Penguin Books

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

***PBS’s AMERICAN EXPERIENCE released a film based on The Poisoner’s Handbook in January 2014***Equal parts true crime, twentieth-century history, and science thriller, The Poisoner’s Handbook is “a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie” (The New York Observer)A fascinating Jazz Age tale of chemistry and detection, poison and murder, The Poisoner’s Handbook is …

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A Better Way of Dying: How to Make the Best Choices at the End of Life

The fail-safe plan for ensuring one’s final wishes are respected Advanced directives and living wills have improved our ability to dictate end-of-life care, but even these cannot guaran­tee that we will be allowed the dignity of a natural death. Designed by two sisters-one a doctor, one a lawyer-and drawing on their decades of experience, the five-step …

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A People’s History of the Supreme Court: The Men and Women Whose Cases and Decisions Have Shaped OurConstitution: Revised Edition

Recent changes in the Supreme Court have placed the venerable institution at the forefront of current affairs, making this comprehensive and engaging work as timely as ever. In the tradition of Howard Zinn’s classic A People’s History of the United States, Peter Irons chronicles the decisions that have influenced virtually every aspect of our society, from the debates …

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The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State

From the bestselling authors of The Right Nation, a visionary argument that our current crisis in government is nothing less than the fourth radical transition in the history of the nation-stateDysfunctional government: It’s become a cliché, and most of us are resigned to the fact that nothing is ever going to change. As John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge show us, that is a …

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How to Be Drawn (Poets, Penguin)

A finalist for the 2015 National Book Award for PoetryA dazzling new collection of poetry by Terrance Hayes, the National Book Award–winning author of LightheadIn How to Be Drawn, his daring fifth collection, Terrance Hayes explores how we see and are seen. While many of these poems bear the clearest imprint yet of Hayes’s background as a visual …

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On the Road

In its time Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece was the bible of the Beat Generation, the essential prose accompaniment to Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. While it stunned the public and literary establishment when it was published in 1957, it is now recognized as an American classic. With On the Road, Kerouac discovered his voice and his true subject—the search …

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The Shadow of the Wind

“Gabriel García Márquez meets Umberto Eco meets Jorge Luis Borges for a sprawling magic show.” –The New York Times Book ReviewA New York Times BestsellerBarcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer’s son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book …

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Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)

The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dream Ever since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as a milestone of the American theater. In the person of Willy Loman, the aging, failing salesman who makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine, Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero …

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The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review

An energetic collection celebrating the bold writers at the forefront of today’s literary world—featuring stories, essays, and poems from “America’s greatest literary journal” (Time) For more than half a century, the Paris Review has launched some of the most exciting new literary voices, from Philip Roth to David Foster Wallace. But rather than trading on nostalgia, the storied journal—reconceived in …

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