SHOPPING CART 
The Perseus Books Group has been named Publisher of the Year by Publishers Weekly |
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SHOPPING CART The Perseus Books Group has been named Publisher of the Year by Publishers Weekly  |  |
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 |  | THE ASSIST Hoops, Hope, and the Game of Their Lives NEIL SWIDEY “With a powerful, moving narrative, Neil Swidey has delivered the rarest of transcendent sports books. Coach Jack O’Brien and his Charlestown players will bring you to your feet, and they'll bring you to tears. Most of all, they’ll make you care about a game so much bigger than winning and losing. This is a brilliant book, one that will stay with you.”—Adrian Wojnarowski, author of New York Times bestseller The Miracle of St. Anthony Jack O'Brien, the impossibly demanding basketball coach at Charlestown High School in Boston, has led his team to five state championship titles in six years. Less talked about is O'Brien's other winning record: Nearly every one of the players who stuck with his program—poor kids growing up in high-crime neighborhoods and saddled with the lousy educational system available in urban America—managed to get to college. But O'Brien is no saint. Saints give without expecting anything in return. O'Brien needs his players and their problems as much as they need him. Revolving around fascinating, complex characters, The Assist is a captivating narrative of a basketball team in pursuit of a championship that also drills down into the legacy of desegregation and explores issues of education, family, and race. O'Brien is a middle-aged white guy coaching an all-black team playing in an all-white neighborhood that three decades ago was at the center of the busing wars dividing cities across the country—a time and place indelibly described in J. Anthony Lukas's powerful book Common Ground. It's the inspiring story of a man who makes a difference, and of boys surmounting nearly impossible odds; it is also the story of the ones who don't make it, and why. | ||
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|  | LIPSTICK JIHAD A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran AZADEH MOAVENI “Compelling… [Moaveni is] a wonderfully acute observer, someone keenly attuned not only to the differences between American and Iranian cultures, but also to the ironies and contradictions of life today in Tehran…an illuminating book.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Azadeh Moaveni was born in Palo Alto, California, into the lap of an Iranian diaspora community longing for an Iran many thousands of miles away. As far back as she can remember she felt at odds with her tangled identity. College magnified the clash between Iran and America, and after graduating, she moved to Tehran as a journalist. Immediately, Azadeh’s exile fantasies dissolved. Azadeh finds a country that is culturally confused, politically deadlocked, and emotionally anguished. In order to unlock the fundamental mystery of Iran—how nothing perceptibly alters, but everything changes—Azadeh must delve deep into Tehran’s edgy underground. Lipstick Jihad is a rare portrait of Tehran, populated by a cast of young people whose exuberance and despair bring the modern reality of Iran to vivid life. Azadeh also reveals her private struggle to build a life in a dark country—the struggle of a young woman of the diaspora, searching for a homeland that may not exist. View the Reading Group Guide (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader.) | ||
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 | | THEY POURED FIRE ON US FROM THE SKY The True Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan BENSON DENG, ALEPHONSION DENG, BENJAMIN AJAK, WITH JUDY BERNSTEIN 2005 Christopher Award Winner “[A] beautifully told volume… it will remain on my desk for years to come. In this tender and lyrical story, the world of some of Africa’s most desperate children—running away from war and toward life—is vividly evoked. . . .The result is one of the most riveting stories ever told of African childhoods—and a stirring tale of courage… Anyone interested in Africa, its children or the human will to survive should read this book.” —Washington Post Book World Benjamin, Alepho, and Benson were raised among the Dinka tribe of Sudan. Their world changed the night the government-armed Murahiliin began attacking their villages. Forced to flee their village, their five-year journey would take them over one thousand miles across a war-ravaged country to refugee camps that offered little respite from the brutality they were fleeing. Thousands of other boys did likewise, joining this stream of child refugees that became known as the Lost Boys. In They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky, Alepho, Benson, and Benjamin, by turn, recount their experiences along this unthinkable journey. It is, in the end, an inspiring and unforgettable tribute to the tenacity of even the youngest human spirits. Read more about the book. | ||
