***AVAILABLE IN E-BOOK FORMAT ONLY*** Based on Lawrence Block's extremely popular seminar for writers. Discover Block's tips for overcoming writer's block and unleashing your creativit... more » more »

The largest and most dynamic collection of words ever assembled -- the English language -- continues to expand. As hundreds of new words are added annually, older ones are sacrificed. Here's a marvelous exploration of unusual and charming archaic words and phrases, providing an enticing glimpse into ... more »

Das Phänomen des Dandytums, das um 1800 mit Lord Byron beginnt und um 1900 mit Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Max Beerbohm und anderen einen deutlichen Höhepunkt verzeichnet, erlebt zurzeit eine erstaunliche Renaissance. Namen wie Tom Wolfe, Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre oder Christian Kracht sind in ... more »

Good news: You don't have to sacrifice style just to pay your electric bill. Kathryn Finney, a.k.a. the Budget Fashionista, is the expert on all things chic and cheap. Now she opens up her Prada bag of shopping and style tips to make you fashionably frugal, with change to spare. It's as easy as 1-2-3 ... more »

Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrumsof American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other -- a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been ... more »

Reading The Catcher in the Rye has become a rite of passage for young Americans, landing the book on bestseller lists (and banned book lists) each year, even though it was published a half century ago. What is it about J. D. Salinger and his body of work that has left such a lasting mark on American ... more »

Romanticism, says De Stendhal, is the art of presenting to the nations the literary works which, in the actual state of their habits and beliefs, are capable of giving them the greatest possible pleasure: classicism, on the contrary, presents them with what gave the greatest possible pleasure to their ... more »

In July 1997, twenty-five of America's most influential journalists sat down to try and discover what had happened to their profession in the years between Watergate and Whitewater. What they knew was that the public no longer trusted the press as it once had. They were keenly aware of the pressures ... more »

Immer fängt alles ganz harmlos an. Etwa wenn ein Mann sich kühl zu seinem berechnenden Alltagsglauben bekennt, dann aber vor Gott auf die Knie fällt und ihn um die Rettung seines Lebens bittet - er braucht ein neues Herz. Tatsächlich erhört Gott seine Bitte, und der ahnungslose Leser wird von der makabren ... more »

David Sedaris plays in the snow with his sisters. He goes on vacation with his family. He gets a job selling drinks. He attends his brother's wedding. He mops his sister's floor. He gives directions to a lost traveler. He eats a hamburger. He has his blood sugar tested. It all sounds so normal, doesn ... more »

In this enlightening look at J.K. Rowling's phenomenal bestsellers, a Christian minister illuminates the powerful, positive message Harry Potter and his magical world bring to readers of all ages. Potter fever has swept the world and shows no signs of abating. the books and the recent movie have attracted ... more »

Since the 1950s, our country's greatest libraries have, as a matter of common practice, dismantled their collections of original bound newspapers and so-called brittle books, replacing them with microfilmed copies. The marketing of the brittle-paper crisis and the real motives behind it are the subject ... more »