Bøger udgivet af Houghton Mifflin

In this picture book classic, travel with young Walter on a fantastical adventure as he journeys?by way of his bed?into a polluted dreamscape world that wakes him up to our collective and individual environmental responsibility.Walter does not appreciate the beauty of nature, or understand his role in keeping the planet healthy . . . until a fantastic journey shows him the tragic fate that could befall Earth if humans like him are not more careful.Chris Van Allsburg (The Polar Express) pairs pitch-perfect narrative with his full-color pastel illustrations, rendering this picture book a story that has stood the test of time."Two-time Caldecott Medalist Van Allsburg reaches a new pinnacle of excellence in both illustration and storytelling in his latest work." (Publishers Weekly)

"It's Jones's age-defying distinction to have mobilized a moral intelligence that's sufficiently vast to contain multitudes."-Washington Post Book World Imaginary Logic is a brilliantly expansive, deeply meditative, and at times wildly imaginative collection of poems that combines Rodney Jones's distinctive storytelling ability, sharp social intelligence, and keen powers of observation in a book that is wistful, satiric, audacious, and remorseless. "The Art of Heaven" opens with a parody of Dante and a down-home, twisted humor that Jones's readers have come to rely on: "In the middle of my life I came to a dark wood, / the smell of barbecue, kids running in the yards. / Not deep depression. This nice hell of suburbs. / Speed bumps. The way things aren't quite paradise." Jones, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, is one of America's "best, most generous, and most brilliantly readable poets" (Poetry). Imaginary Logic is the most eloquent expression yet of his rigorous mind, scrupulous eye, and capacious heart. "[Jones'] poems are a work of hands, and hands-on. His rich lyric sentences register experience at the full and thus at its high moment of complexity. Like most of the important poets, he's a lapsed pastoralist attempting to restore-no, save-the fallen."-Stanley Plumly

Here in paperback is the celebrated eleventh book of poems by Galway Kinnell. The book's title derives from Walt Whitman's "Last Invocation": "Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, / Strong is your hold O love." In this striking collection, Kinnell gives us poems of intermingling with the natural world, love poems and evocations of sexuality, poems about his father, his children, poet friends, poet heroes, and mythic figures. Included also is "When the Towers Fell," his stunning requiem for those who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The Common Man, Maurice Manning's fourth collection, is a series of ballad-like narratives, set down in loose, unrhymed iambic tetrameter, that honors the strange beauty of the Kentucky mountain country he knew as a child, as well as the idiosyncratic adventures and personalities of the oldtimers who were his neighbors, friends, and family. Playing off the book's title, Manning demonstrates that no one is common or simple. Instead, he creates a detailed, complex, and poignant portrait?by turns serious and hilarious, philosophical and speculative, but ultimately tragic?of a fast-disappearing aspect of American culture. The Common Man's accessibility and its enthusiastic and sincere charms make it the perfect antidote to the glib ironies that characterize much contemporary American verse. It will also help to strengthen Manning's reputation as one of his generation's most important and original voices.

"America, meet the real John F. Kennedy." -- Washington TimesJohn F. Kennedy is lionized by liberals. He inspired Lyndon Johnson to push Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act. His New Frontier promised increased spending on education and medical care for the elderly. He inspired Bill Clinton to go into politics. His champions insist he would have done great liberal things had he not been killed by Lee Harvey Oswald.But what if we've been looking at him all wrong? Indeed, JFK had more in common with Ronald Reagan than with LBJ. After all, JFK's two great causes were anticommunism and tax cuts. His tax cuts, domestic spending restraint, military buildup, pro-growth economic policy, emphasis on free trade and a strong dollar, and foreign policy driven by the idea that America had a God-given mission to defend freedom -- all make him, by the standards of both his time and our own, a conservative. This widely debated book is must reading for conservatives and liberals alike."Provocative and compelling . . . Ira Stoll has succeeded in changing our very perception of Kennedy as one of liberalism's heroes." -- Weekly Standard "An informative analysis of the ways in which JFK did indeed evince his conservative side -- he was very religious, open to a free market unencumbered by governmental interference, and staunchly anti-Communist." -- Publishers Weekly

