Harry Potter Boxset Books 1-7

Harry Potter Boxset Books 1-7
The Harry Potter Boxed Set 1-7 includes all seven Harry Potter hardcover books by bestselling author J.K. Rowling, and is housed in a printed and customizable (decorative stickers included) cardboard box featuring a plastic lock and handles.More detail...

The Book of General Ignorance

The Book of General Ignorance
Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again.Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more, The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school.Revealing the truth behind all the things we think we know but don’t, this book leaves you dumbfounded about all the misinformation you’ve managed to collect during your life, and sets you up to win big should you ever be a contestant on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.Besides righting the record on common (but wrong) myths like Captain Cook discovering Australia or Alexander Graham Bell inventing the telephone, The Book of General Ignorance also gives us the skinny on silly slipups to trot out at dinner parties (Cinderella wore fur, not glass, slippers and chicken tikka masala was invented in Scotland, not India).Thomas Edison said that we know less than one millionth of one percent about anything: this book makes us wonder if we know even that much.You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE for more fun entries and complete answers to the following: How long can a chicken live without its head?About two years. What do chameleons do? They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states. Who invented champagne? Not the French. How many legs does a centipede have?Not a hundred. How many toes has a two-toed sloth? It’s either six or eight. How many penises does a European earwig have? a)Fourteenb)None at allc)Two (one for special occasions)d)Mind your own businessWhich animals are the best-endowed of all?Barnacles. These unassuming modest beasts have the longest penis relative to their size of any creature. They can be seven times longer than their body. What is a rhino’s horn made from? A rhinoceros horn is not, as some people think, made out of hair. Who was the first American president?Peyton Randolph. What were George Washington’s false teeth made from? Mostly hippopotamus. What was James Bond’s favorite drink? Not the vodka martini. More detail..

Rhett Butler's People

Rhett Butler's People
Fully authorized by the Margaret Mitchell estate, Rhett Butler's People is the astonishing and long-awaited novel that parallels the Great American Novel, Gone With The Wind. Twelve years in the making, the publication of Rhett Butler's People marks a major and historic cultural event. Through the storytelling mastery of award-winning writer Donald McCaig, the life and times of the dashing Rhett Butler unfolds.Through Rhett's eyes we meet the people who shaped his larger than life personality as it sprang from Margaret Mitchell's unforgettable pages: Langston Butler, Rhett's unyielding father; Rosemary his steadfast sister; Tunis Bonneau, Rhett's best friend and a onetime slave; Belle Watling, the woman for whom Rhett cared long before he met Scarlett O'Hara at Twelve Oaks Plantation, on the fateful eve of the Civil War.Of course there is Scarlett.Katie Scarlett O'Hara, the headstrong, passionate woman whose life is inextricably entwined with Rhett's: more like him than she cares to admit; more in love with him than she'll ever know... Brought to vivid and authentic life by the hand of a master, Rhett Butler's People fulfills the dreams of those whose imaginations have been indelibly marked by Gone With The Wind.More detail...

The Road (Oprah's Book Club)

The Road (Oprah's Book Club)
A New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the YearThe Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Denver Post, The Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times, New York, People, Rocky Mountain News, Time, The Village Voice, The Washington PostThe searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food-—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.More detail...

Into the Wild

Into the Wild
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.More detail...

The World Without Us

The World Without Us
A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.
In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.
The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us. Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists---who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths---Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.
From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn't depend on our demise. It is narrative nonfiction at its finest, and in posing an irresistible concept with both gravity and a highly readable touch, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.More detail...

A Family Christmas

A Family Christmas
"When I began assembling [this] collection, I was skeptical that I would learn anything new about Christmas, but reading and reflecting on the history and spirit of Christmas brought back many memories, and taught me a great deal #133; The literature of Christmas ranges from the miraculous to the tragic, the profound to the ridiculous, but always represents the connection to something larger than ourselves." -Caroline KennedyIn A Family Christmas, Caroline shares the Christmas poetry, prose, scriptural readings, and lyrics that are most dear to her, drawing on authors as diverse as Harper Lee, Nikki Giovanni, Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Collins, John and Yoko, and Charles Dickens. There are also many lesser-known gems throughout and personal treasures from her own family -- including a young Caroline's Christmas list to Santa Claus and a letter from her father as President to a child concerned about Santa's well-being. This diverse and unique anthology will become a timeless keepsake, and will enrich your heart and mind with the spirit of Christmas.A Family Christmas includes selections from:Groucho Marx, Emma Lazarus, Mark Twain, Sandra Cisneros, Pearl S. Buck, Truman Capote, Gabriela Mistral, Ogden Nash, Clement Clarke Moore, Vladimir Nabokov, Marianne Moore, Calvin Trillin, E. B. White, and many more.Caroline Kennedy is the editor of the New York Times bestselling A Family of Poems, Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, A Patriot's Handbook, and Profiles in Courage for Our Time, and is the coauthor of The Right to Privacy and In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action. She serves as the Vice Chair of the New York City Fund for Public Schools. More detail...