Other books that might interest you

• 

  Uncle John's Weird Weird World -...

  Institute Bathroom Readers'

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Beauty pageants, bad musicals, bizarre diseases, and more: it’s all covered in this collection of fascinating trivia and full-color pictures!    It’s finally here: the book that Uncle John’s fans have been asking for: a full-color, illustrated edition featuring the most entertaining articles from the world’s bestselling bathroom trivia series! Hundreds of eye-popping photographs add a new dimension to Uncle John’s unique blend of trivia, humor, origins, history, science, and oddities. All the reader favorites are included—including dumb crooks, weird news, flubbed headlines, strange lawsuits, quirky quotations—and more. Now they pop off the pages like never before! So stimulate your visual cortexes as you read about . . .   •Weird Beauty Pageants •40 Odd Uses for WD-40 •“Bagpiper’s Fungus” and other bizarre diseases •The Wild World of Weird Sports •The “putrified forest” at Tennessee’s Body Farm •The origins of Monopoly, the lava lamp, computer viruses, and B movies •World records that are so risky, Guinness won’t even report them •The all-time dumbest business decisions •Harrowing stories from history, including the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and the Pilgrims’ uncomfortable ride on the Mayflower •The Toxic Travel Guide •How to cook with roadkill, get your TV show on the air, and more •Whatever happened to Nikola Tesla’s death ray? •Real-life superheroes . . . and much, much more!

  Show book

• 

  American Dream An

  Norman Mailer

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In this wild battering ram of a novel, which was originally published to vast controversy in 1965, Norman Mailer creates a character who might be a fictional precursor of the philosopher-killer he would later profile in The Executioner's Song. As Stephen Rojack, a decorated war hero and former congressman who murders his wife in a fashionable New York City high-rise, runs amok through the city in which he was once a privileged citizen, Mailer peels away the layers of our social norms to reveal a world of pure appetite and relentless cruelty. One part Nietzsche, one part de Sade, and one part Charlie Parker, An American Dream grabs the reader by the throat and refuses to let go.

  Show book

• 

  Drum-Taps

  Walt Whitman

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Drum Taps is the next collection of poems published by Walt Whitman after his famous Leaves of Grass.  This collection is a direct response to Whitman's personal observations of the Civil War, many of which come from his volunteer efforts in wartime hospitals.  Despite the miseries of war described, Whitman's poems in Drum Taps assert a steady patriotism in favor of Lincoln's war effort.  Interestingly, the 1915 edition used for this reading includes an introduction from the Times Literary Supplement which draws analogies between the Civil War and the current throes of World War I, enlisting Whitman posthumously as a supporter of the Allied campaign against Germany. - Summary by Expatriate

  Show book

• 

  The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

  Mark Twain

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Two half brothers look so similar as infants that no one can tell them apart. One, the legitimate son of a rich man, is destined for a life of comfort, while the other is condemned to be a slave because he is part black. The mother of the would-be slave is also the nurse of the other; to give her son the best life possible, she switches the babies. Soon the boy who is given every advantage becomes spoiled and cruel. He takes sadistic pleasure in tormenting his half brother. As they grow older, the townspeople no longer notice that the boys look similar, and they readily accept that each is born to his station.A local lawyer, David Wilson, has had a similar experience. On his first day in the village, he made an odd remark about a dog, and the townspeople gave him the condescending name "Pudd'nhead." Although he was a young, intelligent lawyer, he is unable to live down this name, so he toils in obscurity for over twenty years. Finally, he is presented with a complex murder trial-a chance to prove himself to the townspeople and shake this unjust label.

  Show book

• 

  The Nakano Thrift Shop - A Novel

  Hiromi Kawakami

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This “gentle, humorous novel” follows a young Japanese woman as she yearns for the love of a reluctant coworker (The Wall Street Journal). 
   
  The objects for sale at the Nakano Thrift Shop appear as commonplace as the staff and customers who handle them. But like those staff and customers, they hold many secrets. If examined carefully, they show the signs of innumerable extravagances, of immeasurable pleasure and pain, and of the deep mysteries of the human heart. 
   
  Hitomi, the inexperienced young woman who works the register, has fallen for her coworker, the oddly reserved Takeo. Unsure of how to attract his attention, she seeks advice from her employer’s sister, Masayo, whose sentimental entanglements make her a somewhat unconventional guide. But thanks in part to Masayo, Hitomi will come to realize that love, desire, and intimacy require acceptance not only of idiosyncrasies but also of the delicate waltz between open and hidden secrets, in this novel from the author of Strange Weather in Tokyo that “captures an untranslatable Japanese mood” (The New York Times). 
   
  “Uses a series of vignettes to chronicle a girl’s time working at Mr. Nakano’s secondhand store in Tokyo . . . Pleasant, leisurely prose.” —Publishers Weekly 
   
  “Hiromi Kawakami’s charming novel illuminates moments of kindness, love and friendship that pop up like the unexpected treasures amid the shop’s dusty collection of pretty mismatched bowls and plates, castoff eyeglasses, task lamps and old electric fans.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

  Show book

• 

  Abbott and Costello:...

  Bud Abbott, Lou Costello

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Abbott and Costello talk about football, Uncle Mike and Aunt May and thanksgiving dinner. They say Thanksgiving day is almost over. Lou talks to Veola Vonn about dating and marriage. Lou writes a play for Thanksgiving and they perform it.

  Show book