A New York Times Editors' Choice "The Big Crowd is nothing short of a modern masterpiece." - Steven Galloway, author of The Cellist of Sarajevo Tom O'Kane has always looked up to his brother, Charlie, latching onto him as a surrogate father as soon as he arrived in America from County Mayo. Charlie is the American Dream personified: an immigrant who worked his way up from beat cop to mayor of New York. But what if Charlie isn't as wonderful as he seems? More than a decade after Tom arrives in New York, he is forced to confront the truth about Charlie while investigating the mysterious "suicide" of Kid Twist, Charlie's star witness against the largest crime syndicate in New York. As Tom digs deeper, the secrets he uncovers throw everything he thinks he knows about his beloved brother into question. Based on one of the biggest unsolved mob murders in history, The Big Crowd brings the 1940s to indelible life, from the beaches of Acapulco to the battlefields of World War II, from Gracie Mansion to the Brooklyn docks. "A masterwork of historical fiction." - Parade

"A true story fictionalized by a writer who has a special feeling for the dramatic . . . Mixed by Miss Seton's skillful hands, the dust of the past becomes the clay of the artist and is molded into memorable, lifelike form." --Chicago Tribune This fiercely beautiful novel tells the true story of Charles Radcliffe, a Catholic nobleman who joined the short-lived Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and of Jenny, his daughter by a secret marriage. Set in the Northumbrian wilds, teeming London, and colonial Virginia--where Jenny eventually settled on the estate of the famous William Byrd of Westover--Jenny's story reveals one young woman's loyalty, passion, and courage as she struggles in a life divided between the Old World and the New.Miss Seton's narrative is richly buttressed with the results of scrupulous research on the personages and the period. Her sole purpose is to tell a rousing good tale plainly and simply and this she does admirably." --New York Herald Tribune

At the turn of the twentieth century, New York's Bowery District becomes the scene of a terrible murder when the Klezmer King gets fried to a crisp by his Electric Tuxedo--on stage! The Inquisitor's apprentice, thirteen-year-old Sacha Kessler, tries to help find the killer, but the closer he gets to solving the crime, the more it sounds as if the creature that haunted him in his first adventure is back. Worse still, his own family is in danger. Sacha has avoided learning magic until now, but as his world falls apart around him, he changes his mind.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' ChoiceWinner, 2012 Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger "The greatest Hebrew novelist." -- Jewish Review of BooksAn aging Israeli film director has been invited to the pilgrimage city of Santiago de Compostela for a retrospective of his work. When Yair Moses arrives, a painting over his bed triggers a distant memory from one of his early films: a scene that caused a rift with his brilliant but difficult screenwriter. Upon his return to Israel, Moses decides to travel to the south to look for his elusive former partner and propose a new collaboration. But the screenwriter demands a price for it that will have strange and lasting consequences.A searching and original novel by one of the world's most esteemed writers, The Retrospective is a meditation on mortality and intimacy, on the limits of memory and the struggle of artistic creation."[The Retrospective] moved me deeply." -- Vivian Gornick, The Nation "[Yehoshua] achieves an autumnal tone as he ruminates on memory's slippery hold on life and on art." -- The New Yorker

"This book is majestic and squalid at the same time, as if the Bible were actually about Elvis. The rhythms and music carry you like a baby on a raft on the river, but it's the precision of the words that cinches you."--Richard Hell, author of "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp"

Oppen Porter thinks he's dying. (He's not.)From his hospital bed, with tape recorder in hand, he unspools his tale for the benefit of his unborn son, the tale of his forty-day journey from innocence to experience, from self-described ?slow absorber? to man of the world. This is his ?astonishing,?* ?laugh-aloud funny,?** ?crisp,?*** ?delightful,?**** ?indelible?***** story. *Los Angeles Review of Books**Cleveland Plain Dealer***San Francisco Chronicle****Shelf Awareness*****Flavorwire

Number-one New York Times best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Love Story, Elizabeth Gilbert transports readers to far-flung locales with this collection of the year's lushest and most inspiring travel writing.

