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Rabbit, Run
by John UpdikeRabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his--or any other--generation. Its hero is Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty--even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler's edge.
Rabbit, Run
by John UpdikeHarry Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school and that was the best time of his life. Now in his mid-20s, his work is unfulfilling, his marriage is moribund, and he tries to find happiness with another woman. But happiness is more elusive than a medal, and Harry must continue to run--from his wife, his life, and from himself, until he reaches the end of the road and has to turn back....
Roger's Version
by John UpdikeAs Roger Lambert tells it, he, a middle-aged professor of divinity, is buttonholed in his office by Dale Kohler, an earnest young computer scientist who believes that quantifiable evidence of God's existence is irresistibly accumulating. The theological-scientific debate that ensues, and the wicked strategies that Roger employs to disembarrass Dale of his faith, form the substance of this novel--these and the current of erotic attraction that pulls Esther, Roger's much younger wife, away from him and into Dale's bed. The novel, a majestic allegory of faith and reason, ends also as a black comedy of revenge, for this is Roger's version--Roger Chillingworth's side of the triangle described by Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter--made new for a disbelieving age.
S.: A Novel (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Ser. #Bks. 1-4)
by John UpdikeS. is the story of Sarah P. Worth, a thoroughly modern spiritual seeker who has become enamored of a Hindu mystic called the Arhat. A native New Englander, she goes west to join his ashram in Arizona, and there struggles alongside fellow sannyasins (pilgrims) in the difficult attempt to subdue ego and achieve moksha (salvation, release from illusion). "S." details her adventures in letters and tapes dispatched to her husband, her daughter, her brother, her dentist, her hairdresser, and her psychiatrist--messages cleverly designed to keep her old world in order while she is creating for herself a new one. This is Hester Prynne's side of the triangle described by Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter; it is also a burlesque of the quest for enlightenment, and an affectionate meditation on American womanhood.From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Same Door
by John UpdikeThe title of John Updike's first short story collection, published when the author was twenty-seven, alludes to the old superstition that you should enter and leave a house by the same door. Thus John Nordholm, the alternately shy and brash hero of the first story here, is also the narrator of the last. Yet there is a sense in which all sixteen of these stories knock at the same door, a door that in "Dentistry and Doubt" swings open, and in "Toward Evening" remains shut. The characters are polite, nervous, diffident, as if life--or at least youth, for they are all young--were a discomfiting wait in the anteroom of the absolute. The majority of these stories depict encounters between strangers and their unexpected effects, which can be as concrete as a roomful of flowers or a bottle of wine, or as intangible as a miracle or a dream.
Seek My Face
by John UpdikeJohn Updike's twentieth novel, like his first, The Poorhouse Fair, takes place in one day, a day that contains much conversation and some rain. The seventy-nine-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer named Kathryn, and recapitulates, through stories from her career and many marriages, the triumphant, poignant saga of postwar American art. In the evolving relation between the two women, interviewer and subject move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother, therapist and patient, predator and prey, supplicant and idol. The scene is central Vermont; the time, the early spring of 2001.
Self-Consciousness: Memoirs
by John UpdikeJohn Updike's memoirs consist of six Emersonian essays that together trace the inner shape of the life, up to the age of fifty-five, of a relatively fortunate American male. The author has attempted, his Foreword states, "to treat this life, this massive datum which happens to be mine, as a specimen life, representative in its odd uniqueness of all the oddly unique lives in this world." In the service of this metaphysical effort, he has been hair-raisingly honest, matchlessly precise, and self-effacingly humorous. He takes the reader beyond self-consciousness, and beyond self-importance, into sheer wonder at the miracle of existence.
