• November 10 – NYC -  The Times Center (this event is already sold out)
• November 11 – D.C. or Baltimore (TBD)
• November 13 – Atlanta
• November 16 – Sarasota (buy tickets – Golden Circle seats, best in house)
• November 18 – St. Paul, MN (buy tickets)
• November 19 – Toronto
• December 1 – Portsmouth, NH – The Music Hall
• December 2 – Manchester, VT – order tickets

Order “Under the Dome” Signed First Edition – Free Shipping + Free Book

From the Scribner catalog: Under the Dome
“On an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester’s Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Planes crash into it and fall from the sky in flaming wreckage, a gardener’s hand is severed as “the dome” comes down on it, people running errands in the neighboring town are divided from their families, and cars explode on impact. No one can fathom what this barrier is, where it came from, and when—or if—it will go away.”

Featuring more than 100 characters facing a menacing supernatural element in their small Maine town, early reads are comparing Under the Dome to King’s classic epic, The Stand.

When a considering a rare book purchase, make sure the dust-jacket has no hidden flaws. If it does, the seller should accurately describe them.

Search for Michael Jackson books.

Michael Jackson was unquestionably the biggest pop star of the ’80s, and certainly one of the most popular recording artists of all time. In his prime, Jackson was an unstoppable juggernaut, possessed of all the tools to dominate the charts seemingly at will: an instantly identifiable voice, eye-popping dance moves, stunning musical versatility, and loads of sheer star power. His 1982 blockbuster Thriller became the biggest-selling album of all time (probably his best-known accomplishment), and he was the first black artist to find stardom on MTV, breaking down innumerable boundaries both for his race and for music video as an art form.

Yet as Jackson’s career began, very gradually, to descend from the dizzying heights of his peak years, most of the media’s attention focused on his increasingly bizarre eccentricities; he was often depicted as an arrested man-child, completely sheltered from adult reality by a life spent in show business. The snickering turned to scandal in 1993, when Jackson was accused of molesting a 13-year-old boy; although he categorically denied the charges, his out-of-court settlement failed to restore his tarnished image. He never quite escaped the stigma of those allegations, and while he continued to sell records at superstar-like levels, he didn’t release them with enough frequency (or, many critics thought, inspiration) to once again become better known for his music than his private life. Whether as a pop icon or a tabloid caricature, Jackson always remained bigger than life.

Themes and genres

Steve Huey of Allmusic asserts that throughout his solo career, Jackson’s versatility allowed him to experiment with various themes and genres.  As a musician, he ranged from Motown’s dance fare and ballads to techno-edged new jack swing to work that incorporates both funk rhythms and hard rock guitar. Unlike many artists, Jackson did not write his songs on paper. Instead he would dictate into a sound recorder; when recording he would sing from memory. Several critics observed Off the Wall was crafted from funk, disco-pop, soul, soft rock, jazz and pop ballads.  Prominent examples include the ballad “She’s out of My Life”, and the two disco tunes “Workin’ Day and Night” and “Get on the Floor”.

According to Huey, Thriller refined the strengths of Off the Wall; the dance and rock tracks were more aggressive, while the pop tunes and ballads were softer and more soulful. Notable tracks included the ballads “The Lady in My Life”, “Human Nature” and “The Girl Is Mine”; the funk pieces “Billie Jean” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”; and the disco set “Baby Be Mine” and “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”. With Thriller, Christopher Connelly of Rolling Stone commented that Jackson developed his long association with the subliminal theme of paranoia and darker imagery.  Allmusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted this is evident on the songs “Billie Jean” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’”. In “Billie Jean”, Jackson sings about an obsessive fan who alleges he has fathered a child of hers. In “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” he argues against gossip and the media. The anti-gang violence rock song “Beat It” became a homage to West Side Story, and was Jackson’s first successful rock cross-over piece, according to Huey. He also observed that the title track “Thriller” began Jackson’s interest with the theme of the supernatural, a topic he revisited in subsequent years. In 1985, Jackson wrote the charity anthem “We Are the World”; humanitarian themes later became a central component of his life and music.

