Atlas Shrugged is the “second most influential book for Americans today” after the Bible, according to a joint survey of five thousand people conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in 1991.In a scrap heap within an abandoned factory, the greatest invention in history lies dormant and unused. By what fatal error of judgment has its value gone unrecognized, its brilliant inventor punished rather than rewarded for his efforts?This is the s...

"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own…" So begins The War of the Worlds, the science fiction classic that first proposed the possibility that intelligent life exists on other planets.This spellbinding tale describes the Martian invasion of Earth. Following the landing in England of ten huge and indefatigable creatures, comp...

One of the century’s most challenging novels of ideas, The Fountainhead champions the cause of individualism through the story of a gifted young architect who defies the tyranny of conventional public opinion.The struggle for personal integrity in a world that values conformity above creativity is powerfully illustrated through three characters: Howard Roarke, the genius who is resented because he creates purely for the delight of his own work and on no other terms; Gail W...

In 1931, a young American named Victor Herman accompanied his parents to the Soviet Union, where his father was to set up a Ford Motor Company plant. In 1938, he was inexplicably thrown into a Soviet prison. It was forty-five years before he was able to return to America.His was a common nightmare during the Stalin years. Those who survived imprisonment and torture were either sent north to hard labor in the icy forests and mines or into exile. Victor Herman was one of the few who ...

For years, they were the best of friends: Humboldt, a grand, erratic figure, and Charlie, a young man of frenzied and noble longings. But by the 1970s, Humboldt has died a failure, and Charlie's success-ridden life has taken various turns for the worse. Then Humboldt acts from the grave to change Charlie's life by leaving him something in his will.Now Charlie is middle-aged and his days are cluttered with comic absurdities. A thinker, he longs to come from left field and knock them...

In June 1947, fresh out of college and long before he would win the Pulitzer Prize and become known as one of America’s finest historians, Stanley Karnow boarded a freighter bound for France, planning to stay for the summer. He stayed for ten years, first as a student and later as a correspondent for Time magazine. By the time he left, Karnow knew Paris so intimately that his French colleagues dubbed him “le plus parisien des Américains”—the most Parisian American.Now, Kar...

In Orfeo, Powers tells the story of a man journeying into his past as he desperately flees the present. Composer Peter Els opens the door one evening to find the police on his doorstep. His home microbiology lab-- the latest experiment in his lifelong attempt to find music in surprising patterns-- has aroused the suspicions of Homeland Security. Panicked by the raid, Els turns fugitive. As an Internet-fueled hysteria erupts, Els-- the " Bioterrorist Bach"-- pays a final visit to the people...

Howard Hughes lived one of the greatest, most heroic, misunderstood, mysterious, bizarre, and tragic lives in American history. Here at last, in a uniquely full and brilliantly documented biography by a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative team, the mythology that surrounded that life is disentangled from the truth.Hughes had always been different. Raised by overprotective parents, pathologically fearful of germs, in awe of his father, unable to make friends, he grew into a man rul...

This classic of Cold War paranoia is one of the most dazzling and enduring products of an unforgettable time.Buried deep within the consciousness of Sergeant Raymond Shaw is the mechanism of an assassin, a time bomb ticking toward explosion, controlled by the delicate skill of its Communist masters. Shaw returns from the Korean War to an idolizing and unsuspecting country. In a farcical, uproarious scene, he is greeted amid flashbulbs and frock coats by his power-hungry, domineerin...

A winner of the National Book Award, The Moviegoer established Walker Percy as an insightful and grimly humorous storyteller. It is the tale of Binx Bolling, a small-time stockbroker who lives quietly in suburban New Orleans, pursuing an interest in the movies, affairs with his secretaries, and living out his days. But soon he finds himself on a “search” for something more important, some spiritual truth to anchor him.Binx’s life floats casually along until one fateful Mar...

Remote from the rest of war-torn Italy, the little town of Santa Vittoria has but one thing to boast of: its fabulous wine cellars. For this cause, the citizens, led by their wine-loving mayor Bombolini, scheme and plot to prevent the Germans from locating and looting the town's only treasure.A bestseller and the inspiration for the famous film starring Anthony Quinn, this warm, rich novel has already drawn thousands upon thousands into the exuberant and perilous life of Santa Vitt...

Stonewall Jackson was a military genius at once peculiar and perfect, a fearless soldier in battle but a God-fearing man who hesitated to kill on Sunday. He broke the rules of war to win, and yet his tactics are studied in military academies the world over. Burke Davis brings the color, vivid characterization, and immediacy of the best fiction to this fascinating biography.From the remarkable Valley Campaign through the Seven Days, Manassas, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and the master...