Telephone Poles and Other Poems
by John UpdikeWHEN, five years and five books of fiction ago, THE CARPENTERED HEN, John Updike's first collection of verse, was published, Phyllis McGinley wrote: "I have been happily reading Mr. Updike in The New Yorker for some time and am happy, now, to own him collected. When he first appeared in that magazine, I was so elated to see a new name in light verse that I felt like crying with the Ancient Mariner 'A Sail, A Sail!' His is what poetry of this sort exactly out to be--playful but elegant, sharp-eyed, witty." In the Saturday Review, David McCord wrote: "Furthermore, he is a graceful border-crosser (light verse to poem) as Auden has been; as Betjeman and McGinley frequently are." This second collection is equally divided between poems that, in their verbal jugglery and humorous bias, seem to qualify as "light" and poems that, one way or other, cross the problematic border into the general realm of poetry. The distinction cannot be clear-cut. The poet is consistently concerned with Man's cosmic embarrassment, and the same vision illuminates the creatures of "The High Hearts" and "Seagulls." Science and religion, so frequently and variously invoked, frame a single paradox, the paradox of the mundane; and each poem, whether inspired by an antic headline or a suburban landscape, rejoices in the elusive surface of created things.
Terrorist
by John UpdikeThe ever-surprising John Updike's twenty-second novel is a brilliant contemporary fiction that will surely be counted as one of his most powerful. It tells of eighteen-year-old Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy and his devotion to Allah and the words of the Holy Qur'an, as expounded to him by a local mosque's imam. The son of a bohemian Irish-American mother and an Egyptian father who disappeared when he was three, Ahmad turned to Islam at the age of eleven. He feels his faith threatened by the materialistic, hedonistic society he sees around him in the slumping factory town of New Prospect, in northern New Jersey. Neither the world-weary, depressed guidance counselor at Central High School, Jack Levy, nor Ahmad's mischievously seductive black classmate, Joryleen Grant, succeeds in diverting the boy from what his religion calls the Straight Path. When he finds employment in a furniture store owned by a family of recently immigrated Lebanese, the threads of a plot gather around him, with reverberations that rouse the Department of Homeland Security. But to quote the Qur'an: Of those who plot is God the best.
Too Far to Go
by John Updike"The Maples stories trace the decline and fall of a marriage," writes the author in his Foreword, a marriage that is threatened early on by the temptations of infidelity ("Snowing in Greenwich Village") and that ends in a midlife divorce ("Here Come the Maples"). "They also illumine a history in many ways happy, of growing children and a million mundane moments shared." That all blessings are mixed and fleeting does not make them less real, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds. "A tribe segregated in a valley develops an accent, then a dialect, and then a language all its own; so does a couple. Let this collection preserve one particular dead tongue, no easier to parse than Latin."
Tossing and Turning
by John UpdikeJohn Updike's first collection of verse since Midpoint takes its title from a poem about insomnia. Throughout, this is poetry with its eyes wide open, restlessly alert for the oddities of reality and the double entendres of imagination. Fanciers of light verse will find a middle section of delicate fossil prints left by this vanished form; readers of Mr. Updike's fiction will recognize some of the landscapes and preoccupations. In three long poems he, in turn, remembers a boyhood Sunday in Pennsylvania, addresses aspects of a Harvard education, and contemplates, with a Dionysian verve, the aesthetic challenge posed by the new sexual candor ("We must assimilate cunts to our creed of beauty"). Shorter poems treat of spring and flying, of gold and the Caribbean, of sand dollars and bicycle chains, of the shades of bliss and variety of phenomena accessible to a man past the midpoint of his life, trying to pace himself as he heads toward Nandi.
Toward the End of Time
by John UpdikeBen Turnbull, the hero of John Updike's eighteenth novel, is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria. He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time.From the Hardcover edition.
Trust Me
by John UpdikeThe theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines. One man loves his wife's twin, and several men love the imagined bliss of their pasts; one woman takes an impotent lover, and another must administer her father's death. Bourgeois comforts and youthful convictions are tenderly seen as certain to erode: "Man," as one of these stories concludes, "was not meant to abide in paradise."From the Trade Paperback edition.
Villages
by John UpdikeJohn Updike’s twenty-first novel, a bildungsroman, follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen’s education (Bildung) is not merely technical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their female citizens, works to disengage him from his youthful innocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmed existence. The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what light they can. At one juncture he reflects, “How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!” His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages: “A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall. ” This delightful, witty, passionate novel runs from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century.
