ABACUS

(P/B) PRIMITIVE REBELS
Reissued with a new introduction by Owen Jones, Primitive Rebels is the perfect guide to the revolutions that shaped western civilisation, and the bandits, reformers and anarchists who have fought to change the world. Social agitation is as essential a part of public life today as it has ever been. In Eric Hobsbawm's masterful study, Primitive Rebels, he shines a light on the origins of contemporary rebellion: Robin Hood, secret societies, revolutionary peasants, Mafiosi, Spanish Civil War anarchy, pre-industrial mobs and riots - all of wh...
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(P/B) INFINITE JEST
Somewhere in the not-so-distant future the residents of Ennet House, a Boston halfway house for recovering addicts, and students at the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy are ensnared in the search for the master copy of INFINITE JEST, a movie said to be so dangerously entertaining its viewers become entranced and expire in a state of catatonic bliss... (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) ALTERED PASTS
A bullet misses its target in Sarajevo, a would-be Austrian painter gets into the Viennese academy, Lord Halifax becomes British prime minister in 1940: seemingly minor twists of fate on which world-shaking events might have hinged. Alternative history has long been the stuff of parlour games, war-gaming and science fiction, but over the past few decades it has become a popular stomping ground for serious historians. Richard J. Evans now turns a critical, slightly jaundiced eye on the subject. Altered Pasts examines the intellectual fallou...
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(P/B) THE GOLDFINCH
Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty a...
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(P/B) GIRL WITH CURIOUS HAIR
In these stories, the author renders the bizarre normal and the absurd hilarious, from the eerily real , almost holographic evocations of historical figures, to overtelevised game-show hosts and late-night comedians. In the title story, punk nihilism meets Young Republicanism. (From the publisher)...
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(P/B) ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY
Anyone that has read NAKED and BARREL FEVER, or heard David Sedaris speaking live or on the radio will tell you that a new collection from him is cause for jubilation. His recent move to Paris from New York inspired these hilarious new pieces, including 'Me Talk Pretty One Day', about his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declares that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. His family is another inspiration. 'You Can't Kill the Rooster' is a portrait of his brother, who talks incessant hip-hop sla...
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(P/B) NAKED
A riotous collection of memoirs which explores the absurd hilarity of modern life and creates a wickedly incisive portrait of an all-too-familiar world. It takes Sedaris from his humiliating bout with obsessive behaviour in 'A Plague of Tics' to the title story, where he is finally forced to face his naked self in the company of lunatics. At this soulful and moving moment, he brushes cigarette ashes from his pubic hair and wonders what it all means. This remarkable journey into his own life follows a path of self-effacement and a lifelong ...
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(P/B) CREATION
Son of a Persian prince and a Creek sorceress, grandson of the prophet Zoroaster, friend of Xerxes the Great King, ambassador to the courts of India, China and Greece, Cyrus Spitama is also the narrator of "Creation" and probably the greatest namedropper who ever lived. There were a lot of names to drop in the fifth century BC. Pericles, Thucydides, Sophocles, Confucius, Pythagoras and even Buddha walk on and off stage as the great and ancient empires reach their apex. And Cyrus, ever eager for knowledge and greatly given to gossip, learns...
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(P/B) THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM
The mysterious disappearance of her great- grandmother and twenty-five other elderly inmates from a Shaker Heights nursing home has left Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman emotionally stranded on the edge of the Great Ohio Desert. But that is simply one problem of many for the hapless switchboard operator, seriously compounded by her ongoing affair with boss Rick Vigorous; the TV stardom of her talking cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler; and other minor catastrophes that threaten to elevate Lenore's search for love and self-detemination to new heights o...
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(P/B) LESS
The Pulitzer prize-winning novel about a failed writer trying to escape his problems by traveling abroad. WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM YOUR PROBLEMS? Arthur Less is a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the post: it is from an ex-boyfriend of nine years who is engaged to someone else. Arthur can't say yes - it would be too awkward; he can't say no - it would look like defeat. So, he begins to accept the invitations on his desk to half-baked literary events around the world. From France to India, Germa...
