Get big savings on 150+ math and physics titles from Springer and Princeton University Press. Sale ends December 23. (lower level)
Twilight: Los Angeles, 1982
by Anna Deavere Smith
title chosen by Sebastian, Store Associate
Reading this book I was forced to face the reality of our collective history not two decades past. A journey through a series of interviews exposed the gritty truth of racism, poverty, and discrimination as true then as it is now. This is a masterful piece, exposing the highs and lows of humanity. Sometimes funny, sometimes gut-wrenching, i promise the 30+ stories captured here will make you really think.
Runner
by Thomas Perry, Cornell ‘69
title chosen by Gary, Deputy Director
After a nine year hiatus, Perry has delivered the sixth installment in the Jane Whitefield series. Jane, a Native American who lives in Buffalo, is a guide who helps people disappear. The stories are well told and the details of Jane’s craft are fascinating. In Runner, she chooses to end her self-imposed retirement to help a pregnant young woman start a new life. The process has become more complicated in today’s networked and homeland security conscious world. The plot is suitably twisty, the upstate New York locations are dead on, and Perry’s narration is reliably smooth as the action unfolds. Perry is a master and Jane is a terrific heroine if you’d like to encounter her for the first time, try Vanishing Act, the start of the series.
The History of Love
by Nicole Krauss
title chosen by Leeann, Marketing Program Administrator
To those of you who are afraid that this is a maudlin romance novel: don’t be. It’s not. This is a rich, complex and gorgeously written story of profound loss and survival, and the little thoughts and actions people engage in to keep moving forward and recover hope—or that thing we often refer to as hope, in retrospect. Despite its emotional weight, this book left me feeling strangely exhilarated and inspired. Need another reason to pick this up? Best. Ending. Ever. (Or at least the best of 2006.)
My Sister’s Keeper
by Jody Picoult
Anne who was conceived to save her two year old sister who is dying of Leukemia. At 13 Anne is told that her sister now needs a kidney transplant. She decides to hire a lawyer to sue her parents for medical emancipation so she can make decisions about her own body. My Sister’s Keeper tells the story of the family’s struggle to deal with the decision that Anne has made.
Fiske College Guides
Combining statistical and numerical data with loose yet insightful essays for each school – these drawn from contact with a variety of members from each respective institution’s academic community – the Fiske Guide is a single package program for evaluating colleges and universities across the country. The Fiske Guide has been embraced for decades due to its solid academic evaluation and its unique and detailed coverage of the social and cultural side of the included academic institutions. In a world of thick educational marketing and confusing, contradictory institutional evaluations, The Fiske Guide offers a sound, well-rounded and independent resource for those just beginning, revisiting or reevaluating their path towards higher education.
Drift and Pulse
by Kathleen Halme
Always suggestive and ephemeral, Drift and Pulse dwells in language of submarine opacity; the strange and the familiar seeming always already a conglomerate distortion. The overall affect is one of spellbinding aesthetics and a resonate reevaluation of the very processes of understanding. Kathleen Halme’s poetry, here as always, conjures complex, contemplative and emotive visualizations that pass as quickly back to self-reflexive thought as they did into being.
Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahayana
by Daniel Boucher
Cornell professor Daniel Boucher brings his considerable knowledge of Indian and Chinese Buddhism to questions regarding the sociohistorical context of the early Mahayana. Drawing upon previous studies and the range of textual material, Boucher determines the ‘Great Vehicle’ be regarded as a collection of diverse strands of thought and practice standing in direct relation to Mainstream-Buddhism, illustrated well by his translation of the Rastrapalapariprcchasutra.
Zeno’s Conscience
by Italo Svevo
Straddling both truth and fiction, credibility and incredulity, the modern and the postmodern, humanism and antihumanism, Zeno’s Conscience holds the reader spellbound through a continual volley of irrational, poignant and hilarious contradictions, which, in homage to Svevo’s prose, never become convoluted in the process. A book that is once light and fathomless, Zeno deserves a more solid place in the western canon, yet its willingness to poise itself upon the convergence of some of our deepest of cultural contradictions may have hindered it from achieving an appropriate degree of recognition. Yet, for those willing to venture through its pages, its relevance recurs, like a nervous tick, obvious but difficult to broach.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
by Sherman Alexie, art by Ellen Forney
The articles about Sherman Alexie’s March 6, 2009 talk at Cornell drew my attention to this title. The book is a raw yet humorous first-person account of Junior’s coming of age while balancing his heritage on the reservation with the formation of a new identity at the all-white high school. He experiences many tragedies but perseveres through it all matter-of-factly. It’s a book full of strength, inspiration, wit, and great cartoons too!
