After James Henry Trotter's parents are tragically eaten by a rhinoceros, he goes to live with his two horrible aunts. Life there is no fun, until James receives some magical, tiny green things and accidentally drops them by the old peach tree and strange things start to happen. The peach at the top of the tree begins to grow, and before long it's as big as a house. Inside, James meets a bunch of oversized friends-- Grasshopper, Centipede, Ladybug,...

"Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his--or any other--generation. Its hero is Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one time high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty--even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine grace....

Three decades of writer John Cheever's journals giving an account of his family life, literary life, and emotional life. An outstanding literary event: the journals--begun in the late 1940s and continued through more than three decades--of a great American writer. John Cheever's journals provide, of course, peerless insights into the creation of his novels and stories. But they are equally the record of a complex, often dark, always closely observed...

""Robert B. Reich makes the case for a generous, inclusive understanding of the American project, centering on the moral obligations of citizenship. Rooting his argument in everyday reality and common sense, Reich demonstrates the existence of a common good, and argues that it is this that defines a society or a nation. Societies and nations undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce and build the common good, as well as vicious cycles that undermine...