Penguin Group

The Extermination of Michael Moore is his anti-memoir. Breaking the autobiographical mode, he hilariously presents 20 far-ranging, irreverent vignettes from his own life. Moore is his own meta-Forrest Gump, as one moment he's an 11-year old boy stuck on a Senate elevator with Bobby Kennedy, and the next moment he's inside the Bitburg cemetery with a dazed and confused Ronald Reagan. Changing planes in Vienna, he escapes death at the hands of the terrorist Abu Nidal (others weren't so lucky). He founded his first underground newspaper in fourth grade. He refused to be on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite at 16 ('There's not enough Clearasil in the world for that to happen'). And he became the youngest elected official in the country at age 18 by enlisting an 'army of local stoners' who had no idea what they were doing as his campaign staff. Before Michael Moore became the Oscar-winning filmmaker and all-round rabble rouser and thorn-in-the-side of corporate and right-wing America, there was the guy who had an uncanny knack of just showing up where history was being made. This book is a wild, revealing, take-no-prisoners ride through his early life. Alternately funny, eye-opening, and moving, this is a book Michael Moore was been writing — and living — for a very long time.

This brand new edition provides a comprehensive and highly visual introduction to Florence; over 600 superb photographs capture the history, local people and variety of everyday life in one of Italy's most magical cities. The 'Places' section provides a detailed, district-by-district exploration of all the places to visit and principal sites along the way are clearly cross-referenced by number to the full-colour maps found throughout the guide. Expanded and updated restaurant listings feature the best eateries to suit all budgets within each area, providing the address, phone number, opening times and price range, followed by a useful review. A brand new 'Editor's Choice' section illustrates everything you simply can't afford to miss, including lesser-known attractions, family activities and money-saving hints. Expert local writers provide authoritative essays on the city's history along with interesting cultural features. A fully-indexed street atlas enables instant orientation, helping you to navigate around the city with ease and also plots restaurants. The comprehensive 'Travel Tips' section provides all the essential information you'll need for a hassle-free trip, covering accommodation for all budgets, transport, activities and useful booking information, plus a handy A-Z of further practical advice and contact details. The unique combination of insightful exploration alongside practical advice makes this guide a fascinating background read and an invaluable on-the-spot companion.

From Alexandria to York, this unique illustrated guide allows us to see the great centres of classical civilization afresh. The key feature of Cities of the Classical World is 120 specially drawn maps tracing each city's thoroughfares and defences, monuments and places of worship. Every map is to the same scale, allowing readers for the first time to appreciate visually the relative sizes of Babylon and Paris, London and Constantinople. There is also a clear, incisive commentary on each city's development, strategic importance, rulers and ordinary inhabitants. This compelling and elegant atlas opens a new window on to the ancient world, and will transform the way we see it.

I was born in a trunk. It was during the matinee on Friday. I stopped the show. Arresting and wonderful, The Accidental pans in on the Norfolk holiday home of the Smart family one hot summer. There, a beguiling stranger called Amber appears at the door bearing all sorts of unexpected gifts, trampling over family boundaries and sending each of the Smarts scurrying from the dark into the light. A novel about the ways that seemingly chance encounters irrevocably transform our understanding of ourselves, The Accidental explores the nature of truth, the role of fate and the power of storytelling.

'The short story has become one of the major forms of modern literary expression — in some ways the most modern of them all'. The story of the British short story since the Second World War is one of change and revolution and this powerful and moving collection brilliantly demonstrates the evolution of the form. Containing thirty-four of the most widely regarded postwar British writers, it features tales of love and crime, comedy and the supernatural, the traditional as well as the experimental. This many-storied, many-splendored collection is a brilliant portrait of the generation of writers who have immediately influenced the brightest, sharpest and most intriguing writers who continue to emerge today.

Meade is nineteen and living in Paris with her twin brother, Ben Ho, far from their privileged upbringing in Nashville, Tennessee. Hers is a restless quest of balancing addictions: to her brother, her pills and her purging. But when Ben Ho falls for a girl at art school, Meade's precarious equilibrium is shaken. Meade descends into a vortex of glamour and passion with the fashion photographer who becomes her lover. As her sexual obsession shifts from her brother to her troubled Iranian lover, Meade cannot know she has made a tragic match with someone whose secrets go further, deeper and darker than anything she can fathom. A stark, unflinching novel with a dark heart, Comes the Night chronicles a fevered and tormented journey through the frothy, glossy world of fashion and the shadowy recesses of love.

