Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits

Dave Barry is the author of Babies and Other Hazards of Sex, Homes and Other Black Holes, Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead, Bad Habits , and Dave Barry’s Guide to Marriage and/or Sex . He received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for his syndicated column. He lives in Coral Gables, Florida, with his family.
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Moon Swept

Almost everyone remembers their first love. And so, we take a peek back at the D'Artigo sisters' first loves in three short stories. Because long before Smoky, Morio, and Trillian came into her life, Camille's heart belonged to her cousin Shamas. And before Shade, Delilah was learning what love meant from her all-too human detective. And Menolly wasn't always a vampire...at one time, she had dreams of creating a family with a man who taught her to respect herself and never settle for anyone who tore her down. Forbidden Love: Camille and Shamas secretly plan their future together, until his envy over her connection to the Moon Mother, and an attempt at an arranged marriage get in the way. Im-Purrfect Match: Delilah never expected to fall for Chase Johnson. But one night, while searching for information on a man named Tom Lane, the werecat and the detective discover an unexpected attraction. Shadows of Love: Menolly wasn't always a vampire. And once, long ago in Otherworld, a gentleman farmer taught her that she should never settle in matters of the heart.
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Strike of the Shark

A gripping adventure story from Bear Grylls, packed with real survival details and dangers at every turn!When Beck Granger is ship-wrecked in the open seas, he needs all of his survival skills to save a small group of passengers.But the sinking was no accident. In order to stay alive, he'll have to work out who wants him dead, and why.That is, if the sharks don't get him first . . .
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So Lovers Dream

This is not the only one of Alec Waugh's novels in which he has described the agonies of a couple who are desperately in love but cannot marry, for it is a situation that he has himself lived through. But it is in this novel that he has drawn most specifically upon experiences he has only alluded to in other books. His protagonist is Gordon Carruthers, who was also the hero of The Loom of Youth, that then shocking and revelatory novel of public-school life. Now transformed into a globe-trotting writer, Carruthers falls in love with a beautiful American socialite, and eventually, while her husband is away, they begin an affair. For reasons that only gradually become clear, their situation seems to be a cul-de-sac, leading to a denouement that is both surprising and, paradoxically, the only possible one. So Lovers Dream is an autobiographical novel in more ways than one. Into it Waugh put not only his love affair but his home, his literary agent, the details of his...
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Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

From Publishers Weekly In a tour of our solar system, galaxy and beyond, Cornell astronomer Sagan meshes a history of astronomical discovery, a cogent brief for space exploration and an overview of life-from its origins in the oceans to humanity's first emergence to a projected future where humans "terraform" and settle other planets and asteroids, Earth having long been swallowed by the sun. Maintaining that such relocation is inevitable, the author further argues that planetary science is of practical utility, fostering an interdisciplinary approach to looming environmental catastrophes such as "nuclear winter" (lethal cooling of Earth after a nuclear war, a widely accepted prediction first calculated by Sagan in 1982). His exploration of our place in the universe is illustrated with photographs, relief maps and paintings, including high-resolution images made by Voyager 1 and 2, as well as photos taken by the Galileo spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope and satellites orbiting Earth, which show our planet as a pale blue dot. A worthy sequel to Sagan's Cosmos. Author tour. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Sagan's great appeal as a popular-science writer, beyond his prodigious knowledge, is his optimism and sense of wonder. A visualizer and a visionary, he fires our imagination and turns science into high drama. After writing about our origins in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992), Sagan turns his attention to outer space and takes up where Cosmos left off 14 years ago. An astonishing amount of information was amassed during that productive era, and Sagan, of course, is up on all of it. A passionate and eloquent advocate of space exploration, he believes that the urge to wander, and the need for a frontier, is intrinsic to our nature, and that this trait is linked to our survival as a species. Throughout this beautifully illustrated, revelatory, and compelling volume, Sagan returns again and again to our need for journeys and quests as well as our unending curiosity about our place in the universe. Such philosophical musings are interwoven with precise and enthusiastic accounts of the triumphs of interplanetary exploration, from the Apollo moon landings to the spectacular findings of robotic missions, especially the Voyager spacecraft. Sagan describes one exciting discovery after another regarding the four giants--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--and their many moons, mysterious and exquisite rings, and volatile atmospheres. He argues, convincingly, that planetary exploration is of immense value. It not only teaches us about our celestial neighbors, but helps us understand and protect Earth. Yes, we have seemingly insurmountable problems on this pale blue dot, but we have always reached for the stars, and we mustn't stop now. Donna Seaman From Publishers Weekly In a tour of our solar system, galaxy and beyond, Cornell astronomer Sagan meshes a history of astronomical discovery, a cogent brief for space exploration and an overview of life-from its origins in the oceans to humanity's first emergence to a projected future where humans "terraform" and settle other planets and asteroids, Earth having long been swallowed by the sun. Maintaining that such relocation is inevitable, the author further argues that planetary science is of practical utility, fostering an interdisciplinary approach to looming environmental catastrophes such as "nuclear winter" (lethal cooling of Earth after a nuclear war, a widely accepted prediction first calculated by Sagan in 1982). His exploration of our place in the universe is illustrated with photographs, relief maps and paintings, including high-resolution images made by Voyager 1 and 2, as well as photos taken by the Galileo spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope and satellites orbiting Earth, which show our planet as a pale blue dot. A worthy sequel to Sagan's Cosmos. Author tour. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Sagan's great appeal as a popular-science writer, beyond his prodigious knowledge, is his optimism and sense of wonder. A visualizer and a visionary, he fires our imagination and turns science into high drama. After writing about our origins in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1992), Sagan turns his attention to outer space and takes up where Cosmos left off 14 years ago. An astonishing amount of information was amassed during that productive era, and Sagan, of course, is up on all of it. A passionate and eloquent advocate of space exploration, he believes that the urge to wander, and the need for a frontier, is intrinsic to our nature, and that this trait is linked to our survival as a species. Throughout this beautifully illustrated, revelatory, and compelling volume, Sagan returns again and again to our need for journeys and quests as well as our unending curiosity about our place in the universe. Such philosophical musings are interwoven with precise and enthusiastic accounts of the triumphs of interplanetary exploration, from the Apollo moon landings to the spectacular findings of robotic missions, especially the Voyager spacecraft. Sagan describes one exciting discovery after another regarding the four giants--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune--and their many moons, mysterious and exquisite rings, and volatile atmospheres. He argues, convincingly, that planetary exploration is of immense value. It not only teaches us about our celestial neighbors, but helps us understand and protect Earth. Yes, we have seemingly insurmountable problems on this pale blue dot, but we have always reached for the stars, and we mustn't stop now. Donna Seaman
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His Second War

