Winzerer recommendations: english books
Charles de Lint: Someplace to be flying.
OHere is Lily, a photojournalist in search of the 'animal people' who supposedly haunt the city's darkest slums. Here is Hank, who knows those slums all too well. One night, in a brutal incident, their lives collide - uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in te secret drama of the city's oldest inhabitants. For the animal people walk amongst us. Native Americans call them the first people, but they have never left, and they claim the city for their own. Not only that Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they've stumbled into a war. And in this battle for the city's soul, nothing is quite as it appears.
ISBN 76530757X / EUR 13,90
Mark Wolverton: A life in twilight. The final years of J. Robert Oppenheimer
Life in Twilight reveals the least-known and most enigmatic period of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s life, from the public humiliation he endured after the 1954 Atomic Energy Commission’s investigation into his alleged communist leanings and connections to his death in 1967. It covers Oppenheimer’s continued work as a scientist and philosopher and head of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, his often controversial public appearances, as well as parts of his private life.
What emerges is a portrait of a man who was toppled from the highest echelons of politics and society, had to see his honor and name blackened, but succeeded in maintaining his dignity and rebuilding a shattered life, although he never truly recovered from the McCarthy-inspired persecution he suffered. Previously unpublished FBI files round out the picture and cast a sinister cloud over Oppenheimer’s final years, during which he remained under occasional surveillance.
Mark Wolverton has succeeded in presenting an evenhanded and very well- researched account of a life that ended in twilight. It reads like an extended scene from the acclaimed film Good Night, and Good Luck, and indeed Murrow’s interview with Oppenheimer is one of the central elements of the story.
A Life in Twilight is an important exploration, not only of a prominent scientist and philosopher, but also of an unforgettable era in American history.
ISBN 312374402 / EUR 24,90
Markus Zusak: I am the messenger
Ed Kennedy is an underage cabdriver without much of a future. He's pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey, und utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That's when the first ace arrives in the mail. That's when Ed becomes the messenger. Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary) until only one question remains: Who's behind Ed's mission?