Books about Backwards from Amazon.com

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Price: $12.25 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A new voice in the tradition of Anne Tyler and Anita Shreve

Christmas Eve 1967: the night the lives of the McDonald children, Deborah, Robert, James, and Meredith, changed forever. Th eir mother, Rosemarie, told them she was running out to buy more lights for the tree. Instead, she boarded a plane bound for London, leaving the children with their father and the gnawing question: Why did their mother abandon them?

Over the years the siblings have become practiced in concealing their pain, remaining close into adulthood and forming their own families. But long-closed wounds are reopened and secrets that each sibling has locked away come to light, as their father progresses into dementia and James encounters Rosemarie after nearly forty years of her absence. Veitch’s family portrait reveals the joys and sorrows, the complexity and ambiguity of family life, and poignantly probes what it means to love and what it means to leave..
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Backwards is the true story of one big firm trial lawyer's after death face-to-face communication with God/Source about the mysteries of life and death. Backwards shatters the age-old belief that we are mere humans, that fate determines our destinies, and that a task master God demands our obedience and worship. Nanci L. Danison, JD, brings the credibility of a trial lawyer trained to evaluate evidence to her account of the answers to our most pressing spiritual questions: who is God? Who am I? What is the purpose of life? Why am I here? What happens when we die? And how should I live my life here on Earth? She offers a "life plan" from the afterlife that originates in and resonates with our true spiritual nature, and provides step-by-step guidance on how to access and develop our Source-like traits in order to bring peace and happiness to our own lives and our planet..
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Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life. A generous sampling, collected here for the first time and including works as diverse as scholarly art criticism and some decidedly untypical country-
music lyrics, Wild Ducks Flying Backward offers a rare sweeping overview of the eclectic
sensibility of an American original.

Whether he is rocking with the Doors, depoliticizing Picasso’s Guernica, lamenting the angst-ridden state of contemporary literature, or drooling over tomato sandwiches and a species of womanhood he calls “the genius waitress,” Robbins’s briefer writings often exhibit the same five traits that perhaps best characterize his novels: an imaginative wit, a cheerfully brash disregard for convention, a sweetly nasty eroticism, a
mystical but keenly observant eye, and an irrepressible love of language.

Embedded in this primarily journalistic compilation are a couple of short stories, a sheaf of largely unpublished poems, and an off-beat assessment of our divided nation. And wherever we open Wild Ducks Flying Backward, we’re apt to encounter examples of the intently serious playfulness that percolates from the mind of a self-described “romantic Zen hedonist” and “stray dog in the banquet halls of culture.”


From the Hardcover edition..
Price: $6.68 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The world of modern art is a mystery to many. But for Jim Qwilleran, it turns into a mystery of another sort when his assignment to the art beat for The Daily Fluxion leads down the path to murder. A stabbing in an art gallery, vandalized paintings, a fatal fall from a scaffolding--this is not at all what Qwilleran expects when he turns his reportorial talents to art. But Qwilleran and his newly found partner, Koko the brilliant Siamese, are back in their element--sniffing out clues and confounding criminals intent on mayhem and murder. .
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Set in Boston on December 26, 2000, but written before the turn of the nineteenth century, this classic Utopian novel is more significant and relevant than ever with its reappearance this millennium. Addressing moral and material concerns of late nineteenth century industrial America through romantic narrative, Bellamy suggests a fictionalized society in which war, poverty, and malice do not exist..
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On December 15, 1811, two of Thomas Jefferson's nephews murdered a slave in cold blood and put his body parts into a roaring fire. The evidence would have been destroyed but for a rare act of God -- or, as some believed, of the Indian chief Tecumseh

That same day, the Mississippi River's first steamboat, piloted by Nicholas Roosevelt, powered itself toward New Orleans on its maiden voyage. The sky grew hazy and red, and jolts of electricity flashed in the air. A prophecy by Tecumseh was about to be fulfilled.

He had warned reluctant warrior-tribes that he would stamp his feet and bring down their houses. Sure enough, between December 16, 1811, and late April 1812, a catastrophic series of earthquakes shook the Mississippi River Valley. Of the more than 2,000 tremors that rumbled across the land during this time, three would have measured nearly or greater than 8.0 on the not-yet-devised Richter Scale. Centered in what is now the bootheel region of Missouri, the New Madrid earthquakes were felt as far away as Canada; New York; New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; and the western part of the Missouri River. A million and a half square miles were affected as the earth's surface remained in a state of constant motion for nearly four months. Towns were destroyed, an eighteen-mile-long by five-mile-wide lake was created, and even the Mississippi River temporarily ran backwards.

The quakes uncovered Jefferson's nephews' cruelty and changed the course of the War of 1812 as well as the future of the new republic. In When the Mississippi Ran Backwards, Jay Feldman expertly weaves together the story of the slave murder, the steamboat, Tecumseh, and the war, and brings a forgotten period back to vivid life. Tecumseh's widely believed prophecy, seemingly fulfilled, hastened an unprecedented alliance among southern and northern tribes, who joined the British in a disastrous fight against the U.S. government. By the end of the war, the continental United States was secure against Britain, France, and Spain; the Indians had lost many lives and much land; and Jefferson's nephews were exposed as murderers. The steamboat, which survived the earthquake, was sunk.

When the Mississippi Ran Backwards sheds light on this now-obscure yet pivotal period between the Revolutionary and Civil wars, uncovering the era's dramatic geophysical, political, and military upheavals. Feldman paints a vivid picture of how these powerful earthquakes made an impact on every aspect of frontier life -- and why similar catastrophic quakes are guaranteed to recur. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards is popular history at its best..
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A Backward Glance is Edith Wharton's vivid account of both her public and her private life. With richness and delicacy, it describes the sophisticated New York society in which Wharton spent her youth, and chronicles her travels throughout Europe and her literary success as an adult. Beautifully depicted are her friendships with many of the most celebrated artists and writers of her day, including her close friend Henry James.

In his introduction to this edition, Louis Auchincloss calls the writing in A Backward Glance "as firm and crisp and lucid as in the best of her novels." It is a memoir that will charm and fascinate all readers of Wharton's fiction.

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Price: $7.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Imagine your whole day lived backward, from beginning to end. When you got up, you’d put on your jacket, then your shirt and pants, and over those your underwear, because after all, backward is backward, and on a backward day backward is the way everything has to be. You’d walk downstairs backward and sit on your chair backward with your back to the table, and when your parents greeted you in the morning you’d say, of course, “Good night.” But how long can a backward day go on? Just long enough for a smart kid to reverse the spell he’s cast on the whole household and return everything to normal. The Backward Day, a delightfully stylish picture book by the Caldecott Prize–winning team of Marc Simont and Ruth Krauss, brings to life a humorous and engaging reversal of ordinary reality that will enchant young children, as well parents..
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