The Widows of Eastwick: A Novel
by John UpdikeMore than three decades after the events described in The Witches of Eastwick, Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie--widowed, aging, and with their occult powers fading--return for the summer to the Rhode Island town where they once made piquant scandal and sometimes deadly mischief. But what was then a center of license and liberation is now a "haven of wholesomeness" populated by hockey moms and househusbands primly rebelling against their absent, reckless, self-involved parents. With spirits still free but energy waning, the three women reconstitute their coven to confront not only this youthful counterspell of propriety but also the enmity of those longtime townsfolk who, through their youthful witchery, they irreparably harmed. In this wise and wicked satire on the way we make peace with our pasts, John Updike proves himself a wizard on every page.
The Witches of Eastwick: A Novel
by John UpdikeToward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick--and through the even darker fantasies of the town's collective psyche.From the Trade Paperback edition.eat deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation."-The Philadelphia Inquirer"A wicked entertainment . . . In book after book, Updike's fine, funny impressionistic art strips the full casings of everydayness from objects we have known all our lives and makes them shine with fresh new connections."-The New Republic"Witty, ironic, engrossing, punctuated by transports of spectacular prose."-Time"Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have."-NewsdaySelected by Time as one of the Five Best Works of Fiction of the YearFrom the Trade Paperback edition.
The National Banks and American Economic Development, 1870-1900 (Routledge Library Editions: History of Money, Banking and Finance #11)
by Helen Hill UpdikeThis book, first published in 1985, is a study of the functioning of one sector of American capital markets – non-reserve city national banks – between 1870 and 1900. The unusually wide and deep expansion of the American economy in this period was impelled in part by the growth and development of agriculture, and this study examines the role of one source of loanable funds – banks chartered under the National Banking Acts – in providing American farmers with loans to expand and capitalize.
White Shepherd (Comprehensive Owner's Guide)
by Diana L. Updike Jean ReevesDistinguished by its stunning white coat and unmatched versatility, the White Shepherd is a direct descendant of the German Shepherd dog.<P><P> Although traditional German Shepherd devotees have shied away from solid white dogs, thousands of enthusiasts have embraced the beautiful, talented White Shepherd and established it as a breed unto itself. Whether on the farm, in the ring, in the water or in the home, the White Shepherd is an exemplary companion and competitor for the right owner.This book provides the reader with much-needed factual information about the breed, its history, including detailed sections on both noteworthy dogs and kennels, and the breed standard.
Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis
by Mark K. UpdegroveAmericans have long been defined by how they face adversity. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in how the nation's chief executive has tackled myriad issues upon entering the White House. The ways that U.S. presidents handle the vast responsibilities of the Oval Office determine the fate of the nation---and, in many cases, the fate of the world.In this fascinating narrative, presidential historian Mark Updegrove looks at eight U.S. presidents who inherited unprecedented crises immediately upon assuming the reigns of power. George Washington led a fragile and fledgling nation while defining the very role of the presidency. When Thomas Jefferson entered the White House, he faced a nation bitterly divided by a two-party schism far more severe than anything encountered today. John Tyler stepped into the office of the presidency during the constitutional crisis left by the first death of a sitting president. Abraham Lincoln inherited a divided nation on the brink of war. Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to quell America's fears during the depths of the Great Depression. His successor, Harry S. Truman, was sworn in as commander in chief at the close of World War II, and John F. Kennedy stepped into the increasingly heated atmosphere of the cold war. In the wake of Watergate, the first unelected president, Gerald R. Ford, aimed to end America's "long national nightmare."As the forty-fourth president takes office, Updegrove presents a timely look at these chief executives and the challenges they faced. In examining the ways in which presidents have addressed crises, Baptism by Fire illustrates the importance of character in leadership—and in the resilience of America itself.
Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency
by Mark UpdegroveAcclaimed author and historian Mark K. Updegrove, head of the LBJ Foundation and presidential historian for ABC News, offers an illuminating account of John F. Kennedy&’s brief but transformative tenure in the White House. &“Tremendously absorbing and inviting… An important book.&”—Doris Kearns Goodwin • &“Elegant, concise, [and] knowing.&”—Michael Beschloss • &“Rescues JFK from Camelot mythology.&”—Richard Norton Smith Nearly sixty years after his death, JFK still holds an outsize place in the American imagination. While Baby Boomers remember his dazzling presence as president, millennials more likely know him from advertisements for Omega watches or Ray Ban sunglasses. Yet his years in office were marked by more than his style and elegance. His presidency is a story of a fledgling leader forced to meet unprecedented challenges, and to rise above missteps to lead his nation into a new and hopeful era. Kennedy entered office inexperienced but alluring, his reputation more given by an enamored public than earned through achievement. In this gripping new assessment of his time in the Oval Office, Updegrove reveals how JFK&’s first months were marred by setbacks: the botched Bay of Pigs invasions, a disastrous summit with the Soviet premier, and a mismanaged approach to the Civil Rights movement. But the young president soon proved that behind the glamour was a leader of uncommon fortitude and vision. A humbled Kennedy conceded his mistakes, and, importantly for our times, drew important lessons from his failures that he used to right wrongs and move forward undaunted. Indeed, Kennedy grew as president, radiating greater possibility as he coolly faced a steady stream of crises before his tragic end. Incomparable Grace compellingly reexamines the dramatic, consequential White House years of a flawed but gifted leader too often defined by the Camelot myth that came after his untimely death.
The Last Republicans: Inside the Extraordinary Relationship Between George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush
by Mark K. UpdegroveA groundbreaking look at the lives of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, the most consequential father-son pair in American history, often in their own words. In this revealing, often poignant work, presidential historian Mark K. Updegrove tracks the two Bush presidents from their formative years through their post-presidencies and the failed presidential candidacy of Jeb Bush, derailing the Bush presidential dynasty. Drawing extensively on exclusive access and interviews with both Bush presidents, Updegrove reveals for the first time their influences and perspectives on each other’s presidencies; their views on family, public service, and America’s role in the world; and their unvarnished thoughts on Donald Trump and the radical transformation of the Republican Party he now leads.In 2016 George W. Bush lamented privately that he might be “the last Republican president.” Donald Trump’s election marked the end not only to the Bushes’ hold on the White House, but of a rejection of the Republican principles of civility and international engagement and leadership that the Bushes have long championed.The Last Republicans offers illuminating, moving portraits of the forty-first and forty-third presidents, as well as an elegy for the Republican “establishment,” which once stood for putting the interests of the nation over those of any single man.
Make Your Mark: Lessons in Character from Seven Presidents
by Mark K. UpdegroveThe award-wining author of Second Acts and The Last Republicans draws on interviews and conversations with seven presidents to identify the essence of character, leadership and legacy that has defined each of them and the modern American presidency.Throughout his career as an author, journalist, television commentator, and head of a presidential library and foundation, Mark Updegrove has had the privilege of getting to know seven U.S. Presidents, from Gerald Ford to Barack Obama. In Make Your Mark, he offers incisive, compelling sketches of these modern presidents and the character trait that made each suited to his moment in the Oval Office and underlies his most significant accomplishments.Gerald Ford’s instinct to do the right thing in the wake of Watergate;Jimmy Carter’s mission to do good in the areas of peace and human rights during his presidency and throughout his post-presidency;Ronald Reagan’s optimism, restoring the nation’s confidence and pride after a sustained period of demoralizing national setbacks;George H.W. Bush’s humility, helping to ensure a peaceful end to the Cold War that had seethed between the superpowers for over forty years;Bill Clinton’s resilience and determination to keep working for the good of the American people in the face of political and personal obstacles;George W. Bush’s charge to give back as the deadly AIDS epidemic spread unchecked throughout much of the developing world;and Barack Obama’s grace as the first African American to hold the country’s highest office. Make Your Mark reveals that there is no one-size-fits-all model for leadership. We all have our own set of strengths and weaknesses. But drawing on these presidential examples, we can ask ourselves how our character reflects our leadership, and be inspired to find the very best in who we are to make own unique marks as leaders.
