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74 Featured Titles

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Exam Copy
The Spell of the Sensuous
Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
Written by David Abram


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 25, 1997
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-77639-0 (0-679-77639-7)

Winner of the Lannan Award for Nonfiction

David Abram's award-winning work of natural philosophy is already transforming debates at the forefront of environmental studies, psychology, anthropology, literary theory, and philosophy.  Praised for "combining poetic passion with intellectual rigor and daring," (Lannan Award citation), The Spell of the Sensuous explores the earthly, ecological dimensions... Read more >

Exam Copy
Deep Play

Written by Diane Ackerman


Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 8, 2000
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77135-7 (0-679-77135-2)

With A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman let her free-ranging intellect loose on the natural world.  Now in Deep Play she tackles the realm of creativity, by exploring one of the most essential aspects of our characters: the abitlity to play.

"Deep play" is that more intensified form of play that... Read more >

Exam Copy
A Natural History of the Senses

Written by Diane Ackerman


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 10, 1991
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73566-3 (0-679-73566-6)

Diane Ackerman's lusciously written grand tour of the realm of the senses includes conversations with an iceberg in Antarctica and a professional nose in New York, along with dissertations on kisses and tattoos, sadistic cuisine and the music played by the planet Earth.

PRAISE FOR A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES

"Delightful... Read more >

Exam Copy
Brothel
Mustang Ranch and Its Women
Written by Alexa Albert


Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: June 25, 2002
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-449-00658-0 (0-449-00658-1)

When Harvard medical student Alexa Albert conducted a public-health study as the Mustang Ranch brothel in Nevada, the only state in the union where prostitution is legal, neither she nor the brothel could have predicted the end result. Having worked with homeless prostitutes in Times Square, Albert was intimate with human... Read more >

Exam Copy
Woman
An Intimate Geography
Written by Natalie Angier


Format: Trade Paperback, 464 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: February 15, 2000
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-49841-8 (0-385-49841-1)

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST
Natalie Angier's text is a detailed exploration of female anatomy. By showing how culture based assumptions have influenced research in evolutionary psychology and have consequently lead to dubious conclusions about "female nature," she deals a body blow to Darwinian-based gender stereotypes.  Her ability to choose just the right word... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Hour of Our Death

Written by Philippe Aries


Format: Trade Paperback, 696 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: July 22, 2008
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-394-75156-6 (0-394-75156-6)

This remarkable book—the fruit of almost two decades of study—traces in compelling fashion the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions... Read more >

Exam Copy
Sicily
Three Thousand Years of Human History
Written by Sandra Benjamin


Format: Trade Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Steerforth
On Sale: December 18, 2007
Price: $19.95
ISBN: 978-1-58642-131-1 (1-58642-131-X)

The rich, recorded history of Sicily reaches back for more than three thousand years. Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Byzantines, Muslims, Normans, Hohenstaufens, Spaniards, Bourbons, the Savoy Kingdom of Italy and the modern era have all held sway, and left lasting influences on the island’s culture and architecture. And yet no contemporary... Read more >

Exam Copy
A Fortunate Man
The Story of a Country Doctor
Written by John Berger


Format: Trade Paperback, 176 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 25, 1997
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-73726-1 (0-679-73726-X)

In this quietly revolutionary work of social observation and medical philosophy, Booker Prize-winning writer John Berger and the photographer Jean Mohr train their gaze on an English country doctor and find a universal man--one who has taken it upon himself to recognize his patient's humanity when illness and the fear of... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Sacred Canopy
Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion
Written by Peter L. Berger


Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 1, 1990
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-07305-9 (0-385-07305-4)

This absorbing examination of the sociological roots of religious belief expands on Berger's theories of knowledge. With illustrations drawn from a variety of primitive, ancient, and contemporary religions, Berger argues that religion is a "sacred canopy" that every society builds to give its world meaning. Read more >

Exam Copy
One Hundred Days
My Unexpected Journey from Doctor to Patient
Written by David Biro


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: March 13, 2001
Price: $13.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-70673-8 (0-375-70673-9)

It is a situation we all fear and none of us can imagine: a life-threatening diagnosis. But what if the person receiving the diagnosis—young, physically fit, poised for a bright future—is himself a doctor?

At thirty-one David Biro has just completed his residency and joined his father’s successful dermatology practice. Struck with... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Return to Laughter
An Anthropological Novel
Written by Elenore Smith Bowen


Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: February 20, 1964
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-05312-9 (0-385-05312-6)

"The first introspective account ever published of what it's like to be a field worker among a primitive people."—Margaret Mead Read more >

Exam Copy
Factory Girls
From Village to City in a Changing China
Written by Leslie T. Chang


Format: Trade Paperback, 448 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: August 4, 2009
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-52018-8 (0-385-52018-2)

Winner of the 2009 Asian American Literary Award For Nonfiction, given by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop
Winner of the PEN USA Literary Award for Research Nonfiction
A New York Times Notable Book of 2008
One of the Washington Post’s best books of 2008
A Seattle Times best nonfiction book of 2008
One of the Christian... Read more >
Also available as an eBook and a hardcover.

