In Monterey, on the California coast, Sweet Thursday is what they call the day after Lousy Wednesday, which is one of those days that are just naturally bad. Returning to the scene of Cannery Row, the weedy lots and junk heaps and flophouses of Monterey, John Steinbeck once more brings to life the denizens of a netherworld of laughter and tears, from Fauna, new headmistress of the local brothel, to Hazel, a bum whose mother must have wanted a daughter...

When America entered World War II, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned over 100 million books. Outraged librarians sent donated books to our troops. The War Department joined the publishing industry in an extraordinary program: 120 million books printed in small, lightweight paperbacks. Beloved by the troops and still fondly remembered, theirs is an inspiring story.

Examines the connection between creativity and alcohol by traveling to locales well-loved by six of America's greatest alcoholic writers, including Cheever's New York, Williams' New Orleans, and Hemingway's Key West.

Brooks does a good job of giving not only a sense of the cultural and literary history of the period between 1865 and 1915, but when he's at his best he also gives a felt sense of that period -- the look of rooms and houses, the way winter and summer feel, the everyday things the literary people of the time lived with.

During the 1980s and 90s, the Resource Institute, headed by Jonathan White, held a series of "floating seminars" aboard a sixty-five-foot schooner featuring leading thinkers and writers from an array of disciplines. Over ten years, White conducted interviews, gathered in this collection, with the writers, scientists, and environmentalists who gathered on board to explore our relationship to the wild.

Presents an anthology of fiction, speeches, poems, and essays about the nature of war by such contributors as Rita Williams-Garcia, Mark Twain, Bob Dylan, Ernie Pyle, and Helen Benedict.