In Gates of Eden, Ethan Coen exhibits on the printed page the striking, twisted, yet devastatingly on-target vision of modern American life familiar from his movies. The world within the world we live in comes alive in fourteen brazenly original tragicomic short stories—from the Midwest mob war that fizzles due to the principals' ineptness to the trials of a deaf private eye with a blind client to a fugitive's heartbreaking explanation for having beheaded his wife, alarming in that it almost makes sense.

'Generous but unflinching, sweeping but intimate, fictional but true' KAREN JOY FOWLER. 'A brilliant requiem for our generation and all our dreams' GEORGE R.R. MARTIN. What happened to the idealism of the 1960s? This question has haunted a generation. Outside the Gates of Eden follows two men from their first meeting in high school to their final destination in the 21st century. Alex is torn between his father's business empire and his own artistic yearnings. Cole, constantly uprooted in his childhood, finds his calling at a Bob Dylan concert in 1965. From the Summer of Love in San Francisco to the Woodstock festival in upstate New York, from campus protests to the Soho art scene, from a communal farm in Virginia to the mariachis of Guanajuato, Mexico, the novel charts the rise and fall of the counterculture - and what came after. Using the music business as a window into the history of half a century, Outside the Gates of Eden is both epic and intimate, starkly realistic and ultimately hopeful, a War and Peace for the Woodstock generation. 'Shiner displays the panoramic historical consciousness of a Pynchon or DeLillo, and yet every page is suffused with a humble and scrupulous humanity... You simply live with his people and know them and love them' JONATHAN LETHEM. 'A page-turning tour de force. Anyone with a passion for rock and roll storytelling at its very best must not deny themselves the opportunity to read this tale. A masterpiece' IAIN MATTHEWS. 'A history of a generation seen through the lens of music' JOHN KESSEL.

The cultural historian and author of Atomic Spaces offers a comprehensive account of the Baby Boomer years—from the atomic age to the virtual age. Born under the shadow of the atomic bomb, with little security but the cold comfort of duck-and-cover drills, the postwar generations lived through—and led—some of the most momentous changes in all of American history. In this new cultural history, Peter Bacon Hales explores those decades through a succession of resonant moments, spaces, and artifacts of everyday life. Finding unexpected connections, he traces the intertwined undercurrents of promise and peril. From newsreels of the first atomic bomb tests to the invention of a new ideal American life in Levittown; from the teen pop music of the Brill Building and the Beach Boys to Bob Dylan’s canny transformations; from the painful failures of communes to the breathtaking utopian potential of the digital age, Hales reveals a nation in transition as a new generation began to make its mark on the world it was inheriting. Outside the Gates of Eden is the most comprehensive account yet of the baby boomers, their parents, and their children, as seen through the places they built, the music and movies and shows they loved, and the battles they fought to define their nation, their culture, and their place in what remains a fragile and dangerous world.

Widely admired as the definitive cultural history of the 1960s, this groundbreaking work finally reappears in a new edition. The turbulent 1960s, almost from its outset, produced a dizzying display of cultural images and ideas that were as colorful as the psychedelic T-shirts that became part of its iconography. It was not, however, until Morris Dickstein's landmark Gates of Eden, first published in 1977, that we could fully grasp the impact of this raucous decade in American history as a momentous cultural epoch in its own right, as much as Jazz Age America or Weimar Germany. From Ginsberg and Dylan to Vonnegut and Heller, this lasting work brilliantly re-creates not only the intellectual and political ferment of the decade but also its disillusionment. What results is an inestimable contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century American culture.

During the sixties, says Morris Dickstein, America seemed to be at the gates of Eden--verging on a new way of experiencing life, art, and culture. In this provocative book, he discusses how we reached the gates and why, in the end, they remained closed. Beginning with Allen Ginsberg and the Beat poets of the late fifties, Dickstein traces the rise of a new sensibility in American thought, writing, and music through lively and incisive analyses of such sixties icons as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Bob Dylan, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, Joseph Heller, Paul Goodman, Norman O. Brown, and the Rolling Stones. Now, on the twentieth anniversary of the book's original publication, Dickstein has written a new introduction, reassessing the period's achievements and failures, and providing a fresh perspective on the ways that the sixties continue to influence our politics and culture.

Despite the development of a faster-than-light drive, Earth’s space program has been in the doldrums for centuries, as has Earth itself. Hyperspace being impossible to navigate without beacons at which to aim, there is no alternative but to wait for vessels sent out at sub-light speed decades previously to find somewhere worth going. Unfortunately, when a worthwhile planet finally turns up, it doesn’t take long for political conflicts to materialize over its exploitation. Then, when an entire survey team perishes, the problems intensify. Lee Caretta is the man most likely to solve the problem—if his conflict-ridden employers will let him, if he can keep his tendencey to suffer unexplained blackouts under control, and if the world really is sufficiently Earth-like not to be deadly to the explorers. And then the humans begin to die once more! Despite the development of a faster-than-light drive, Earth’s space program has been in the doldrums for centuries, as has Earth itself. Hyperspace being impossible to navigate without beacons at which to aim, there is no alternative but to wait for vessels sent out at sub-light speed decades previously to find somewhere worth going. Unfortunately, when a worthwhile planet finally turns up, it doesn’t take long for political conflicts to materialize over its exploitation. Then, when an entire survey team perishes, the problems intensify. Lee Caretta is the man most likely to solve the problem—if his conflict-ridden employers will let him, if he can keep his tendencey to suffer unexplained blackouts under control, and if the world really is sufficiently Earth-like not to be deadly to the explorers. And then the humans begin to die once more!

A brilliantly observed memoir of an unprecedented and remarkable spiritual journey. While religion has fuelled the often violent conflict plaguing the Holy Land, Yossi Klein Halevi wondered whether it could be a source of unity as well. To find the answer, this religious Israeli Jew began a two–year exploration to discover a common language with his Christian and Muslim neighbours. He followed their holiday cycles, befriended Christian monastics and Islamic mystics, and joined them in prayer in monasteries and mosques in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden traces that remarkable spiritual journey. Halevi candidly reveals how he fought to reconcile his own fears and anger as a Jew to relate to Christians and Muslims as fellow spiritual seekers. He chronicles the difficulty of overcoming multiple obstacles注eological, political, historical, and psychological注at separate believers of the three monotheistic faiths. And he introduces a diverse range of people attempting to reconcile the dichotomous heart of this sacred place柠struggle central to Israel, but which resonates for us all.