Legacy and Influence

Michael Jackson was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1984. There are actually two stars bearing the name Michael Jackson in the walk, the other being that of the Los Angeles talk radio show host of the same name; while Jackson’s name is marked with a record icon, the radio Jackson is denoted with a microphone icon. Jackson had a notable impact on music and culture throughout the world. He broke down racial barriers, transformed the art of the music video and paved the way for modern pop music in his own country. Jackson’s work, distinctive musical sound and vocal style have influenced hip hop, pop and R&B artists, including Mariah Carey, Usher, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and R. Kelly. For much of his career, he had an “unparalleled” level of worldwide influence over the younger generation through his musical and humanitarian contributions.

The photo auctioned was a signed print Einstein gave to his friend, CBS and ABC journalist Howard K. Smith, as a gesture of admiration for his work, the auctioneers said. The inscription, translated from the German reads: “This gesture you will like, because it is aimed at all of humanity. A civilian can afford to do what no diplomat would dare.Your loyal and grateful listener, A. Einstein ’53.” The seller bought the photo from Smith’s estate, Livingston said.

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Awards
Max Planck presents Albert Einstein with the Max-Planck medal of the German Physical Society, June 28, 1929 in Berlin.

In 1922 Einstein was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect”. This refers to his 1905 paper on the photoelectric effect: “On a Heuristic Viewpoint Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light”, which was well supported by the experimental evidence by that time. The presentation speech began by mentioning “his theory of relativity [which had] been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles [and] also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time.” (Einstein 1923)

It was long reported that Einstein gave the Nobel prize money directly to his first wife, Mileva Mari?, in compliance with their 1919 divorce settlement. However, personal correspondence made public in 2006  shows that he invested much of it in the United States, and saw much of it wiped out in the Depression.

Einstein traveled to New York City in the United States for the first time on 2 April 1921. When asked where he got his scientific ideas, Einstein explained that he believed scientific work best proceeds from an examination of physical reality and a search for underlying axioms, with consistent explanations that apply in all instances and avoid contradicting each other. He also recommended theories with visualizable results (Einstein 1954).

In 1999, Albert Einstein was named Person of the Century by Time magazine,  a Gallup poll recorded him as the fourth most admired person of the 20th century and according to The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, Einstein is “the greatest scientist of the twentieth century and one of the supreme intellects of all time.”

Honors

Albert Einstein has been recognized many times over for his achievements. The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics named 2005 the “World Year of Physics” in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Annus Mirabilis Papers.

The Albert Einstein Memorial in central Washington, D.C. is a monumental bronze statue depicting Einstein seated with manuscript papers in hand. The statue is located in a grove of trees at the southwest corner of the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences on Constitution Avenue, near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The chemical element 99, einsteinium, was named for him in August 1955, four months after Einstein’s death

2001 Einstein is an inner main belt asteroid discovered on March 5, 1973.

The Albert Einstein Award (sometimes called the Albert Einstein Medal because it is accompanied with a gold medal) is an award in theoretical physics, that was established to recognize high achievement in the natural sciences. It was endowed by the Lewis and Rosa Strauss Memorial Fund in honor of Albert Einstein’s 70th birthday. It was first awarded in 1951 and included a prize money of $15,000, which was later reduced to $5,000.  The winner is selected by a committee (the first of which consisted of Einstein, Oppenheimer, von Neumann and Weyl) of the Institute for Advanced Study, which administers the award.  Lewis L. Strauss used to be one of the trustees of the institute.

The Albert Einstein Peace Prize is an award that is given yearly by the Chicago, Illinois-based Albert Einstein Peace Prize Foundation. Winners of the prize receive $50,000.

In 1990, his name was added to the Walhalla temple.