"'Can a nation disappear forever?' . . . [In] a tale of collective loss, political revolution and the individual quest for self-determination . . . Kim brings us the souls caught up on the ground of this larger drama." - Minneapolis Star TribuneIn 1904, facing war and the loss of their nation, more than a thousand Koreans leave their homes for the promise of land in unknown Mexico. After a long sea voyage, these emigrants - thieves and royals, priests and soldiers, orphans and entire families - discover that they have been sold into indentured servitude.Aboard the ship, the orphan Ijeong fell in love with a nobleman's daughter; separated when the hacendados claim their laborers, he vows to find her. Then, after years of working in the punishing heat of the henequen fields, the Koreans are caught in the midst of a Mexican revolution. A tale of star-crossed love, political turmoil, and the dangers of seeking freedom in a new world, Black Flower is an epic story based on a little-known moment in history."Kim is at the leading edge of a new breed of South Korean writers." - Philadelphia City Paper"Spare and beautiful." - Publishers Weekly, starred review"Readers who remember the historical fiction of Thomas B. Costain, Zoé Oldenbourg and Anya Seton will appreciate [Kim's] extensive research and empathic imagination." - Kirkus Reviews

Frances and Bernard meet in the summer of 1957. Afterward, he writes her a letter. Soon they are immersed in the kind of fast, deep friendship that can change the course of our lives. They find their way to New York and, for a few whirling years, each other. The city is a wonderland for young people with dreams: cramped West Village kitchens, parties stocked with the sharp-witted and glamorous, taxis that can take you anywhere at all, long talks along the Hudson as the lights of the Empire State Building blink on above. Inspired by the lives of Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell, Frances and Bernard imagines, through new characters with charms entirely their own, what else might have happened. In the grandness of the fall, can we love another person so completely that we lose our dreams? In witness to all the wonder of kindred spirits and bittersweet romance,¿Frances and Bernard¿is a tribute to the power of friendship and the people who help us discover who we are.

"Running Ransom Road is Caleb Daniloff's unblinking, ultimately triumphant account of his journey from mean, hopeless drunk back to humanity and himself--through distance running. It's a searing tale of spiritual redemption--one marathon, one mile, one brave, difficult step at a time."--Steve Friedman, co-author of New York Times bestseller Eat and Run and author of the memoir Lost on Treasure IslandFor fifteen years, the words that best described Caleb Daniloff were "drunk," "addict," and "abuser." These days, the best word to describe him is "runner."In Running Ransom Road, the long-since-sober Daniloff confronts his past by setting out to run races in each of the cities where he once lived and wreaked havoc during that lost period of his life. As he competes in marathons from Boston to Vermont to Moscow, he explores his old destructive life and how running's sobering and inspiring effects have changed him for the better. In doing so, he connects with others like him, illuminating the connection between addiction and running. Running Ransom Road is at once a memoir of addiction, finding oneself, and learning to push past barriers both physical and emotional."Just as Caleb Daniloff's life was about to tumble into the abyss of addiction, he was lucky enough to discover he liked to run, simply for himself. In Running Ransom Road, his captivating narrative describes a journey of personal redemption that, fortunately for us, he is willing to share."--Frank Shorter, Olympic marathon gold medalist

Founding father Thomas Jefferson believed that "religion is a matter which lies solely between Man and his God," but these days many people seem to have forgotten this ideal. Conservatives claim America is a "Christian nation" and urge that laws be structured around religious convictions. Hardcore atheists, meanwhile, seek to undermine and attack religion at all levels. Surely there must be a middle ground.In How to Be Secular, Jacques Berlinerblau issues a call to the moderates--those who are tired of the belligerence on the fringes--that we return to America's long tradition of secularism, which seeks to protect both freedom from and for religion. He looks at the roots of secularism and examines how it should be bolstered and strengthened so that Americans of all stripes can live together peacefully."Jacques Berlinerblau mounts a careful, judicious, and compelling argument that America needs more secularists . . . The author's argument merits a wide hearing and will change the way we think and talk about religious freedom." --Randall Balmer, author of Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts Faith and Threatens America