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 | | THE WOMAN AT THE WASHINGTON ZOO Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate MARJORIE WILLIAMS EDITED BY TIMOTHY NOAH New York Times Bestseller “Lovely… Stunning, unflinching… Williams had a special voice, one capable not just of canny political observation but of tenderness and bracing intimacy.”—The New York Times Book Review The Woman at the Washington Zoo collects Marjorie Williams’s brilliant writings—from sharp political profiles to witty commentary on gender and family life to tender, intensely personal explorations of illness and loss. Williams wrote political portraits that came to be considered the final word on the capital’s most powerful figures, and she also writes essays that tackled topics broader and more intimate, including her battle against fourth-stage liver cancer. This splendid collection provides a window into Washington’s political elite, the messy lives that the rest of us lead, and—perhaps most powerfully—Williams herself. Read more about the book. | ||
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 | | TULIA Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town NATE BLAKESLEE Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize “[Tulia is] a devastating critique of Texas’ judicial system and the nation’s drug laws. But it is foremost a riveting legal thriller about the inspirational men and women… who refused to let the injustice stand. Atticus Finch, after all, was from a small Southern town, too. And Tulia, in Blakeslee’s rich and deeply satisfying telling, resembles nothing so much as a modern-day To Kill a Mockingbird—or would, that is, if the novel were a true story and Atticus had won.”—The New York Times Book Review In the summer of 1999, in the tiny west Texas town of Tulia, thirty-nine people, almost all of them black, were arrested and charged with dealing powdered cocaine. The operation was based on the work of one notoriously unreliable undercover officer. Despite the flimsiness of the evidence against them, virtually all of the defendants were convicted and given sentences as high as ninety-nine years. Tulia is the story of this town, the bust, the trials, and the heroic legal battle that ultimately led to the reversal of the convictions in the summer of 2003. But as Tulia makes clear, these events are the latest chapter in a story with themes as old as the country itself. It is a gripping, marvelously well-told tale about injustice, race, poverty, hysteria, and desperation in rural America. Read more about the book. | ||
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 | | AN INFINITY OF LITTLE HOURS Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World's Most Austere Monastic Order NANCY KLEIN MAGUIRE “A riveting and sympathetic account.” –Washington Post Book World In 1960, five young men arrived at the imposing gates of Parkminster, the largest center of the most rigorous and ascetic monastic order in the Western world: the Carthusians. This is the story of their five-year journey into a society virtually unchanged in its behavior and lifestyle since its foundation in 1084. An Infinity of Little Hours is a uniquely intimate portrait of the customs and practices of a monastic order almost entirely unknown until now. It is also a drama of the men's struggle as they avoid the 1960s—the decade of hedonism, music, fashion, and amorality—and enter an entirely different era and a spiritual world of their own making. After five years each must face a choice: to make "solemn profession" and never leave Parkminster; or to turn his back on his life's ambition to find God in solitude. Read more about the book. Reading groups may also be interested in viewing Philip Gröning's film Into Great Silence, for more about Carthusian monks | ||
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 | | AUSCHWITZ A New History LAURENCE REES Named Best History Book at the British Book Awards “[A] devastating new history of the infamous death factory… Rees’s research is impeccable and intrepid.”—The Washington Post This companion book to the PBS Documentary is essential reading for anyone studying the Holocaust. Based on over 100 interviews with survivors and Nazi perpetrators, Auschwitz provides a portrait of the inner workings of the camp in unrivalled detail. Rees determines that a terrible immoral pragmatism characterized many of the decisions that determined what happened at Auschwitz. Thus the story of the camp becomes a morality tale, too, in which evil is shown to proceed in a series of deft, almost noiseless incremental steps until it produces the overwhelming horror of the industrial scale slaughter that was inflicted in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Read more about the book. | ||
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