Characters in the cast of more than 100 include Dale Barbara, a Gulf veteran and now a cook, the town’s newspaper owner Julia Shumway, a physician’s assistant at the hospital and three children. They’re up against an evil politician, Big Jim Rennie – who’s desperate to hold onto power and will stop at nothing, even murder – and his son, who in classic King style, “is keeping a horrible secret in a dark pantry”. Meanwhile, time under the Dome is running out.

“Since it’s over a thousand pages long, I sure hope people like it,” Stephen King said earlier this year in his regular column for Entertainment Weekly.

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“He was one of our greatest writers, and he will be sorely missed,” said Nicholas Latimer, vice president of publicity at Updike’s publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic. Updike’s most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest received the Pulitzer Prize. Describing his subject as “the American small town, Protestant middle class,” Updike was widely recognized for his careful craftsmanship, his highly stylistic writing, and his prolific output, having published more than twenty-five novels and more than a dozen short story collections, as well as poetry, art criticism, literary criticism and children’s books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems appeared in The New Yorker, starting in 1954. He also wrote regularly for The New York Review of Books. His work attracted a significant amount of critical attention and he was considered one of the most prominent contemporary American novelists.

Early life

Raised at 117 Philadelphia Avenue (now part of Route 724) in Shillington, Pennsylvania, until he was 11, his family moved to a sandstone farmhouse in Plowville, PA, where he became interested in reading and writing. These early years in Berks county would shape the environment of the Rabbit tetrology, as well as many of his early novels and short stories (The Poorhouse Fair, The Centaur, Of The Farm, “A Soft Spring Night in Shillington”, “The Other Side of the Street”, etc.) Updike later attended Harvard after receiving a full scholarship. At Harvard, he served as president of the Harvard Lampoon, before graduating summa cum laude in 1954 with a degree in English. After graduation, he decided to pursue a career in graphic arts and attended The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, England. On returning to the U.S., he became a regular contributor to The New Yorker, but stayed only two years. Later, Updike moved to Ipswich, Massachusetts (the basis for Eastwick in The Witches of Eastwick).

Career

Rabbit Angstrom : The Four Novels : Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest (Everyman's Library)

Updike became most famous as a “chronicler of suburban adultery.” (“A subject which,” he once wrote, “if I have not exhausted, has exhausted me.”) Yet on many occasions, Updike has slipped away from familiar territory: The Witches of Eastwick (1984, later made into a movie of the same name) concerned a New England coven of divorcees, and was a bestseller; The Coup (novel) (1978, about a fictional Cold War-era African dictatorship), was similarly a bestseller, and reflects the author writing at his most Nabokovian; his 2000 postmodern effort Gertrude and Claudius is a carefully researched overture to the story of Hamlet. Other important novels include The Centaur (National Book Award, 1963), Couples (1968) and Roger’s Version (1986). (Martin Amis called Roger’s Version a “near-masterpiece”; Couples both landed the author on the cover of TIME magazine and made his fortune.)

Updike enjoyed working in series: In addition to the four Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom novels, a recurrent Updike alter-ego is the moderately well-known, unprolific Jewish novelist and eventual Nobel laureate Henry Bech, chronicled in three comic short-story cycles: Bech: A Book (1970), Bech is Back (1981) and Bech At Bay: A Quasi-Novel (1998). His stories involving the socially-conscious (and socially successful) couple “The Maples” are widely considered to be autobiographical, and several were the basis for a television movie entitled Too Far To Go starring Michael Moriarty and Blythe Danner which was broadcast on NBC. Updike stated that he chose this surname for the characters because he admired the beauty and resilience of the tree.

