Bøger udgivet af Vintage

In his latest collection of death-defying exploits and far-flung travels, Outside Magazine editor Tim Cahill visits the side of an active volcano in Ecuador, the Saharan salt mines and the largest toxic waste dump in the Western Hemisphere. He also ventures to find a Caspian tiger in Turkey and giant centipedes in the Congo. Cahill is one of the last great intrepid journalists, and his thirty wildly entertaining essays display sparkling wit and unstinting curiosity. When not on the move, he debunks hoary notions of the kindness of dolphins and ruminates on religion, death and the perplexing phenomenon of yoga. Charming, incisive and absolutely fearless, Cahill is the perfect travel companion.

As a surgical pathologist for more than twenty-five years, Spencer Nadler was not content with the distance between his lab and the patient. Meeting with those whose diseased cells he has diagnosed, he offers them a rare understanding. Hanna Baylan is a woman as determined as he is to confront the cancer cells biopsied from her breast. Comille, a young boy with Sickle Cell anemia, has frequent racking pain, but doesn't let it interfere with his gusto for life. And 91-year old-conductor Mehli Mehta inspires comparison between the cellular rhythms that threaten his heart and those that govern his work.In these intimate, lyrical portraits of people and their cells, Nadler brings a unique clarity and compassion to medicine.

Long before Oliver Sacks became a distinguished neurologist and bestselling writer, he was a small English boy fascinated by metals-also by chemical reactions (the louder and smellier the better), photography, squids and cuttlefish, H.G. Wells, and the periodic table. In this endlessly charming and eloquent memoir, the author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings chronicles his love affair with science and the magnificently odd and sometimes harrowing childhood in which that love affair unfolded.In Uncle Tungsten we meet Sacks' extraordinary family, from his surgeon mother (who introduces the fourteen-year-old Oliver to the art of human dissection) and his father, a family doctor who imbues in his son an early enthusiasm for housecalls, to his "Uncle Tungsten," whose factory produces tungsten-filament lightbulbs. We follow the young Oliver as he is exiled at the age of six to a grim, sadistic boarding school to escape the London Blitz, and later watch as he sets about passionately reliving the exploits of his chemical heroes-in his own home laboratory. Uncle Tungsten is a crystalline view of a brilliant young mind springing to life, a story of growing up which is by turns elegiac, comic, and wistful, full of the electrifying joy of discovery.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize"Russo writes with a warm, vibrant humanity.... A stirring mix of poignancy, drama and comedy." -The Washington PostWelcome to Empire Falls, a blue-collar town full of abandoned mills whose citizens surround themselves with the comforts and feuds provided by lifelong friends and neighbors and who find humor and hope in the most unlikely places, in this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Richard Russo. Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it's Janine, Miles' soon-to-be ex-wife, who's taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it's the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town-and seems to believe that "everything" includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.

This extraordinary debut novel from Whiting Writers' Award winner John Wray is a poetic portrait of a life redeemed at one of the darkest moments in world history.Twenty years after deserting the army in the first world war, Oskar Voxlauer returns to the village of his youth. Haunted by his past, he finds an uneasy peace in the mountains-but it is 1938 and Oskar cannot escape from the rising tide of Nazi influence in town. He attempts to retreat to the woods, only to be drawn back by his own conscience and the chilling realization that the woman whose love might finally save him is bound to the local SS commander. Morally complex, brilliantly plotted, and heartbreakingly realized, The Right Hand of Sleep marks the beginning of an important literary career.

This rousing anthology features the work of more than twenty-five writers from the great twentieth-century countercultural literary movement. Writing with an audacious swagger and an iconoclastic zeal, and declaiming their verse with dramatic flourish in smoke-filled cafés, the Beats gave birth to a literature of previously unimaginable expressive range.The defining work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac provides the foundation for this collection, which also features the improvisational verse of such Beat legends as Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure and the work of such women writers as Diane DiPrima and Denise Levertov. LeRoi Jones's plaintive "Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” and Bob Kaufman's stirring "Abomunist Manifesto” appear here alongside statements on poetics and the alternately incendiary and earnest correspondence of Beat Generation writers. Visceral and powerful, infused with an unmediated spiritual and social awareness, this is a rich and varied tribute and, in the populist spirit of the Beats, a vital addition to the libraries of readers everywhere.

In this brilliant, impassioned and controversial book, New Yorker critic Joan Acocella argues that twentieth-century literary critics from the Left and Right have misused Willa Cather and her works for their own political ends, and, in doing so, have either ignored or obscured her true literary achievement. In an acute and often very funny critique of the critics, Acocella untangles Cather's reputation from decades of politically motivated misreadings, and proposes her own clear-headed view of Cather's genius. At once a graceful summary of Cather's life and work, and a refreshing plea that books be read for themselves, Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism will also inspire readers to return to one of America's great novelists.

"I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false." In True History of the Kelly Gang," the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist."

Lin has a husband, two daughters, and close friends. But dance is her passion. Inescapably, it imposes itself upon her, until the inevitable moment when she must choose between her family life and the all-consuming world of dance to which she aches to return. Slow Emergencies conveys an irresistible impulse to create, and illustrates the emotional turmoil that ensues for Lin and her family. Nancy Huston, award-winning author of The Mark of the Angel, writes brilliantly here about the passage of time, the body's vulnerability, and the solitude of creative endeavor. What results is a deeply felt novel that offers a disquieting but profoundly moving meditation on just what it means to be an artist.

