The Penguin Book of New American Voices:Cowboys, Indians and Commuters

David Foster Wallace

William T. Vollmann

DONNA TARTT

Jeffrey, Eugenides

Penguin Books, Ltd.

A rich, haunting novel of street life in San Francisco’s Mission District, from the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central In The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann uses the story of two brothers to construct a haunting series of parallels between the lives of the dispossessed and the anxious middle class. Henry Tyler is a failing private detective in San Francisco. When the love of his life, Irene--who happens to be married to his brother John, an ambitious contract lawyer--commits suicide, he clings despairingly to her ghost. Struggling to turn his grief into something precious, Henry enters into a new life of nightmare beauty and degradation as he attempts to track down the legendary Queen of the Prostitutes. Crafted out of language by turns eloquent, humorous, sensual, and obscene, and full of vividly rendered depictions of low-life bars, office politics, and hobo camps, here are Vollmann's familiar but ever surprising characters--the seekers, the vigilantes, the hypocrites, the sex workers. He has woven their stories into a vivid and unforgettable novel about the eerie paradoxes of possession and loss.

The Royal Family: A Novel

Comics & Graphic Novels

Graphic Novels

Penguin Publishing Group

The man and the idea that created modern science, as seen by one of today's most celebrated writers.In 1543, the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lay on his deathbed, his just-published masterpiece On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in his hands. At that time, religious doctrine and common sense dictated that the earth ruled the universe, with the sun, moon, planets, and stars all rotating around it. By putting the sun at the center of that cosmology, his book fomented another kind of revolution—a scientific one—that would lead to a completely new view of the universe, and humanity's place in it.As contemporary cosmologists explore the universe's vastness and the nearly insignificant role we play in it, the repercussions from Copernicus's radical step continue to resound. With the energetic prose and powerful intelligence for which he is known, William T. Vollmann provides an enlightening and readable explication not only of Copernicus's book but also of Copernicus's epoch, and the momentous clash between the two. 20 diagrams.

Uncentering the Earth: Copernicus and 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres'

Science & Math

Astronomy & Space Science

Atlas / W.W. Norton

The debut work of fiction from the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central  Watch for Vollmann’s new work of nonfiction, No Immediate Danger, coming in April of 2018You Bright and Risen Angels is the work of an extraordinary imagination. In this free-wheeling novel of epic proportions, William T. Vollmann has crafted a biting, hilarious satire of history, technology, politics, and misguided love. In the jungles of South America, on the ice fields of Alaska, the plains of the Midwest, and the streets of San Francisco, a fearsome battle rages. The insects are vying for world domination; the inventors of electricity stand in evil opposition. Bug , a young man, rebels against his own kind and joins forces with the insects. Wayne, a thug, allies himself with the malevolent forces of electricity and vows to assassinate the preying mantis who tends bar in Oregon.

You Bright and Risen Angels

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Picador

Ice Shirt (Picador Books)

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Fantasy

No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies

Penguin??Books

The Lucky Star: A Novel

VIKING

An epic study of an emblematic American region by one of our most celebrated writers It sprawls across a stinking artificial sea, across the deserts, date groves, and labor camps of southeastern California, right across the Mexican border. For generations of migrant workers, from Okies fleeing the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to Mexican laborers today, Imperial County has held the promise of paradise-and the reality of hell. It is a land beautiful and harsh, enticing and deadly, rich in history and heartbreak. Across the border, the desert is the same but there are different secrets. In Imperial, award-winning writer William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, and by extension into the dark soul of American imperialism. Known for his penetrating meditations on poverty and violence, Vollmann has spent ten years doggedly investigating every facet of this bi-national locus, raiding archives, exploring polluted rivers, guarded factories, and Chinese tunnels, talking with everyone from farmers to border patrolmen in his search for the fading American dream and its Mexican equivalent. The result is a majestic book that addresses current debates on immigration, agribusiness, and corporate exploitation, issues that will define America's identity in the twenty-first century.

Imperial

History

Americas

An unconventional work offers fifty-three interconnected tales, fables, and portraits, ranging from the journalistic to the surreal, that bring to life a wide and strange array of characters in diverse settings, from Sarajevo to Jerusalem to New York.

The Atlas

Travel

Viking/Penguin

This comic and surreal novel about the beastliness and pain in the world focuses on the stories of assorted young American misfits, reactionaries and revolutionaries, young lovers, and raging old tyrants

You Bright and Risen Angles: A Cartoon

United States

Scribner

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Books by William T. Vollmann