Updike stated at the dawn of his career an intention to publish one book a year, and advancing years have slowed down neither his production nor inventiveness. In 1994 he rewrote the tale of Tristan and Isolde (Brazil); a multi-generational saga about religion and entertainment In the Beauty of the Lilies, 1996) and a science fiction novel (Toward the end of time, 1997). In Seek My Face (2002) he explored the post-war art scene. In Villages (2004), Updike returned to the familiar territory of infidelities in New England. His twenty-second and most recent novel, Terrorist, the story of a fervent, eighteen-year-old extremist Muslim in New Jersey, was published in June 2006; his sixth collection of non-fiction, “Due Considerations,” appeared in the fall of 2007.

A large anthology of short stories from his literary career, titled The Early Stories 1953–1975 (2003) won the 2004 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He wrote in its preface that his career’s intention had been to “give the mundane its beautiful due.”

Updike worked in a wide array of genres, including fiction, poetry, essay, and memoir. His lone foray into drama, Buchanan Dying: a play, apparently constituted something of a reversal, since in a 1968 interview Updike claimed that “[t]he unreality of painted people standing on a platform saying things they’ve said to each other for months is more than I can overlook.” He further said: “From Twain to James and Faulkner to Bellow, the history of novelists as playwrights is a sad one.”

In 2006 Updike was awarded the Rea Award for the Short Story for outstanding achievement.

Updike has four children and lived prior to his passing away in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts with his second wife, Martha. In his memoir, Self Consciousness, Updike writes a letter to his grandsons Anoff and Kwame, about the Updike family history, and asks that they not be ashamed of their skin. (His grandsons are half black, their father being from West Africa.) He also has a grandson named Trevor.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning writer suffered from psoriasis and had connected it to his abilities as a writer. In Self Consciousness, he links his “skin’s embarrassing overproduction” to his creativity.

Cultural references

* Updike was the subject of a “closed book examination” by Nicholson Baker, entitled U and I (Random House, 1991). Baker discusses his wish to meet Updike and become his golf partner.
* In an episode of the animated series The Simpsons, “Insane Clown Poppy”, John Updike is the ghost writer of a book that Krusty the clown is promoting. The book’s title is “Your Shoes Too Big To Kickbox God,” a 20-page book written entirely by John Updike as a money-making scam.

Criticism

Martin Amis has reviewed Updike’s work on several occasions, including in the essay collection Picked-Up Pieces (“Updike’s view of twentieth-century literature is a levelling one. Talent, like life, should be available to all”), the memoir Self-Consciousness (“the last section of the book, ‘On Being a Self Forever’, is to my knowledge the best thing yet written on what it is like to get older: age, and the only end of age”), Rabbit at Rest (“this novel is enduringly eloquent about weariness, age and disgust, in a prose that is always fresh, nubile and unwitherable”), and Odd Jobs: Essays and Criticism (“there is a trundling quality, increasingly indulged: too much trolley-car nostalgia and baseball-mitt Americana, too much ancestor worship, too much piety”).

In November 2008 the editors of Literary Review magazine awarded Updike Britain’s Bad Sex in Fiction lifetime achievement award, which celebrates “crude, tasteless or ridiculous sexual passages in modern literature.”

Quotations

“Men are all heart and Women are all body. I don’t know who has the brains. God maybe.” (Rabbit, Run)

“The great thing about the dead, they make space.” (Rabbit is Rich)

“Rabbit loves men, uncomplaining with their bellies and cross-hatched red necks, embarrassed for what to talk about when the game is over, whatever the game is. What a threadbare thing we make of life! Yet what a marvelous thing the mind is, they can’t make a machine like it; and the body can do a thousand things there isn’t a factory in the world can duplicate the motion.” (Rabbit is Rich)

“Fortune’s hostage, heart’s desire, a granddaughter. His. Another nail in his coffin. His.” (Rabbit is Rich)

“Tell your mother, if she asks, that maybe we’ll meet some other time. Under the pear trees, in Paradise.” (Rabbit at Rest)

“Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot.” (The Witches of Eastwick)

“We all dream, and we all stand aghast at the mouth of the caves of our deaths; and this is our way in. Into the nether world.” (The Witches of Eastwick)

