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Kent's Picks

Kent started as a seasonal cashier in 2009 and now works the main floor as well.  He loves to read history, biography and anthropology.
$27.00
ISBN-13: 9780802714251
Availability: Special Order - Subject to Availability
Published: Walker & Company, 4/2004
This is one of those stories of early European adventurers who travelled so far on sea and land through parts unknown, accomplished so much, and had so much fortune and misfortune and then lived to tell about it, that you are simply astonished. William Dampier was an English sailor who played with the line between privateer (sanctioned raider), and buccaneer (pirate.) An astute naturalist as well, he inspired Darwin, and his travelogues inspired the literature of Swift and Defoe. This book is a wonderful discovery of an original man.

$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780393064476
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: W. W. Norton & Company, 9/2011

Worldly ex-papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini, combing through a monastery library in 1417, discovered a copy of On the Nature of Things, written by Lucretius in the 1st century BC. Espousing atomism, Epicureanism, and a belief that the gods care not about human affairs, the text was key, Greenblatt says, to inspiring the Renaissance and shaping our modern world. In politics, theology and art, we have grappled with these 'new' ideas since the 15th century.

The history of how ancient texts barely survive is fascinating, and I loved this book because it enlightened me to those ancient philosophers.


$26.00
ISBN-13: 9780465004850
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Basic Books, 3/2010
This well-researched accounting of the Lost Colony does not slouch into myth and conspiracy theories as others have done. Horn sets the events within their economic and political contexts, and finds reasonable evidence to show where many of the colonists ended up. The book is still captivating though, and heartbreaking. Personal stories of the colonists are included, as well as the stories of those whose actions affected the outcome of the colony, such as John White (colony leader and grandfather of Virginia Dare), and Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I.

$16.00
ISBN-13: 9780143119166
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Penguin (Non-Classics), 4/2011
Mould is a dealer in fine paintings.  Always eloquent, but never lofty, he describes the high stakes art world, and the thrill and anxiety of pursuing finds that can turn out to be either masterpieces or fakes.  The chapter on the Norman Rockwell hoax is spellbinding.  For art lust and intrigue, you can't do better than this book.

$26.95
ISBN-13: 9780375710155
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Knopf, 5/2005
The story of Fallingwater embodies so many things: the comeback of Frank Lloyd Wright, the story of modern architecture, the story of the Kaufmann retail family, and the story of Pittsburgh. And then there's the house itself. Leaving no stone unturned,Toker weaves it all together in this fantastically interesting and engrossing history.

$28.00
ISBN-13: 9780618758289
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 5/2011
Here are the unsung stories of the British anti-war activists of WWI. Against the grain, they fought the ideas of class, nationalism, and Empire; ideas used by the glorifiers of the war to justify unprecedented carnage. While giving an excellent history of the war, Hochschild frames it with contrasting biographies of its protesters and supporters, and he shows how, ironically, the ideas of workers' rights, socialism and independence began to flourish as the war spent empires. This well-written book struck me with the senselessness, and yet the profundity, of WWI.

$34.99
ISBN-13: 9780061237225
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Harper, 12/2010
It's not surprising that the Rockefellers would become collectors of fine art. But with what a passion and eye they did so! And with what a progressive bent, being early proponents and patrons of Modern and non-European art. Believing that great art should be available to everyone, they founded and funded great museums, and were behind the creation of great public spaces furnished with cutting-edge art. As a collector myself, this book is a vicarious thrill!

$30.00
ISBN-13: 9780553806700
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Bantam, 1/2011
In August 1942 the US first truly went on the offensive in the Pacific, capturing a Japanese airfield on Guadalcanal Island. In stunning scope and detail Hornfischer explains how the US and Allies fought off all attempts of the Imperial Japanese Navy to retake it. The ferocious and awe-inspiring naval battles, the portraits of US Naval leadership in shakeout, and the groping new use of radar illustrate the pivotal and epic nature of the Guadalcanal Campaign.

Books: A Memoir (Paperback)

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9781416583356
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Simon & Schuster, 7/2009
This is the first of McMurtry's three excellent memoirs, and this one is based on his life as an antiquarian bookseller and collector.  His chapters are short and accessible, and his elegant plain speaking and subtle humor easily draw you into this book.

Jitterbug Perfume (Paperback)

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780553348989
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Bantam, 4/1990
This is my first Tom Robbins novel and I'm hooked.  JITTERBUG PERFUME is a crazy quilt of entertaining characters striving for immortality and enlightenment across time, the key to which may just be a perfume based on beet root or jasmine.  Dark Age King Alobar's people will kill him at the first sign of age; in New Orleans, Madame Devalier schemes to beat the Parisian perfumers to the ultimate scent; smelly goat god Pan suffers from irrelevancy.  Robbins somehow weaves the themes of fragrance and transcendence together into a tale that will transport you too.

$15.00
ISBN-13: 9780375758621
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 3/2002
In this non-fiction work, Carhart gives us an engaging and mildly mysterious story about a seclusive piano repair shop in his Paris neighborhood.  As he uncovers the shop and its proprietor, he rediscovers the piano: he learns how they work and why each one is unique.  You don't have to know music or play piano to be absorbed by this book.

$15.95
ISBN-13: 9780060006778
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Harper Perennial, 2/2005
I grew up wondering if the WWII firebombing of Dresden, Germany was unjustified. Were fatalities as immense as is often claimed, and was Dresden not a valid military target? Taylor explains how city-center bombing evolved during the war, and how Dresden wound up as one of the most terrible examples of it. This book is well-researched and well-reasoned, and answers a lot of questions.

$14.00
ISBN-13: 9780767915304
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Broadway, 6/2004
Ever wish you could drop it all and move to a South Pacific island?  J. Maarten Troost did it, and the result is this very funny cautionary tale, which redefines culture shock.  I love Troost's writing style: he's at once dry and hysterical, and his wit is biting, but not bitter.  He'll keep you reading simply for the pleasure of it.

$19.95
ISBN-13: 9781557503626
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: US Naval Institute Press, 4/1996
It seems the histories of WWII often overlook the early and terrifying U-boat war, very close to home off the US East Coast.  But Torpedo Junction fills in all gaps.  It's filled with suspenseful and stirring accounts of personal heroism and dedication in desperate straits, on both sides.  Homer Hickham also gives us a thorough record of German U-boats: their captains and tactics, and tells how the sluggish merchant marine and Coast Guard figured out how to face this challenge.


ISBN-13: 9780807046678
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Beacon Press, 8/2005
What is death? What is the soul?  Cosmic questions, but the author tackles them by examining how human cultures have ritualized and even invented death, in sometimes grisly and disturbing ways.  Whether or not you've decided what you think about these topics, this book will challenge and provoke you.

$17.95
ISBN-13: 9780375725531
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Vintage, 11/2003
Samuel Pepys was a man on the rise in Enlightenment England and he kept a diary.  Through his eyes Tomalin gives us a front row seat to transforming events like the English Revolution, Restoration, the Great Fire of London, and plague.  But just as interesting is Tomalin's exploration of how Pepys so candidly studied himself in his diary, along with the people he knew, from his housemaid to the king.  It's exhilarating you-are-there history, and intimate, unvarnished biography.