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Too Much Tuscan Sun: Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide
by Castagno, Dario
What Frances Mayes Won't Tell You Tuscany should be called Touristcany. Or should it? |
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Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series
by Asinof, Eliot
Baseball's Gambling Era Expect more than usual interest in the 1919 Chicago White Sox team with the 2005 World Series victory of Chicago's storied franchise. Eliot Asinof's book is an essential starting point. |
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Rabbit at Rest
by Updike, John
John Updike's finest hour. His best work, and there's a lot of it, has given him an indelible place in our American letters. He is one of our literary masters and Rabbit at Rest is where he is at the peak of his powers. |
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Gasping For Airtime: Two Years in the Trenches of "Saturday Night Live"
by Mohr, Jay
Jay Mohr was on SNL?! I can think of at least twenty cast members and writers who would be more qualified to write an SNL memoir - people who spent more time and made more of an impact on the show during better points in its history. Not to mention, people whose personal collection of gossip stories would have actually been entertaining. |
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How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life
by Lama, Dalai
Learning from a Bodhisattva The Dalai Lama shares wisdom with a practical guide for meditation and living with the proper perspective and compassion. |
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Cherry
by Karr, Mary
Drug-laden memoir of adolescence Some of Mary Karr's best episodes, she's not afraid to admit, occurred while under the influence of this, that or the other, and a couple of them have a wickedly cool youth-fiction-meets-Hunter S. Thompson feel to them. It's hard not to burst into a wide grin as Karr trips out and sees the apparition of her high-school geometry teacher |
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30 Frames Per Second: The Visionary Art of the Music Video
by Reiss, Steve and Feineman, Neil
An artform immortalized... finally It's hard to convince people that the music video medium - over all the others - can most succinctly combine abstract, disjointed imagery with music and narrative. Videos can simultaneously hold the attention of a person with a PhD in art and a teenager stoned off his ass. |
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April 1865
by Winik, Jay
America's Turning Point For Civil War buffs and anyone with an interest in this period in American history. Jay Winik's lively narrative reads like a suspense novel. |
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Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
by Klosterman, Chuck
Why Pop Culture Matters What sets Chuck Klosterman apart from most cynical, intellectual writers is that he doesn't pretend to be above pop culture because he knows he would be fighting a losing battle. |
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Cobb: a Biography
by Stump, Al
Baseball's Meanest Man Heminway recognized Ty Cobb as a great player and "an absolute shit." Stump expounds on this basic concept in full detail in a very readable biography. |
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