Start saving your pennies….

Absolute Death by Neil Gaiman

Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

A Loaded Gun: A Biography of Emily Dickinson by Lyndall Gordon

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back by Douglas Rushkoff

Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs by R.U. Sirius

Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver

American Beauty by Michael Hernandez de Luna (Bad Press Books, 2008).

Sample art.

From the publisher:

American Beauty is an artist’s investigation into those Icons of popular culture wading in politics, religion, decadence and sex. This book commemorates and pokes fun at those who have fallen from society’s graces because of lousy judgment and questionable life styles. Prepare yourself for a guided tour of America’s underbelly of misconduct and bad taste through the artworks of Chicago artist and provocateur Michael Hernandez de Luna, who puts it all together for you in the miniature framework of the postage stamp, while using the US postal system as phantom collaborators in the process of creating and certifying his art with the bona-fide markings of the postage cancellation. This book rolls over the many issues of Americana with images hailing the protesting cheer of subversive activism, philately, humor and satire. This book contains colorful biting images of raw and provocative artwork that will surely make you laugh! A little something for everybody!

I’m starting a new series on Books Are People, Too - FBI files on famous writers. First up is Thomas Mann.

Click here to download the PDF file [100 pages | 4 meg]

The FBI summarized the file when it was posted on its website:

Thomas Mann, German author, Nobel prize winner in literature, and naturalized American citizen, was investigated from 1927 through 1955. The security investigation gathered information showing Mann’s affiliation with communist causes and associates.

For more info on the FBI and Mann, see Communazis: FBI Surveillance of German Émigré Writers by Alexander Stephan.

Mann’s file is one of several dozen files that used to be available on the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act website but have been quietly removed. I have no idea why the feds yanked these files, but I’ll be posting all the ones I can recover at my other main website, The Memory Hole. Meanwhile, look for more writers’ files to be posted here in the future.