Bøger udgivet af Knopf Publishing Group

"We are in the dark side of the brain--full of grief and deliciously strange comedy. I've never read anything like it." --Michael Ondaatje With this eerie, provocative, and utterly original novel, Rupert Thomson takes the psychological thriller into unexplored territory. Martin Blom is walking toward his car in a supermarket parking lot when a single random bullet pierces his brain. From that moment he is blind--his doctor says permanently. But then one evening Martin discovers what is either a genuine miracle or a delusion suffered occasionally by the newly blind: in the dark, he can see. Armed with this ambiguous gift, Thomson's protagonist enters a nocturnal world of strip clubs and sleazy hotels. In that world, an alluring young woman may give herself to the one man she thinks is unable to see her, only to vanish inexplicably. In that world, a blind man may become a murder suspect. And in the gorgeously disorienting world of The Insult, reality itself is a consensual hallucination. And you succumb to it at your own risk. "Reads like an unholy collaboration between Oliver Sacks and Edgar Allan Poe." --Time Out "Thomson is a master stylist, a virtuoso of the hallucinatory image, a writer with a dark vision and a bright future." --Washington Post

Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara, wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene - one that would haunt this family forever - David I. Kertzer begins his fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping, and shows how the deep-rooted antisemitism of the Catholic Church would eventually contribute to the collapse of its temporal power in Italy. As Edgardo's parents desperately search for a way to get their son back, they learn why he - out of all their eight children - was taken. Years earlier, the family's Catholic serving girl, fearful that the infant might die of an illness, had secretly baptized him (or so she claimed). Edgardo recovered, but when the story reached the Bologna inquisitor, the result was his order for Edgardo to be seized and sent to a special monastery where Jews were converted into good Catholics. His justification in Church teachings: No Christian child could be raised by Jewish parents. The case of Edgardo Mortara became an international cause celebre. Although such kidnappings were not uncommon in Jewish communities across Europe, this time the political climate had changed. As news of the family's plight spread to Britain, where the Rothschilds got involved, to France, where it mobilized Napoleon III, and even to America, public opinion turned against the Vatican. The fate of this one boy came to symbolize the entire revolutionary campaign ofMazzini and Garibaldi to end the dominance of the Catholic Church and establish a modern, secular Italian state.

The most comprehensive field guide available to the American Southeast--a portable, essential companion for visitors and residents alike--from the go-to reference source for over 18 million nature lovers. This compact volume contains: An easy-to-use field guide for identifying 1,000 of the state's wildflowers, trees, mushrooms, mosses, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, butterflies, mammals, and much more; A complete overview of the southeastern region's natural history, covering geology, wildlife habitats, ecology, fossils, rocks and minerals, clouds and weather patterns, and the night sky; An extensive sampling of the area's best parks, preserves, hiking trails, forests, and wildlife sanctuaries, with detailed descriptions and visitor information for 50 sites and notes on dozens of others. The guide is packed with visual information -- the 1,500 full-color images include more than 1,300 photographs, 13 maps, and 16 night-sky charts, as well as more than 100 drawings explaining everything from geological processes to the basic features of different plants and animals. For everyone who lives or spends time in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, or Tennessee, there can be no finer guide to the area's natural surroundings than the National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southeastern States.

From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner, a passionate, profound story of love and obsession that brings us back and forth in time, as a narrative is assembled from the emotions, hopes, fears, and deep realities of Black urban life. With a foreword by the author. "As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved.... Morrison conjures up the hand of slavery on Harlem's jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear." --GlamourIn the winter of 1926, when everybody everywhere sees nothing but good things ahead, Joe Trace, middle-aged door-to-door salesman of Cleopatra beauty products, shoots his teenage lover to death. At the funeral, Joe's wife, Violet, attacks the girl's corpse. This novel "transforms a familiar refrain of jilted love into a bold, sustaining time of self-knowledge and discovery. Its rhythms are infectious" (People). "The author conjures up worlds with complete authority and makes no secret of her angst at the injustices dealt to Black women." --The New York Times Book Review

The most comprehensive field guide available to North American butterflies--a must-have for any enthusiast's day pack or home library--from the go-to reference source for over 18 million nature lovers. The National Audubon Society Field Guide to Butterflies is an easy-to-use, essential guide to all true butterflies, the most common skippers, and many migrants and strays. It features a durable vinyl biding, color plates visually arranged by shape and color, and thumb-tab silhouettes for quick and easy identification of butterflies in the field. The species account for each butterfly provides measurements, descriptions of each stage of the life cycle, and information on coloring or distinguishing markings, flight period, habitat, and range.

