivant, ikebana). Others, such as pakapoo a word that is used chiefly in Australia and refers to a Chinese form of lottery--will seem exotic indeed, especially to American readers. It is hard to see how some entries meet the criterion of being words encountered in nonspecialist literature: "tokamak: a toroidal apparatus for producing controlled fusion. . . ."

Definitions are exhaustive. Changes in meaning are traced over time. Origins are succinctly yet thoroughly explored. Halva entered English from Yiddish, but Arabic and Persian supplied the source for equivalent terms in Hebrew, Greek, and Turkish. All are listed in the entry.

Separate entries are sometimes provided for plurals or other parts of speech. Spelling variants are given, sometimes as separate entries. The pronunciation guide follows the International Phonetic Alphabet system (IPA) and Southern English pronunciation. Dates are given in abbreviated form (OE for Old English, pre-1149); a table is provided in the preface. A useful appendix lists entries by country of origin and century of introduction, providing a quick grasp of the magnitude of these imports and a good overview of terms and their origins. French still predominates with more than 2,800 entries; only one word comes to us from Thai.

Entries are in boldface, followed by pronunciation, part of speech, variant spellings, date, language of origin, definition, and different meanings by date or part of speech. Miscellaneous usage and historical notes are given in bulleted paragraphs, with an occasional quotation, with date) containing the word in context. Words in small caps indicate cross-references.

Spence, Jonathan D. (1985). The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
. New York, N.Y., Penguin Books.
Matteo Ricci (1552-1616), an Italian Jesuit, entered China in 1583 to spread Catholicism in the largely Confucian country. In order to make a persuasive argument for the educated Chinese to abandon their traditional faith for the new one he was carrying, Ricci realized that he would have to prove the general superiority of Western culture. He did so by teaching young Confucian scholars tricks to increase their memory skills--an important advantage in a nation with countless laws and rituals that had to be learned by heart. Ricci attracted numerous students with this method; more important, Ricci came to have a sympathetic understanding for China that he communicated to Rome, and thence to the European nations at large. Spence's portrait of Ricci is a gem of historical writing. - Gregory MacNamee

Spence, Jonathan D. (1999). The Search for Modern China
. New York, W.W. Norton.
The difficulty of finding a complete, one-volume history of China is no longer a problem with publication of this work, which covers Chinese history from the 16th-century Ming Dynasty to the 1989 "China Spring" demonstrations. The 200+ photographs and illustrations, many in color and previously unpublished, include historical notes that add understanding to the art and the stories illustrated. The text is written in an informative manner that will appeal to students; their lack of knowledge of Chinese history is forstalled by the comprehensive glossary that explains phrases, people, and events.

Spence, Keith and Giles Swayne (1981). How Music Works
. New York; London, Macmillan: Collier Macmillan.
Useful as a text for early beginners trying to understand music fundamentals: notation, note duration, rhythm, chords and chord progression.

Spengler, Oswald (1991). The Decline of the West
. New York, Oxford University Press.
Since its first publication in two volumes between 1918-1923, The Decline of the West has ranked as one of the most widely read and most talked about books of our time. In all its various editions, it has sold nearly 100,000 copies. A twentieth-century Cassandra, Oswald Spengler thoroughly probed the origin and "fate" of our civilization, and the result can be (and has been) read as a prophesy of the Nazi regime. His challenging views have led to harsh criticism over the years, but the knowledge and eloquence that went into his sweeping study of Western culture have kept The Decline of the West alive.

This abridgment, prepared by the German scholar Helmut Werner, with the blessing of the Spengler estate, consists of selections from the original (translated into English by Charles Francis Atkinson) linked by explanatory passages which have been put into English by Arthur Helps. H. Stuart Hughes has written a new introduction for this edition.

In his engrossing and highly controversial philosophy of history, Spengler describes how we have entered into a centuries-long "world-historical" phase comparable to late antiquity. Guided by the philosophies of Goethe and Nietzsche, he rejects linear progression, and instead presents a world view based on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations. He argues that a culture blossoms from the soil of a definable landscape and dies when it has exhausted all of its possibilities.

Despite Spengler's reputation today as an extreme pessimist, The Decline of the West remains essential reading for anyone interested in the history of civilization.

Spiegelman, Art (2004). In the Shadow of No Towers
. New York, Pantheon Books.
Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda.

Spiegelman, Art (1997). Maus: A Survivor's Tale
. New York, Pantheon Books.
The publisher of Maus directs libraries to shelve the book under "Holocaust/Autobiography," and indeed, although it is a comic strip featuring white mice as Jews, pigs as Poles, cats as Nazis, and wartime Europe as a gigantic mousetrap, Maus is as restrained an exemplar of this garish genre as can be found nowadays. For several years the tale has been appearing as specially bound installments in the avant-garde art comic Raw, of which the artist-author Art Spiegelman is coeditor along with his wife Francoise Mouly. Maus is actually less another "survivor's tale" than it is another cruel anatomy of the legendary Jewish Family. We have all met this Wunderfamilie: it is uniquely warm, supportive, close and nonviolent. Its parents never hit. Its mother may be "pushy," but only out of bottomless maternal desire to see her precious offspring flourish. Its father is wise, gentle, intellectually stimulating, and never alcoholic. Since the war, the more heavily propagandized countries such as the U.S. have imbibed this myth with their mother's milk; similarly acquired lore includes "The Nazis tied pregnant women's legs together when they went into labor," "The Nazis swung Jewish babies against brick walls and dashed out their brains," and of course that old Christmas favorite, the Anne Frank Story. It is a measure of how much more potent a well-told (and oft-repeated) fable is than mere empirical observation that not until we encounter Revisionism, which dares to call a thing by its proper name, are most of us able to retroactively "conform" the actualities of Jewish behavior we ourselves have witnessed to a rather sounder theoretical framework.

St. Aubyn, Edward (2015). The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind / Bad News / Some Hope / Mother's Milk / At Last. New York, Picador.
Follows the life of Patrick Melrose, a member of an upper class English family, through his traumatic childhood with an abusive father, drug addiction, fatherhood, and the possible loss of his family home. By turns harrowing and hilarious, this ambitious novel cycle dissects the English upper class. Edward St. Aubyn offers his reader the often darkly funny and self-loathing world of privilege as we follow Patrick Melrose's story of abuse, addiction, and recovery from the age of five into early middle age.

St. Clair, Jeffrey (2016). Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes from a Failed Revolution. Petrolia, CA, CounterPunch.
Bernie Sanders promised a Revolution, a promise that was seized upon with an almost religious fervor by a new generation of political activists, a generation raised with smart phones and terror alerts, a generation burdened by debt and facing dim economic prospects. Jeffrey St. Clair, editor of the political journal CounterPunch, called Bernie's raucous band of followers The Sandernistas, as they pitched themselves for battle against one of the most brutal political operations of the modern era, the Clinton machine. Ridiculed by the media and dismissed as a nuisance by the political establishment, the Sanders campaign shocked Clinton in a state after state, exposing the deep structural fissures in the American electorate. Ultimately the Sanders campaign faltered, undone by the missteps of its leader and by sabotage from the elites of the Democratic Party. By the time the Senator gave his humiliating concession speech at the convention in Philadelphia, even his most ardent supporters jeered him in disgust and walked out, taking their protests back to the streets. This turbulent year of mass revolt and defeat is recounted here, as it happened, by one of America's fiercest and funniest journalists.

St. Clair, Jeffrey and Joshua Frank (2018). The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink. Chico, CA, AK Press.
If Hunter S. Thompson had been a backpacker, this is the book he would have written. But don’t let the fear and loathing fool you: this book is a love letter to the American West—that is, what’s left of the West in the wake of fracking, toxic waste, the gunning down of grizzlies and wolves, the hypocrisy of Democrats, and the venality of Republicans. There are passages here that will break your heart. — Ted Nace

St. Clair, Jeffrey and Joshua Frank (2012). Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion. Chico, CA, AK Press.
Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank skillfully smoke out the real Barack Obama... the technofascist military strategist disguised as a Nobel Peace Laureate, but owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street, Corporate America, and the Pentagon.

St. Louis, Regis and Gregor Clark (2015). Lonely Planet Montréal & Québec City. Oakland, CA, Lonely Planet.
Stroll down the cobblestone streets of Old Montréal, cycle through the Parc des Champs de Bataille, or enjoy the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal; all with your trusted travel companion. Get to the heart of Montréal and Québec City.

Staff, Irish Republican Army Ireland (1996). Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army: Notes on Guerrilla Warfare. Boulder, Colorado, Paladin Press.
The original instruction manual for the active arm of the IRA, Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army covers such topics as building up resistance centers, organizing and arming a guerrilla force, employing tactics of deception and attack, destroying enemy communications and gaining support of the populace.

