In her long career, Ugresic has published several novels (e.g., The Ministry of Pain), but she made her name with her essay collections, which have caused controversy and earned her the admiration of writers and critics abroad. In these latest musings, written over the course of several years, Ugresic leaves no stone unturned and no thought contained, doing what she does best: writing about the human condition through her own experience. Refusing to establish a central theme, she touches upon a wide range of topics: the paradox of multiculturalism, metaphors as our "defense against nightmares," the eerie similarities between capitalism and communism, and ways in which we try to rise hopelessly above our less-than-perfect existence. Along the way, she pays homage to the works of literature that have influenced her own creative process, in an effort to pay "a symbolic literary tax on narcissim" because "writing is not the humblest of vocations." Perhaps not, but Ugresic certainly knows how to balance being a critic with being criticized. Recommended for all libraries collecting cultural criticism.--Mirela Roncevic, Library Journal Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

After caring for his mother at the end of her life, Thomas Gass took a job as a nursing home aide in a for-profit long term care home. This graphic, poignant & chilling book details his experiences in this 'warehouse' for the elderly & asks fundamental questions about care in American nursing homes.

...sometimes we need to go through the darkness to get to the light and that it may be emotionally painful...” the Needs Based Method of [overcoming] alcohol and drug abuse,” and how Oden deals with the why dependency happens. Many can benefit from Oden’s eye-opening and highly successful method. —”the emotional, physical, or social absence of or ‘neglect’ by a caretaker, or when nobody’s home.” -US Review of Books

Gass has applied his psychology degree in a variety of settings, including a three-and-a-half-year period working in a for-profit long- term-care facility in the Midwest, first as a nursing aide and then as a director of social services. He draws on that experience to take readers into the world of a nursing home, in an account that is intimate, stark, funny, and poignant--and a wake-up call to Americans of the need to act now to make nursing homes a better place to live and work. No subject index. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

For the first time in his esteemed career, Tim Powers returns to the setting (and a central character) from his landmark time travel novel, "The Anubis Gates." Tracking the murderer of her fiancee through 19th century London's darkest warrens, Jacky Snapp has disguised herself as a boy but the disguise fails when, trying to save a girl from the ghost of her jealous husband, Jacky finds that she has made herself visible to the ghosts that cluster around the Thames And one of them is the ghost of her fiancee, who was poisoned and physically transformed by his murderer but unwittingly shot dead by Jacky herself. Jacky and the girl she rescued, united in the need to banish their pursuing ghosts, learn that their only hope is to flee upriver to the barge known as Nobody's Home where the exorcist whose name is Nobody charges an intolerable price.

In this broad-based study of American fiction, canonical and otherwise, Arnold Weinstein examines closely the strong ties between language, history and culture, with a particular focus on freedom of the self.