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MARINER BOOKS • WWW.MARINERBOOKS.COM 55 “A fresh and unique look at eight of the artists who define modern culture.”—Billy Collins Jonah Lehrer PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST • “Marks the arrival of an important new thinker, who finds in the science and the arts wonder and beauty, and with equal confidence says wise and fresh things about both.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review • A Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, a Borders Original Voices Selection, an Amazon.com Best Science Book of the Year, a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year s Jonah Lehrer demonstrates in this sparkling debut, science is not A the only path to knowledge. In fact, when it comes to understand- ing the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of nineteenth- and twen- tieth-century artists—a painter, a poet, a chef, a composer, and a handful ISBN-13/EAN: 978-0-547-08590-6 • $14.95 of novelists—Lehrer shows how each one discovered an essential truth Proust Was a Neuroscientist about the mind that neuroscience is only now rediscovering. We learn, SEPTEMBER • Science for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory; how 256 pages • 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 • A4 George Eliot understood the brain’s malleability; how the French chef Eleven halftones to run with text Escoffier intuited umami (the fifth taste); how Cézanne worked out the Houghton Mifflin hardcover, 2007 subtleties of vision; and how Gertrude Stein exposed the deep struc- Previous ISBN 978-0-618-62010-4 ture of language. It’s a riveting tale of art trumping science again and again. An ingenious blend of biography,criticism, and first-rate science • National advertising, including The New writing, Proust Was a Neuroscientist urges science and art to listen more Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, closely to each other, for willing minds can combine the best of both, to the New York Review of Books brilliant effect. • Online promotions, including podcast • Author’s websites www.jonahlehrer.com and www.scienceblogs.com/cortex 56 MARINER BOOKS / SEPTEMBER • WWW.MARINERBOOKS.COM who define modern culture.”—Billy Collins EXTRAORDINARY ACCLAIM FOR JONAH LEHRER AND PROUST WAS A NEUROSCIENTIST “In this amazing first book [Lehrer] bridges ‘the two cultures’ with ease and grace. His clear and vivid writing—incisive and thoughtful, yet sensitive and modest—is a special pleasure.” —Oliver Sacks “Lehrer’s smart, elegantly written little book expresses an appealing faith that art and science offer different but complementary views of the world.”—Washington Post Book World © LORI DUFF JONAH LEHRER is an editor at large for “A precocious and engaging book that tries to mend the Seed magazine and a contributing editor century-old tear between the literary and scientific cultures . at NPR’s Radio Lab. A graduate of Columbia Lehrer is smart, and there are some fun moments in these pages.” University and a Rhodes scholar, Lehrer —New York Times Book Review has worked in the lab of the Nobel Prize–winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel “A slim,brainy book about the brain, modernist art, and in the kitchens of Le Cirque 2000 and Le Bernardin. He has written for the Boston and literature . illuminating.”—Entertainment Weekly Globe, the Washington Post, Nature, and Nova Science Now, and writes a highly “This exhilarating book will give you much to think about regarded blog, “The Frontal Cortex.” and make you feel good about your endlessly innovative brain.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Lehrer is gifted with the ability to find philosophy in science and stray bits of science buried amid the rubble of literary history.”—San Francisco Chronicle “A delightful,thoughtful read.”—Antonio Damasio “Proust Was a Neuroscientist showcases the exuberant intelligence of Jonah Lehrer.”—Bookforum MARINER BOOKS / SEPTEMBER • WWW.MARINERBOOKS.COM 57 Archibald MacLeish J.B. A Play in Verse • A 50th anniversary edition of a Pulitzer Prize–winning play ISBN-13/EAN: 978-0-395-08353-6 • $15.00 ased on the story of Job, this drama in verse tells the story of a J.B. Btwentieth-century American banker and millionaire whom God SEPTEMBER • Poetry/Drama commands be stripped of his family and wealth, but who refuses to turn 160 pages • 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 • OO his back on God. J.B. won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1959 and the Houghton Mifflin paperback Tony Award for best play.More important, the play sparked a national conversation about the nature of God, the meaning of hope, and the role of the artist in society. • Academic advertising ARCHIBALD MACLEISH (1892–1982) was an American poet, writer, and the Librarian of Congress. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times. 58 MARINER BOOKS / SEPTEMBER • WWW.MARINERBOOKS.COM Joseph Epstein IN A CARDBOARD BELT! Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage • From the author of the New York Times bestseller Snobbery, an entertaining collection of essays that zips from cultural observation to memoir to literary criticism • “Vintage Epstein: elegantly written, charming, candid, curmudgeonly, mordant.”—Boston Globe • “Anyone who quotes Bialystock instead of Derrida is our kind of guy. Who says fun has to be brainless?”—Kirkus Reviews ISBN-13/EAN: 978-0-547-08574-6 • $14.95 aking his title from the wounded cry of the once great Max Bialy- In a Cardboard Belt! Tstock in The Producers—“Look at me now! Look at me now! I’m SEPTEMBER • Essays wearing a cardboard belt!”—the charming essayist Joseph Epstein gives us 432 pages • 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 • A4 his largest and most adventurous collection to date. With his signature Houghton Mifflin hardcover, 2007 gifts of sparkling humor and a penetrating intelligence, he issues forth as a Previous ISBN 978-0-618-72193-1 memoirist, polemicist, literary critic, and amused observer of contempo- rary culture. In deeply considered examinations of writers from Paul ALSO AVAILABLE Valéry to Truman Capote, in incisive take-downs of such cultural pooh- Friendship: An Exposé bahs as Harold Bloom and George Steiner, and in personally revealing (978-0-618-87215-2) $14.95 PA essays about his father and about his years as a teacher, this remarkable Snobbery: The American Version collection entertains and enlightens. This offering from one of America’s (978-0-618-34073-6) $14.95 PA best essayists is a book to be savored. JOSEPH EPSTEIN is the author of the New York Times bestseller Snobbery, • Online advertising, including salon.com among many other acclaimed books. He was born and educated in Chicago, • Featured on houghtonmifflinbooks.com where for thirty years he taught English and writing at Northwestern University. From 1975 to 1997 he was the editor of the American Scholar. He lives in Chicago. MARINER BOOKS / SEPTEMBER • WWW.MARINERBOOKS.COM 59 A Mariner Original Porter Shreve WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE WAS OURS • A Mariner Original his “wonderful and accomplished writer” (Lorrie Moore) brings Tus a charming story of one family’s struggle to run their own alter- native school in a time of Democratic idealism. It’s 1976, and while the country prepares to celebrate the bicenten- ISBN-13/EAN: 978-0-618-72210-5 • $12.95 nial, Daniel’s family is falling apart. His idealistic father, Pete, has been When the White House Was Ours fired from yet another teaching job, and his mother is one step away SEPTEMBER • Fiction from leaving for good. But when Pete lucks into a crumbling mansion in 288 pages • 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 • A4 the nation’s capital, he makes a bold plan to start a school under his own roof where students and teachers will be equals. Daniel is elated: Washington is ideal because he loves presidential history,and in the alternative school he will have the freedom to do • Author tour including Washington, D.C., what he wants. But soon the money runs out, the residents take drastic Chicago, Milwaukee, Indianapolis • Mariner advertising measures, and, like the Carter presidency,what begins with hope slides • Reading group promotion into crisis. • Online promotion, including podcasts Porter Shreve’s third novel returns him to the territory he handled • Advance reading copies so well in his debut, The Obituary Writer (a New York Times Notable Book)—a young protagonist grappling with his father’s legacy,set against a sharply etched political and cultural landscape. 60 MARINER BOOKS / SEPTEMBER • WWW.MARINERBOOKS.COM from the author of The Obituary Writer PRAISE FOR THE OBITUARY WRITER “An involving and sneakily touching story whose twists feel less like the conventions of a genre than the convolutions of a heart—any heart.”—New York Times “Fast-paced, deftly observed . a work that glides along so smoothly and unpredictably that you nearly forget that the author is not only a fine storyteller but a shrewd psychologist . A substantial achievement.”—Newsday “An engaging debut.”—USA Today © BICH MINH NGUYEN PORTER SHREVE is the author of The Obit- uary Writer, which was a New York Times ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Notable Book and a finalist for the Great Lakes Booksellers Award. He is also the author of Drives Like a Dream, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year. Born and FROM raised in Washington, D.C., he currently WHEN THE WHITE HOUSE WAS OURS lives in Chicago and West Lafayette, Indi- ana, where he directs the creative writing n my red, white, and blue room, I tried to forget my parents’ program at Purdue University. Iquarrel. I took the tasseled flag off the wall and hung it outside my window.I turned off the lights and kneeled down so I could see AUTHOR’S RESIDENCES through the scrim of trees. To the south and east the aerial shells West Lafayette, Indiana, and Chicago, screamed high over the Washington Monument, exploding in wide Illinois streamers to the ground.