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(P/B) COSMOS
- The story of cosmic evolution, science and civilisation - Spacecraft missions to nearby planets - The Library of ancient Alexandria - The human brain - Egyptian hieroglyphics - The origin of life - The death of the sun - The evolution of galaxies - The origins of matter, suns and worlds. The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilisation grew up together, and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan's re...
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(P/B) THE AGE OF CAPITAL
The first and best, major treatment of the crucial years 1848-1875, a penetrating analysis of the rise of capitalism throught the world. In the 1860s a new word entered the economic and political vocabulary of the world: 'capitalism'. The global triumph of capitalism is the major theme of history in the decades after 1848. It was the triumph of a society which believed that economic growth rests on competitive private enterprise, on success in buying everything in the cheapest market (including labour) and selling it in the dearest. An eco...
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(P/B) REVOLUTIONARIES
Recent years have seen a remarkable growth of interest in revolution and social upheaval. This collection of essays by distinguished historian and long-standing Marxist Eric Hobsbawm is a commentary and critical retrospective on the revolutionary movements and ideas that dominated the twentieth century, and which remain of crucial contemporary relevance. The essays here explore a broad range of related topics including the history of communism, the influence of marxism, insurrection, military coups and guerrilla warfare, and the role of in...
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(P/B) ON HISTORY
In these essays, about a quarter of them previously unpublished, Eric Hobsbawm reflects upon the theory, practice and development of history and its relevance to the modern world. These wide-ranging papers reflect Professor Hobsbawm's lifelong concern with the relations between past, present and future. They deal, among many other subjects, with the problems of writing history, its abuses and the historian's responsibilities; with the history of society and 'history from below'; with Marx and current historical trends or fashions; with Eur...
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(P/B) THE AGE OF REVOLUTION
Eric Hobsbawm traces with brilliant clarity the transformation brought about in every sphere of European life by the Dual Revolution - the 1789 French revolution and the Industrial Revolution that originated in Britain. This enthralling and original account highlights the significant sixty years when industrial capitalism established itself in Western Europe and when Europe secured the domination over the rest of the world it was to hold for a century. (From the publisher) "The work is challenging, learned, brilliant in its analytical po...
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(P/B) CONSIDER THE LOBSTER AND OTHER ESSAYS
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a sick sense of humour? What is John Updike’s deal anyway? And who won the Adult Video News’ Female Performer of the Year Award the same year Gwyneth Paltrow won her Oscar? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in his new book of hilarious non-fiction. For this collection, David Foster Wallace immerses himself in the three-ring circus that is the presidential race in order to document one of the most vicious campaigns in recent history. Later he strolls from booth to booth at a lo...
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(P/B) A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN
A collection of insightful and uproariously funny non-fiction by the bestselling author of INFINITE JEST - one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING... brings together Wallace's musings on a wide range of topics, from his early days as a nationally ranked tennis player to his trip on a commercial cruiseliner. In each of these essays, Wallace's observations are as keen as they are funny. Filled with hilarious details and invigorating analyses, these essays brilliantly expose the fault line in Amer...
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(P/B) HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD
In the 144 years since Karl Marx's Das Kapital was published, the doctrine that bears his name has been embraced by millions in the name of equality, and just as dramatically has fallen from grace with the retreat of communism from the western world. But as the free market reaches its extreme limits in the economic and environmental fallout, a reassessment of capitalism's most vigorous and eloquent enemy has never been more timely. Eric Hobsbawm provides a fascinating and insightful overview of Marxism. He investigates its influences and a...
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(P/B) VIVA LA REVOLUCION
Viva La Revolucion is Hobsbawm's magisterial work on Latin America, the fruit of forty years' writing about the continent. Eric Hobsbawm (1917-2012) wrote that Latin America was the only region of the world outside Europe which he felt he knew well and where he felt entirely at home. He claimed this was because it was the only part of the Third World whose two principal languages, Spanish and Portuguese, were within his reach. But he was also, of course, attracted by the potential for social revolution in Latin America. After the triumph o...
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(P/B) THE AGE OF EMPIRE
The splendid finale to Eric Hobsbawm's study of the nineteenth century, THE AGE OF EMPIRE covers the area of Western Imperialism and examines the forces that swept the world to the outbreak of World War One- and shaped modern society....
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