Manifold Destiny

Giving new meaning to the term "fast food" Rest-stop grade F meat patty? Nah. Nuggets of reconstituted poultry bits? Pass. Deep-fried fish discus? No, really, thanks all the same. It's time to bid farewell to the roadside meal as you know it. Nearly twenty years ago, Chris Maynard and Bill Scheller opened the world's eyes to the beautym of car-engine gastronomy in the original Manifold Destiny. And now that another generation of both drivers and eaters has emerged, the cult classic is due for an overhaul. In this shiny, spanking-new edition, learn how to make s'mores in your Scion, poach fish in your Pontiac, even bust out a gourmet snack from under the hood of your Escalade. With step-by-step diagrams, crowd-pleasing recipes, and thorough instructions, now you can turn your car into a kitchen without ever crossing any golden arches. Hilarious, bizarre, and ultimately (seriously!) useful, Manifold Destiny is and always will be an unparalleled original. So, slap a ham steak under the hood of your car, hit the gas, and drive until you reach delicious -- which is in approximately fifty miles, depending on traffic.

At the border where Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina meet under the scrutiny of the US and Mercosur (the large South American trade bloc), Arabs have long fulfilled what author John Tofik Karam calls a "manifold destiny." Karam casts Lebanese, Palestinians, and Syrians at this American border as circumstantial protagonists of a hemispheric saga. For the more than six decades since they started settling at the trinational border between Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina, Arabs have animated the hemisphere. Their transnational economic and social projects reveal a heretofore unacknowledged venue of exceptional rule in which the community accommodates and abides multiple states' varied suspensions of norms and laws. Arabs set up businesses and community centers at the border under authoritarian military governments between the 1950s and 1980s; thereafter, when denied full democratic enfranchisement, they instead underwent increasing surveillance from the 1990s to today. Karam reveals an unfinished history of exceptional rule that Arabs accommodate from an authoritarian past to a counterterrorist present. Karam's riveting account draws on anthropological and historical research from each side of this trinational South American border, as well as from the US—where government bureaucrats still suspect Arabs at the border of would-be-terrorist subversion. Offering a fresh understanding of the hemisphere, Manifold Destiny brings the transnational turn of Middle Eastern studies to bear upon the fields of American studies, Brazilian studies, and Latin American studies.

On the evening of June 20th [2006], several hundred physicists, including a Nobel laureate, assembled in an auditorium at the Friendship Hotel in Beijing for a lecture by the Chinese mathematician Shing-Tung Yau. In the late nineteen-seventies, when Yau was in his twenties, he had made a series of breakthroughs that helped launch the string-theory revolution in physics and earned him, in addition to a Fields Medal - the most coveted award in mathematics - a reputation in both disciplines as a thinker of unrivalled technical power. Yau had since become a professor of mathematics at Harvard and the director of mathematics institutes in Beijing and Hong Kong, dividing his time between the United States and China. His lecture at the Friendship Hotel was part of an international conference on string theory, which he had organized with the support of the Chinese government, in part to promote the country's recent advances in theoretical physics. (More than six thousand students attended the keynote address, which was delivered by Yau's close friend Stephen Hawking, in the Great Hall of the People.) The subject of Yau's talk was something that few in his audience knew much about: the Poincaré conjecture, a century-old conundrum about the characteristics of three-dimensional spheres, which, because it has important implications for mathematics and cosmology and because it has eluded all attempts at solution, is regarded by mathematicians as a holy grail. Yau, a stocky man of fifty-seven, stood at a lectern in shirtsleeves and black-rimmed glasses and, with his hands in his pockets, described how two of his students, Xi-Ping Zhu and Huai-Dong Cao, had completed a proof of the Poincaré conjecture a few weeks earlier. 'I'm very positive about Zhu and Cao's work, ' Yau said. 'Chinese mathematicians should have every reason to be proud of such a big success in completely solving the puzzle.' He said that Zhu and Cao were indebted to his longtime American collaborator Richard Hamilton, who deserved most of the credit for solving the Poincaré. He also mentioned Grigory Perelman, a Russian mathematician who, he acknowledged, had made an important contribution. Nevertheless, Yau said, 'in Perelman's work, spectacular as it is, many key ideas of the proofs are sketched or outlined, and complete details are often missing.' He added, 'We would like to get Perelman to make comments. But Perelman resides in St. Petersburg and refuses to communicate with other people.'