Exam Copy
Glass, Paper, Beans
Revolutions on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things
Written by Leah Hager Cohen


Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Broadway Business
On Sale: August 17, 1998
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-49257-7 (0-385-49257-X)

Once upon a time we knew the origins of things: what piece of earth the potato on our dinner plate came from, which well our water was dipped from, who cobbled our shoes, and whose cow provided the leather. In many parts of the world, that information is still readily available... Read more >

Exam Copy
Honky

Written by Dalton Conley


Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 18, 2001
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72775-7 (0-375-72775-2)

As recalled in Honky, Dalton Conley’s childhood has all of the classic elements of growing up in America. But the fact that he was one of the few white boys in a mostly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood on Manhattan’s Lower East Side makes Dalton’s childhood unique.

At the age of three... Read more >

Exam Copy
Newjack
Guarding Sing Sing
Written by Ted Conover


Format: Trade Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: June 12, 2001
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72662-0 (0-375-72662-4)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction

Ted Conover, the intrepid author of Coyotes, about the world of illegal Mexican immigrants, spent a year as a prison guard at Sing Sing. Newjack, his account of that experience, is a milestone in American journalism: a book that casts... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Rolling Nowhere
Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes
Written by Ted Conover


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 11, 2001
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-375-72786-3 (0-375-72786-8)

In Ted Conover’s first book, now back in print, he enters a segment of humanity outside society and reports back on a world few of us would chose to enter but about which we are all curious.

Hoboes fascinated Conover, but he had only encountered them in literature and folksongs. So, he... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Cave Painters
Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists
Written by Gregory Curtis


Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: October 9, 2007
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7887-5 (1-4000-7887-3)

The Cave Painters is a vivid introduction to the spectacular cave paintings of France and Spain—the individuals who rediscovered them, theories about their origins, their splendor and mystery.

Gergory Curtis makes us see the astonishing sophistication and power of the paintings and tells us what is known about their creators, the Cro-Magnon... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
The Origin of Species
By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
Written by Charles Darwin


Format: Paperback, 512 pages
Publisher: Bantam Classics
On Sale: June 1, 1999
Price: $6.95
ISBN: 978-0-553-21463-5 (0-553-21463-2)

Darwin's classic and highly influential work about evolutionary processes and their role in shaping the origin of all species. Read more >

Exam Copy
In Small Things Forgotten
An Archaeology of Early American Life
Written by James Deetz


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: August 1, 1996
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-48399-5 (0-385-48399-6)

History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. Objects such as doorways, gravestones, musical instruments, and even shards of pottery fill in the cracks between large historical events and depict the intricacies of... Read more >

Exam Copy
Where the Girls Are
Growing Up Female with the Mass Media
Written by Susan J. Douglas


Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: March 28, 1995
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-2530-2 (0-8129-2530-0)

Where the Girls Are is a tour through the confusing and contradictory images of women in American pop culture. Douglas looks back at the television programs, popular music, advertising, and nightly news reports of the past four decades to reveal the decidedly mixed messages conveyed to girls and women coming of... Read more >

Exam Copy
Dangerous Words
Talking About God in the Age of Fundamentalism
Written by Gary Eberle


Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Trumpeter
On Sale: June 12, 2007
Price: $21.95
ISBN: 978-1-59030-432-7 (1-59030-432-2)

Religious language, Gary Eberle notes, can be the linguistic equivalent of nitroglycerine. A little three-letter word like God, for example, is so complex, so intertwined with various identities, so ultimately undefinable, that using it can be like throwing a hand grenade, regardless of one's intentions. Others have noted the linguistic problem... Read more >

Exam Copy
Re-Making Love
The Feminization Of Sex
Edited by Barbara Ehrenreich


Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: August 18, 1987
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-385-18499-1 (0-385-18499-9)

This provocative book reveals how the real sexual revolution was initiated by women -- not men -- and how it transformed both our behavior and our understanding of what sex means in our lives. Read more >

Exam Copy
This Cold Heaven
Seven Seasons in Greenland
Written by Gretel Ehrlich


Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 7, 2003
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75852-5 (0-679-75852-6)

For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the treacherous beauty of a world that is defined by ice. In This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of... Read more >

Exam Copy
The Immense Journey
An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man and Nature
Written by Loren Eiseley


Format: Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 12, 1959
Price: $10.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-70157-8 (0-394-70157-7)

"Dr. Eiseley has written a work of true science which must surely take its place also as great literature."--London Times Literary Supplement

In an unusual blend of scientific knowledge and imaginative vision, Eiseley, anthropologist and naturalist, tells the story of man. He reveals life's endless mysteries in his own experiences, departing from... Read more >

Exam Copy
Power/Knowledge
Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977
Written by Michel Foucault


Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: November 12, 1980
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-394-73954-0 (0-394-73954-X)

Edited and with an afterword by Colin Gordon.  In this set of essays and interviews, Foucault interprets his writings on such themes as sexuality, politics, and punishment, stressing the contribution of each to the magnificent--and terrifying--portrait of society that he is compiling.  As Foucault shows, what he has always been describing is the... Read more >
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