A collection of sixty classic and contemporary essays, stories, lists, poems, quotations, and cartoons that celebrates the joys of reading, the feeling of spending hours browsing through a bookstore, and the people for whom buying books is a necessity. Booklovers will find themselves in good company within the pages of A Passion for Books, beginning with science-fiction great Ray Bradbury's foreword and throughout contributions like-- Umberto Eco's How to Justify a Private Library, dealing with the question everyone with a sizable library is inevitably asked: "Have you read all these books?"; Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, the tale of a book collector so obsessed with owning a book that he is willing to kill to possess it; and Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life, in which she shares her optimistic view on the role of reading and the future of books in the computer age. Interspersed throughout are entertaining lists--Ten Bestselling Books Rejected by Publishers Twenty Times or More, Norman Mailer's Ten Favorite American Novels and many more-- plus select writings on bookstores, book clubs, cartoons about books and a specially prepared "bibliobibliography" of books about books. Whether you consider yourself a bibliomaniac or just someone who enjoys reading, A Passion for Books will provide you with a lifetime's worth of entertaining, informative, and pleasurable reading on your favorite subject--the love of books.

In the light of the globalization, (post-)modernization, social fragmentation, and economization of many of today’s living contexts, local knowledge is receiving increasing attention in various sciences. Commonly, local knowledge indicates a counterpart to both rational forms of an explicit knowledge of facts and knowledge of universal validity. Local knowledge attempts to appreciate a more comprehensive view of people’s skills, capabilities, experience, and sophistication. On the other hand, the reference to ‘local’ implies an idea of bounded applicability of knowledge in a specific environment. Beyond this scope of application, local knowledge can be acknowledged either as instrumental in order to achieve specific goals or as an intrinsic value in order to deal with social relations, solidarity, common values and norms accordingly. Social and spatial settings are influential for everybody’s quality of life, personal identity, and political commitment – and local knowledge is the essential foundation in turning these settings into a vivid arena. This volume is a result of a two-day conference held in November 2013 in Salzburg, Austria, dedicated to bringing together researchers from different scientific disciplines, including sociology, philosophy, social geography, economics, history, interpersonal communication studies, cultural studies, and theology, in order to draw distinct trains of thought about local knowledge in a transdisciplinary fashion: the phenomenon, its epistemic and philosophical reflection, its methodological comprehension, and its practical application.

Irresistible tales of love, friendship, passion and betrayal from some of the top names in fiction. A woman planning not just what she wants to wear to a school reunion, but who she wants to be . . . A couple hoping to start a new life in Spain - and completely misunderstanding what they each want . . . A girl who's brother falls in love with a beautiful male impersonator . . . A woman haunted by ghosts from her past . . . A newly divorced mother taking her teenage daughter to Crete for a holiday, longing to be young again, until she remembers how awful it is to be 17 . . . From Maeve Binchy to Jane Fallon, Adriana Trigiani to Alexander McCall Smith, this is the must-have collection of the year.

“It’s fun to find ways I’m like you and you’re like me. It’s fun to find ways we’re different.” In this colorful, inviting book, kids from preschool to lower elementary learn about diversity in terms they can understand: hair that’s straight or curly, families with many people or few, bodies that are big or small. With its wide-ranging examples and fun, highly detailed art, I’m Like You, You’re Like Me helps kids appreciate the ways they are alike and affirm their individual differences. A two-page adult section in the back provides tips and activities for parents and caregivers to reinforce the themes and lessons of the book.

Join Lola as she learns what it means to be a big sister, in the third installment in the loveable Lola series. We all know how much Lola loves books, so it is no surprise that she can’t wait to share her love of reading with her new baby brother, Leo. Lola gets ready for little Leo’s arrival by reading books about brothers and sisters and picking out the perfect stories that she just knows her little brother will love. When the baby is finally here, Lola takes on the role of big sister—she helps her mommy and daddy around the house and tells Leo stories to cheer him up when he cries. Simple text and bright and charming illustrations celebrate family, reading, and what it means to be a big sister.