"Beautiful Lies is set in Victorian Britain; at its center is Maribel Campbell Lowe, the wife of a Scottish M.P. and a self-proclaimed Chilean heiress. But Maribel's life is based on a web of lies, and a newspaperman's uncommon interest in her could prove disastrous" --New York Times Book ReviewLondon 1887. For Maribel Campbell Lowe, the beautiful bohemian wife of a maverick politician, it is the year to make something of herself. She is torn between poetry and the new art of photography. But it is soon plain that Maribel's choices are not so simple. As her husband's career hangs by a thread, her real past, and the family she abandoned, come back to haunt them both. When the notorious newspaper editor Alfred Webster begins to ask pointed questions, she fears he will not only destroy Edward's career but both of their reputations.

An offbeat love story about the adventures and mutual rescue of a young woman out of place in her hometown and a mysterious stranger who calls himself Peter Parker (and begins to cast her in the role of Spider-Man's first sweetheart), The Night Gwen Stacy Died is about first loss, first love, and finding our real identities."A dreamy world where comic book characters and psychic visions are as real as teenage boredom and young love, Bruni's debut is a magical story, a white-knuckle thrill ride." --Diana Spechler, author of Who by Fire "The perspective shifts, slippery identities, and lurking weirdness in this book recall the peak moments of Kurosawa, Hitchcock, and Lynch. But to describe it in cinematic terms would risk slighting that bighearted, sneakily exhilarating voice that can finally be only the work of a masterful writer." --Sean Howe, author of Marvel Comics: The Untold Story"Bruni's fiercely smart and delectably unpredictable first novel delivers again and again that most sought-after shiver up the spine, the chill that comes when you realize the world you thought you knew and understood is newer and stranger than you ever dared imagine. A genuine page-turner." --Kathryn Davis, author of The Thin Place"Mixed into this novel's blustery atmosphere are gusts of contemporary masters, like Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Kelly Link, and Michael Chabon. This gave me the sort of reading experience I always hope for but almost never find: a world that somehow both resembles the one in which I live and is also unlike any other I've ever seen or read." --Stefan Merrill Block, author of The Story of Forgetting"A brave and bold new voice, Bruni takes us on an unexpected adventure of love and loss, of beginnings and ends, all the while showing us what it really means to be a hero." --Alison Espach, author of The Adults

This satirical adventure from Philip K. Dick deals with issues of power, class, and politics, set in a world ruled by big-brained elites. In Our Friends from Frolix 8, the world is run by an elite few. And what determines whether one is part of the elite isn't wealth or privilege, but brains. As children, every citizen of Earth is tested; some are found to be super-smart New Men and some are Unusuals, with various psychic powers. The vast majority are Undermen, performing menial jobs in an overpopulated world. Nick Appleton is an Underman, content to go with the flow and eke out an existence as a tire regroover. But after his son is classified as an Underman, Appleton begins to question the hierarchy. Strengthening his resolve, and energizing the resistance movement, is news that the great resistance leader Thors Provoni is returning from a trip to the furthest reaches of space. And he's brought help: a giant, indestructible alien.

A "New York Times Book Review "Editors Choice

"An extraordinary exploration and meditation . . . [Bass] transports us along on this wonder-filled tour, full of hardness and hope, into an otherworldly place that mirrors our own." --National Geographic TravelerBlack rhinos are not actually black. They are, however, giant animals with tiny eyes, feet the diameter of laundry baskets, and horns that are prized for both their aesthetic and medicinal qualities. Until recently, these creatures were perched on the edge of extinction, their numbers dwindling as they succumbed to poachers and the ravages of civil war. Now their numbers are rising, thanks to a groundbreaking new conservation method from the Save the Rhino Trust: make sure that rhinos are worth more alive than dead.Rick Bass, who has long worn the uneasy mantle of both activist and hunter, traveled to Namibia to find black rhinos. The tale of his journey provides a deeper understanding of these amazing animals and of just what needs to be done to protect them."Bass provides a singularly thoughtful portrait of a unique animal, and a meditation on mankind's relationship to both it and the natural world as a whole." --Minneapolis Star Tribune