Stafford, Peter G. and Jeremy Bigwood (1992). Psychedelics Encyclopedia
. Berkeley, CA, Ronin Pub.
Psychedelics Encyclopedia draws from scientific research, personal accounts, and popular literature to document the properties attributed to psychedelic substances, their preparation and use, and the shifting social attitudes toward them over the past half-century. Psychedelics Encyclopedia is a remarkable sourcebook for anyone interested in the psychological, biological, physiological and cultural aspects of psychedelic drugs. A fascinating historical reference on psychedelia, from the LSD-25 of the sixties, to the memory and cognitive enhancers of today are compiled with over 200 illustrations. Featured are the LSD family, marijuana and its botanical relatives, peyote, mescaline and san pedro, psychoactive mushrooms, the MDA cluster, yage and harmaline, ibogaine, short-acting tryptamines (DMT, DET, DPT), nootropics, and other psychoactive substances. Each is treated with respect to its history, botany, pharmacology, physical effects, mental effects, forms, sources, purity tests,. Included are biographies, updates, and bibliographies for further research and studies. Psychedelics Encyclopedia is the seminal reference work.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2010). The Black Ice Score
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Three guys wearing black suits and holding guns were giving Parker a lesson in economics. All about the haves and the have-nots. The good guys in a new African nation were missing a treasury full of diamonds. They were the have-nots. The nation's corrupt leader had stashed the rocks somewhere in New York City. He and his henchmen were the haves. Now the good guys needed a specialist to get their diamonds back. So they came to the best in the business: Parker. Only the three mysterious tough guys came to Parker, too. They figured three hands filled with .38s could convince him to pass up this international gem game. But leaning on Parker was like pressuring a box of TNT with a short fuse.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2011). Butcher's Moon
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Stark's antihero Parker attempts to retrieve money he had to leave in an amusement park, but the money is gone. He enlists Alan Grofield to assist, but when Grofield is taken hostage, Parker assembles a private army to get him back and rob the mob blind at the same time.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2010). Deadly Edge
. Chicago; London, University of Chicago Press.
Deadly Edge bids a brutal adieu to the 1960s as Parker robs a rock concert, and the heist goes south. Soon Parker finds himself - and his woman, Claire - menaced by a pair of sadistic, drug-crazed hippies. Parker has a score to settle while Claire's armed with her first rifle, and they're both ready to usher in the end of the Age of Aquarius.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2010). The Green Eagle Score
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
With Mary Fusco newly out of the penitentiary and a smart alec finance clerk named Devers, Parker plans to steal the payroll for an entire U.S. Air Force base up near the Canadian border. Parker knows the score is risky, but he sees a way the odds can be shortened. And like every heist that Parker plans the job goes sweetly until one thing - not even Parker could have forseen - turns the whole think sour.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2008). The Handle
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Parker is enlisted by the mob to knock off an island casino guarded by speedboats and heavies, forty miles from the Texas coast.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2008). The Hunter
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
In The Hunter, the first volume in the series, Parker roars into New York City, seeking revenge on the woman who betrayed him and on the man who took his money, stealing and scamming his way to redemption.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2009). The Jugger
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Parker travels to Nebraska to help out a geriatric safecracker who knows too many of his criminal secrets. By the time he arrives, the safecracker is dead and Parker's skeletons are on the verge of escaping from their closet-unless Parker resorts to lethal measures. In The Jugger, Parker travels to Nebraska to help out a geriatric safecracker who knows too many of his criminal secrets. By the time he arrives, the safecracker is dead and Parker's skeletons are on the verge of escaping from their closet - unless Parker resorts to lethal measures.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2008). The Man With the Getaway Face
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Parker goes under the knife in The Man with the Getaway Face, changing his face to escape the mob and a contract on his life. Along the way he scores his biggest heist yet: an armored car in New Jersey, stuffed with cash.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2009). The Mourner
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
A story of convergence of cultures and of guys with guns. Hot on the trail of a statue stolen from a fifteenth-century French tomb, Parker enters a world of eccentric art collectors, greedy foreign officials, and shady KGB agents.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2008). The Outfit
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Parker, the ruthless antihero of Richard Stark's eponymous mystery novels, is one of the most unforgettable characters in hardboilParker goes toe-to-toe with the mob, hitting them with heist after heist after heist, and the entire underworld learns an unforgettable lesson: whatever Parker does, he does deadly.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2010). Plunder Squad
. Chicago; London, The University of Chicago Press.
When a job looks like amateur hour, Parker walks away. But even a squad of seasoned professionals can't guarantee against human error in a high-risk scam. Can an art dealer with issues unload a truck of paintings with Parker's aid? Or will the heist end up too much of a human interest story, as luck runs out before Parker can get in on the score?

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2009). The Rare Coin Score
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Parker makes the mistake of letting an amateur in on the score, and one of them is a pretty woman named Claire.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2009). The Score
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Parker works with a group of professional con men in The Score on his biggest job yet - robbing an entire town in North Dakota.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2009). The Seventh
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
The heist of a college football game goes bad, and the take is stolen by a crazed, violent amateur. Parker must outrun the cops - and the killer - to retrieve his cash.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2010). Slayground
. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
The hunter becomes prey, as a heist goes sour and Parker finds himself trapped in a shuttered amusement park, besieged by a bevy of local mobsters. There are no exits from Fun Island. Outnumbered and outgunned, Parker can't afford a single miscalculation. He's low on bullets but as anyone who's crossed his path knows, that definitely doesn't mean he's defenseless.

Stark, Richard [aka Donald Edwin Westlake] (2010). The Sour Lemon Score
. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.
Bank robberies should run like clockwork, right? If your name's Parker, you expect nothing less. Until, that is, one of your partners gets too greedy for his own good. The four-way split following a job leaves too small a take for George Uhl, who begins to pick off his fellow hoisters, one by one. The first mistake? That he doesn't begin things by putting a bullet in Parker. That means he won't get the chance to make a second. One of the darkest novels in the series, this caper proves the adage that no one crosses Parker and lives.

Starkie, Enid (1968). Arthur Rimbaud
. New York, New York, New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Rimbaud was a rebellious, enigmatic, brilliant, and inscrutable poet who, in just four short years between the ages of sixteen and twenty, wrote the poetry which has made him a figure of mythic proportions, not only in French literature, but in the literature and history of Modernism. Starkie, in brilliantly lucid prose and with loving attention to every detail, tells Rimbaud's life story and connects that story to the writing of the poems and the evolution of Rimbaud's views on poetry and the task of the poet.

Starnone, Domenico (2009)). First Execution
. New York, London; Europa Editions.
A stylish metaphysical novel about the art of teaching, the fear of terrorism, the sinuous paths that self-delusion lead us down, and the travails of growing old. Mild-mannered retired teacher Domenico Stasi learns that Nina, a former student of his, is being held as a suspected terrorist. His first thought is to contact her -- only her innocence can reassure him that his teachings have not contributed to the creation of a monster. But instead of the comforting proclamations of innocence Stasi was hoping to hear, Nina coolly alludes to her guilt. She then entrusts him with a simple task that soon turns deadly serious. A lethal game has now been put into play and nothing can stop its course.

Starr, Chester G. (1991). A History of the Ancient World
. New York, Oxford University Press.
In a long and distinguished career, Chester Starr has written on topics ranging from early man, to the early Athenian democracy, to the role of sea power in the classical world. And one of his finest works--the product of his broad interests and expertise--has been A History of the Ancient World, long a standard work on the distant past. This completely updated Fourth Edition continues to provide one of the most distinguished and comprehensive one-volume introductions to the ancient past available today.

Steadman, Ralph; Anita O'Brien, eds.(2016). A Retrospective: Ralph Steadman
. London, Cartoon Museum.
In the greatest tradition of British cartooning and graphic satire going back to Hogarth, Gillray, and Cruikshank, this new exhibition of Ralph Steadman’s drawings will startle your eyes and shake your sensibilities. It brings to life his knowledge of the tradition, and portrays his variety of styles – from the delicate to the grotesque – but most of all it shows that Steadman is much, much more than just a cartoonist.

Steadman,Ralph; Steve Crist & Sadie Steadman Williams, eds. (2020). Ralph Steadman: A Life in Ink
. Los Angeles, Chronicle Chroma.
The definitive career retrospective of this revered and provocative UK artist. Renowned for his collaborations with iconic American writer Hunter S. Thompson, they formed an unlikely duo that created “Gonzo” journalism. This lifelong partnership included the legendary Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, originally published in Rolling Stone magazine, which has since become a cult classic. Along with Steadman’s signature ink-splattered style, he is also known for his diverse body of work that includes satirical political illustrations as well as his award-winning children’s books such as Alice in Wonderland.

Steffens, Lincoln (2005). The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens
. Berkeley, CA, Heyday Books.
Here is the autobiography of one of the world's first celebrity journalists: Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936), a man whose writing was so notorious that President Theodore Roosevelt coined a term for it - muckraking.

Growing up in 1870s Sacramento, Steffens studied at Berkeley and in Europe before taking a position at the New York Evening Post, and later at McClure's Magazine. His crusade to expose corruption took him all over the nation and on to Mexico, Europe, and the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, where he made his famous proclamation, "I have seen the future, and it works!" Eventually he became disenchanted with communism, and in his later years he returned to California, to feel again its "warm, colorful force of beauty" and to write what would become a best-selling memoir.