“An Irish temper makes you appreciate Lutherans.” (Terrorist)

“Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark.” (“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” The New Yorker, 1960)

“Gods do not answer letters.” (“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” The New Yorker, 1960)

“He had met the little death that awaits athletes. He had retired.” (“Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” The New Yorker, 1960)

“My mother had dreams of being a writer and I used to see her type in the front room. The front room is also where I would go when I was sick so I would sit there and watch her.” (2004 interview with Academy of Achievement (source: http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/upd0int-1))

“Black is a shade of brown. So is white, if you look.” (Brazil)

“Freedom is a blanket which, pulled up to the chin, uncovers the feet.” (The Coup)

“Fame is a mask that eats into the face.” (Self-Consciousness)

“Masturbation! Thou saving grace note upon the baffled chord of self. (A Month of Sundays)

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.” (“How To Love America (And Leave It At The Same Time)” [Problems And Other Stories])

“Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.” (“A Month of Sundays”)

“Time passes in America and Asia; in Europe, history occurs” (“Europe: Two Points on a Descending Curve”, Picked up Pieces, 1976)

Horrormeister Stephen King talks about his lifetime achievement award, why he wants a star in Hollywood and his morbid imagination.

• Ralph Waldo by Emerson
• Thomas Jefferson
• Mark Twain
• Abraham Lincoln
• James Baldwin
• W. E. B. DuBois’ Souls of Black Folk
• Martin Luther King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail
• Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
• Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American
• Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook
• Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward
• John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle
• Robert Caro’s Power Broker
• Studs Terkel’s Working
• Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments
• Robert Penn’s All the King’s Men – a novel about a corrupt Southern governor

Theology and Philosophy

Obama also noted several of his theology and philosophy influences over the years:

• Friedrich Nietzsche (the nineteenth-century German philosopher and classical philologist.)
• Reinhold Niebuhr ( the American theologian. A Protestant, he is best known for his study of the task of relating the Christian faith to the realities of modern politics and diplomacy. He was an important contributor to modern “just war” thinking.)
• Paul Tillich (the German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher.)

During his college years Occidental College in California , Obama says his love of literature was renewed, where he was admitted to reading “tons of books”. In December of 1997, he even reviewed a book for the Chicago Tribune:

“A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of the Juvenile Court.” by William Ayers

During the Democratic campaign in 2008, in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Obama listed Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls” as key influences. He also mentioned Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”, E.L. Doctorow and Philip Roth. Thrown into the mix was also “Parting the Waters” by Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Martin Luther King.

Later in November of last year, he departed his residence in Chicago carrying a hardcover copy of “Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer” by Fred Kaplan.  In the same month, he was spotted with a copy of Derek Walcott’s” Collected Poems 1948-1984.”

With two young daughters to entertain, he also claims to have read all seven of the Potter books.  As we all know,  Harry Potter is a series of seven highly popular  fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling.

Post Election

Once the election of 2008 was over, there were several other books mentioned, including  “Team of Rivals” by Doris Kearns Goodwin.  Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln is a non-fiction book written by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, first published by Simon & Schuster on October 25, 2005. The book is a biographical portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and some of the men who served with him in his Cabinet from 1861 to 1865. Three of his Cabinet members had previously run against Lincoln in the 1860 election: Edward Bates (Attorney General), Salmon Chase (Treasury), and William H. Seward (State). The book focuses on Lincoln’s mostly successful attempts to reconcile conflicting personalities and political factions on the path to abolition and victory in the US Civil War.

On a related note,  Poet Elizabeth Alexander, a close friend, is reading at his inauguration today.

The story didn’t indicate whether they sell their books on the internet. They probably don’t because it would take forever to catalog and list them all on-line. Enjoy the video:

For anyone who wants to visit, here is their address:

Happy Tales Bookstore
Lenore & Leroy Dickman
W1778 County Road K
Markesan, WI 53946
920-398-3375