Politics
& Prose carries a fantastic variety of sale or bargain books. In
publishers' terms these are "remainders," loosely defined as overstocked
quantities of books that publishers make available at greatly reduced
prices.
At Politics & Prose, we are particularly proud of the quality and selection of
our Remainder Room, located on the lower level of the store.
The
unending flow of distinguished and unusual remainder books into Politics
& Prose is an exciting dynamic. We are proud of these quality,
diverse selections. Unfortunately, like significant but temporary
apparitions, the books will quickly be consumed, and rarely can we get
these titles again due to limited supply. Do make a point of browsing
this section as often as possible -- we guarantee rich rewards!
These books are often only available for a short time,
and this online display is but a small sample of our current selection,
so visit us soon to find what you want!
In addition to being the mother of two of Picasso’s children, Françoise Gilot was a serious painter and student of painting. The author of several memoirs, including Matisse and Picasso: A Friendship in Art,
she was also an excellent writer. Covering the years between 1946 and
1954, when Matisse died, Gilot’s fascinating account records the
painters’ conversations, their explorations of color and new media, and
their sometimes prickly relationship. There are big names in this
narrative, but Gilot is not gossipy; her insider’s account of these two
towering figures of modern art is primarily concerned with the work.
Available in paperback, $5.98.
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel Once Upon a River
(W.W.Norton, $25.95) has been getting a lot of great reviews [Ed: see
our interview posted above]. Like many novelists, Campbell started out
writing short fiction, and her first collection of stories, Women and Other Animals,
won an Associated Writing Programs Award. Like her later narratives,
these early stories feature strong women and difficult situations: a
widowed farmer undergoes a health crisis, but draws closer to her
daughters; a snow-cone vendor at a circus dodges an escaped tiger. Then
there are the more usual problems of poverty, families, lovers. Campbell
writes with compassion and immediacy; her characters are survivors.
Available in paperback, $4.98.
The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga,
won the Man Booker Prize in 2008 for its searing depiction of Balram
Halwal, a young Indian born into poverty and determined to claw his way
out no matter what. The son of a rickshaw puller, Balram goes to work at
an early age, getting his education by watching who gets ahead and how.
He gradually abandons his honest, hardworking ways and the novel is in
part his effort to show how the greed and corruption he has absorbed led
him to an act of violence against his employer. Available in hardcover,
$5.98.
David Grossman’s To The End of the Land focuses
on the life of one woman, yet tells the wider story of the Middle East,
its wars and dreams of peace. Ora, a middle-aged mother of an Israeli
soldier, is stunned when her son, about to finish his military service
and come home, instead is sent to fight on a new battle front. To avoid
news, good or bad, she sets off on a long hike in the Galilee. She is
accompanied by her old friend Avram, still suffering from the trauma of
his wounding and capture in the Yom Kippur War. Together the two relive
the past, and the novel shows how inextricably their personal lives are
tangled with history. This is both an affecting novel of love and family
and a powerful statement about war. Available in paperback, $4.98.
Unless you’re a connoisseur of nightmares, The Bedside Book of Beasts: A Wildlfe Miscellany, might seem an odd choice for bedtime reading. But Graeme Gibson, who brought us The Bedside Book of Birds,
has again chosen tales, myths, legends, and facts that fascinate and
delight. Focusing on wild animals, this anthology presents work by some
of the world’s best writers, in all sorts of genres. Orwell and his
elephant are here, as is the Bible’s Leviathan, Arthur Conan Doyle
tracking a plesiosaurus, Murakami describing a woodland dancer, and
much, much more, from fiction, diaries, and travelogues. Each entry is
amply illustrated with color plates of ancient artifacts, paintings, and
photos. A gorgeous anthology of art and words. Available in hardcover,
$5.98.
