Books about Commonwealth from Amazon.com

From the #1 bestselling author of Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim comes a collection of the short stories David Sedaris loves most. Containing the work of both contemporary and classic writers, CHILDREN PLAYING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES, edited and introduced by Sedaris, gives his legions of fans a glimpse at the writing he finds inspiring - and helps them discover the truth about loneliness, hope, love, betrayal, and certain, but not all, monkeys.

David Sedaris fell in love with short stories while living in Odell, Oregon. Sedaris writes, "When apple-picking season ended, I got a job in a packing plant and gravitated toward short stories, which I could read during my break and reflect upon for the remainder of my shift. A good one would take me out of myself and stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit." Featuring such notable writers as Alice Munro, Tobias Wolff, Lorrie Moore, and Joyce Carol Oates, readers will reconnect with classics, as well discover fantastic but lesser-known writers.

Included in CHILDREN PLAYING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES are:

• Introduction by David Sedaris

• "Oh, Joseph, I'm So Tired" by Richard Yates

• "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter

• "Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri

• "The Garden Party" by Katherine Mansfield

• "Half A Grapefruit" by Alice Munro

• "Applause, Applause" by Jean Thompson

• "I Know What I'm Doing About All the Attention I've Been Getting" by Frank Gannon

• "Where the Door Is Always Open and the Welcome Mat Is Out" by Patricia Highsmith

• "The Best of Betty" by Jincy Willett

• "Song of the Shirt, 1941" by Dorothy Parker

• "The Girl with the Blackened Eye" by Joyce Carol Oates

• "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" by Lorrie Moore

• "Revelation" by Flannery O'Connor

• "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel

• "Cosmopolitan" by Akhil Sharma

• "Irish Girl" by Tim Johnston

• "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff

• Epilogue by Sarah Vowell

Borrowing the book's name from an Adriaen van der Werff painting, CHILDREN PLAYING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES is David Sedaris's attempt to share his passion for short stories with a wider audience-and his enthusiasm is contagious. "The authors in this book are huge to me, and I am a comparative midget, scratching around in their collective shadow. 'Pint sized Fanatic Bowing Before Statues of Hercules' might have been more concise, but people don't paint things like that, and besides, it doesn't sound as good."

David Sedaris is publishing this book to support 826NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York. All of his proceeds, after permission expenses, from CHILDREN PLAYING BEFORE A STATUE OF HERCULES will benefit this organization designed to help students ages six to eighteen develop their writing skills through free writing workshops, publishing projects, and one-on-one help with homework and English-language learning. In the book's epilogue, Sarah Vowell describes the fine work done by 826NYC..
Price: $6.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Offering readers key women's writings from the eighth century to the present, this global and multicultural anthology includes selections written in English by women from Great Britain and the U.S. as well as Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Croatia, Ghana, India, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa. Organized thematically, the anthology emphasizes five important topics for women writers finding a voice, writing the body, rethinking the maternal, identity and difference, and resistance and transformation. Pivotal works of feminist theory by Woolf, Cixous, Showalter, hooks, Trinh, and others are also included. For those interested in women's literature.

.
Price: $88.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The customary modern image of the New England Puritans is a dark one: the Puritans, religious dissenters who valued propriety and order, are seen as a witch-hunting, suspicious tribe, and their very name carries connotations of grimness and primness.

Thirty years ago, at the outset of his career as a historian, John Demos decided to reexamine that view in light of the evidence. Among the findings that he reports in A Little Commonwealth is the surprising discovery that the Puritans were not so, well, puritanical. They were not, Demos argues, especially consumed by ideology, and in their daily lives, "religion seems to figure in a somewhat haphazard and occasional way." The Puritans, he continues, had no unusual objections to sexuality or fun-seeking, except where such activities endangered social harmony--and the Puritans were indeed fiercely protective of group stability. Demos examines such documents as the transcripts of divorce proceedings to suggest that Puritan women enjoyed, if not equal rights, then better consideration than most women in other English colonies in the New World. He looks closely into the material culture of the Puritans, which shows some odd discrepancies: for instance, although few households possessed more than a single chair (usually reserved for the elderly), many contained elaborate wardrobes--for, Demos writes, "clothing was not only a good investment for a man of some means; it was also a way of demonstrating his standing in the larger community and of confirming his own self-image."

In questioning the view of the Puritans as a plain-dressing, plain-living, haunted, and repressed sect, Demos provides a close and intriguing look at the New England past. Reissued on the 30th anniversary of its first publication, A Little Commonwealth deserves a wide audience today. --Gregory McNamee.
Price: $8.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Bestselling author Alan Dean Foster’s new adventure takes place in the amazing Humanx Commonwealth, home of the ever-popular Pip & Flinx. Although the dynamic redhead and his daring minidrag do not appear in Quofum,this knockout thrillersets the stage for their explosive date with destiny in the duo’s final climactic adventure, Flinx Transcendent.

The mission to planet Quofum is supposed to be a quickie for Captain Boylan and his crew. Boylan is tasked with delivering four scientists–two men, one woman, and one thranx–to the unknown world, setting up camp while the experts investigate flora and fauna, then ferrying them safely home.
The first surprise is that Quofum, which regularly slips in and out of existence on Commonwealth monitors, is actually therewhen Boylan and company arrive. The second surprise is more about what Quofum is not: The planet is not logical, ordered, or rational.

The team encounters three intelligent, warring species–some carbon-based, others silicate-based, all bizarre–along with thousands of unique, often unclassifiable life-forms. Quofum’s wild biodiversity doesn’t appear to be natural. But if it is by design, then by whose, and for what purpose?

There are more revelations, more highly evolved species waiting to be identified, even tantalizing clues to a civilization light-years ahead of the Commonwealth’s. But the crew members are not ready for the real shockers, because none of them expect to find a killer in their midst, or to discover that their spaceship is missing and, with it, all means of communication.

Of course, the marooned teammates know nothing about the Great Evil racing toward the galaxy, and they certainly have never heard of Flinx, the only person with half a chance to stop it. Nor do they know that Quofum could play a crucial role in defeating the all-devouring monster from beyond.
One thing the scientists do know, however, is how to ferret out the truth. But whether that will be enough to alter the course of the oncoming catastrophe is anyone’s guess..
Price: $16.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

.
Price: $12.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Postcolonial StudiesReader is the essential introduction to the most important texts in post-colonial theory and criticism Updating and expanding the coverage of the highly successful first edition, this second edition now offers 121 extracts from key works in the field, arranged in clearly introduced sections on:
· Issues and Debates
· Universality and Difference
· Representation and Resistance
· Nationalism
· Hybridity
· Indigeneity
· Ethnicity
· Race
· Feminism
· Language
· The Body and Performance
· History
· Place
· Education
· Production and Consumption
· Diaspora
· Globalization
· Environment
· The Sacred

Leading figures in the areas of post-colonial writing, theory and criticism are represented, as are critics who are as yet less well-known. As in the first edition, the Reader ranges as widely as possible in order to reflect the remarkable diversity of work in the discipline and the vibrancy of anti-imperialist writing both within and without the metropolitan centres. Covering more debates, topics and critics than any comparable book in its field, The Postcolonial Studies Reader provides the ideal starting point for students and issues a potent challenge to the ways in which we think and write about literature and culture..
Price: $35.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]