Bøger udgivet af Harper Perennial

"Spellbinding . . . . Anam has written a story about powerful events. But it is her descriptions of the small, unheralded moments . . . that truly touch the heart." --San Francisco ChronicleTahmima Anam's deeply moving debut novel about a mother's all-consuming love for her two children, set against the backdrop of war and terror, has led critics to comparisons with The English Patient and A Thousand Splendid Suns.Rehana Haque, a young widow transplanted to the city of Dhaka in East Pakistan, is fiercely devoted to her adolescent children, Maya and Sohail. Both become fervent nationalists in the violent political turmoil which, in 1971, transforms a brutal Pakistani civil war into a fight to the death for Bangladeshi independence. Fair-minded and intensely protective of her family, but not at all political, Rehana is sucked into the conflict in spite of herself. A story of passion and revolution, of family, friendship and unexpected heroism, A Golden Age depicts the chaos of an era and the choices everyone--from student protesters to the country's leaders, and rickshaw wallahs to the army's soldiers--must make. Rehana herself will face a cruel dilemma; the choice she makes is at once heartbreaking and true to the character we have come to love and respect.

Groundbreaking, insightful, and compulsively readable, Revolution in Mind goes beyond myth and polemic to give us the story of one of the most controversial and important intellectual endeavors of the twentieth century. In this masterful history, George Makari demonstrates how a new way of thinking about inner life coalesced and won followers who spread this body of thought throughout the West. Along the way he introduces the reader to a fascinating array of characters, many of whom have been long ignored or forgotten.Revolution in Mind is a brilliant, engaging, and radically new work--the first ever to account fully for the making of psychoanalysis.

In the autumn of 1598, Abraham, a melancholy young Jewish gem merchant, seeks his fortune far from the imprisoning ghetto walls of Venice. Traveling halfway across the world, he lands in the lush and exotic Burmese kingdom of Pegu--an alien place, yet one where the jewel trader is not shunned for his faith. There is a price for his newfound freedom, however. Local custom demands that Abraham perform a duty he finds troubling and barbaric . . . and thus Mya, barely more than a girl, arrives to share his bed. Gently banishing his despair, awakening something profound within him, Mya ultimately accepts Abraham's protection and, unexpectedly, his love. But great social and political upheaval threatens to violently transform the Peguan empire--with devastating consequences for Abraham and Mya and their dreams for the future.

"A first-class thriller that is equal parts hard-boiled Raymond Chandler mystery and voodoo-powered crime-fiction masterwork. . . . A spellbinding thriller of the highest order." --Chicago Tribune Max Mingus wanted to turn down the case--15 million bucks or not. Three years had passed since Haitian billionaire Allain Carver's five-year-old son was abducted. Sure, Max had been the best detective in Miami once. But that was before he went to jail. Before his wife died. Plus, he'd heard what had happened to the others who'd gone searching for Charlie Carver before him . . . With nothing left to lose--and a lot of money to gain--Max heads to Haiti. He knows about the voodoo and black magic. But when the trail to the missing boy leads to a local myth about a spirit child stealer named "Mr. Clarinet," could the truth be even more shocking than the legend? Max's job suddenly isn't just about finding the boy, his killers, or the money--it's about just staying alive.

"Wolf restores our awe of the human brain--its adaptability, its creativity, and its ability to connect with other minds through a procession of silly squiggles." -- San Francisco ChronicleHow do people learn to read and write--and how has the development of these skills transformed the brain and the world itself ? Neuropsychologist and child development expert Maryann Wolf answers these questions in this ambitious and provocative book that chronicles the remarkable journey of written language not only throughout our evolution but also over the course of a single child's life, showing why a growing percentage have difficulty mastering these abilities.With fascinating down-to-earth examples and lively personal anecdotes, Wolf asserts that the brain that examined the tiny clay tablets of the Sumerians is a very different brain from the one that is immersed in today's technology-driven literacy, in which visual images on the screen are paving the way for a reduced need for written language--with potentially profound consequences for our future.

Two hundred years ago, only the most reckless or eccentric Europeans had dared to traverse the unmapped territory of the modern-day Middle East. But in 1798, more than 150 French engineers, artists, doctors, and scientists--even a poet and a musicologist--traveled to the Nile Valley under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte and his invading army. Hazarding hunger, hardship, uncertainty, and disease, Napoleon's "savants" risked their lives in pursuit of discovery. The first large-scale interaction between Europeans and Muslims in the modern era, the audacious expedition was both a triumph and a disaster, resulting in finds of immense historical and scientific importance (including the ruins of the colossal pyramids and the Rosetta Stone) and in countless tragic deaths through plague, privation, madness, or violence.Acclaimed journalist Nina Burleigh brings readers back to the landmark adventure at the dawn of the modern era that ultimately revealed the deepest secrets of ancient Egypt to a curious continent.