From Naipaul's India to the last days of Hong Kong, and from the ghosts of Pearl Harbor to Benazir Bhutto, Buruma delivers an engaging and incisive look at the ways East and West understand-and misunderstand-each other. At home in both worlds, Buruma traverses the realms of journalism, literary criticism, and political analysis, to examine the dialogue of fact and fantasy that affects our perception of far-away lands. Whether deconstructing the films of Satyajit Ray or the novels of Yoshimoto Banana, Buruma offers a splendid counterbalance to fashionable theories of clashing civilizations and uniquely Asian values. In twenty-five illuminating, often humorous essays, The Missionary and the Libertine shows us why Buruma's reputation for writing the most compelling commentary on the faultlines of the East-West divide is so secure.

From the author of the Whitbread Award—winning The Last King of Scotland, comes a spellbinding tale of a town under siege in colonial Africa and a young woman who finds love and freedom in the midst of a devastating war.The year is 1899, and the South African town of Ladysmith is surrounded by Boer forces. For four long months bread is thickened with laundry starch and soldier's horses are killed for meat; daily bombings destroy homes and businesses, forcing the town's inhabitants into tunnels and makeshift shelters; and soldiers and townspeople alike are hideously wounded by flying shrapnel. As the world she knows collapses around her, Bella Kiernan finds the courage to escape from convention, to rebel against the political forces that threaten her homeland and to pursue her life's greatest romance. Ladysmith is a magnificent love story, a vivid portrait of war, and clear confirmation of Giles Foden's standing as a formidably talented novelist.

Martin Amis is one of the most gifted and innovative writers of our time. With Experience, he discloses a private life every bit as unique and fascinating as his bestselling novels. The son of the great comic novelist Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis explores his relationship with this father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life. He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain's most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others. Not since Nabokov's Speak, Memory has such an implausible life been recorded by such an inimitable talent. Profound, witty, and ruthlessly honest, Experience is a literary event.

The Nature of Generosity is at once a natural sequel to the acclaimed memoir Hole in the Sky and an entirely unique masterwork from one of the finest writers of the American West. Taking as his topic the "ordinary yearning to take physical and emotional care," William Kittredge embarks upon a literary and philosophical grand tour that explores the very core of who we are. Whether he's recalling a childhood in Oregon, touring Europe, or studying photographs of Japanese gardens in a bookstore in New York City, Kittredge's connections are as unexpected as they are inspiring. Shattering the myth that survival of the fittest means "survival of the violent, or the cruelest, or the selfish," Kittredge imagines a world in which altruism dominates--and offers ample evidence that this is not an unreachable utopian ideal.

Winner of the National Book AwardThis bestselling, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing.The Arctic is a perilous place. Only a few species of wild animals can survive its harsh climate. In this modern classic, Barry Lopez explores the many-faceted wonders of the Far North: its strangely stunted forest, its mesmerizing aurora borealis, its frozen seas. Musk oxen, polar bears, narwhal, and other exotic beasts of the region come alive through Lopez's passionate and nuanced observations. And, as he examines the history and culture of the indigenous people, along with parallel narratives of intrepid, often underprepared and subsequently doomed polar explorers, Lopez drives to the heart of why the austere and formidable Arctic is also a constant source of breathtaking beauty, beguilement, and wonder. Written in prose as memorably pure as the land it describes, Arctic Dreams is a timeless mediation on the ability of the landscape to shape our dreams and to haunt our imaginations. Look for Barry Lopez's new book, Horizon, available now.

The internationally acclaimed author of the L.A. Quartet and The Underworld USA Trilogy, James Ellroy, presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia.Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns--it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an enforcer--a power in his own small corner of hell. Then the Feds announce a full-out investigation into local police corruption, and everything goes haywire.Klein's been hung out as bait, "a bad cop to draw the heat," and the heat's coming from all sides: from local politicians, from LAPD brass, from racketeers and drug kingpins--all of them hell-bent on keeping their own secrets hidden. For Klein, "forty-two and going on dead," it's dues time.Klein tells his own story--his voice clipped, sharp, often as brutal as the events he's describing--taking us with him on a journey through a world shaped by monstrous ambition, avarice, and perversion. It's a world he created, but now he'll do anything to get out of it alive.Fierce, riveting, and honed to a razor edge, White Jazz is crime fiction at its most shattering.

Wiliam Boyd, winner of the Whitbread and Somerset Maugham Awards, introduces unlikely heroes desperate to redeem their unsatisfying lives.From California poolsides to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, here is a world populated by weary souls who turn to fantasy as their sole escape from life's inequities. Stranded in an African hotel during a coup, an oafish Englishman impresses a young stewardess with stories of an enchanted life completely at odds with his sordid existence in "The Coup." In the title story, an arrogant, sadistic American pilot in Vietnam underestimaets the power of revenge when he relentlessly persecutes a member of his maintenance crew. With droll humor and rare compassion, Boyd's enthralling stories remind us of his stature as one of contemporary fiction's finest storytellers.

From the Oscar-winning screenwriter of All the President's Men, The Princess Bride, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, here is essential reading for both the aspiring screenwriter and anyone who loves going to the movies. If you want to know why a no-name like Kathy Bates was cast in Misery, it's in here. Or why Linda Hunt's brilliant work in Maverick didn't make the final cut, William Goldman gives you the straight truth. Why Clint Eastwood loves working with Gene Hackman and how MTV has changed movies for the worse,William Goldman, one of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood today, tells all he knows. Devastatingly eye-opening and endlessly entertaining, Which Lie Did I Tell? is indispensable reading for anyone even slightly intrigued by the process of how a movie gets made.