“Didn’t we just pass this place?”
Archive for July, 2008
Two New Lit Blogs
Posted in News on 23 July, 2008 by S&Co.Please note the addition of permanent links to two lit blogs: Brad Tyer’s The Browser. (Brad is the former editor of the Missoula Independent.) And Ward Six, written by Rhian Ellis, J. Robert Lennon, and Ed Skoog. (Ellis and Lennon are writers with connections to Missoula.) Check ‘em out!
The Best We Can Hope For
Posted in Books, Excerpts on 22 July, 2008 by S&Co.
Over the next few weeks I will post excerpts from forthcoming titles. This is from Losing Hurts Twice as Bad: The Four Stages to Moving Beyond Iraq, by Christopher J. Fettwies (W.W. Norton, Sept. 08):
[p. 23] The best the United States can hope for — and even this appears to be a long shot — is to leave behind a functioning, stable Iraq, where a central government manages to hold together and stave off civil war, Islamic fundamentalism, and Iranian influence. In this best-case scenario, Iraq will not be a breeding ground for terrorists and will harbor no WMD programs. It will be able to provide power to its capital and other basic requirements for an acceptable minimum standard of living for its people, one which it cannot currently provide. In other words, the best we can hope for is an Iraq that looks a great deal like the one we found in 2003, only this time led by a strongman who may be a bit friendlier to the West. Rarely are wars that aim for what amounts to a return to the status quo ante considered worthwhile ventures. Post-surge optimism should therefore be kept in perspective. At best, this war may someday be judged as a rather inconsequential waste of American blood and treasure. At worst, it could be remembered as the greatest blunder in the history of the United States. The choices made over the course of the next few years will make the difference.
The Onion? Or the New York Times?
Posted in News on 21 July, 2008 by S&Co.Lifestyles of the Affluent:
I suppose this is good news, but it struck me as being very strange …
The Cure Within
Posted in Books on 21 July, 2008 by Elisabeth
[p. 19] “Where do these stories of mind-body illness and mind-body healing come from? What is their relationship both to modern medicine on the one side and traditional religious and folk stories about illness on the other? What can their prominence in our culture today teach us about our own imperfectly secularized experiences of illness, the curious ways in which we navigate a path between science and sense-making in our own time? What can they teach us too about discontents and countercurrents within the profession of mainstream medicine itself, the ways that doctors and scientists also feel and respond to shortcomings of the physicalist story of illness? This book takes an historical approach to tackling these kinds of questions. It does so, moreover, in a way that puts the spotlight, first and foremost, not just on the science, not just on the practices, not just the institutions, but on the stories of mind-body medicine: where they have come from, what they have helped generate over time, what functions they serve in our society today.”
-Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine, (W. W. Norton & Co., $25.95). In Stock!
Nazis in the Walls
Posted in Books, Excerpts on 20 July, 2008 by S&Co.
I was quite small, perhaps eight, when it occurred to me how deeply I disliked the other children. I mean, it wasn’t as if I wanted them dead or anything; it just didn’t seem as though we had much to say to one another. I had made an effort when we first moved to the neighborhood, dutifully ringing doorbells and dragging the sprinkler from the garage and setting it up on the lawn, but one can spend only so many afternoons throwing dirt clods at passing cars before the soul cries out for something finer.
– Rachel Shukert
Have You No Shame? And Other Regrettable Stories (Villard; $14)
IN STOCK
Tina, Eat Your Dinner
Posted in Books on 19 July, 2008 by Kit
Growing up I was stubborn. So stubborn in fact that my family re-enacted that scene from A River Runs Through It where Paul refuses to eat the oatmeal, thus not cleaning his plate, thus not being allowed to leave the dinner table long after the meal and other plates have been cleaned, dried and put back on the shelves. In my case, however, the oatmeal was canned tuna. After an hour and a half, I caved, ate the tuna I had declared was only suitable for cats and then promptly regurgitated the food back onto my plate something like two or three minutes after forcing the fish down. My father was horrified, my mother unamused and me, well, I won that battle.
So when I saw Richard Ellis’ new book: Tuna: A Love Story, I had to laugh. A beautiful, hardcover edition that explores the preservation and exploitation of tuna, the fish’s history and argues for a reexamination of the fish’s treatment due to impending extinction. Informative and gripping, this book is great for anyone who enjoys tuna and even those who don’t.
Tuna: A Love Story (Knopf, $27.95) In Stock!
Proof of Time Travel?
Posted in Magazines on 19 July, 2008 by S&Co.
“Adam-12, see the gold Cadillac Eldorado with California plates parked behind the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center with a Penthouse magazine sitting on the dash.”
Hope it doesn’t spoil the family atmosphere for the Hip Strip Block Party.
Announcing: Bicycle Benefits
Posted in News on 18 July, 2008 by S&Co.We are happy to announce that Shakespeare & Co. has enrolled as a member of the Bicycle Benefits program in Missoula. See a list of Missoula member businesses here. How does it work? It’s simple: buy a Bicycle Benefits sticker and affix it to your bicycle helmet. Ride your bicycle to any member business, show your sticker, and you may be eligible for a discount or reward. Here at the bookshop, we are going to start out by offering a 10% discount, on a different category, each day of the week. As follows:
Monday: 10% off Children’s Books.
Tuesday: 10% off Memoirs.
Wednesday: 10% off Cookbooks.
Thursday: 10% off Science Fiction.
Friday: 10% off Magazines.
Saturday: 10% off Staff Favorites.
Sunday: 10% off Adult Paperback Fiction.
Bicycle Benefits at S&Co. will be updated regularly (to feature different areas of the store) and are of course always subject to change. Details can always be found here. Discounts apply only to regularly priced merchandise and do not apply to special orders.
Helmet stickers may be purchased at Shakespeare & Co. for $5.00 each.
Thanks for riding your bicycle! And thanks also to Dillon and everyone involved at — and with — Bicycle Benefits — especially you constant riders — for helping to create more sustainable communities!
Bomb Scare
Posted in Books, Excerpts on 17 July, 2008 by Elisabeth
Joseph Cirincione
[p. 160-61] On August 29, 2007, the U.S. Air Force lost track of the equivalent of 60 Hiroshima bombs for 36 hours as a B-52 bomber flew across the country with 6 nuclear missiles tucked under its wings. Unknown to the air crews, the missiles were each armed with a 150-kiloton nuclear warhead, ten times the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
The Air Force has not flown nuclear weapons on bombers for 40 years and has not even practiced loading these weapons on them for 17 years. The live bombs were put on by accident. Most experts had thought it impossible that anyone could get past the half-dozen security checks designed to prevent the unauthorized use of the most dangerous weapons on earth.
Yet Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick disclosed that the loaded bomber “sat on the tarmac overnight without special guards, protected for 15 hours by only the base’s exterior chain-link fence and roving security patrols.”
-Joseph Cirincione, Bomb Scare: The History & Future of Nuclear Weapons, (Columbia; $18.95) IN STOCK.
