My Hard Bargain was hailed as an impressive debut by The Wall Street Journal, and substantial and down to earth by the New Yorker. The exalted, memorable characters in Kirn's acclaimed debut short story col lection confront the real hard bargains in life that spring up from the business of simply living, and Kirn transforms these hard-luck stories into strapping moral lessons which evoke the bonds that unite us all.
The Hard Bargain describes in vivid detail and elegant prose the clash of wills between a famous father and his hard-driving middle son. Richard Tucker, the American superstar tenor from the golden age of the Metropolitan Opera, demanded that his son become a surgeon. Rejecting his father’s wishes, David wanted to follow his father onto the opera stage. Their struggle over David’s future—by turns hilarious and humiliating, wise and loving—is played out in medical and musical venues around the world. The father and son strike a bargain, the hard bargain of the title, which permitted both dreams to flicker for a decade until one (the right one, it turns out) bursts into sustaining flame. This heartfelt memoir about a son’s struggle against the looming power of a magnetic father is conveyed in a moving narrative that one reviewer has called “the most dramatic exploration of the private life of a legendary singer in the annals of opera literature.”
With Hard Bargain, Robert Shogan offers an account of one of World War II's most dramatic chapters—the story of how Franklin D. Roosevelt secretly brokered a deal to provide the destroyers Winston Churchill needed to save Britain from destruction. At the center of the momentous events of 1940 are two extraordinary leaders: Churchill, the forthright pragmatist, and Roosevelt, the suave politician. As Hitler's war machine threatened to starve England into submission, these two men initiated a complex negotiation that would shatter all precedents for conducting foreign policy. FDR yearned to enter the war, but was handcuffed by domestic politics. Churchill had to plead for American intervention at a time when the United States was intensely isolationist. Drawing on archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Shogan masterfully recreates the President's maneuvers as FDR stepped around the Constitution in order to clinch the deal, a move that has had repercussions from Korea to the Persian Gulf.
"Another winning entry in a consistently strong series." —Booklist Twenty years ago, teenager Callum Hinds went missing in England's Lake District. His uncle, suspected of having done the boy harm, was interviewed by the police. When the uncle committed suicide near his cottage in the Hanging Wood, everyone assumed it was a sign of guilt. The boy's body was never found. Now Callum's sister, Orla Payne, who never believed in their uncle's guilt, has returned to the Lakes and taken up a job in a residential library close to the Hanging Wood. She wants to find the truth about Callum's disappearance. Prompted by historian Daniel Kind, she tries to interest DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of Cumbria's Cold Case Review Team. Hannah is reluctant, but when Orla dies in strange and shocking circumstances, Hannah determines to find the truth about what happened to Callum—and to Orla. Soon Hannah finds herself racing against time as the past casts long shadows on the sunlit landscape of the lakes.
Almost half of everything sold in America is listed at some kind of promotional price. People don't only want a deep discount, they expect it - and won't settle for anything less. In this playful, deeply researched book, journalist Mark Ellwood takes a trip into this new landscape. From the floor of upscale department store Sergdorf Goodman to the bustling aisles of a Turkish bazaar, from the outlet Disneyworld of rural Pennsylvania to a town in Florida that can claim to be couponing's spiritual capital, Ellwood shows how some people are, quite literally, born to be bargain junkies thanks to a quirk of their DNA. He also uncovers the dark side of discounting: the sales-driven sleights of hand that sellers employ to hoodwink unsuspecting buyers. Bargain Feveris a manual for thriving in this new era, when deal hunting has gone from being a sign of indigence to one of intelligence. There's never been a better time to be a buyer - at least if you know how the game works. 'This book is a bargain hunter's bible.' Michael Tonello, author of Bringing Home the Birkin'Bargain Fever is just as fierce, funny, tenacious, and tantalizing as its author. I love this book.' Kelly Cutrone, founder, People's Revolution, and author of Normal Gets You Nowhere'A book after my own heart. Bargain Fever lifts the veils off the sales, ensuring even more that you'll never pay retail again.' Carmen Wong Ulrich, financial contributor, CBS This Morning, and author of Generation Debt'Highly informative and entertaining.' Booklist
Carlo Carlucci won't take no for an answer.The passionate Italian pursues tour guideFrancesca Bernard, who stirs him with her beautyand innocence more than any other woman.But Francesca is also an heiress, and alreadyengaged to a man whom Carlo believes is agold digger. There's only one way he canprotect Francesca—and satisfy his desire—andthat's to claim her for himself, as his wife!
Roley was once a rising star in the contemporary Christian music scene, but then he felt called to racial reconciliation and moved to a disadvantaged neighborhood where he embodies the ideals that are needed to forge a just society.
A New York Times Notable Book A Daily Beast Best Book of the Year A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year From elementary school on, Walter Kirn knew how to stay at the top of his class: He clapped erasers, memorized answer keys, and parroted his teachers’ pet theories. But when he launched himself eastward to an Ivy League university, Kirn discovered that the temple of higher learning he had expected was instead just another arena for more gamesmanship, snobbery, and social climbing. In this whip-smart memoir of kissing-up, cramming, and competition, Lost in the Meritocracy reckons the costs of an educational system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within.
When it comes to food, Americans seem to have a pretty great deal. Our grocery stores are overflowing with countless varieties of convenient products. But like most bargains that are too good to be true, the modern food system relies on an illusion. It depends on endless abundance, but the planet has its limits. So too does a healthcare system that must absorb rising rates of diabetes and obesity. So too do the workers who must labor harder and faster for less pay. Through beautifully-told stories from around the world, Kevin Walker reveals the unintended consequences of our myopic focus on quantity over quality. A trip to a Costa Rica plantation shows how the Cavendish banana became the most common fruit in the world and also one of the most vulnerable to disease. Walker’s early career in agribusiness taught him how pressure to sell more and more fertilizer obscured what that growth did to waterways. His family farm illustrates how an unquestioning belief in “free markets” undercut opportunity in his hometown. By the end of the journey, we not only understand how the drive to produce ever more food became hardwired into the American psyche, but why shifting our mindset is essential. It starts, Walker argues, with remembering that what we eat affects the wider world. If each of us decides that bigger isn’t always better, we can renegotiate the grand food bargain, one individual decision at a time.
Describes the author's fifteen-year relationship with eccentric New Yorker Clark Rockefeller, his discovery that Rockefeller was a serial imposter and murderer and how his old friend's murder trial made him face hard truths about himself.