The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens is the story of a cranky and brilliant reporter with a passion for examining the complex and contradictory conditions that breed corruption, poverty, and misery. As such, this book is an antidote to the spin doctors, pundits, and talking heads who discourage us from ever reading past a headline or challenging the status quo. Lincoln Steffens is an inspiration to all socially engaged citizens today.

Stein, Jean and George Plimpton (1994). Edie: American Girl
. New York, NY, Grove Press.
When Edie was first published in 1982 it quickly became an international best-seller and then took its place among the classic books about the 1960s. Edie Sedgwick exploded into the public eye like a comet. She seemed to have it all: she was aristocratic and glamorous, vivacious and young, Andy Warhol's superstar. But within a few years she flared out as quickly as she had appeared, and before she turned twenty-nine she was dead from a drug overdose.

In a dazzling tapestry of voices--family, friends, lovers, rivals--the entire meteoric trajectory of Edie Sedgwick's life is brilliantly captured. And so is the Pop Art world of the '60s: the sex, drugs, fashion, music--the mad rush for pleasure and fame. All glitter and flash on the outside, it was hollow and desperate within--like Edie herself, and like her mentor, Andy Warhol. Alternately mesmerizing, tragic, and horrifying, this book shattered many myths about the '60s experience in America.

Stein, Matthew R. (2008). When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency
. White River Junction, VT, Chelsea Green Pub. Co.
A comprehensive guide and compendium of the tools society will require as it reaches the convergence of hyper-inflation, oil depletion, and environmental limitations; in other words, at the point where technology fails. "We imagine that we live in the age of information, but this engrossing book reminds us of how comparatively little we know. Most human communities used to know how to provide water and food and energy for themselves, but most of the tips in this comprehensive account will come as news to most Americans. You may never need to put them into practice (or you may need them this winter when home heating prices soar) but at the very least they illuminate the state of our comparative ignorance." - Bill Mckibben

Steinbeck, John (1999). A Russian Journal
. New York, Penguin Books.
Just after the Iron Curtain fell on Eastern Europe, Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Steinbeck and acclaimed war photographer Robert Capa ventured into the Soviet Union to report for the New York Herald Tribune. This rare opportunity took the famous travelers not only to Moscow and Stalingrad - now Volgograd - but through the countryside of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Hailed by the New York Times as "superb" when it first appeared in 1948, A Russian Journal is the distillation of their journey and remains a remarkable memoir and unique historical document.

Steinbeck, John (1996). The Grapes of Wrath and Other Writings, 1936-1941
. New York, Literary Classics of the United States: Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Books USA.
Robert DeMott and Elaine A. Steinbeck, editors. This latest volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck features the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath. Newly edited based on Steinbeck's manuscript, typescript, and galleys, this masterpiece continues to exert a powerful influence on American culture. Also included: The Long Valley, a collection of brilliant short stories such as "The Red Pony," "The Chrysanthemums," and "Flight," and The Log from the Sea of Cortez, a revealing exposition of Steinbeck's guiding beliefs. The Harvest Gypsies, his report on migrant workers that laid the groundwork for The Grapes of Wrath, is included as an appendix.

Steinbeck, John (1994). Novels and Stories, 1932-1937
. New York, Library of America: Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Books USA.
Robert DeMott and Elaine A. Steinbeck, editors. Here are the novels and stories that established the young Steinbeck's reputation - The Pastures of Heaven, To a God Unknown, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, and Of Mice and Men. Launching a projected multi-volume edition of Steinbeck's writing, these five works chart his evolution into one of the greatest and most enduringly popular of American novelists.

Steinbeck, John (2001). Novels, 1942-1952
. New York, Library of America: Distributed to the trade in the United States by Penguin Putnam.
The third volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck's writings shows him continuing to explore new subject matter and new approaches to storytelling. These four novels display the versatility and emotional directness that have made Steinbeck one of America's most enduringly popular writers.

The Moon Is Down (1942), set in an unnamed Scandinavian country under German occupation, dramatizes the transformation of ordinary life under totalitarian rule and the underground struggle against the Nazi invaders. Told largely in dialogue, the book was conceived simultaneously as a novel and a play, and was successfully produced on Broadway. Although some American critics found its treatment of the German characters too sympathetic, The Moon Is Down was widely read in occupied areas of Europe, where it was regarded as an inspiring contribution to the resistance.

In Cannery Row (1945) Steinbeck paid tribute to his closest friend, the marine biologist Ed Ricketts, in the central character of Doc, proprietor of the Western Biological Laboratory and spiritual and financial mainstay of a cast of philosophical drifters and hangers-on. The comic and bawdy evocation of Monterey's sardine-canning district - "a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream " - has made this one of the most popular of all of Steinbeck's novels.

Steinbeck's long involvement with Mexican culture is distilled in The Pearl (1947). Expanding on an anecdote he heard in Baja California about a local boy who had found a pearl of unusual size, Steinbeck turned it into a parable of the corrupting influence of sudden wealth. The Pearl appears here with the original illustrations by Jose Clemente Orozco.

Ambitious in scale and original in structure, East of Eden (1952) recounts the violent and emotionally turbulent history of a Salinas Valley family through several generations. Drawing on Biblical parallels, encompassing a period stretching from the Civil War to World War I, and incorporating, as counterpoint to the central story, some of the actual history of Steinbeck's mother's family, East of Eden is an epic that explores the writer's deepest and most anguished concerns within a landscape that for him had mythic resonance.

Robert DeMott, editor, is the Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor at Ohio University and the author of Steinbeck's Typewriter, an award-winning book of critical essays.

Steinberg, Saul (2006). Saul Steinberg: Illuminations
. New Haven, Yale University Press.
Steinberg (1914-1999) is best known for his New Yorker drawings, but he also created murals, advertising art, collages, fabric designs, masks, greeting cards and stage sets, all of which are represented in this copiously illustrated volume published in conjunction with a traveling retrospective. Born in Romania, Steinberg emigrated in 1942 to the United States, where he quickly rose to fame with drawings that employ the visual language of the cartoon but add an inventiveness that Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Simic lauds in his introduction. In the lucid text, art curator Smith (Steinberg at the New Yorker) calls these calligraphic drawings "illuminations," since, like illuminated manuscripts, they combine word and image, and also because they throw light on subjects "too small to be noticed." Immediately understandable yet infinitely complex, the drawings combine art and joke, and have unexpected depth that Smith explores in his commentaries. Steinberg created these visionary drawings - in such a wide variety of styles that art critics have always found them impossible to categorize - by turning up surprises in unlikely places. Smith compares him to the little dog he added to scenes in old picture postcards, absorbed in his own world, sniffing out details others miss. This splendid catalogue is a worthy tribute to Steinberg's genius.

Steinberg, Susan (2003). The End of Free Love
. Tallahassee, FL, FC2.
The End of Free Love evokes the schizophrenia of our times, a community of voices at the zero point. Like the voices that splinter from Marguerite Duras's work, these characters are neurotic, taking refuge in comics, food, music, sex, 'locking' and lies. Violence is everywhere: within, without, in every emotion, in every word. But often hidden emotions rise to the surface, where self-consciousness, shame, and rage, to name a few, are permitted, voiced, and, eventually, set free. Throughout The End of Free Love Steinberg creates a hybrid text, blending poetry and fiction in writing as much about its form as its content. This is fiction that offers itself up for our delight, while remaining as elusive and unpredictable as language itself.

Stendhal and Richard Howard (2000). The Charterhouse of Parma
. New York, Modern Library.
Novel by Stendhal, published in French as La Chartreuse de Parme in 1839. It is generally considered one of Stendhal's masterpieces, second only to The Red and the Black, and is remarkable for its highly sophisticated rendering of human psychology and its subtly drawn portraits. The novel is set mainly in the court of Parma, Italy, in the early 19th century. It follows the fortunes of Fabrice del Dongo, a young aristocrat and ardent admirer of Napoleon. He fights at Waterloo and returns to Parma, where he joins the church for worldly advantage. In the course of the story he kills a rival, fathers a child, and eventually retires to the Carthusian monastery, or charterhouse, of Parma, where he dies.

Stendhal and C. K. Scott-Moncrieff (1995). The Red and the Black
. New York, The Modern Library.
The classic, elegant translation of Stendhal's masterful novel of ambition, desire, and politics in post-Napoleonic France. A brilliant portrait of one of the most ruthlessly charming heroes in literature, The Red and the Black chronicles the rise and fall of Julian Sorel. Born into the peasantry, Sorel connives his way into the highest Parisian aristocratic circles. But his powers of seduction lead to his downfall when he commits a crime of passion.

Stephens, Robert Henry (1972). Nasser: A Political Biography
. New York, Simon and Schuster.
Comprehensive biography dealing with every aspect of Nasser's life from the domestic situation in Egypt to its foreign policy. Stephens explains Nasser's life in terms of the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist minds of his contemporaries Tito and Nehru. A great biography of Egypt's greatest leader.

