A story of friendship, encouragement, and the quest to design a better world A Man Apart is the story—part family memoir and part biography—of Peter Forbes and Helen Whybrow’s longtime friendship with Bill Coperthwaite (A Handmade Life), whose unusual life and fierce ideals helped them examine and understand their own. Coperthwaite inspired many by living close to nature and in opposition to contemporary society, and was often compared to Henry David Thoreau. Much like Helen and Scott Nearing, who were his friends and mentors, Coperthwaite led a 55-year-long “experiment in living” on a remote stretch of Maine coast. There he created a homestead of wooden, multistoried yurts, a form of architecture for which he was known around the world. Coperthwaite also embodied a philosophy that he called “democratic living,” which was about empowering all people to have agency over their lives in order to create a better community. The central question of Coperthwaite’s life was, “How can I live according to what I believe?” In this intimate and honest account—framed by Coperthwaite’s sudden death and brought alive through the month-long adventure of building with him what would turn out to be his last yurt—Forbes and Whybrow explore the timeless lessons of Coperthwaite’s experiment in intentional living and self-reliance. They also reveal an important story about the power and complexities of mentorship: the opening of one’s life to someone else to learn together, and carrying on in that person’s physical absence. While mourning Coperthwaite’s death and coming to understand the real meaning of his life and how it endures through their own, Forbes and Whybrow craft a story that reveals why it’s important to seek direct experience, to be drawn to beauty and simplicity, to create rather than critique, and to encourage others.

In A Man Apart Richard Steyn once again brings to life a South African icon. Louis Botha was the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, a union he did much to create in the decade after the devastation of the Anglo-Boer War. During the war Botha was a brilliant young Boer general who through his battlefield strategy won significant victories over the British in the early stages of the war. When the weight of British arms overwhelmed the Boers, Botha along with Smuts did much to encourage peace between English and Afrikaner and led the country to Union in 1910 and dominion status. Botha was a big-hearted and generous man who showed magnanimity in his dealings with all, including former enemies. He led the South African troops to victory and the capture of German South West Africa – prior to this he had to put down a revolt of pro-German Afrikaners. At the Peace of Versailles, representing South Africa, he pleaded unsuccessfully for magnanimity towards the Germans. Botha was a globally respected figure – he and Smuts effectively operated as a double act in South Africa and on the international stage before Botha's untimely death in August 1919 at only 57. In A Man Apart this tragically short life is illuminated in full.

The American Revolution radically changed the lives of many, some of them friends of the Revolution, some not, and some who wished to have no part of it for either side. Rarely did one of these reluctant witnesses leave a narrative journal. Nicholas Cresswell, a young English gentry farmer, was one. Arriving in Virginia during the momentous month of May 1774, Cresswell set out to seek his fortune as a farmer in the newer settlements in northwest Virginia. Soon the fortunes of Revolution overwhelmed him and his plans to begin a new life in America. For the next three years, Cresswell struggled to sustain his mission. Time was against him as his combatants on both sides, with increasingly ominous insistence, sought for and demanded his allegiance. This he never ceded. The very act of keeping a journal became dangerous. His written account of his attempt to sustain his liberty has long been a significant window into the turbulence of the Revolution. In offering this singular view of liberty during the Revolution, Nicholas Cresswell stood and still stands as a rebuke to subsequent historians of the Revolution, patriot leaning or loyalist leaning, who had difficulty in accommodating this journal into their generalized views of causation and justification. As a consequence, much of Cresswell's real perspectives were either lost or misinformed. In 1928, an edition of Cresswell's journal was published, but it was expurgated and not annotated. This edition of the Cresswell journal is the first unexpurgated and annotated edition ever published. As such, it offers new light for the better illumination of the turbulent world of revolutionary politics and personalities.

William Coperthwaite is a teacher, builder, designer, and writer who for many years hasexplored the possibilities of true simplicity on a homestead on the north coast of Maine. In the spirit of Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and Helen and Scott Nearing, Coperthwaite has fashioned a livelihood of integrity and completeness-buying almost nothing, providing for his own needs, and serving as a guide and companion to hundreds of apprentices drawn to his unique way of being. A Handmade Life carries Coperthwaite's ongoing experiments with hand tools, hand-grown and gathered food, and handmade shelter, clothing, and furnishings out into the world to challenge and inspire. His writing is both philosophical and practical, exploring themes of beauty, work, education, and design while giving instruction on the hand-crafting of the necessities of life. Richly illustrated with luminous color photographs by Peter Forbes, the book is a moving and inspirational testament to a new practice of old ways of life.

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

More than a biography, this is a savvy portrait of how Archie Leach, born to a poor working-class family in Bristol, England became Cary Grant, one of Hollywood's most irresistible and admired celebrities of all time.

The Bonfire of the Vanities defined an era--and established Tom Wolfe as our prime fictional chronicler of America at its most outrageous and alive. With A Man in Full, the time the setting is Atlanta, Georgia--a racially mixed late-century boomtown full of fresh wealth, avid speculators, and worldly-wise politicians. Big men. Big money. Big games. Big libidos. Big trouble. The protagonist is Charles Croker, once a college football star, now a late-middle-aged Atlanta real-estate entrepreneur turned conglomerate king, whose expansionist ambitions and outsize ego have at last hit up against reality. Charlie has a 28,000-acre quail-shooting plantation, a young and demanding second wife--and a half-empty office tower with a staggering load of debt. When star running back Fareek Fanon--the pride of one of Atlanta's grimmest slums--is accused of raping an Atlanta blueblood's daughter, the city's delicate racial balance is shattered overnight. Networks of illegal Asian immigrants crisscrossing the continent, daily life behind bars, shady real-estate syndicates, cast-off first wives of the corporate elite, the racially charged politics of college sports--Wolfe shows us the disparate worlds of contemporary America with all the verve, wit, and insight that have made him our most phenomenal, most admired contemporary novelist. A Man in Full is a 1998 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

Nicholas Cresswell was twenty-four years old when he left his birthplace of Edale, England to sail for Virginia, believing that ""a person with a small fortune may live much better and make greater improvements in America than he can possibly do in England."" From the time he left, sailing from Liverpool in 1774, until the time he returned, he kept a diary detailing his experiences in pre-Revolutionary America. As a loyal subject to King George, Cresswell found himself often unhappy in America, detailing the turmoil and abuses often suffered by Loyalists in the colonies. Confining his travel mainly to the mid-Atlantic region, Cresswell not only had occasion to attend a slave gathering and observe what went on there, but also traded amongst many of the native tribes, including the Lenape, Tuscarora, Ottawa and Shawnee. Despite his ambivalence about returning to England, (toward the end of the book he moans, ""I wish to be at home and yet dread the thought of returning to my native Country a Beggar "" (P. 251)), life in the colonies becomes too much for this loyal subject and Cresswell's journal ends in 1777 with his return to England.

HE WAS THE MOST MAGNIFICENT MAN SHE'D EVER ENCOUNTERED Maude Ann knew she was in trouble when wounded detective Matthew Dolan was sent to Henley Haven to recuperate. The nurturing foster mom couldn't afford to fall for another man in blue, yet Matt's piercing eyes and gut-wrenching loneliness stirred something deep inside of her. Now it wasn't a question of if she'd surrender to their electrifying passion but when…