Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

In this vast novel, packed with incident, Gunter Grass traces the dark labyrinth of the German mentality as it developed during the rise, fall, and aftermath of the Third Reich. 'The greatest living German novelist '-- Newsweek 'A virtuoso, a vastly intelligent, sensitive, and humane writer with a zany eye for the preposterous.' -- Washington Post...

As much as we detest pain, it remains curiously indispensable. Medical science still struggles to conquer pain, yet those who feel no pain at all live in great peril. Dr. Frank Vertosick, a practicing neurosurgeon, explores this paradox, using pain as a lens to give insight into how our bodies function. C. S. Lewis called pain God's megaphone: it...

A poem and two essays written over a period of five decades gather the author's thoughts on the work of the controversial Marquis de Sade. ...

The author's chronicle of one summer as an Alaskan smokejumper reflects on the years of training, the adrenaline-fueled jumps, his brushes with death, the fires he conquered, and the ones that got away. ...

Something stopped Nita's hand as it ran along the bookshelf. She looked and found that one of the books had a loose thread at the top of its spine. It was one of those So You Want to Be a . . . books, a series on careers. So You Want to Be a Pilot, and a Scientist . . . a Writer. But his one said, So You Want to Be a Wizard. I don't believe this,...

An elderly American living in Brazil reminisces about his various lives as World War II ace, multimillionaire investment banker, insane asylum inmate, thief, murderer, lover, and protector of the innocent. ...