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Thinking the Twentieth Century$38.00 add to cart

Our Author of the Month for February is celebrated historian Tony Judt.

Among the remarkable generation of historians who came out of Cambridge in the 1960s -- David Cannadine, Linda Colley and Simon Schama among others -- one name stands out. Well before his death in 2010 at the age of 62 from a progressive neurological disorder, Tony Judt proved himself a great historian of modern Europe and a brilliant political commentator. In his guise as a political and historical essayist, he was a fearless critic of narrow orthodoxies and bullying cliques, from communist apologists to the Israel lobby, from "liberal hawks" to progressive educationists.

Thinking the Twentieth Century is the final book by this unparalleled historian and public critic. Where Judt's masterpiece Postwar redefined the history of modern Europe by uniting the stories of its eastern and western halves, Thinking the Twentieth Century unites the century's conflicted intellectual history into a single soaring narrative. Spanning the entire era and all currents of thought in a manner never previously attempted, Thinking the Twentieth Century is a triumphant tour de force that restores clarity to the classics of modern thought with the assurance and grace of a master craftsman.

British crime writer Reginald Hill passed away Jan 12, 2012. A winner of the Crime Writers' Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement in 1995, Hill was the author of over fifty novels, but he was best known for his characters Dalziel and Pascoe. In addition to starring in twenty of Hill's novels, the characters were also dramatized on the BBC.

His most recent novel, The Woodcutter, was published in Fall 2010.

 

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The Odds$27.50 add to cart

Stewart O'Nan is author of such wonderfully imagined novels as Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, Wish You Were Here and Songs for the Missing. Emily, Alone is his spring 2011 release, now available in paperback.

When you pick up a Stewart O'Nan novel, you're pretty sure to discover it won't be like the last one. He has a literary curiosity that drives him to write in a number of styles and genres. In a 2011 interview in theday.com, he did not dodge the issue: "I love to read all different kids of books, so it makes sense that I'd write them. Plus, it's much more exciting and challenging to try something new."

His thirteenth novel, The Odds, is no exception. In an original and bittersweet gem, Art and Marion Fowler flee their Cleveland suburb for Niagara Falls. Jobless, with their home approaching foreclosure and their marriage on the brink of collapse, Art and Marion risk everything they have -- their savings and each other -- at the roulette wheel. Their desperate attempt to get their life back yields a tender yet honest exploration of faith, forgiveness and last chances.

I mostly read fiction, memoirs, and poetry--preferences that are reflected in my night table choices. I've selected books that have been published relatively recently, because I believe it's important to support new works. (I've allowed myself one exception, The Smoking Diaries, by Simon Gray, which I excuse on the grounds that it's new to me.)

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