Great Books

In this remarkable memoir, Tung Pok Chin casts light on the largely hidden experience of those Chinese who immigrated to this country with false documents during the Exclusion era. Although scholars have pieced together their history, first-person accounts are rare and fragmented; many of the so-called 'Paper Sons' lived out their lives in silent fear of discovery. Chin's story speaks for the many Chinese who worked in urban laundries and restaurants, but it also introduces an unusually articulate man's perspective on becoming a Chinese American. Chin's story begins in the early 1930s, when he followed the example of his father and countless other Chinese who bought documents that falsely identified them as children of Chinese Americans. Arriving in Boston and later moving to New York City, he worked and lived in laundries. Chin was determined to fit into American life and dedicated himself to learning English. But he also became an active member of key organizations a church, the Chinese Hand Laundrymen's Alliance, and Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association that anchored him in the community. A self-reflective and expressive man, Chin wrote poetry commenting on life in China and the hardships of being an immigrant in the United States. His work was regularly published in the China Daily News and brought him to the attention of the FBI, then intent on ferreting out communists and illegal immigrants. His vigorous narrative speaks to the day-to-day anxieties of living as a Paper Son as well as the more universal immigrant experiences of raising a family in modest circumstances and bridging cultures. Historian K. Scott Wong introduces Chin's memoir, discussing the limitations on immigration from China and what is known about Exclusion-era Chinese American communities. Set in historical context, Tung Pok Chin's unique story offers an engaging account of a twentieth-century Paper Son. Author note: Winifred Chin is a Visiting Scholar with the Asian/Pacific American Studies and Research Institute at New York University.

What would it be like to stand head and shoulders above everyone else - and to keep growing? Unable to interact with a fragile world that isn't built to withstand your size? To live in a house that doesn't fit you anymore - with a wife who doesn't either? Craig Pressgang's life is well documented in his official CIA biography, "Giant Man: Pillar of America," but the heroic picture it paints is only half the story. The continuous growth caused by Craig's strange medical condition brings a variety of problems as he becomes more isolated and unknowable. Told in three eras by three women with unique relationships with Craig, 3 Story follows his sad life from his birth to the present. Harvey Award winner Matt Kindt (Super Spy, Pistolwhip) brings his innovative design and storytelling sensibility to this poignant look at what it really means to be different, alienated from the rest of the world.

A child of the 1950s from a small New England town, "perfect Paul" earns straight A's and shines in social and literary pursuits, all the while keeping a secret -- from himself and the rest of the world. Struggling to be, or at least to imitate, a straight man, through Ivy League halls of privilege and bohemian travels abroad, loveless intimacy and unrequited passion, Paul Monette was haunted, and finally saved, by a dream of "the thing I'd never even seen: two men in love and laughing." Searingly honest, witty, and humane, Becoming a Man is the definitive coming-out story in the classic coming-of-age genre.

Paul Monette first made a name for himself in 1978 with his debut novel, Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll, a comic romp with serious overtones. He established himself as a writer of popular fiction with three more novels before he and his lover were both diagnosed with HIV. In 1988 he wrote On Borrowed Time, a memoir of living with AIDS and of his lover's death. The passion and anger that fueled On Borrowed Time surfaces again in 1992's Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, his National Book Award-winning autobiography. Although it follows the traditional structure of the autobiography and bildungsroman--early family life, education, reflections on how art influenced the subject's view of life--Becoming a Man also filters Monette's story through two central facts: the closet and AIDS. Monette writes of the pain of being closeted, the effect it had on his writing, and how it shaped (and often destroyed) his relationships. Monette's fear and fury at AIDS and homophobia heighten the same skill and imagination he put into his fiction. This vision--poetic yet highly political, angry yet infused with the love of life--is what transforms Becoming a Man from simple autobiography into an intense record of struggle and salvation. Paul Monette did not lead a life different from many gay men--he struggled courageously with his family, his sexuality, his AIDS diagnosis--but in bearing witness to his and others' pain, he creates a personal testimony that illuminates the darkest corners of our culture even as it finds unexpected reserves of hope.