Stephenson, Neal (2004). The Baroque Cycle: The Confusion
. London, Heinemann.
The title of Stephenson's vast, splendid and absorbing sequel to Quicksilver (2003) suggests the state of mind that even devoted fans may face on occasion as they follow the glorious and exceedingly complex parallel stories of Jack Shaftoe, amiable criminal mastermind, and Eliza, Countess de la Zeur, courageous secret agent and former prisoner in a Turkish harem. In 1689, Jack recovers his memory in Algiers, evades galley slavery and joins a quest for the lost treasure of a Spanish pirate named Carlos Olancho Macho y Macho. This leads to adventures at sea worthy of Patrick O'Brian, and hairbreadth escapes from the jaws of the Inquisition. Meanwhile, Eliza is captured by the historical (and distinguished) French privateer Jean Bart while trying to escape to England with her baby. She must then navigate the intrigues of the court of Louis XIV, which are less lethal than those of the Inquisition by a small margin, but still make for uneasy sleep for a friendless female spy. Her correspondence with such scientific minds as Wilhelm Leibniz helps propel the saga's chronicling of the roots of modern science at a respectable clip. Of course, one can't call anything about the Baroque Cycle "brisk," but the richness of detail and language lending verisimilitude to the setting and depth to the characters should be reward enough for most readers.

Stephenson, Neal (2003). The Baroque Cycle: Quicksilver
. New York, William Morrow.
Stephenson's very long historical novel, the first volume of a projected trilogy, finds Enoch Root, the Wandering Jew/alchemist from 1999's Cryptonomicon, arriving in 1713 Boston to collect Daniel Waterhouse and take him back to Europe. Waterhouse, an experimenter in early computational systems and an old pal of Isaac Newton, is needed to mediate the fight for precedence between Newton and scientist and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, both of whom independently invented the calculus. Their escalating feud threatens to revert science to pre-empirical times. Root believes Waterhouse, as a close friend to both mathematicians, has the ability to calm the neurotic Newton's nerves and make peace with Leibniz. As Waterhouse sails back to Europe (and eludes capture by the pirate Blackbeard), he reminisces about Newton and the birth of England's scientific revolution during the 1600s. While the Waterhouse story line lets readers see luminaries like Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton at work, a concurrent plot line follows vagabond Jack Shaftoe (an ancestor of a Cryptonomicon character, as is Waterhouse), on his journey across 17th-century continental Europe. Jack meets Eliza, a young English woman who has escaped from a Turkish harem, where she spent her teenage years. The resourceful Eliza eventually rises and achieves revenge against the slave merchant who sold her to the Turks. Stephenson, once best known for his techno-geek SF novel Snow Crash, skillfully reimagines empiricists Newton, Hooke and Leibniz, and creatively retells the birth of the scientific revolution. He has a strong feel for history and a knack for bringing settings to life.

Stephenson, Neal (2004). The Baroque Cycle: The System of the World
. New York, William Morrow.
The colossal and impressive third volume (after Quicksilver and The Confusion) of Stephenson's magisterial exploration of the origins of the modern world in the scientific revolution of the baroque era begins in 1714. Daniel Waterhouse has returned to England, hoping to mediate the feud between Sir Isaac Newton and Leibniz, both of whom claim to have discovered the calculus and neither of whom is showing much scientific rationality in the dispute. This brawl takes place against the background of the imminent death of Queen Anne, which threatens a succession crisis as Jacobite (Stuart, Catholic) sympathizers confront supporters of the Hanoverian succession. Aside from the potential effect of the outcome on the intellectual climate of England, these political maneuverings are notable for the role played by trilogy heroine Eliza de la Zour, who is now wielding her influence over Caroline of Ansbach, consort of the Hanoverian heir. Eliza has risen from the streets to the nobility without losing any of her creativity or her talents as a schemer; nor has outlaw Jack Shaftoe lost any of his wiliness. What he may have lost is discretion, since he oversteps the boundaries of both law and good sense far enough to narrowly escape the hangman. In the end, reluctant hero Waterhouse prevails against the machinations of everybody else, and scientific (if not sweet) reason wins by a nose. The symbol of that victory is the inventor Thomas Newcomen standing (rather like a cock crowing) atop the boiler of one of his first steam engines. This final volume in the cycle is another magnificent portrayal of an era, well worth the long slog it requires of Stephenson's many devoted readers.

Stephenson, Neal (1999). Cryptonomicon
. New York, Avon Press.
With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.

In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy - is assigned to detachment 2702. It is an outfit so secret that only a handful of people know it exists, and some of those people have names like Churchill and Roosevelt. The mission of Watrehouse and Detatchment 2702-commanded by Marine Raider Bobby Shaftoe-is to keep the Nazis ignorant of the fact that Allied Intelligence has cracked the enemy's fabled Enigma code. It is a game, a cryptographic chess match between Waterhouse and his German counterpart, translated into action by the gung-ho Shaftoe and his forces.

Fast-forward to the present, where Waterhouse's crypto-hacker grandson, Randy, is attempting to create a "data haven" in Southeast Asia - a place where encrypted data can be stored and exchanged free of repression and scrutiny. As governments and multinationals attack the endeavor, Randy joins forces with Shaftoe's tough-as-nails grandaughter, Amy, to secretly salvage a sunken Nazi sumarine that holds the key to keeping the dream of a data haven afloat. But soon their scheme brings to light a massive conspiracy with its roots in Detachment 2702 linked to an unbreakable Nazi code called Arethusa. And it will represent the path to unimaginable riches and a future of personal and digital liberty or to universal totalitarianism reborn.

A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, Cryptonomicon is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring; the product of a truly iconoclastic imagination working with white-hot intensity.

Stephenson, Neal (1995). The Diamond Age, or, Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
. New York, Bantam Books.
Stephenson's fourth solo novel, set primarily in a far-future Shanghai at a time when nations have been superseded by enclaves of common cultures ("claves"), abundantly justifies the hype that surrounded Snow Crash, his first foray into science fiction. Here, the author avoids the major structural problem of that book-a long lump of philosophical digression-by melding myriad perspectives and cogitations into his tale, which is simultaneously SF, fantasy and a masterful political thriller. Treating nanotechnology as he did virtual reality in Snow Crash-as a jumping-off point-Stephenson presents several engaging characters. John Percival Hackworth is an engineer living in a neo-Victorian clave, who is commissioned by one of the world's most powerful men to create a Primer that might enable the man's granddaughter to be educated in ways superior to the "straight and narrow." When Hackworth is mugged, an illegal copy of the Primer falls into the hands of a working-class girl named Nell, and a most deadly game's afoot. Stephenson weaves several plot threads at once, as the paths of Nell, Hackworth and other significant characters-notably Nell's brother Harv, Hackworth's daughter Fiona and an actress named Miranda-converge and diverge across continents and complications, most brought about by Hackworth's actions and Nell's development. Building steadily to a wholly earned and intriguing climax, this long novel, which presents its sometimes difficult technical concepts in accessible ways, should appeal to readers other than habitual SF users.

Stephenson, Neal (2008). Snow Crash
. New York, Bantam Books.
From the opening line of his breakthrough cyberpunk novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson plunges the reader into a not-too-distant future. It is a world where the Mafia controls pizza delivery, the United States exists as a patchwork of corporate-franchise city-states, and the Internet--incarnate as the Metaverse--looks something like last year's hype would lead you to believe it should. Enter Hiro Protagonist--hacker, samurai swordsman, and pizza-delivery driver. When his best friend fries his brain on a new designer drug called Snow Crash and his beautiful, brainy ex-girlfriend asks for his help, what's a guy with a name like that to do? He rushes to the rescue. A breakneck-paced 21st-century novel, Snow Crash interweaves everything from Sumerian myth to visions of a postmodern civilization on the brink of collapse. Faster than the speed of television and a whole lot more fun, Snow Crash is the portrayal of a future that is bizarre enough to be plausible.

Stephenson, Sam; W. Eugene Smith (2009). The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965
. New York, Knopf.
Like the American Renaissance of Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickinson, Thoreau, and Melville bursting out of the Massachusetts countryside a hundred years before, the legend of the New York jazz scene in the late 1950s and early '60s, when singular geniuses like Monk, Coltrane, Davis, Mingus, and Evans might be gigging on the same night--sometimes on the same stage--only grows with time. Now, in The Jazz Loft Project, we have a rare and remarkable window into that moment. The project is the fruit of two obsessed men, W. Eugene Smith, the brilliant photographer who shot thousands of pictures and recorded thousands of hours of music and talk at his Midtown apartment and studio, which served as an open-door meeting place and jam session site for hundreds of musicians and artists; and Sam Stephenson, the documentarian who has spent even longer archiving and investigating the riches Smith left behind. Among its many wonders, what their book does best is put the creations of those bebop geniuses in context: giving life to the forgotten players who jammed with the future immortals, revealing the casual crosspollination among artists, musicians, and writers (and between blacks and whites), and reminding us of the world outside the loft, with baseball, UFO stories, and civil rights on the radio and the daily commerce of New York's flower district on the street below.