Emily Dickinson left a daunting literary oeuvre, and as the letters quoted in Brenda Wineapple’s White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson show,
she was equally enigmatic in person. Higginson, a successful writer,
invited correspondence from young hopefuls. Dickinson responded, sent
him some poems, and from 1862 until 1886 they exchanged letters, meeting
only once. Wineapple interweaves letters, poems, and literary criticism
for this fascinating dual biography, which is also a unique history of
the America of the time, juxtaposing Dickinson’s home-bound perspective
with Higginson’s public persona. While she wrote at home, he was an
active abolitionist and served as commander of the first Union regiment
of black soldiers. Available in hardcover, $5.98.
.
To tell someone how to find
your house, you can direct them to go left then right, or you can say “head
east for half a mile.” These two options are available to English speakers,
that is. For Australian aboriginal speakers of Guuga Yimithirr, only the latter
mode is possible, as their language lacks an “egocentric” vocabulary of “left,
“right,” “in front of,” and “behind.” In his fascinating trip THROUGH THE LANGUAGE GLASS,
Guy Deutscher, author of The Unfolding of
Language, investigates how
language shapes, expands, and constrains human world views—or doesn’t.
Available in hardcover, $10.98.
In the brief, powerful
essays of ENCOUNTER the France-based Czech writer Milan Kundera considers the role of art in the modern world. As
you might expect from a world-renowned novelist, he looks at the fiction that
has made its mark on him, and this book contains illuminating criticism of
great writers from Dostoyevsky to García Marquez and Philip Roth. But Kundera’s
aim here is larger than any single genre, and he also writes about music, film,
the visual arts, and even travel. His description of, and meditation on, a
moon-drenched landscape in Martinique adds yet greater scope to an already
expansive view of how art can take you by surprise. Available in hardcover,
$7.98.
From microscopes to
telescopes, science is all about the visuals. That’s perhaps one reason why it
lends itself so well to the graphic novel format. Lauren Redniss’s RADIOACTIVE: Marie & Pierre
Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout,
however, isn’t a novel, but a factual account of the lives of the Curies and
their groundbreaking work with radium. The team won the 1903 Nobel Prize for
physics, and Marie alone was awarded the 1911 Nobel for chemistry. Using
collage, brilliant full-page swathes of color, drawings, and photos, Redniss
depicts the Curies’ courtship and marriage along with their experiments. The
text is studded with quotations from their contemporaries as well as
individuals who figured prominently once the nuclear era was up and running.
Available in hardcover, $14.98.
THE ART OF WILLIAM STEIG—you’d
know it anywhere, from New Yorker covers
and cartoons to children’s books. Edited by Claudia J. Nahson, a curator at New York’s Jewish Museum, this volume
contains nearly 300 of Steig’s drawings, watercolors, and cartoons from all
phases of long and distinctive career (he contributed to The New Yorker for some 73 years). While the art speaks
eloquently, the profile of the artist is rounded out with essays and memoirs
from Steig’s family and colleagues, including his wife, Jeanne Steig, the
artist and children’s book author; and his fellow geniuses Maurice Sendak, and
Edward Sorel. Available in hardcover, $19.98.
Serge Carrefax: son of an
inventor and himself obsessed with radio communications; a pilot, flying even
higher when on cocaine; an archeologist; a spiritualist. His story makes up Tom
McCarthy’s enigmatic novel, C. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, this post-modern
tour de force by the author of Remainder and Tintin and the
Secret of Literatureis
by turns mesmerizing and puzzling as it offers an unconventional history of the
early 20th-century. Available in hardcover, $6.98.
BACK IN STOCK: THE
LONDON SCENE: Six Essays on London Lifeis a recent collection of articles Virginia Woolf
wrote in 1931 for the British Good Housekeeping. Five of the six pieces were published in book form
in 1981, but the sixth was missing until 2004. It joins the others in this
volume, completing Woolf’s tour of London with her descriptions of the city’s
history, buildings, sights, and sounds, all as immediate and exquisitely evoked
as when Woolf set pen to paper. Available in hardcover, $4.98.
