What I Think I Did

Sample

Robin Waterfield

"In this comprehensive biography, Robin Waterfield traces the influences that shaped Kahlil Gibran, author of the inspirational New Age text The Prophet, which has sold millions of copies and remains an enduring work of the twentieth century. He explores Gibran's development from the wounded Romantic and angry young man to his final metamorphosis as the Prophet of New York, following him from the decadence of fin de siecle Boston to the vigor of Greenwich Village in its heyday before the First World War."--BOOK JACKET. "Though known outwardly for the peace and optimism that permeates his work, Gibran's life, as Waterfield demonstrates, was littered with personal tragedy and conflicted sexuality. Admired by many as a charismatic, intelligent, and talented aesthete, Gibran could also be abusive, arrogant, narcissistic, and self-indulgent. Tormented by his failure to live up to his own vision of spiritual fulfillment, Gibran ultimately succumbed to the ravages of alcoholism. Tragically, he did not live to see the phenomenal sales The Prophet achieved."--BOOK JACKET. "Using Gibran's poetry and art, as well as the major social and cultural contexts of Gibran's lifetime, Waterfield completely reappraises all of the remaining primary sources for Gibran's life and character. In so doing, he offers an entirely new portrait of the complex man whose ideals shaped the New Age."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Stephen Koch

**Double Lives** is the first major study since the fall of the Soviet regime on Stalinist culture in the intellectual life of the West.

Sample

Michael Posner

"Novelist, essayist, satirist, and iconoclast, Mordecai Richler was one of Canada's most skilled and popular writers. Controversial too. His early novels outraged some in Montreal's Jewish community and his later non-fiction work outraged some Quebec nationalists. But from the beginning, his tremendous talent was indisputable and such literary triumphs as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and, later, Barney's Version cemented his reputation as a brilliant, gutsy writer both in Canada and internationally. His death in July 2001 prompted tributes from around the world that acknowledged his humour, intellect, and irrepressible curmudgeonliness." "In The Last Honest Man Michael Posner has deftly woven hundreds of personal, intimate memories of Richler into a rich biography of the writer's life. Through the words of his family and friends, colleagues and rivals, editors, writers, filmmakers, drinking pals, and others, a complex picture of the writer emerges, one that captures him in all his guises: the grumpy and the high-spirited man, the observer and the engaged, the generous and the distanced, the enthusiastic and the sardonic, the man as consummately at ease in the Ritz Hotel as in his favourite Montreal watering hole, Winnie's, but awkward in crowded social situations." "Drawing on 150 interviews conducted in London, Montreal, Toronto, New York, and Los Angeles - and on richler's own letters and writings - Michael Posner has composed an unconventional biography, one that delivers a wonderful and highly textured portrait of this multifaceted artist. Book jacket."--Jacket.

Sample

Sudhir Venkatesh

First introduced in Freakonomics, here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology grad student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrance into the gang, what he learned, and how his method revolutionized the academic establishment. When Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago's most notorious housing projects, he was looking for people to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty. A first-year grad student hoping to impress his professors with his boldness, he never imagined that as a result of the assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade inside the projects under JT's protection, documenting what he saw there. Over the next seven years, Venkatesh got to know the neighborhood dealers, crackheads, squatters, prostitutes, pimps, activists, cops, organizers, and officials. From his privileged position of unprecedented access, he observed JT and the rest of the gang as they operated their crack-selling business, conducted PR within their community, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang's complex organizational structure. In Hollywood-speak, Gang Leader for a Day is The Wire meets Harvard University. It's a brazen, page turning, and fundamentally honest view into the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, often corrupt struggle to survive in what is tantamount to an urban war zone. It is also the story of a complicated friendship between Sudhir and JT-two young and ambitious men a universe apart.