Sterling, Bruce (1998). Distraction: A Novel
. New York, Bantam Books.
It's 2044 A.D. and America has gone to the dogs. The federal government is broke and, with 16 political parties fighting for power, things aren't likely to improve soon. The Air Force, short on funding, is setting up roadblocks to shake down citizens and disguising its tactics as a bake sale. The governor of Louisiana, Green Huey, is engaging in illegal genetic research and has set up his own private biker army. The newly elected president of the U.S., Leonard Two Feathers, is considering a declaration of war against the Netherlands, a country that finds itself half under water due to global warming. Trying desperately to hold things together is Oscar Valparaiso, political consultant and spin doctor extraordinaire, who has just engineered the election of a new liberal senator for the state of Massachusetts, only to discover that his boss suffers from severe bipolar disorder. Looking for a new challenge, Oscar takes a job with the U.S. Senate Science Committee. His first assignment is to investigate the scandal-ridden Collaboratory, a gigantic, spaceshiplike federal lab in East Texas. Oscar, himself the result of an illegal Colombian cloning experiment, immediately falls head over heels for a gawky but brilliant young Nobel laureate, with whom he sets out to save both the lab and the nation from Green Huey. In his latest novel (after Holy Fire), Sterling once again proves himself the reigning master of near-future political SF. This is a powerful and, at times, very funny novel that should add significantly to Sterling's already considerable reputation. - Publishers Weekly

Stevens, Jule (1977). How to Grow and Identify Psilocybin Mushrooms
. Seattle, Washington, Sun Magic Publications.
Psilocybin mushrooms.

Stevens, Jay (1998). Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream
. New York, Grove Press.
Stevens has written a gripping account of the use and abuse of mind-altering drugs in recent decades. He explains the fascination of mescaline and psilocybin for psychologists interested in behaviorial change. He documents the insidious role of the CIA in testing mind-control drugs. He traces the convoluted path of Timothy Leary from his position as research psychologist at Harvard to his role as guru advocating the use of LSD to achieve spiritual utopia. He descibes the outwardly placid social climate of the 1950s, and vividly contrasts the dramatic upheavals of the 60s, sketching pulsing portraits of Allen Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, and Jack Kerouac. Packed with facts, this is social history at its most compelling.

Stevens, Wallace (1982). The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
. New York, Vintage Books.
This definitive poetry collection, originally published in 1954 to honor Stevens on his 75th birthday, contains:

  • Harmonium
  • Ideas of Order
  • The Man With the Blue Guitar
  • Parts of the World
  • Transport Summer
  • The Auroras of Autumn
  • The Rock

Stevens, Wallace (1997). Collected Poetry and Prose
. New York, Library of America: Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Books.
This outstanding volume collects for the first time all of Stevens's published poetry, along with his writings about poetry plus reviews, criticism, speeches, short stories, and philosophical works. It also contains scholarly notes on the text plus an index to first lines and titles. Undoubtedly, the single finest collection of Stevens ever produced.

Stevens, Wallace and Samuel French Morse (1990). Opus Posthumous
. New York, Vintage Books.
Intended as a companion volume to Stevens's Collected Poems, the Opus Posthumous miscellany (first issued in 1957) contains some of his deepest poetic ruminations on the imagination and the limits of knowledge, along with many verses that seem like metaphysical doodles, mere dress rehearsals for larger poems. The book also includes three philosophical playlets, notes on Stevens's poetry, plus essays on diverse themes: living in Connecticut, the irrational in poetry, Raoul Dufy's lithographs, reading T.S. Eliot to stay young, etc. Original to this revised edition is a wonderful batch of first-rate aphorisms (e.g., "All poetry is experimental poetry"). Among the newly added poems, the standout is "Carnet de Voyage" (1914), an early sequence in which Stevens tentatively sounded his mature themes. Previously uncollected essays and jottings include jejune scribbling on the insurance industry and oracular pronouncements in the form of Stevens's replies to questionnaires sent by Partisan Review and other magazines.

Stich, Sidra, University of California Berkeley. University Art Museum., et al. (1987). Made in U.S.A.: An Americanization in Modern Art, the '50s & '60s
. Berkeley, University Art Museum, University of California University of California Press.
Stich contends that "setting forth an original American iconography and asserting innovative attitudes toward image presentation" were the major accomplishments of American artists of the 1950s and 60s. She points to artists' images of American icons, food, cities, media, and "the American dream." Made in U.S.A. focuses on Pop Art, its precursors and fellow travelers. In dealing with this aggregation of artists Stich presents clear, insightful commentary, but avoids critical evaluation. She should be commended for the inclusion of less well known female and male artists, along with the superstars. Her book provides a valuable survey of American art and culture.

Stillman, Frances and Jane Shaw Whitfield (1966). The Poet's Manual and Rhyming Dictionary
. London, Thames & Hudson.

Stock, Noel (1970). The Life of Ezra Pound
. London, Routledge
Although this detailed biography was first published in 1970, two years before Ezra Pound's death, it remains the standard work on one of the century's most enigmatic, controversial literary figures and one of our greatest poets. Noel Stock, who had access to Pound's papers, sorts out all the known facts of his career and presents them in unimpassioned, orderly fashion but says relatively little about his work. In a preface to this new edition, Mr. Stock takes note of information that has lately become available.

Stohl, Bev Boisseau (2023). Chomsky and Me: A Memoir
. New York, OR Books.
Bev Stohl ran the MIT office of the renowned linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky for nearly two and a half decades. Through these pages we observe the comings and goings of a constant and varied stream of visitors: the historian Howard Zinn; activists Alex Carey, Peggy Duff, and Dorie Ladner; the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee; actors Catherine Keener and Wallace Shawn; the writer Norman Mailer; gaggles of fourteen-year-old school students, and the world’s leading linguists. All make appearances in these stories. Many who visit are as careless of their allotted time as Chomsky is generous with his. Shepherding them out in mid-conversation is one of Bev’s more challenging responsibilities. Published with the approval of its subject and written with affection, insight and a gentle sense of humor, Chomsky and Me describes a relationship between two quite different people who, through the happenstance of work, form a bond that is both surprising and reciprocally rich.

Stokes, Doug (2004). America's Other War: Terrorizing Colombia
. London, New York; Zed Books.
America‘s Other War demonstrates that in Colombia the U.S. has long supported a pervasive campaign of state violence directed against both armed insurgents and a wide range of completely unarmed progressive social forces. While the pretext may change from one decade to the next, the basic policies remain the same: maintain the pro-U.S. Colombian state, protect U.S. economic interests and preserve strategic access to oil. Colombia is now the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid in the world, and the largest by far in Latin America. Using extensive declassified documents, this book shows that the so-called 'war on drugs', and now the new 'war on terror' in Colombia are actually part of a long-term Colombian 'war of state terror' that predates the end of the Cold War with U.S. policy contributing directly to the disgraceful human rights situation in Colombia today.

Stokes, Lisa Odham and Michael Hoover (1999). City on Fire: Hong Kong Cinema
. London; New York, Verso.
The Hong Kong film industry of the '80s and early '90s produced a treasure trove of films. It made matinee idols of (among others) Chow Yun-Fat, Jackie Chan and Maggie Cheung, reinvented genres with style, and generally beat the Hollywood dream factory at its own game with an "anything goes" attitude, despite tiny budgets and brief production schedules. Hoover and Stokes rightly consider the anxiety produced by the ticking clock to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China as the key to this period of frenetic creativity. In the most serious study to date of Hong Kong cinema, the authors dutifully ground their account with social, political, economic and historical analysis. Sometimes they get a bit carried away, however: comparing a Harold Lloyd stunt to a Jackie Chan variant, the Lloyd version becomes emblematic of the ideal of upward mobility in the American 1920s, and Chan's tumble reflects how "Hong Kong's dollar fell during a run on the colony's currency in 1983." The abundance of quotes from Marx and Engels at times makes a cinema noted for its pure entertainment value sound dull and allegorical. Still, the book's extensive interviews with major HK players - and detailed coverage of the comedies and romances that have enjoyed less international exposure than the now famous action films of Chan and John Woo - are of outstanding interest. - Publishers Weekly

Stoll, Steven (2017). Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia
. New York, NY, Hill and Wang.
Ramp Hollow traces the rise of the Appalachian homestead and how its self-sufficiency resisted dependence on money and the industrial society arising elsewhere in the United States -- until, beginning in the nineteenth century, extractive industries kicked off a "scramble for Appalachia" that left struggling homesteaders dispossessed of their land. As the men disappeared into coal mines and timber camps, and their families moved into shantytowns or deeper into the mountains, the commons of Appalachia were, in effect, enclosed, and the fate of the region was sealed.

Ramp Hollow takes a provocative look at Appalachia, and the workings of dispossession around the world, by upending our notions about progress and development. Stoll ranges widely from literature to history to economics in order to expose a devastating process whose repercussions we still feel today.