A provocative, brilliant, and groundbreaking historical reconsideration of the roots of Spanish culture. We all carry in our heads a seductive picture of what Spain stands for: its music, painting, buildings, and history. But much of what we think of as Spanish culture is, in fact, the invention of a very specific group: the Spanish in exile. Historian Henry Kamen creates a vivid portrait of a dysfunctional, violent country that, since the destruction of the last Muslim territories in Granada in 1492, has expelled wave after wave of its citizens in a brutal attempt to create religious and social conformity. Muslims, Jews, Protestants, liberals, Socialists, and Communists were all driven abroad at different times, and Spain's enormous contribution to European culture is largely a result of these rejected peoples--their creative response both to having no home and to the shock of encountering new worlds. A landmark work, The Disinherited describes with illuminating sympathy the travails of these unwanted societies and the enduring "virtual" culture they imagined often thousands of miles from their lost home.

"There is passion here, a piercing accuracy, a rare sensitivity and power. . . . One can only marvel." -- New York TimesSet in Southern Rhodesia under white rule, Doris Lessing's first novel is at once a riveting chronicle of human disintegration, a beautifully understated social critique, and a brilliant depiction of the quiet horror of one woman's struggle against a ruthless fate.Mary Turner is a self-confident, independent young woman who becomes the depressed, frustrated wife of an ineffectual, unsuccessful farmer. Little by little the ennui of years on the farm works its slow poison. Mary's despair progresses until the fateful arrival of Moses, an enigmatic black servant. Locked in anguish, Mary and Moses--master and slave--are trapped in a web of mounting attraction and repulsion, until their psychic tension explodes with devastating consequences.

"A spellbinding treat. . . . Galilee leaps through time and space to reveal an impressively majestic vision told in beautiful prose." --PeopleA classic early work from master storyteller and New York Times bestselling author Clive BarkerRich and powerful, the Geary dynasty has reigned over American society for decades. But it is a family with dark, terrible secrets. For the Gearys are a family at war. Their adversaries are the Barbarossas, a clan whose timeless origins lie in myth, whose mystical influence is felt in intense, sensual exchanges of flesh and soul. Now their battle is about to escalate.When Galilee, prodigal prince of the Barbarossa clan, meets Rachel, the young bride of the Gearys' own scion Mitchell, they fall in love, consumed by a passion that unleashes long-simmering hatred. Old insanities arise, old adulteries are uncovered, and a seemingly invincible family will begin to wither, exposing its unholy roots. . . .

"A distinctive voice and an offbeat worldview...All of these stories take place in Coen Brothers Land, a parallel universe similar to our own--except it's weirder, funnier, and better edited." -- New York Times Book ReviewThe fiction debut of one of the most distinctive filmmakers working today, Ethan Coen.In Gates of Eden, Ethan Coen exhibits on the printed page the striking, twisted, yet devastatingly on-target vision of modern American life familiar from his movies. The world within the world we live in comes alive in fourteen brazenly original tragicomic short stories--from the Midwest mob war that fizzles due to the principals' ineptness to the trials of a deaf private eye with a blind client to a fugitive's heartbreaking explanation for having beheaded his wife, alarming in that it almost makes sense.

From rocking red shoes in summer to perfecting your postholiday thank-you notes, A Year in High Heels is the ultimate style guide for all fashion-forward females. Fashion journalist and bestselling author Camilla Morton has gathered together an eclectic collection of inspiring suggestions, sensible advice, and surprising how-tos to guide every glamour girl through the year--with witty, smart, and fun tips on how to walk the red carpet, curate an exhibition, blog your way to fame, spice up your public speaking, and make even the mundane magical.Gisele Bündchen, Diane von Furstenberg, Matthew Williamson, and other fashion icons share secret tips on where to find inspiration; while Dita Von Teese, Anya Hindmarch, and Christian Lacroix explain how to tease, how to go green, and how to appreciate opera. Filled with unique challenges and infinitely fun ideas, this is the guide to a guaranteed extraordinary year!

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. His Shakespeare is like no one else's the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time."

Armed with trust funds and pedigrees but bent on rebellion, twenty-somethings Alice, Harry, Rose, and Hugo are teetering on the brink of self-destruction. With Manhattan and London as their playgrounds, they chase oblivion--and their next high--through a glittering blur of nightclubs, decadent parties, high fashion, and underground music scenes, hard-partying on the razor's edge with a never-ending cocktail of drugs and booze. Insomniacs and unstoppable, these four lost souls ride the extreme highs and devastating lows of a summer that quickly reaches a crescendo of music, heat, and hedonism. Wavering between moments of revelation and ruin, they illuminate a generation given everything--except an answer to the timeless question: Who am I?From a remarkable new literary voice comes a startling, fresh, strikingly candid novel of addiction and excess.