Alec Waugh, who served in the last war as a regular army officer, was recalled to his regiment in September 1939. After a few months of regimental duties he has filled a succession of Junior Staff appointment, with the B.E.F. in France, in London during the Blitz, with the M.E.F in Syria and Egypt and latterly with the Persia and Iraq command. This book is the narrative of his four years in khaki. It makes no attempt to be sensational, but the range and variety of those experiences have provided ample scope for that capacity to convey character, atmosphere and landscape which has made Alec Waugh so popular a novelist.
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Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize)

ReviewNovel by Saul Bellow, published in 1975. The novel, which won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976, is a self-described "comic book about death," whose title character is modeled on the self-destructive lyric poet Delmore Schwartz. Charlie Citrine, an intellectual, middle-aged author of award-winning biographies and plays, contemplates two significant figures and philosophies in his life: Von Humboldt Fleisher, a dead poet who had been his mentor, and Rinaldo Cantabile, a very-much-alive minor mafioso who has been the bane of Humboldt's existence. Humboldt had taught Charlie that art is powerful and that one should be true to one's creative spirit. Rinaldo, Charlie's self-appointed financial adviser, has always urged Charlie to use his art to turn a profit. At the novel's end, Charlie has managed to set his own course. -- __Product DescriptionA chronicle of success and failure, this work is Bellow's tale of the writer's life in America. When Humboldt dies a failure in a seedy New York hotel, Charlie Citrine coping with the tribulations of his own success, begins to realize the significance of his own life.
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Fighting Terrorism

In this innovative and concise work, Israeli politician Benjamin Netanyahu offers a compelling approach to understanding and fighting the increase in domestic and international terrorism throughout the world. Citing diverse examples from around the globe, Netanyahu demonstrates that domestic terrorist groups are usually no match for an advanced technological society which can successfully roll back terror without any significant curtailment of civil liberties. But Netanyahu sees an even more potent threat from the new international terrorism which is increasingly the product of Islamic militants, who draw their inspiration and directives from Iran and its growing cadre of satellite states. The spread of fundamentalist Islamic terrorism, coupled with the possibility that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, poses a more frightening threat from an adversary less rational and therefore less controllable than was Soviet Communism. How democracies can defend themselves against...
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Electric Dreams

The Stories Behind the Series Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than one hundred short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams collects ten of the best. In "Autofac," Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines. "Exhibit Piece" and "The Commuter" feature Dick exploring one of his favorite themes: the shifting nature of reality and whether it is even possible to perceive the world as it truly exists. And "The Hanging Stranger" provides a thrilling, dark political allegory as relevant today as it was when Dick wrote it at the height of the Cold War. Strange, funny, and powerful, the stories in this collection highlight a master at work, encapsulating his boundless imagination and deep understanding of the human condition.
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