First you took [the title] at face value, and picked it up immediately. "This is just the sort of book for which I have been looking!" Many of you, particularly those among you who seek out the maudlin and melodramatic, were struck by the "Heartbreaking" part. Others thought the "Staggering Genius" ...
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When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still p ...
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This story of the remarkably long and happy marriage of Vladimir and V?ra Nabokov emphasizes V?ra's extraordinary devotion, which manifested itself in ways that were pivotal to Nabokov's work as both a writer and a teacher. The book brings both Nabokovs to life, and provides fascinating revelations ...
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<blockquote><i>"This is a book about that most admirable of human virtues-- courage. 'Grace under pressure,' Ernest Hemingway defined it. And these are the stories of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators and the grace with which they endured them."</i><p>-- John F. Kennedy</p></ ...
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Gathers James essays about fiction, literary criticism, and the works of Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Howells, Stowe, Arnold, Browning, Byron, Trollope, and Stevenson.