"One of the most profound thinkers of the 20th century." -- New York TimesThe finest single-volume anthology of the great philosopher's work, with a new introduction by leading Heidegger scholar Taylor CarmanBasic Writings is the finest single-volume anthology of the work of Martin Heidegger, widely considered one of the most important modern philosophers. Its selections offer a full range of the influential author's writings--including "The Origin of the Work of Art," the introduction to Being and Time, "What Is Metaphysics?," "Letter on Humanism," "The Question Concerning Technology," "The Way to Language," and "The End of Philosophy." This essential collection provides readers with a concise introduction to the groundbreaking philosophy of this brilliant and essential thinker.

"A profound book of great distinction and originality. . . . A brilliant synthesis of the evidence with respect to man's evolutionary direction. . . . I cannot imagine anyone reading this book who will not be profoundly influenced by it, and who will not wish to read it several times over, for it is a great work by a great man--one of the most spiritually erudite of our time." --New York TimesVisionary theologian and evolutionary theorist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's analysis of human evolutionPierre Teilhard De Chardin was one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time. He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect, and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science.In this timeless book, which contains the quintessence of his thought, Teilhard argues that just as living organisms sprung from inorganic matter and evolved into ever more complex thinking beings, humans are evolving toward an "omega point"--defined by Teilhard as a convergence with the Divine.

"Like a woman, this book gets better with age. Greer's punchy prose and all-too-true observations motivate you to go out and do something to liberate yourself-and other women." -- Leora Tanenbaum, author of Slut! Growing Up Female with a Bad ReputationA ground-breaking, worldwide bestselling study of women's oppression that is at once an important social commentary, a passionately argued masterpiece of polemic, and a feminist classic.The publication of Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch in 1970 was a landmark event, raising eyebrows and ire while creating a shock wave of recognition in women around the world with its steadfast assertion that sexual liberation is the key to women's liberation. Today, Greer's searing examination of the oppression of women in contemporary society is both an important historical record of where we've been and a shockingly relevant treatise on what still remains to be achieved.

"[Umrigar] communicates her childhood longing for a cohesive family in deeply felt portraits of those she loves. . . . It is this combination of personal revelation and empathetic observation that makes Umrigar's memoir so appealing."-- Washington Post Book WorldFrom the bestselling author of The Space Between Us and If Today Be Sweet comes a sensitive, beautifully written memoir of Thrity Umrigar's youth in India, told with the honesty and guilelessness that only a child's point of view could provide.In a series of incredibly poignant stories, Thrity Umrigar traces the arc of her Bombay childhood and adolescence--from her earliest memories growing up in a middle-class Parsi household to her eventual departure for the U.S. at age 21. Her emotionally charged scenes take an unflinching look at family issues once considered unspeakable--including intimate secrets, controversial political beliefs, and the consequences of child abuse. Punishments and tempered hopes, struggles and small successes all weave together in this evocative, unforgettable coming-of-age tale.First Darling of the Morning also offers readers a fascinating glimpse at the 1960s and 70s Bombay of Umrigar's memories. Two coming-of-age stories collide in this memoir--one of a small child, and one of a nation.

From critically acclaimed author Alice Mattison, "a charmer" (New York Times) whose "voice is like that of no one else writing today" (Kirkus)--comes a profoundly moving meditation on love, friendship, and the unforgotten pastOne quiet spring day in 1989, Constance Tepper arrives from Philadelphia to watch over her mother's Brooklyn apartment and her orange cat. Con's mother, Gert, has left town to visit her old friend Marlene Silverman in Rochester. Marlene has always seemed alluring and powerful to Con, and ever since Con was a little girl, the long-standing bond between Gert and Marlene has piqued her curiosity. Now she finds herself wondering again what keeps them together.Con's week in Brooklyn will take a surprising turn when she wakes to find that someone has entered her mother's apartment and her own purse is missing. Stranded, with no money, she begins to phone family and friends. By the end of that week, she will experience a series of troubling discoveries about her marriage, her job, and her family's history, and much of her life will be changed forever.In the fall of 2003, now living in Brooklyn and working as a lawyer, Con has almost forgotten that strange and shattering week. But a series of unsettling reminders and surprising discoveries--including traces of a lost elevated train line through Brooklyn--will lead to grief, love, and more questions. At last, a confrontation between Marlene and Con's daughter will unravel some of the mysteries of the past.

A flat planet traveling through space carried by four elephants balancing on the back of a giant turtle; a world populated by (mostly inept) wizards, dwarfs, despots, policemen, assassins, aged barbarians, vampires, thieves, witches, and civil servants; a place where technology, per se, is nonexistent but magic works . . . except when it doesn't.Gleaned from more than two decades' worth of Discworld tales, here is an essential compendium of insightful musings, witty commentary, and sagacious observations by New York Times bestselling author Terry Pratchett, compiled by Pratchett expert Stephen Briggs.

