From an acclaimed author and artist, this “cleverly illustrated novel takes reads on a fabulous journey [and] a touching pilgrimage of faith” (Publishers Weekly). Adventurer and travel writer Hippolyte Web has set his sights on an expedition to the Auroras, a group of tiny islands in the South Atlantic that haven’t been spotted in centuries. Equipped with outdated charts, an inadequate sailboat, and an advance for a book about his quest, the trip soon leads to discoveries beyond anything he could have imagined. But the challenges that he meets are nothing compared to those that await him when he returns. Marie Simplon, his no-nonsense book editor, is more than a little skeptical of Hippolyte’s strange tale. As he inundates her with centuries-old maps, sketches, and specimens, she is drawn into the mysterious details of his voyage. The two are soon joined in a race—Hippolyte to prove his islands exist, Marie to refute his claims. But Marie’s conflicting emotions about the journey and the man lead her on her own quest to discover for herself the limits of logic and the power of belief.

Report of Lieut. P. H. Ray, commanding the expedition, to the chief of the United States Signal office.

Susan Sontag: An Annotated Bibliography catalogues the works of one of America's most prolific and important 20th century authors. Known for her philosophical writings on American culture, topics left untouched by Sontag's writings are few and far between. This volume is an exhaustive collection that includes her novels, essays, reviews, films and interviews. Each entry is accompanied by an annotated bibliography.

Nearly the whole of America's partisan politics centers on a single question: Can markets solve our social problems? And for years this question has played out ferociously in the debates about how we should educate our children. From the growth of vouchers and charter schools to the implementation of No Child Left Behind, policy makers have increasingly turned to market-based models to help improve our schools, believing that private institutions--because they are competitively driven--are better than public ones. With The Public School Advantage, Christopher A. and Sarah Theule Lubienski offer powerful evidence to undercut this belief, showing that public schools in fact out-perform private ones.