Wanton West

From the time of the gold rush to the election of the first woman to the U.S. Congress, Wanton West brings to life the women of the West's wildest region: Montana, famous for its lawlessness, boomtowns, and America's largest red-light districts. Prostitutes and entrepreneurs--like Chicago Joe, Madame Mustache, and Highkicker—flocked to Montana to make their own money, gamble, drink, and raise hell just like men. Moralists wrote them off as “soiled doves,” yet a surprising number prospered, flaunting their freedom and banking ten times more than their “respectable” sisters. A lively read providing new insights into women's struggle for equality, Wanton West is a refreshingly objective exploration of a freewheeling society and a re-creation of an unforgettable era in history.

"Saint Joan" is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first staged in 1923. It is based on the life and trial of Joan of Arc, the French heroine who played a significant role in the Hundred Years' War between France and England. Shaw's play explores themes of faith, martyrdom, politics, and the nature of leadership. The play portrays Joan as a complex figure, driven by her unwavering faith and conviction that she is following divine guidance. Shaw presents her as a visionary and a symbol of individual courage against oppressive authority. At the same time, he critiques the political and religious institutions that ultimately lead to her downfall. "Saint Joan" received critical acclaim for its thought-provoking exploration of Joan's character and the social, political, and religious forces of her time. Shaw won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925, partly in recognition of this play and his other contributions to literature and drama.

Like John Updike, Martin Amis is the preeminent novelist-critic of his generation. Always entertaining, with a razor-sharp wit and inimitable judgment, he expounds on a dazzling range of topics from chess, nuclear weapons, masculinity, screen censorship, to Andy Warhol, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Margaret Thatcher. The very best of his essays and reviews from the past twenty-five years are brought together in this substantial and wide-ranging collection, including pieces on Cervantes, Milton, Donne, Coleridge, Jane Austen, Dickens, Kafka, Philip Larkin, Joyce, Evelyn Waugh, Malcolm Lowry, Nabokov, William Burroughs, Anthony Burgess, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Shiva and V.S. Naipaul, Kurt Vonnegut, Iris Murdoch, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Don DeLillo, Elmore Leonard, Michael Crichton,V.S. Pritchett and John Updike.