How to Retire Rich in a Totally Changed World
by Walter UpdegraveWhether you are thirty years from retirement or it's just around the corner, here is the only book you'll need about how to get it together and plan a safe, secure, and prosperous retirement. Money magazine senior editor Walter Updegrave has crafted a practical, resourceful guide, showing readers how to cut through the clutter, assess their finances, and become their own personal pension manager. How to Retire Rich in a Totally Changed World gives readers the tools to make retirement something everyone can look forward to.
We're Not In Kansas Anymore: Strategies for Retiring Rich in a Totally Changed World
by Walter UpdegraveWhether you are thirty years from retirement or it's just around the corner, here is the only book you'll need about how to get it together and plan a safe, secure, and prosperous retirement.We all know the scene: Dorothy is transported from the flat terrain of Kansas to the bizarre land of Oz. Her cry, "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," may be the best line to describe how people feel about the retirement landscape. It’s one teeming with challenges, from the impact of corporate downsizing on individuals to battered 401(k)s, precarious Social Security, and cuts in pensions and health care benefits for retirees. Many people are intimidated and delay thinking about retirement. That’s a mistake. We're Not in Kansas Anymore is the only guide you need to learn how to deal with the Oz-like reality that is retirement planning today. Walter Updegrave shows how to cut through the clutter, assess your finances, and become your own personal pension manager. • Get real about retirement. Neither your employer nor the government will adequately feather your retirement nest. You're on your own. Only you can take action and responsibility for your life after work. Walter Updegrave shows how to start now.• Develop a simple, direct, empowering retirement plan. Cut through the alphanumeric soup of 401(k)s, IRAs, Keoghs, and SEPs, get a grip, and execute a personal plan that makes sense given your circumstances. • Create a realistic investing strategy and get the most out of your 401(k) and other retirement accounts.• Ensure that your money lasts a lifetime.The Tin Man wanted to experience life with passion and emotion. Likewise, you'll improve your chances of creating the kind of retirement you want if you bring some passion and emotion into your retirement plan and then save enough to make it a reality. The Scarecrow thought his life would be better if he "only had a brain." It was the Scarecrow, however, who came up with the best ideas to get Dorothy out of her jams. Similarly, Updegrave shows that any reasonably intelligent person can execute a successful retirement plan and, like the Cowardly Lion, show some courage by having the discipline, willpower, and conviction to follow it through.We're Not in Kansas Anymore is the best, most thorough, and most empowering retirement guide in print today. Don't leave Kansas--or anywhere else for that matter--without it.
Special Marine Corps Units Of World War II [Illustrated Edition]
by Charles L. Updegraph Jr.Includes more than 25 maps and illustrations.During World War II, a variety of new and experimental units were organized by Marine Corps to enhance the capabilities of the Corps. For the first time under one cover, this historical reference pamphlet tells of the development, deployment, and eventual demise of the five types of special units: raiders, parachutists, glider forces, barrage balloon squadrons, and base defense battalions. Official records of the Marine Corps and appropriate historical works were utilized in compiling this chronicle.Among the proudest traditions of the United States Marine Corps is the legend "First to Fight." This recognized ability to deploy effective forces in a minimum of time to meet any contingency is not easily maintained. It requires a careful evaluation of international trends and a constant reappraisal of the tactics and forces necessary to meet any crisis. The types of forces which must be maintained, and the structure of these forces, must be reviewed and updated.During the middle and late 1930s, concurrently with the Japanese expansion into northern China, the Marine Corps studied and refined its amphibious doctrine. Subsequently, the Corps stepped up its experimentation with new theories and methods to meet world-wide contingencies. Especially in the aftermath of the outbreak of war in Europe, the United States military establishment undertook a reexamination of its resources and capabilities. The Marines were among the most aggressive when it came to adapting current forces to future requirements.A number of the units which emerged from this period, and from the early war years, were either overtaken by events during the course of the war, or never lived up to their original promise. In these cases, the Marine Corps reorganized or disbanded the units as dictated by the tactical requirements. This monograph traces the origin, formation, deployment, and eventual demise of five such units.