"The Hermit's Story," a short story by Rick Bass, brings readers to a remote, mountainous place where two couples are having Thanksgiving dinner together. Up in the mountains, things are always quiet. In the valley below, one can usually find the hustle and bustle of a town-but not this Thanksgiving. The power is out, and a deep, dark peace holds the land. This selection is part of the full length audiobook, "Storm: Stories of Survival From Land and...

Genet…Beckett…Burroughs…Miller…Ionesco, Oe, Duras. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Hubert Selby Jr. and John Rechy. The legendary film I Am Curious (Yellow). The books that assaulted the fort of propriety that was the United States in the 1950s and '60s, Lady Chatterley's Lover and The Tropic of Cancer. The Evergreen Review. Victorian "erotica." The Autobiography of Malcolm X. A bombing, a sit-in, and a near-fistfight with Norman Mailer. The...

Essays document historical successes and failures of the American intelligence services, from analyses of the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination to the CIA's Cold War struggles with the KGB.

Traces the evolution of lesbian identity, discussing the establishment of lesbian subcultures in each decade and examining how feminism and gay liberation have destigmatized lesbianism

Details the life and career of the actress best known for the role of Shirley on the television series "Laverne and Shirley," looking at her years waiting tables and her first big break with a role in "American Graffiti."

Shares the story of renowned astronaut and distinguished scientist Kathryn Sullivan, describing how she defied the conventions of her childhood to pursue interests previously limited to boys and how she became the first woman to walk in space.

By 1919 the Great War has ended, peace talks are under way in Paris, and the world has been forever changed. Delia Martin, apprentice practitioner of magical arts, and her husband, Police Captain Gabriel Ryan, face the greatest challenge of their lives when fragments from the war descend on San Francisco. As Delia prepares to meet friends at a St. Patrick's Day parade, the strange ghost of a European princess appears in her mirror. Her pleasant outing...

"After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924, Harvard University scholar and activist F. O. Matthiessen and artist Russell Cheney fell in love and remained inseparable until Cheney's death in 1945. During the intervening years, the men traveled throughout Europe and the United States, achieving great professional success while contending with serious personal challenges, including addiction, chronic disease, and severe depression....

Offers a narrative of the United States' intellectual history of the past one hundred years by discussing the ideas and thinkers that helped shape the century.