Two young men are caught in the crosshairs of shady government operations, mafias, and billionaires. A multi-generational family drama unfolds into an observation of violence in American History: from the Oregon Trail, to the nuclear age, the Vietnam War, and a post-9/11 world.

“Lean, taut storytelling . . . breakneck stuff . . . Arguably his most accessible book to date—Baxter [is] resplendent.”—SFX magazine When his father dies suddenly, George Poole stumbles onto a family secret: He has a twin sister he never knew existed, who was raised by an enigmatic cult called the Order. The Order is a hive—a human hive with a dominant queen—that has prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. After Poole enters the Order’s vast underground city and meets the disturbing inhabitants, he uncovers evidence that they have embarked on a divergent evolutionary path. These genetically superior humans are equipped with the tools necessary to render modern Homo sapiens as extinct as the Neanderthals. And now they are preparing to leave their underground realm. “[Excels] at both action-packed storytelling and philosophical speculation.”—Library Journal “Utterly fascinating . . . constantly surprising . . . Coalescent reveals a new side to Baxter’s vast talent.”—Locus

Diesel Dining: The Art of Manifold Cooking is for hungry truck drivers. Hard working people not having the luxury of being at home, and wanting something at the end of a long day resembling a home-cooked dinner. Diesel Dining: The Art of Manifold Cooking teaches you how to prepare good, healthy, hot, affordable meals. Diesel Dining: The Art of Manifold Cooking is guaranteed to save you thousands of dollars a year by removing the temptation and impulse buying of overpriced fast food products when you are famished and too exhausted to cook. Diesel Dining: The Art of Manifold Cooking offers a variety of recipes you can try cooking on your manifold. It also includes tips, tricks, stories, and trucking folklore. If you're a long haul trucker, and you want to enjoy a home-cooked, hot, meat and potatoes dinner at the end of your day's drive, then Diesel Dining: The Art of Manifold Cooking is the one and only cookbook you'll ever need. You'll never see Diesel Dining: The Art of Manifold Cooking in a typical homemaker's kitchen, since its premise is based on using your truck's diesel engine to cook your meals. Soon, this book will be dog-eared and stained with a variety of sauces, as it sits within easy reach by your interstate maps and daily log book.

Published when Wallace was just twenty-four years old, The Broom of the System stunned critics and marked the emergence of an extraordinary new talent. At the center of this outlandishly funny, fiercely intelligent novel is the bewitching heroine, Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman. The year is 1990 and the place is a slightly altered Cleveland, Ohio. Lenore’s great-grandmother has disappeared with twenty-five other inmates of the Shaker Heights Nursing Home. Her beau, and boss, Rick Vigorous, is insanely jealous, and her cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, has suddenly started spouting a mixture of psycho-babble, Auden, and the King James Bible. Ingenious and entertaining, this debut from one of the most innovative writers of his generation brilliantly explores the paradoxes of language, storytelling, and reality.

“Breathtaking . . . brilliantly conducted . . . Far-future philosophic space opera and near-future eco-thriller combine effectively.”—Locus It is the year 2047, and nuclear engineer Michael Poole is mourning the death of his beloved wife and doubting his own sanity. But he must stave off a looming catastrophe: vast reservoirs of toxic gases lie beneath the melting poles, threatening to contaminate the atmosphere and destroy all life on Earth. Though born five hundred thousand years after the death of Michael Poole, Alia knows him intimately. Every person in Alia’s world is entrusted with Witnessing one life from the past by means of a technology able to traverse time. Alia’s subject is Michael Poole. Chosen to become a Transcendent, a member of the group mind that is shepherding humanity toward an evolutionary apotheosis, Alia discovers a dark side to the Transcendent’s plans. Somehow, Michael holds the fate of the future in his hands, and to save that future, Alia must undertake a desperate journey into the past. “Stunning . . . engaging . . . a contrasting mix of Baxter’s customary skill at presenting a very realnear future, and his talent for high-level hardscience fiction.”—Starburst