Stone, Judy (1997). Eye on the World: Conversations with International Filmmakers
. Los Angeles, Silman-James Press.
Eye On The World: Conversations With International Filmmakers profiles more than 200 filmmakers from forty countries in this unique and engaging look at cinema around the world. Author Judy Stone gets to the heart of these film artists' work and their underlying views of the world (the political and cultural contexts) that inform their works. No mere academic survey, Eye On The World is an inviting and enlightening blend of conversations and commentaries, most of which are drawn from Stone's long-running film column for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Stone, Oliver and Peter J. Kuznick (2011). The Untold History of the United States
. New York, Gallery Books.
In this companion to the Showtime documentary series, director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick challenge the prevailing orthodoxies of traditional history books in a thoroughly researched and rigorously analyzed look at the dark side of American history. By casting a spotlight on the shadier aspects of America's past, as well as the humane alternatives, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick provide a thought-provoking rebuttal to the nationalist myths that are far too often served up as history. Aided by the latest archival findings and recently declassified documents and building on the research of the world's best scholars, Stone and Kuznick construct an often shocking but meticulously documented "People's History of the American Empire" that offers startling context to the Bush-Cheney policies that put us at war in two Muslim countries and show us why the Obama administration has had such a difficult time cleaving a new path.

Stone, Robert (1987). Dog Soldiers: A Novel
. New York, Penguin Books.
In Saigon during the waning days of the Vietnam War, a small-time journalist named John Converse thinks he'll find action - and profit - by getting involved in a big-time drug deal. But back in the States, things go horribly wrong for him. Dog Soldiers perfectly captures the underground mood of America in the 1970s, when amateur drug dealers and hippies encountered profiteering cops and professional killers - and the price of survival was dangerously high.

Stone, Robert (1992). Children of Light
. New York, Vintage Books.
Before he is fully awake, Gordon Walker, intellectual manque, failed playwright in his 40s and modestly successful screenwriter-actor, has already consumed his daily hits of valium, alcohol and cocaine."Stoned, abandoned, desolate," he is a melancholy case, teetering at the edge of the precipice; his wife has fled, his children are estranged, he feels desperately alone. Bereft, he goes to Mexico, where his old love Les Verger, a gifted actress who is herself in thrall to dope, drink and episodic madness, is shooting a picture Walker wrote. From the beginning, the air is filled with portent. Their meeting is delayed, and with each intervening event, the tension and sense of impending doom mount. When they do meet, they will be left to the mercies of their flayed nerves and their inner ruin. The tale is swiftly and expertly told; the momentum is headlong, swirling; the talk stunning, spinning out of its energies and one crackling scene after another.

Stone, Robert (1992). A Flag for Sunrise: A Novel
. New York, Vintage Books.
An emotional, dramatic and philosophical novel about Americans drawn into a small Central American country on the brink of revolution.

Stone, Robert (1993). Outerbridge Reach
. New York, NY, HarperPerennial.
Stone's best book since Dog Soldiers, and arguably even better. An Annapolis grad and Vietnam vet, now a sailboat salesman in Connecticut, the elegant and thoughtful Owen Browne finds himself enrolled in a grand adventure--sailing solo around the world--after his millionaire boat-maker boss, who was meant to make the sail, disappears under shady circumstances. A cynical documentary filmmaker, Strickland, will make a movie of this voyage--sure that Owen's WASP uprightness and natural election will unravel under the stress. It is to be partly a movie that Owen himself will shoot at sea, and that Strickland will augment with interviews with Owen's lovely but quietly desperate and alcoholic wife, Anne, as well as with the various corporate players in what Strickland sees as just another corporate-American public-relations show. Owen goes uneasily off to sea (he is a clumsy, only half- competent sailor, but Vietnam has left him with a reckoning with truth and courage still unfulfilled), and Strickland commences his film--and then everything goes a lot differently than expected. A book about self-reconfiguration, the novel becomes a constellation of collapse: the merely aesthetic fails the pure, elliptical Strickland as he falls in love with Anne (a character of startling human intricacy), whose infidelity is her own ethical malfunction. Owen's shoddily made boat starts coming apart in the terrible sea, but by then it hardly matters to him: Having been gradually shaken by revelation of the paradoxical ''singularity'' of the All, he fakes his positions and wanders amidst religious sublimity and mad self-cancellation. Stone never has written better. Plot seems the only element occasionally reached for here, sometimes too slow, too quickened, but Stone's matchless dialogue and Melvillean sea-writing (and Melvillean themes: con-games, the death of myth) more than compensate. Ashen yet rich, prophetically unswerving but clement: a novel of true American literary significance.

Stone, Robert (1997). A Hall of Mirrors
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.
Rheinhardt, a disk jockey and failed musician, rolls into New Orleans looking for work and another chance in life. What he finds is a woman physically and psychically damaged by the men in her past and a job that entangles him in a right-wing political movement. Peopled with civil rights activists, fanatical Christians, corrupt politicians, and demented Hollywood stars, A Hall of Mirrors vividly depicts the dark side of America that erupted in the sixties. To quote Wallace Stegner, "Stone writes like a bird, like an angel, like a circus barker, like a con man, like someone so high on pot that he is scraping his shoes on the stars."

Stone, Robert (2003). Bay of Souls
. Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
Stone's shortest novel, and his first in five years (after Damascus Gate, 1998), is a tight, brilliantly observed tale of one man's moral dissolution. Michael Ahearn is a respected professor of literature at a small college in the upper Midwest, with a lovely wife and 12-year-old son, but a vague dissatisfaction gnaws at him, exacerbated by a frightening incident while deer hunting and the near-death of his son from exposure. When Michael meets a new professor, the beautiful and electrifying Lara Purcell, he falls under her spell and launches an affair, endangering his marriage and his relationship with his son. At Lara's prompting, Michael travels with her to her Caribbean island home of St. Trinity, a nation rife with political violence, where Lara hopes to repossess the soul she believes has been captured by a voodoo goddess. The narrative undergoes a tonal shift on the troubled, threatening island, with events unfolding in a more intense, then nearly hallucinatory way, especially as Michael is himself possessed during a voodoo ceremony in which Lara hopes to reclaim her soul. A brief return to the U.S. mainland closes the novel on a somber note. All of Stone's characters here are etched in the acid of hard truth, with Stone probing deep-particularly into Michael, a sensitive, at times courageous man whose lust for the divine, for transcendence or salvation, is spoiled by a self-deception and self-indulgence that lead him astray and finally turn his life to ash. This is a novel of bold prose and subtle perceptions, a small, hard gem from a master writer. - Publishers Weekly

Stone, Robert (2007). Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
. New York, Ecco.
"A memoir of America's most turbulent, whimsical decade. From the New York City of Kline and De Kooning to the jazz era of New Orleans's French Quarter to Ken Kesey's psychedelic California, Prime Green explores the 1960s in all its weird, innocent, fascinating glory. An account framed by two wars, it begins with Stone's last year in the Navy and ends in Vietnam, where he was a correspondent in the days following the invasion of Laos. The narrative zips from coast to coast, from days spent in the raucous offices of Manhattan tabloids to the breathtaking beaches of Mexico, and merry times aboard the bus with Kesey and the Pranksters. These accounts of the sixties are riveting not only because Stone is a master storyteller but because he was there, in the thick of it, through all the wild times.

Stoppard, Tom (2003). The Coast of Utopia
. New York, Grove Press.
The Coast of Utopia is Tom Stoppard's long-awaited and monumental trilogy that explores a group of friends who came of age under the Tsarist autocracy of Nicholas I, and for whom the term intelligentsia was coined. Among them are the anarchist Michael Bakunin, who was to challenge Marx for the soul of the masses; Ivan Turgenev, author of some of the most enduring works in Russian literature; the brilliant, erratic young critic Vissarion Belinsky; and Alexander Herzen, a nobleman's son and the first self-proclaimed socialist in Russia, who becomes the main focus of this drama of politics, love, loss, and betrayal. In The Coast of Utopia, Stoppard presents an inspired examination of the struggle between romantic anarchy, utopian idealism, and practical reformation in this chronicle of romantics and revolutionaries caught up in a struggle for political freedom in an age of emperors.

Stoppard, Tom (1972). Jumpers: A Play
. New York, Grove Press.
Tom Stoppard's play "Jumpers" is both a high-spirited comedy and a serious attempt to debate the existence of a moral absolute, of metaphysical reality, of God.

Stoppard, Tom (1994). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: The Film
. New York, Grove Press.
Acclaimed as a modern dramatic masterpiece, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" is the fabulously inventive tale of "Hamlet" as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of "Waiting for Godot" resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end.

Stoppard, Tom (1996). The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays
. New York, Grove Press.
Culled from nearly 20 years of the playwright's career, a showcase for Tom Stoppard's dazzling range and virtuosic talent, The Real Inspector Hound and Other Plays is essential reading for fans of modern drama. The plays in this collection reveal Stoppard's sense of fun, his sense of theater, his sense of the absurd, and his gifts for parody and satire. They include The Real Inspector Hound, After Margritte, Dirty Linen, New-Found-Land, Dogg's Hamlet, and Cahoot's Macbeth.

Stoppard, Tom (1984). The Real Thing
. Boston, Faber & Faber.
The play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage by her husband, Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing?

In The Real Thing, Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart.

Stoppard, Tom (1999). Tom Stoppard: Plays 5
. London, Faber and Faber.
This fifth collection of Tom Stoppard's plays brings together five classic plays by one of the most celebrated dramatists writing in the English language: Arcadia (1993), The Real Thing (1982), Night & Day (1978), Indian Ink (1995), and Hapgood (1994).

Storch, Randi (2007). Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-35
. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
Red Chicago is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago's neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago's rank-and-file Communists.

Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow's former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better welfare system, fairer unions, and racial equality, Chicago's Communists created a movement that at times departed from international party leaders' intentions. By focusing on the experience of Chicago's Communists, who included a large working-class, African American, and ethnic population, this study reexamines party members' actions as an integral part of the communities in which they lived and the industries where they worked.

Stout, Nancy (2013). One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution
. Monthly Review Press, New York, NY.
Celia Sánchez is the missing actor of the Cuban Revolution. Although not as well known in the English-speaking world as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, Sánchez played a pivotal role in launching the revolution and administering the revolutionary state. She joined the clandestine 26th of July Movement and went on to choose the landing site of the Granma and fight with the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. She collected the documents that would form the official archives of the revolution, and, after its victory, launched numerous projects that enriched the lives of many Cubans, from parks to literacy programs to helping develop the Cohiba cigar brand. All the while, she maintained a close relationship with Fidel Castro that lasted until her death in 1980.

The product of ten years of original research, this biography draws on interviews with Sánchez's friends, family, and comrades in the rebel army, along with countless letters and documents. Biographer Nancy Stout was initially barred from the official archives, but, in a remarkable twist, was granted access by Fidel Castro himself, impressed as he was with Stout's project and aware that Sánchez deserved a worthy biography. This is the extraordinary story of an extraordinary woman who exemplified the very best values of the Cuban Revolution: selfless dedication to the people, courage in the face of grave danger, and the desire to transform society.

Strand, Paul, Mark Haworth-Booth, et al. (1987). Paul Strand
. New York, N.Y., Aperture Foundation.
Paul Strand was more than a great artist: he was a discoverer of the true potential of photography as the most dynamic medium of the twentieth century. Purity, elegance, and passion are the hallmarks of Strand's imagery. This inaugural volume of Aperture's Masters of Photography series presents forty-one of Strand's greatest photographs, drawn from a career that spanned six decades.

Included are his earliest experimental efforts, created from 1915 to 1917, which Alfred Stieglitz declared had begun to redefine the medium. Subsequent photographs reveal the artist's impeccable vision in locales as diverse as New England and the Outer Hebrides, France, and Ghana. During Strand's last years, he concentrated on still lifes and the poignant beauty to be found in his own garden at Orgeval, France.

In an introductory essay, Mark Haworth-Booth, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, provides an overview of the artist's life and his enduring contribution.

Straub, Peter, editor (2009). American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps
. New York, NY, Library of America.
From early on, American literature has teemed with tales of horror, of hauntings, of terrifying obsessions and gruesome incursions, of the uncanny ways in which ordinary reality can be breached and subverted by the unknown and the irrational. As this pathbreaking two-volume anthology demonstrates, it is a tradition with many unexpected detours and hidden chambers, and one that continues to evolve, finding new forms and new themes as it explores the bad dreams that lurk around the edges, if not in the unacknowledged heart, of the everyday. Peter Straub, one of today's masters of horror and fantasy, offers an authoritative and diverse gathering of stories calculated to unsettle and delight.

This first volume surveys a century and a half of American fantastic storytelling, revealing in its 44 stories an array of recurring themes: trance states, sleepwalking, mesmerism, obsession, possession, madness, exotic curses, evil atmospheres. In the tales of Irving, Poe, and Hawthorne, the bright prospects of the New World face an uneasy reckoning with the forces of darkness. In the ghost-haunted Victorian and Edwardian eras, writers including Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Ambrose Bierce explore ever more refined varieties of spectral invasion and disintegrating selfhood.

In the twentieth century, with the arrival of the era of the pulps, the fantastic took on more monstrous and horrific forms at the hands of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other classic contributors to Weird Tales. Here are works by acknowledged masters such as Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, Conrad Aiken, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, along with surprising discoveries like Ralph Adams Cram's The Dead Valley, Emma Francis Dawson's An Itinerant House, and Julian Hawthorne's Absolute Evil.

American Fantastic Tales offers an unforgettable ride through strange and visionary realms.

Straub, Peter, editor (2009). American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now
. New York, NY, Library of America.
The second volume of Peter Straub's pathbreaking two-volume anthology American Fantastic Tales picks up the story in 1940 and provides persuasive evidence that the decades since then have seen an extraordinary flowering. While continuing to explore the classic themes of horror and fantasy, successive generations of writers - including Shirley Jackson, Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Stephen King, Steven Millhauser, and Thomas Ligotti have opened up the field to new subjects, new styles, and daringly fresh expansions of the genre's emotional and philosophical underpinnings. For many of these writers, the fantastic is simply the best available tool for describing the dislocations and newly hatched terrors of the modern era, from the nightmarish post-apocalyptic savagery of Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream to proliferating identities set deliriously adrift in Tim Powers' 'Pat Moore.'

'At its core,' writes editor Peter Straub, 'the fantastic is a way of seeing.' In place of gothic trappings, the post-war masters of the fantastic often substitute an air of apparent normality. The surfaces of American life, department store displays in John Collier's Evening Primrose, tar-paper roofs seen from an el train in Fritz Leiber's Smoke Ghost, the balcony of a dilapidated movie theater in Tennessee Williams' The Mysteries of the Joy Rio become invested with haunting presences. The sphere of family life is transformed, in Davis Grubb's Where the Woodbine Twineth or Richard Matheson's Prey, into an arena of eerie menace. Dramas of madness, malevolent temptation, and vampiristic appropriation play themselves out against the backdrop of modern urban life in John Cheever's Torch Song and Shirley Jackson's unforgettable The Daemon Lover.

Nearly half the stories collected in this volume were published in the last two decades, including work by Michael Chabon, M. Rickert, Brian Evenson, Kelly Link, and Benjamin Percy: writers for whom traditional genre boundaries have ceased to exist, and who have brought the fantastic into the mainstream of contemporary writing.

The 42 stories in this second volume of American Fantastic Tales provide an irresistible journey into the phantasmagoric underside of the American imagination.

Strindberg, Arthur (2018). Delphi Collected Works of August Strindberg
. East Sussex, UK, Delphi Classics.
A pivotal figure of late nineteenth century theatre, the Swedish playwright, novelist and essayist August Strindberg produced over sixty plays and more than thirty works of fiction, often drawing directly on his personal experience. A bold experimenter of literary forms, he explored a wide range of dramatic methods and purposes, from naturalistic tragedy, monodrama and history plays, to expressionist and surrealist works. This comprehensive eBook presents the largest collection of Strindberg’s works ever compiled in English translation, with numerous illustrations, rare texts, informative introductions and the usual Delphi bonus material.


Sturgeon, Theodore (1999). More Than Human
. New York, Vintage Books.
All alone: an idiot boy, a runaway girl, a severely retarded baby, and twin girls with a vocabulary of two words between them. Yet once they are mysteriously drawn together this collection of misfits becomes something very, very different from the rest of humanity. This intensely written and moving novel is an extraordinary vision of humanity's next step.

Sturrock, John (1996). The Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing
. Oxford; New York, Oxford University Press.
The Oxford Guide to Contemporary Writing covers the recent literature of cultures as various as Australian and Spanish-American, French, Israeli, and Canadian, New Zealand and Russian, as well as American, English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish. Here are discussions of the movements, noteworthy publishing events, and literary happenings in world cultures, with frank and lively opinions on the individuals and artists involved, including James Wood on the English, ("Intelligence is A.S. Byatt's greatest problem as a writer. She has never learned how to subjugate it"); John Taylor on the French (he dubs Debord's Panegyric the "most remarkably pure autobiography of recent times"); Rhys Williams on the literature of German-speaking countries ("This was the generation of the student movement, but also of urban terrorism"); Mark Morris on Japan (who explains the difference between shosetsu, roughly akin to the novel, and junbungaku, or "pure literature"). Not merely an annotated bibliography of authors and titles, The Oxford Guide to Contemporary Literature is an intriguing narrative in its own right, and a provocative source for new reading ideas and divergent literary paths to tread. Written by experts, but demanding no specialist knowledge of the reader, it concentrates on fiction and poetry, but is generously inclusive in its scope; each chapter provides a wealth of biographical and background information, informed criticism, suggestions for further reading, and an often controversial view of contemporary writing and its development.

Stutely, Richard (2007). The Definitive Business Plan: The Fast-Track to Intelligent Business Planning for Executives and Entrepreneurs
. New York, Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Delivers fast-track advice for business people-executives and entrepreneurs, who want to get beyond the basics and produce coherent, compelling and intelligent plans. A guide to help you start, run or revitalize any business enterprise.

Subtelny, Orest (2009). Ukraine: A History
. Toronto, University of Toronto Press.
In 1988, the first edition of Orest Subtelny's Ukraine was published to international acclaim, as the definitive history of what was at that time a republic in the USSR. In the years since, the world has seen the dismantling of the Soviet bloc and the restoration of Ukraine's independence - an event celebrated by Ukrainians around the world but which also heralded a time of tumultuous change for those in the homeland.