Seven hundred years ago, executioners led a Welsh rebel named William Cragh to a wintry hill to be hanged. They placed a noose around his neck, dropped him from the gallows, and later pronounced him dead. But was he dead? While no less than nine eyewitnesses attested to his demise, Cragh later proved to be very much alive, his resurrection attributed to the saintly entreaties of the defunct Bishop Thomas de Cantilupe. The Hanged Man tells the story of this putative miracle--why it happened, what it meant, and how we know about it. The nine eyewitness accounts live on in the transcripts of de Cantilupe's canonization hearings, and these previously unexamined documents contribute not only to an enthralling mystery, but to an unprecedented glimpse into the day-to-day workings of medieval society. While unraveling the haunting tale of the hanged man, Robert Bartlett leads us deeply into the world of lords, rebels, churchmen, papal inquisitors, and other individuals living at the time of conflict and conquest in Wales. In the process, he reconstructs voices that others have failed to find. We hear from the lady of the castle where the hanged man was imprisoned, the laborer who watched the execution, the French bishop charged with investigating the case, and scores of other members of the medieval citizenry. Brimming with the intrigue of a detective novel, The Hanged Man will appeal to both scholars of medieval history and general readers alike.

These short works, ranging from Tolstoy's earliest tales to the brilliant title story, are rich in the insights and passion that characterize all of his explorations in love, war, courage, and civilization.

"Here, finally, is some writing with a genuine purchase on things of worth. The collection of pithy short stories, filled with a sad wonder, tells of contemporary Egyptians . . . timorously rebelling against the conformism of life along the Nile." --(london) observer ". . . Bakr emerges as a fine observer of her country's times, with a vision which remains, for all its engagement, quirky and distinctively personal." --(london) times literary supplement Set among the poor of contemporary Cairo, these thirteen stories and one short novella tell of women struggling to provide themselves with the basic necessities of life. They explore the limits of self-awareness, the pressures to conform, and some of the strange paths to escape that women resort to in a conservative society shot through with social and sexual prejudice and preconceptions. Salwa Bakr contends that Arabic literature has been the domain of men and that it is the task of women writing in Arabic to redress the balance. One of Egypt's most interesting women writers of fiction, she is an emerging talent of great power. Her published oeuvre includes three story collections, a novel, and many popular articles. This translation of The Wiles of Men and Other Stories was first published in hardcover by Quartet Books of Great Britain in 1992.

For the past decade, Men’s Journal has set the standard for travel and adventure writing by publishing the work of America’s finest authors and literary journalists. Wild Stories collects thirty-two of the best pieces to appear in the magazine, written by its most esteemed contributors, including Jim Harrison, Sebastian Junger, P. J. O’Rourke, Rick Bass, Thomas McGuane, George Plimpton, Hampton Sides, Doug Stanton, Tim Cahill, and Mark Bowden. Each of the four chapters in Wild Stories showcases Men’s Journal’s diversity and taut storytelling power. “The Adventures” is a series of razor-sharp travel narratives, from a road trip across India on the perilous Grand Trunk Road to a search for grizzlies in Romania. “The Sporting Life” is a look into obscure corners of the sports world, where golf’s bush-league wannabes try to make it to the PGA and a group of cyclists out-suffer one another in pursuit of the mythic Hour Record. “Men’s Lives” includes profiles of singular adventurers such as Yvon Chouinard and Ned Gillette, and captures the rewards of such quintessentially male traditions as building a cabin on your own plot of land. And “The Reporting” collects definitive accounts of the most newsworthy disasters, as well as riveting dispatches from war zones in Somalia, Sudan, and Colombia, and from environmental hot spots in Alaska and Montana.Commemorating Men’s Journal’s tenth anniversary, Wild Stories is a diverse and entertaining anthology that explores the magazine’s basic creed: Life is an adventure. From the first page to the last, these are stories you’ll never forget.

The collection that established O’Connor’s reputation as one of the american masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive The Misfit, as well as “The Displaced Person” and eight other stories.

Here, in these powerful stories, Richard Wright takes readers into this landscape once again. Each of the eight stories in Eight Men focuses on a black man at violent odds with a white world, reflecting Wright's views about racism in our society and his fascination with what he called "the struggle of the individual in America." These poignant, gripping stories will captivate all those who loved Black Boy and Native Son.