1586 — London, England. Sixteen-year-old Mercy Hart is the daughter of one of London's richest — and strictest — cloth merchants. Kit Turner is an actor and the illegitimate son of the late Earl of Dorset. A chance encounter finds Kit falling for the beautiful Mercy's charms, but their love is forbidden. A merchant's daughter and a vagabond — it simply cannot be. If Mercy chooses Kit she must renounce her family name and leave her home. Will she favour duty over true love, or will she give Kit his heart's desire?

Think nothing tastes as good as slim feels? You're obviously not eating the right food... Holly, Naomi and Kate are determined to win the battle of the bulge. So it's down to the local slimming club, where carbs are strictly off the menu and there's no escaping the scales. But calorie-counting isn't the only thing on their minds. Newly engaged Holly should be over the moon. So why does she blush every time her sexy boss walks into the room? Curvaceous Naomi finds herself the object of a very unusual fetish and a shocking secret is revealed when an unexpected visitor arrives on Kate's doorstep. Yet with a little group support (and a particularly brutal weight loss boot camp) the women manage to stick to their regime, in time for the glamorous Slimmer of the Year Awards. But with tempting buffet tables, highly competitive contestants and even the odd fat fetishist lurking, it's anyone's guess as to what will happen...

Fifteen-year-old Aaron lives amongst the rubbish piles in the slums of Cairo. His job? To collect broken glass. His life? Wasted. His hope? To find a future he can believe in...

Watch out for the mosquitoes', they called to one another, lyrically because warning wasn't any use anyway, as they walked out of their kimonos and dropped them like the petals of one big scattered flower on the bank behind them, and exposing themselves felt in a hundred places at once the little pangs'. Moon Lake is the story of a summer camp in Mississippi, a surly lifeguard, a rebellious orphan girl, and the fateful day when they learn the secrets of life and death. Pulitzer Prize-winner Eudora Welty's extraordinary short story is a lushly atmospheric and acutely observed portrayal of the strange, surreal time between childhood and adulthood.

Raised by his mother in a one-room house in the slums of Casablanca, Youssef El Mekki has always had big dreams of living another life in another world. Suddenly his dreams are within reach when he discovers that his father-whom he'd been led to believe was dead-is very much alive. A wealthy businessman, he seems eager to give his son a new start. Youssef leaves his mother behind to live a life of luxury, until a reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends. Trapped once again by his class and painfully aware of the limitations of his prospects, he becomes easy prey for a fringe Islamic group. In the spirit of The Inheritance of Loss and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Laila Lalami's debut novel looks at the struggle for identity, the need for love and family, and the desperation that grips ordinary lives in a world divided by class, politics, and religion.

The enigmatic performer known as the Body Artist takes the stage at Chicago's Club Gouge and allows her audience to use her naked body as a canvas for their impromptu illustrations. V. I. Warshawski watches as people step forward, some meek, some bold, to make their mark. The evening takes a strange turn when one woman's sketch triggers a violent outburst from a man at a nearby table. Quickly subdued, the man-an Iraqi war vet-leaves the club. Days later, the woman is shot outside the club. Sara Paretsky is a New York Times bestselling author.

When an art restorer is murdered and a portrait by Rembrandt is stolen, Gabriel Allon is pulled into a race across the globe against a group of powerful men who will do anything to keep the truth about the painting hidden...

An enchantingly imagined romance inspired by the true story of the typewriter's invention. Carolina Fantoni, a young contessa in nineteenth-century Italy, is going blind. Neither her parents nor her fianc believe her. Only her friend Turri, an eccentric local inventor, understands. As darkness erases Carolina's world, she discovers one place where she can still see-in her dreams-yet she remains isolated from the outside world. Desperate to communicate with Carolina, Turri creates a peculiar contraption for her: the world's first typewriter. His gift ignites a passionate love affair that will mark both their lives forever.

In Connecticut, the murder of a pharmaceutical bigwig brings in Savich and Sherlock, along with local Agent Bowie Richards and P.I. Erin Pulaski. Back in Washington, an important U.S. senator is terrorized by an unknown entity, and is calling for Savich's special skills. When the Vice President is nearly killed it's clear these crimes are linked, and Savich and Sherlock must act fast to stop a killer.

An uproarious, uplifting, and brazenly honest celebration of the single girl's life. Unsolicited relationship advice from relatives, disastrous dates, men who wear thumb rings, and the moments of deep satisfaction when a single girl realizes that she can do whatever she wants with her time — it's all here in Haiku for the Single Girl. Reading this brilliantly incisive and wittily illustrated collection, every woman — whether single or not-will laugh until she cries, and then start laughing all over again.