While previous updates brought readers up to the year 2000, this new fourth edition includes an overview of Ukraine's most recent history, focusing on the dramatic political, socio-economic, and cultural changes that occurred during the Kuchma and Yushchenko presidencies. It analyzes political developments - particularly the so-called Orange Revolution - and the institutional growth of the new state. Subtelny examines Ukraine's entry into the era of globalization, looking at social and economic transformations, regional, ideological, and linguistic tensions, and describes the myriad challenges currently facing Ukrainian state and society.

Suganami, Hidemi, Madeline Carr, et al. (2017). The Anarchical Society at 40: Contemporary Challenges and Prospects
. New York, NY, Oxford University Press.
Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society was published in 1977. Forty years on, it is considered one of the classic texts in International Relations. volume argues that although many of Bull's substantive judgements require updating, his approach remains valuable, not only for thinking about enduring problems of violence and security, but also, as a starting point, for thinking about many issues that Bull himself neglected. However, the contributors also develop important criticisms of Bull's approach and identify ways in which it could be strengthened. A key insight is that although The Anarchical Society is famous for explicating the concept of 'international society', there is more to it than that. Indeed, the contemporary relevance of Bull's work is clearest when we recognize the often overlooked potential of his concept of the 'world political system', referring to the global network of interactions of which modern international society is only a part.

Sullivan, Michael (1973). The Meeting of Eastern and Western Art from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day
. London, Thames & Hudson.
The meeting of Eastern and Western art is always more than a synthesis; it offers creative possibilities for interaction between East and West, a process in which the great civilizations preserve their own character while stimulating and enriching each other. In this book, Michael Sullivan leads the reader through four centuries of exciting interaction between the artists of China and Japan and those of Western Europe. From Hokusai to van Gogh, Sullivan shows how the study of artistic interpretation has significantly enlarged and enriched our vision of artists and their aims and ideals both East and West.

Summers, Anthony (1980). Conspiracy
. New York, McGraw-Hill.
Anthony Summers' comprehensive work on the assassination of JFK is among the top books on the subject, ranking alongside Gaeton Fonzi's "The Last Investigation." The author's voluminous research brings together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in a lucid and rare way. In a nutshell, the anti-Castro Cuban organizations [CRC, Alpha-66, etc.] and their right-wing American supporters [Gerry Patrick Hemming and Interpen, for example], the Mafia [Trafficante, Marcello, Giancana, Roselli], and elements within the CIA [David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Theodore Shackley, David Sanchez Morales, William Harvey, etc.] and their numerous contract agents [David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Lee Harvey Oswald] were collaborating in an effort to assassinate Fidel Castro and reverse the socialist revolution in Cuba. The Mob wanted their gambling casinos back, while the anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA wanted multi-national corporate capitalism back. In a classic case of "blowback", the forces working to destroy Fidel and the Cuban Revolution failed in their efforts and subsequently conspired to destroy the man [JFK] they believed responsible for their failure. Elements within the CIA, CIA contract agents, Mob and anti-Castro Cubans had the motive, means and opportunity to effectuate the "blowback" assassination of JFK. For the meticulously researched details which support this thesis, read Anthony Summers' work: "Conspiracy". It is one of the most well-reasoned and articulate works on the subject of the JFK assassination.

Summerson, John Newenham (1980). The Classical Language of Architecture
. London, Thames and Hudson.
Classical architecture is a visual "language" and like any other language has its own grammatical rules. Classical buildings as widely spaced in time as a Roman temple, an Italian Renaissance palace and a Regency house all show an awareness of these rules even if they vary them, break them or poetically contradict them. Sir Christopher Wren described them as the "Latin" of architecture and the analogy is almost exact. There is the difference, however, that whereas the learning of Latin is a slow and difficult business, the language of classical architecture is relatively simple. It is still, to a great extent, the mode of expression of our urban surroundings, since classical architecture was the common language of the western world till comparatively recent times. Anybody to whom architecture makes a strong appeal has probably already discovered something of its grammar for himself.

In this book, the author's purpose is to set out as simply and vividly as possible the exact grammatical workings of this architectural language. He is less concerned with its development in Greece and Rome than with its expansion and use in the centuries since the Renaissance. He explains the vigorous discipline of "the orders" and the scope of "rustication "; the dramatic deviations of the Baroque and, in the last chapter, the relationship between the classical tradition and the "modern" architecture of today. The book is intended for anybody who cares for architecture but more specifically for students beginning a course in the history of architecture, to whom a guide to the classical rules will be an essential companion.

Sumner, Gregory D. (1996). Dwight Macdonald and the Politics Circle: The Challenge of Cosmopolitan Democracy
. Ithaca, Cornell University Press.
One of the best known and most iconoclastic of the 'New York Intellectuals' of the 1930s and 1940s, Dwight Macdonald was also the editor of Politics. Sumner tells the story of the magazine's brief, tumultuous season, and brings to life the characters and dramatic moments that made it the forum for debate about the road to peaceful, democratic reconstruction of a war-torn social order.

Suntree, Philip (1978). Kid Nigredo
. Berkeley, CA, Turkey Press.
Collection of poetry written by Philiip Suntree when he lived in Nevada City, California. One of an edition of only 400 copies handset by Harry Reese and printed by Sandra Liddell.

Sutherland, Neil (1991). San Francisco from the Air
. New York, Crescent Publishing.

Swisher, Clayton E. (2004). The Truth About Camp David: The Untold Story About the Collapse of the Middle East Peace Process
. New York, Nation Books.
The collapse of both sets of Arab-Israeli negotiations in 2000 led not only to recrimination and bloodshed, with the outbreak of the second intifada, but to the creation of a new myth. Syrian and Palestinian intransigence was blamed for the disastrous state of affairs, as both parties rejected a "generous" peace offering from the Israelis that would have brought peace to the region. The Truth About Camp David shatters that myth. Based on riveting, eyewitness accounts of more than forty direct participants in the Arab-Israeli negotiations, including the Camp David 2000 summit, former federal investigator-turned-investigative journalist Clayton E. Swisher provides a compelling counter-narrative to commonly accepted history. The Truth About Camp David details the inner workings of the Clinton Administration's negotiating mayhem, their eleventh hour blunders and miscalculations, and their concluding decision to end the Oslo process with blame and disengagement.

Swofford, Anthony (2003). Jarhead: A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
. New York, Scribner.
Swofford hated being a marine, but he was apparently a good and skilled soldier during his service. He was recruited from the ranks of grunts for a reconnaissance and sniping squad and was on the front line of the Gulf War's ground attack. In this memoir, Swofford's portrayal of the battlefield also contains flashbacks and flash-forwards of his personal life, which serve as platforms for his recurrent cynicism. Expressing it gives Swofford's prose an exaggerated style as he searches for variant descriptions for his anger over military decorations, girlfriends, civilians, and the purpose of the war he fought. Death lurks in Swofford's story, for he contemplated suicide, worried about being killed by enemy or friendly fire, and witnessed the deaths of Iraqi soldiers. Writing graphically and in the marines' defiantly vulgar argot, Swofford candidly exhibits his negative feelings--and his comradeship with buddies belly to the sand.

Symmes, Patrick (2000). Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend
. New York, Vintage Books.
Riding a temperamental motorcycle through the semi-surreal landscapes of the cone of South America, Symmes conceived the sparkling idea to retrace the route taken by Ernesto Guevara Lynch de la Serna in 1952, before he became Che. In 1996, Symmes motored south from Buenos Aires into the wind-blasted plains, carrying Guevara's diary. The name Che was an ensured conversation starter, Symmes discovered in his odyssey, never more so than in locales where an oral memory of Guevara's visit lingered. Strung along a route from the Atlantic, across the Andes, up Chile, and into Peru, Guevara's diary strikes Symmes not as a recitation of the faults of society but as an adventuresome travelogue. Symmes himself acutely critiques, in the countries he passes through, the revolutionary wars Che advocated, culminating in his demise in Bolivia.

Synge, John Millington (1966). The Playboy of the Western World and Riders to the Sea
. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Comedy in three acts by J.M. Synge, published and produced in 1907. It is a masterpiece of the Irish Literary Renaissance. This most famous of Synge's works fused the patois of ordinary Irish villagers with Synge's sophisticated rhetoric and enraged Irish playgoers with its satire of Irish braggadocio. The play follows the mercurial rise and fall of the character Christy Mahon, whose self-reported murder of his father earns him much admiration until his father shows up alive and in pursuit of his cowardly son.

Szarkowski, John, Ansel Adams, et al. (2001). Ansel Adams at 100
. Boston, Little, Brown and Co.
Grandly proportioned, linen-bound and graceful as the images it conveys, Ansel Adams at 100 commemorates the birth of the famous native San Franciscan photographer with 114 of Adams's rich, beloved images spanning his oeuvre, and some delightful photos of the artist. The book and accompanying centennial exhibit at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (Aug. 2001-Jan. 2002), curated by John Szarkowski, director of the department of photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art, reevaluate the impact of Adams's work on photography, landscapes and the audience. "His pictures have enlarged our visceral knowledge of things that we do not understand," writes Szarkowski. He relates specific epiphanies that propelled Adams's evolution as an artist, such as when he shot Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, having suddenly realized that using a specific filter would "deepen the tone of the sky almost to black" and capture his emotional experience of the vista.

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