Dream Cabinet

Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. They travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their employers. The most completely successful of his books ... here Lem comes closest to inventing a real universe (Boston Globe). Translated by Michael Kandel.

Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book is an updated, expanded remix of its bestselling predecessor, Rick Mercer Report: The Book, containing 10,000 words of new material from the show’s fifth season. Rick’s celebrated rants are some of the sharpest political commentary to be found anywhere in the country’s media, and certainly the funniest. They are featured here, along with other moments from the show—including encounters with Conrad Black, Jean Chrétien, and Anne Murray—and many additional pieces, some of which first appeared on his website. Because when he’s not jumping into a lake with David Suzuki or Bob Rae, or helping the leader of the Green Party kill a tree, Rick Mercer likes to relax by blogging. From Kabul, say. Or the bearpit of a leadership convention. Rick Mercer Report: The Paperback Book will help you make sense of five extraordinary years in the life of Canada—or at least laugh despite them.

The book charts an extraordinary period in Danish history: the "Press Freedom Period" of 1770-73, in which King Christian 7's physician J.F. Struensee introduced a series of radical enlightenment reforms beginning with the total abolishment of censorship. The book investigates the sudden avalanche of pamphlets and debates, initiating the modern public sphere of Denmark-Norway. Publications show a surprising variety, from serious political, economic, and philosophical treatises over criticism, polemics, ridicule, entertainment, and to spin campaigns, obscenities, libel, threats. A successful coup against Struensee led to his subsequent public execution in Copenhagen, and the latter half of the period saw the gradual smothering of the new public sphere as well as an international pamphlet storm over what was happening in Denmark. Readers all over Europe proved curious to learn about the radical experiment with enlightened absolutism in Denmark; interest was heightened by the involvement of the Danish Queen, the English princess Caroline Matilda to whom Struensee had an intimate relation. The book is a detailed portrayal of a seminal event in the development of the public sphere in Europe.

The brilliant and influential statesman, Itō Hirobumi (1841-1909), and the first prime minister of Japan’s modern state, has been poorly understood. This biography attempts to set the record straight about Itō’s thought and vision for Japan’s modernisation based on research in primary sources. It outlines Itō’s life: the son of a poor farmer, he showed exceptional talent as a boy and was sent to study in Europe and the United States. He returned home convinced that Western civilisation was the only viable path for Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Itō became a powerful intellectual and political force behind reforms of Japanese laws and institutions aimed to shape a modern government based on informed leadership and a knowledeable populace. Among his many achievements were the establishment of Japan’s first constitution—the Meiji Constitution of 1889, and the founding in 1900 of a new type of constitutional party, the Rikken Seiyukai (Friends of Constitutional Government), which, reformulated after 1945, became the Liberal Democratic Party that has dominated Japanese politics in the postwar period. Concerning Itō’s role as Japanese Resident-General in Korea from 1905, the author argues that Itō’s aim, not understood by either the Japanese home government or Koreans themselves, was not to colonize Korea. He was determined to modernise Korea and consolidate further constitutional reforms in Japan. This aim was not shared by others, and Itō resigned in 1909. He was assassinated the same year in Manchuria by a Korean nationalist. The Japanese language edition of this book is a bestseller in Japan, and it received the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities, one of Japan's most prestigious publishing awards.

Felix is an average teenager whose favorite past time is reading and learning about zombies with his friends. His near obsession of the topic often prompts comments that he should spend less time learning about zombie lore and more of his time on practical things that could be applied to the real world. All of that changes when the dead begin to rise and the living start to die and the world around him starts to resemble one of his zombie novels or movies. Suddenly he finds himself the unlikely hero in a world where reality has become stranger than fiction and where his hobby of planning for a zombie apocalypse becomes vital to the survival of those around him. As he and his friends struggle to fight against death itself they realize that truth is often much stranger than fiction..... and allot more deadly. ** This novel is a horror story which includes scenes of death and violence. It may be too intense and graphic for younger or more sensitive readers. Parental discretion is advised.

When Crospinal’s ailing father finally dies, he is left utterly alone in the pen, surrounded by encroaching darkness. The machines that tended to him as a child have long ago vanished, and the apparitions that kept Crospinal company are now silenced. Struggling with congenital issues, outfitted in a threadbare uniform, he has little choice but to leave what was once his home, soon discovering that nothing in the outside world is how he had been told it would be. In his quest for meaning and understanding, and the contact of another, Crospinal learns truths about himself, about his father, and about the last bastion of humanity, trapped with him at the end of time.

Get double the presidential fun with the radio hosts guaranteed to bring carbs back to the White House. Take a stand for God, country, and apple pie! Still wondering who to vote for? Well, wonder no more. In Rick & Bubba for President you’ll discover that the two self-proclaimed “Sexiest Fat Men Alive” are exactly what Washington needs. From global warming (“We’d get involved, but it’s just been so doggone hot lately.”), to updating Air Force One (“Hasn’t it gone without a pizza over long enough?”), it’s obvious that Rick and Bubba have the fresh ideas that Americans have been waiting for. Whether male or female, Republican, Democrat, Independent, or undecided, we can all agree on one thing: two heads of state have got to be better than one. So get out the White House barbeque! Rick and Bubba are headed to Washington!

Definitive and daring, The Ecopoetry Anthology is the authoritative collection of contemporary American poetry about nature and the environment--in all its glory and challenge. From praise to lament, the work covers the range of human response to an increasingly complex and often disturbing natural world and inquires of our human place in a vastness beyond the human. To establish the antecedents of today's writing,The Ecopoetry Anthology presents a historical section that includes poetry written from roughly the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Iconic American poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson are followed by more modern poets like Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and even more recent foundational work by poets like Theodore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, and Muriel Rukeyser. With subtle discernment, the editors portray our country's rich heritage and dramatic range of writing about the natural world around us.