Love, marriage, and sex with robots? Not in a million years? Maybe a whole lot sooner!A leading expert in artificial intelligence, David Levy argues that the entities we once deemed cold and mechanical will soon become the objects of real companionship and human desire. He shows how automata have evolved and how human interactions with technology have changed over the years. Levy explores many aspects of human relationships--the reasons we fall in love, why we form emotional attachments to animals and virtual pets, and why these same attachments could extend to love for robots. Levy also examines how society's ideas about what constitutes normal sex have changed--and will continue to change--as sexual technology becomes increasingly sophisticated. Shocking, eye-opening, provocative, and utterly convincing, Love and Sex with Robots is compelling reading for anyone with an open mind.

"From Sputnik to the International Space Station, Jay Barbree has seen it all, and reported it well. 'Live from Cape Canaveral' encapsulates the most technically exciting half century in history." -Neil ArmstrongSome fifty years ago, while a cub reporter, Jay Barbree caught space fever the night that Sputnik passed over Georgia. He moved to the then-sleepy village of Cocoa Beach, Florida, right outside Cape Canaveral, and began reporting on rockets that fizzled as often as they soared. In "Live from Cape Canaveral," Barbree--the only reporter who has covered every mission flown by astronauts--offers his unique perspective on the space program. He shares affectionate portraits of astronauts as well as some of his fellow journalists and tells some very funny behind-the-scenes stories--many involving astronaut pranks. Barbree also shows how much the space program and its press coverage have changed over time. Warm and perceptive, he reminds us just how thrilling the great moments of the space race were and why America fell in love with its heroic, sometimes larger-than-life astronauts.

On the day they first meet in a city playground, Deborah Laidlaw lends Toby Ruben a book called Trolley Girl, the memoir of a forgotten trolley strike in the 1920s, written by the sister of a fiery Jewish revolutionary who played an important, ultimately tragic role in the events. Young mothers with babies, Toby and Deborah become instant friends. It is a relationship that will endure for decades--through the vagaries of marriage, career, and child-rearing, through heated discussions of politics, ethics, and life--until an insurmountable argument takes the two women down divergent paths. But in the aftermath of crisis and sorrow, it is a borrowed book, long set aside and forgotten, that will unite Toby and Deborah once again.

This epic story opens at the hour the Greatest Generation went to war on December 7, 1941, and follows four U.S. Navy ships and their crews in the Pacific until their day of reckoning three years later with a far different enemy: a deadly typhoon. In December 1944, while supporting General MacArthur's invasion of the Philippines, Admiral William "Bull" Halsey neglected the Law of Storms, placing the mighty U.S. Third Fleet in harm's way. Drawing on extensive interviews with nearly every living survivor and rescuer, as well as many families of lost sailors, transcripts and other records from naval courts of inquiry, ships' logs, personal letters, and diaries, Bruce Henderson finds some of the story's truest heroes exhibiting selflessness, courage, and even defiance.

A galaxy of legendary figures from the annals of Western historyIn this enlightening and entertaining work, Paul Johnson, the bestselling author of Intellectuals and Creators, approaches the subject of heroism with stirring examples of men and women from every age, walk of life, and corner of the planet who have inspired and transformed not only their own cultures but the entire world as well. Heroes includes: Samson, Judith, and Deborah - Henry V and Joan of Arc - Elizabeth I and Walter Raleigh - George Washington, the Duke of Wellington, and Lord Nelson - Emily Dickinson - Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee - Mae West and Marilyn Monroe - Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II

Thirty million people today care for ailing family members in their own homes--a number that will increase dramatically over the next decade as baby boomers enter old age, as soldiers return home from war mentally and physically wounded, as medical advances extend lives and health insurance fails to cover them.Offering both companionship and guidance to the people who find themselves caring for their intimates, An Uncertain Inheritance is a collection of essays from some of the country's most accomplished writers. Poignant, honest, sometimes heartbreaking, often wry, and funny, here is a book that examines caregiving from every angle, revealing the pain, intimacy, and grace inherent in this meaningful relationship.

It is an era that redefined history. As the 1790s began, a fragile America teetered on the brink of oblivion, Russia towered as a vast imperial power, and France plunged into revolution. But in contrast to the way conventional histories tell it, none of these remarkable events occurred in isolation.Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian Jay Winik masterfully illuminates how their fates combined in one extraordinary moment to change the course of civilization. A sweeping, magisterial drama featuring the richest cast of characters ever to walk upon the world stage, including Washington, Jefferson, Louis XVI, Robespierre, and Catherine the Great, The Great Upheaval is a gripping, epic portrait of this tumultuous decade that will forever transform the way we see America's beginnings and our world