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Classic Love Poems$16.95 add to cart

Valentine's Day is next week. Had you heard? Here's a great gift idea or some ideas for what to put in that blank card or lines for that soliloquy you're planning to deliver from below your beloved's window.

Classic Love Poems, edited by Max Morris, has all the poets you'd expect to see in such a collection. Among the poets included are Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with five Sonnets from the Portuguese; Lord Byron has She Walks in Beauty among others; Emily Dickinson has four poems including If You Were Coming in the Fall; and, of course, Shakespeare is there with eleven Sonnets and two excerpts from Romeo and Juliet.

The book is illustrated with lovely drawings and the book has a red ribbon to mark that page you need to retrieve in the near-dark under that window next Tuesday.

 

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Thinking The Twentieth Century$38.00 add to cart

I was late discovering Tony Judt. By the time I started reading his essays in the New York Review of Books, I also learned that he was dying of a progressive neurological disorder. But I remember when his book Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 was released a few years ago and knew that Judt was clearly a top-rate historian. The sheer breadth of research and sympathy is remarkable. It leads to Postwar's claim to be the first truly European history of contemporary Europe, from Lisbon to Leningrad, based on research in six languages, covering thirty-four countries across sixty years which integrates international relations, domestic politics, ideas, social change, economic development, and culture -- high and low -- into a single grand narrative.

Tony Judt is our Author of the Month for February. In his new book, Thinking the Twentieth Century, the last century comes to life as an age of ideas--a time when, for good and for ill, the thoughts of the few reigned over the lives of the many. Judt presents the triumphs and the failures of prominent intellectuals, adeptly explaining both their ideas and the risks of their political commitments.

I encourage you, if you haven't already read Postwar to read it, and then dive into Thinking the Twentieth Century.

 

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MWF Seeking BFF$17.00 add to cart

When Rachel Bertsche first moved to Chicago, she was thrilled to finally share a zip code, let alone an apartment, with her boyfriend. But shortly after getting married, she realized that her new life was missing one thing: friends. In her uproarious memoir, MWF seeking BFF, Bertsche describes how she went on fifty-two friend-dates, one per week for a year, in hopes of meeting her new Best Friend Forever, and discovers how difficult -- and hilariously awkward -- it can be to make new friends as an adult. In a time when women happily annnounce they need a man but are embarrassed to admit they need a BFF, Bertsche uncovers the reality that no matter how great your love life is, you've gotta have friends.

 

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Markets Never Forget (but People Do)$35.95 add to cart

Sir John Templeton, legendary investor, was famous for saying, "The four most dangerous words in investing are, 'This time it's different.'" Though history doesn't repeat, not exactly, he knew that history is an excellent guide for investors. In Markets Never Forget (But People Do), long-time Forbes columnist and CEO of Fisher Investments, Ken Fisher, takes aim at some major market memory mishaps -- like the idea that stocks have become inherently more volatile or that wildly above- or below-average returns are abnormal. He shows how, early in every recovery, investors don't believe in it, often at a huge cost. In investing, ideology is deadly.

For another great book on a similar subject, check out This Time is Different by Carmen M Reinhart and Kenneth S Rogoff.