For nearly sixty years the menace of nuclear war has hung over humanity, while at the same time the promise of nuclear energy has enticed us. In "Megawatts and Megatons," two of the world's most eminent physicists--French Nobel Prize laureate Georges Charpak and American Enrico Fermi Award-winner Richard L. Garwin--assess with consummate authority the benefits of nuclear energy and the dangers of nuclear weaponry. Garwin and Charpak begin by elucidating the discoveries that have allowed us to manipulate nuclear energy with increasing ease. They clearly and concisely explain complex principles of fission and fusion pertaining to nuclear weaponry and the generation of nuclear electric power. They also make a strong and eloquent argument in favor of arms control. More than ten thousand nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union, together with a similar number in the United States, have the capacity to destroy the world many times over. The "nuclear club" of nations is growing, with India and Pakistan its latest members and Iran, Iraq, and North Korea striving for admission. Even the possibility of a single weapon in the hands of a terrorist group--or a lone terrorist--poses a threat that we cannot ignore. Meanwhile, nuclear power already provides one-sixth of all electrical energy in the world--France, for instance, derives 80% of its electricity from reactors-- but nuclear power has met with great resistance in the United States, where the specter of the Three Mile Island breakdown still looms in the public's consciousness. Garwin and Charpak take a temperate, rational tone in evaluating the benefits of nuclear energy. They show how it can provide an assured, economicallyfeasible, and environmentally responsible supply of energy in a way that avoids the hazards of weapons proliferation. Cogently written, passionately and carefully ar-gued--and featuring explanatory technical drawings as well as illustrations by the world-famous French cartoonist Sempe--"Megawatts and Megatons" is a thoughtful and important primer on two of the central issues of our time.

This fully revised edition brings a new level of beauty, accuracy, and usefulness to the field guide that wildflower enthusiasts have relied upon for more than 20 years. More than 940 all-new, full-color images show the wildflowers of western North America close-up and in their natural habitats. The guide has been completely revised to make identification in the field easier than ever. Images are grouped by flower color and shape and keyed to clear, concise descriptions that reflect current taxonomy.

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE, THE MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE, THE AMERICAN HISTORY BOOK PRIZEBook Four of Robert A. Caro's monumental The Years of Lyndon Johnson displays all the narrative energy and illuminating insight that led the Times of London to acclaim it as "one of the truly great political biographies of the modern age. A masterpiece." The Passage of Power follows Lyndon Johnson through both the most frustrating and the most triumphant periods of his career--1958 to1964. It is a time that would see him trade the extraordinary power he had created for himself as Senate Majority Leader for what became the wretched powerlessness of a Vice President in an administration that disdained and distrusted him. Yet it was, as well, the time in which the presidency, the goal he had always pursued, would be thrust upon him in the moment it took an assassin's bullet to reach its mark. By 1958, as Johnson began to maneuver for the presidency, he was known as one of the most brilliant politicians of his time, the greatest Senate Leader in our history. But the 1960 nomination would go to the young senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Caro gives us an unparalleled account of the machinations behind both the nomination and Kennedy's decision to offer Johnson the vice presidency, revealing the extent of Robert Kennedy's efforts to force Johnson off the ticket. With the consummate skill of a master storyteller, he exposes the savage animosity between Johnson and Kennedy's younger brother, portraying one of America's great political feuds. Yet Robert Kennedy's overt contempt for Johnson was only part of the burden of humiliation and isolation he bore as Vice President. With a singular understanding of Johnson's heart and mind, Caro describes what it was like for this mighty politician to find himself altogether powerless in a world in which power is the crucial commodity. For the first time, in Caro's breathtakingly vivid narrative, we see the Kennedy assassination through Lyndon Johnson's eyes. We watch Johnson step into the presidency, inheriting a staff fiercely loyal to his slain predecessor; a Congress determined to retain its power over the executive branch; and a nation in shock and mourning. We see how within weeks--grasping the reins of the presidency with supreme mastery--he propels through Congress essential legislation that at the time of Kennedy's death seemed hopelessly logjammed and seizes on a dormant Kennedy program to create the revolutionary War on Poverty. Caro makes clear how the political genius with which Johnson had ruled the Senate now enabled him to make the presidency wholly his own. This was without doubt Johnson's finest hour, before his aspirations and accomplishments were overshadowed and eroded by the trap of Vietnam. In its exploration of this pivotal period in Johnson's life--and in the life of the nation--The Passage of Power is not only the story of how he surmounted unprecedented obstacles in order to fulfill the highest purpose of the presidency but is, as well, a revelation of both the pragmatic potential in the presidency and what can be accomplished when the chief executive has the vision and determination to move beyond the pragmatic and initiate programs designed to transform a nation. It is an epic story told with a depth of detail possible only through the peerless research that forms the foundation of Robert Caro's work, confirming Nicholas von Hoffman's verdict that "Caro has changed the art of political biography."