The tumultuous life of England's greatest novelist, beautifully rendered by unparalleled literary biographer Claire Tomalin. When Charles Dickens died in 1870, «The Times» of London successfully campaigned for his burial in Westminster Abbey, the final resting place of England's kings and heroes. Thousands flocked to mourn the best recognized and loved man of nineteenth-century England. His books had made them laugh, shown them the squalor and greed of English life, and also the power of personal virtue and the strength of ordinary people. In his last years Dickens drew adoring crowds to his public appearances, had met presidents and princes, and had amassed a fortune.Like a hero from his novels, Dickens trod a hard path to greatness. Born into a modest middle-class family, his young life was overturned when his profligate father was sent to debtors' prison and Dickens was forced into harsh and humiliating factory work. Yet through these early setbacks he developed his remarkable eye for all that was absurd, tragic, and redemptive in London life. He set out to succeed, and with extraordinary speed and energy made himself into the greatest English novelist of the century.Years later Dickens's daughter wrote to the author George Bernard Shaw, «If you could make the public understand that my father was not a joyous, jocose gentleman walking about the world with a plum pudding and a bowl of punch, you would greatly oblige me.» Seen as the public champion of household harmony, Dickens tore his own life apart, betraying, deceiving, and breaking with friends and family while he pursued an obsessive love affair.»Charles Dickens: A Life» gives full measure to Dickens's heroic stature-his huge virtues both as a writer and as a human being — while observing his failings in both respects with an unblinking eye. Renowned literary biographer Claire Tomalin crafts a story worthy of Dickens's own pen, a comedy that turns to tragedy as the very qualities that made him great-his indomitable energy, boldness, imagination, and showmanship-finally destroyed him. The man who emerges is one of extraordinary contradictions, whose vices and virtues were intertwined as surely as his life and his art.

»A necessary book for anyone truly interested in what we take from the sea to eat, and how, and why.» Sam Sifton, «The New York Times Book Review.» Writer and life-long fisherman Paul Greenberg takes us on a journey, examining the four fish that dominate our menus: salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna. Investigating the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, Greenberg reveals our damaged relationship with the ocean and its inhabitants. Just three decades ago, nearly everything we ate from the sea was wild. Today, rampant overfishing and an unprecedented biotech revolution have brought us to a point where wild and farmed fish occupy equal parts of a complex marketplace. «Four Fish» offers a way for us to move toward a future in which healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception.

The New York Times bestseller — A beautifully written, thought-provoking novel. #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathryn Stockett. In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress in coastal Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris knows more about the townspeople than she will ever say, and believes her job is to deliver secrets. Yet one day she does the unthinkable: slips a letter into her pocket, reads it, and doesn't deliver it. Meanwhile, Frankie Bard broadcasts from overseas with Edward R. Murrow. Her dispatches beg listeners to pay heed as the Nazis bomb London nightly. Most of the townspeople of Franklin think the war can't touch them. But both Iris and Frankie know better... The Postmistress is a tale of two worlds-one shattered by violence, the other willfully na ve-and of two women whose job is to deliver the news, yet who find themselves unable to do so. Through their eyes, and the eyes of everyday people caught in history's tide, it examines how stories are told, and how the fact of war is borne even through everyday life.

And the Land Lay Still is nothing less than the story of a nation. James Robertson's breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change. It is a moving, sweeping story of family, friendship, struggle and hope — epic in every sense.

What could go wrong when a wife pawns the mink coat that her lover gave her as a parting gift? What happens when a priceless piece of furniture is the subject of a deceitful bargain? Can a wronged woman take revenge on her dead husband? This title explores the sinister side of human nature: the cunning, sly, selfish part of each of us.

The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth — perhaps the last the students will ever hear. As they listen, Ned recalls his own painful triumphs and inglorious failures, in a career that took him from the Western Isles of Scotland to Hamburg and from Israel to Cambodia. He asks himself: Did it do any good? What did it do to me? And what will happen to us now? In this final Smiley novel, the great spy gives his own humane and unexpected answers.

Topping and tailing this collection are The Visitor and Bitch, stories featuring Dahl's notorious hedonist Oswald Hendryks Cornelius (or plain old Uncle Oswald) whose exploits are frequently as extraordinary as they are scandalous. In the middle, meanwhile, are The Great Switcheroo and The Last Act , two stories exploring a darker side of desire and pleasure. In the black comedies of Switch Bitch, Roald Dahl brilliantly captures the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex.

This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multi-volume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes.