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Fahrenheit 451
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic, frightening vision of the future, firemen don't put out fires--they start them in order to burn books. Bradbury's vividly painted society holds up the appearance of happiness as the highest goal--a place where trivial information is good, and knowledge and ideas are bad. Fire Captain Beatty explains it this way, "Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs.... Don't give them slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy." Guy Montag is a book-burning fireman undergoing a crisis of faith. His wife spends all day with her television "family," imploring Montag to work harder so that they can afford a fourth TV wall. Their dull, empty life sharply contrasts with that of his next-door neighbor Clarisse, a young girl thrilled by the ideas in books, and more interested in what she can see in the world around her than in the mindless chatter of the tube. When Clarisse disappears mysteriously, Montag is moved to make some changes, and starts hiding books in his home. Eventually, his wife turns him in, and he must answer the call to burn his secret cache of books. After fleeing to avoid arrest, Montag winds up joining an outlaw band of scholars who keep the contents of books in their heads, waiting for the time society will once again need the wisdom of literature. Bradbury--the author of more than 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems, including The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man--is the winner of many awards, including the Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Readers ages 13 to 93 will be swept up in the harrowing suspense of Fahrenheit 451, and no doubt will join the hordes of Bradbury fans worldwide. --Neil Roseman.
Price: $2.66
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In the Beauty of the Lilies
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The Public Burning (Coover, Robert)
For quite some time after the 1977 publication of The Public Burning, it was almost impossible to find a copy. The book's own publisher seemed--no, was reluctant to admit it even existed That's because this imaginative reconstruction of the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted for giving atom bomb secrets to the Soviets, was the first major work of modern fiction to feature a still-living historical figure as a prominent character. The book's obscurity was the publisher's attempt to avoid legal repercussions from Richard Nixon, who over the course of the book engages in a romantic interlude with Ethel Rosenberg and graphically surrenders himself to a rapacious Uncle Sam. Now that Nixon's dead, however, readers are free to marvel at one of the few American novels to rival Joyce's Ulysses for sustained stylistic inventiveness. Snippets of speeches and articles from Time are recast in poetic form, entire scenes are presented in dramatic verse, as events in the Rosenberg case move towards their historically destined conclusion. --Ron Hogan.
Price: $6.98
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A Slow Burning
Nat Hennessey, a New York cop, is about to marry Camilla Bissonette when the past catches up with both of them in this complicated thriller by the author of The Fourth Procedure. Nat's father was beaten to death by a black man who never paid for his crime. He believes he has no racial bias against African-Americans, but Cush Walker, a brilliant black scientist who's convinced he's found the neurobiological basis of racism in the human brain, thinks otherwise. Walker has his own haunted past; his father was lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 60s. Now Walker proposes to scan the brains of the NYPD for racial bias, a prospect that alarms Nat and his colleagues. But that's not the only reason for Nat's antipathy toward the scientist; Walker and Camilla were once lovers, and the reason she broke off their affair is somehow related to his experimental procedure. But just as she's about to tell Nat about Cush--and reveal an even murkier secret about the circumstances of her own birth--she's shot by the criminal who killed Nat's father. In laboratory and operating room scenes that will appeal to fans of Robin Cook and Michael Crichton, Cush tries to bring Camilla out of her coma with a risky, potentially fatal, and untested procedure that puts Nat's life in peril too. Slow Burning isn't an easy read, but it's a fascinating one that attempts to combine cutting-edge neuroscience with an explanation for the deep-seated racism that Pottinger believes bedevils everyone. Scientific explanations slow down the pace, and occasionally the characters seem like talking heads instead of complete and complex individuals, but it's the implications of Pottinger's thesis that will disturb the reader and resonate in the mind after the last page is turned. --Jane Adams.
Price: $0.69
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The Slow Burning Love of God (Mahanta Transcripts , No 13)
Jacket Copy What happens to those first bright flames of your most profound spiritual experiences? Most of us have known some kind of religious conversion, dramatic shift of consciousness, out-of-body experience, or renewed spiritual awareness You know what you've found is real, but as the intensity fades, you wonder. Are you left with only dying embers? Or do you discover the long-last, slow burning love of God? You will, as you keep giving of yourself. This is how love endures. In The Slow Burning Love of God, the thirteenth book of The Mahanta Transcripts series, you'll find simple, true-life stories, unique insights, and more than thirty different techniques to show you how to experience the presence of God in your life. Move into higher states of consciousness, see truth when it comes to you, solve problems, and find your next spiritual step. The Mahanta Transcripts are excerpts from Harold Klemp's worldwide speaking tours. They offer study aids for greater spiritual understanding, and are an excellent introduction to Eckankar..
Price: $21.38
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