A raucous comedy about a paranoid loser who maybe wasn't paranoid enough... In the sixties, Jeffrey Parker briefly attended an antiwar rally. He wasn't all that interested--he just listened to a few speeches, and went home...and nothing was ever the same. In this wildly comic novel, Parker's brief dalliance is the beginning of the end. He never lands a decent job. Women never stick around. He has terrible stretches of bad luck, and is the unwilling victim of just plain bizarre occurances: once, he comes home to find that the final page in every one of his books has been removed. Then Parker discovers that he's been the target of a government plot--like the FBI's real-life COINTELPRO--and the obsession of a rogue FBI agent who just won't give up. This outrageously imaginative debut is reminiscent of John Kennedy Toole's explosive, out-of-nowhere farce A Confederacy of Dunces. Part thriller, part national tragedy, and all hysterical comedy, it is devilishly entertaining even as it forces Parker and readers to uncover the truth not only about their country, but about themselves.

In the 1960s, Jeffrey Parker briefly attended an anti-war rally. He wasn't all that interested - just listened to a few speeches and went home, but nothing was ever the same again. In this wildly comic novel, Parker's brief dalliance is the beginning of the end. He never lands a decent job. Women never stick around. He has terrible stretches of bad luck and is the unwitting victim of plain bizarre occurrences. Then Parker discovers that he's been the target of a government plot and the obsession of a rogue FBI agent who just won't give up.

If you ever needed proof that a magazine can have a love affair with a musician, you're holding it in your hands. For DownBeat, the preeminent publication of the jazz world, Miles Dewey Davis was one of its most cherished subjects. Since it began covering the jazz scene in 1939, no other artist has been more diligently chronicled in its pages than Davis. The beauty of this collection is seeing the development of an artist over time. The reviews of his music go from quietly introducing a new talent to revering, perhaps, the greatest jazz artist of his generation. The feature articles begin with a very young, very polite Davis lamenting, “I've worked so little. I could probably tell you where I was playing any night in the last three years.” As he develops, the interviews show Davis gaining confidence and stature, showing swagger and becoming the over-the-top, say-it-like-it-is showman that made every interview an event. The Miles Davis Reader compiles more than 200 news stories, feature articles, and reviews by some of the greatest writers in jazz into one volume. It delivers a patchwork of his words and music – in the moment, as they happened. With several lengthy features added along with a dozen new photographs, this new edition is a beautiful series of snapshots, a year-by-year ride through the many phases of Davis as an artist and as a man.

Reprint of the 1987 original with a new introduction and preface. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"The Powerful Placebo" discusses the placebo effect over the centuries, reminding the reader how complex the issue is, from the very definition of a placebo and the success of dubious or fraudulent remedies to the modern worship of placebos as controls in clinical trials. The authors assert that "until recently, the history of medical treatment was essentially the history of placebo effect".

Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strange life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris's teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again--this time dressed as a man. Siri Hustvedt's The Blindfold is "...a work of dizzying intensity. . .eloquent and vivid." - Don DeLillo.