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The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide. (read more)

Divisadero takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada's casinos and eventually to the landscape of south-central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time — Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around "the raw truth" of Anna's own life, the one she's left behind but can never truly leave. And as the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough hewn from the past. (read more)

"John Perkins has written a book that shakes one's confidence in the ethics of the prevailing economic system. We are in troubling times and need to understand realistically the price we are paying for the 'free' market we enjoy. Perkins has written an extraordinary tale." Jim Garrison, author of America As Empire, President of the State of the World Forum (read more)

An ensemble story marked by Yael Hedaya's exquisite sensitivity, Accidents follows its cast through fragility, vulnerability, and joy, accruing the small events of unremarkable days to produce a grand vision of the shared life. Rarely has the fictional world of family been plumbed with such knowingness, humor, and love. (read more)

While politicians spew shallow sound bites that describe a "free" American people who govern themselves by selecting their representatives, in reality politicians from both parties maintain control by selecting specific voters. Incumbent politicians control thousands of election practices and bureaucratic hurdles that determine who votes and how their votes are counted, including the location of election-district boundaries, the number of booths at urban polling places, and English-only ballots. Spencer Overton uses real-life stories to show how these seemingly insignificant practices channel political power and determine policies on war, schools, clean air, and other issues that shape our lives. (read more)

The vast majority of screenplay and writing books focus on story development and have little to say about the initial concept that generated the piece. Developing Story Ideas offers students and other young artists a spectrum of resources and a structure of writing practice so that anyone can quickly and reliably generate a wide variety of stories in a broad range of forms. It first shows you how to observe situations, acts, and themes-and use these observations as the basis for storytelling. (read more)

"Striking and spirited in its presentation, this short, rapid-fire novel reads like a hymn to the travails of love and work, marriage and babies, illness and sex, sexism and the '60s, Revlon and Bergdorf's. Its framework is a Jewish couple in an exclusive New York suburb, but its reach is clearly more universal....Exquisitely perceptive and a little bit catty, Hill's novel goes down in one smooth, satisfying gulp." Wade Edwards, The Virginia Quarterly Review (read more)

Louise Erdrich never ceases to amaze readers with her elegant prose and her penetrating insight into the human psyche. In her twelfth novel, ,i>The Painted Drum, she crafts an intricate story about the overlapping lives in a small New Hampshire town and the reverberating effects of a family?s tragedy. Tin House magazine (read more)