Awesome Varieties Album and Music Offers

Skits and bits from A Prairie Home Companion celebrate the secret society of men and women who possess excellent spelling and punctuation skills.

ENGLISH MAJORS. You know who you are and here is a double-CD celebrating the secret society of those who, though they may be chauffeuring kids to swim lessons or writing Unix programs or frying cheeseburgers, still could, if need be, write a term paper on the water imagery in The Waste Land.

Includes the Six-Minute Hamlet, the Ten-Minute MacBeth,tributes to Hawthorne and Kerouac and Emily Dickinson, a Guy Noir adventure that exposes an M.F.A. scam, the Ballad of John Henry ('John Henry was an English major and poetry was his line. He sat by the window with his yellow legal pad and he wrote one sentence at a time.'), and more.

With guest appearances by Allen Ginsberg, Billy Collins, Roy Blount Jr., Robert Bly, Donald Hall, and Calvin Trillin.

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Price: $15.22 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Franklin Electronic. Spelling Corrector.
Price: $11.76 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my home town…." Each week, more than four million radio listeners hear these words, and settle in for some old-fashioned, up-to-the-minute storytelling

During live broadcasts of A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor takes us to "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve," where "the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." These expertly crafted tales touch the heart and tickle the funnybone. Warm, poignant, often hilarious, each is a classic of live storytelling, full of gentle humor, genuine emotion, and (more often than not) surprising insights into family, community, love, faith, and hope..
Price: $14.63 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Carl Sagan’s prophetic vision of the tragic resurgence of fundamentalism and the hope-filled potential of the next great development in human spirituality

The late great astronomer and astrophysicist describes his personal search to understand the nature of the sacred in the vastness of the cosmos. Exhibiting a breadth of intellect nothing short of astounding, Sagan presents his views on a wide range of topics, including the likelihood of intelligent life on other planets, creationism and so-called intelligent design, and a new concept of science as “informed worship.” Originally presented at the centennial celebration of the famous Gifford Lectures in Scotland in 1985 but never published, this book offers a unique encounter with one of the most remarkable minds of the twentieth century..
Price: $5.33 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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The Marx Brother who never spoke--Harpo Marx--expounds upon his life and times in Hollywood and on the vaudeville stage in this funny, affectionate, and poignant autobiography as told to journalist Rowland Barber..
Price: $11.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

"For the Love of Murphy's is an excellent account of the history of a great five-and-ten. Jason Togyer has truly captured the "behind-the-counter" view of an innovative retail organization.

The G. C. Murphy Company is very special to me. My management style and work ethic grew from the experience and training I acquired over a sixteen-year period as a G. C. Murphy employee. I worked as a part-time stock boy in the early 1950s and then spent five years full time in the management training program, working in seven different stores. After serving in the Marine Corps, I returned part time to the G. C. Murphy Company—and while attending Penn State University, I worked in the downtown State College store.

I highly recommend For the Love of Murphy's to anyone who has had the experience of working in a five-and-ten retail store. Students of marketing management and merchandising, young entrepreneurs, and small-business owners will also gain immensely from the wealth of information in this book." —Larry R. Pollock
Chancellor Emeritus, Penn State-New Kensington

Five-and-ten stores were immensely popular during the middle fifty years of the twentieth century, selling cheap, dependable goods to people from all walks of life. Now the product of a bygone era, these stores were revolutionary in their time, but few today appreciate how important they were in creating our present-day consumer culture. In this caring but honest look at one of the best-known chains of five-and-tens, Jason Togyer traces the history of the G. C. Murphy Company, headquartered in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

Though not the largest chain, nor the first, Murphy's is remembered today as a commercial trailblazer, a corporation run with honesty and integrity, and, at its peak, a retailer whose more than 500 stores managed to outsell those of the giant F. W. Woolworth Company by a factor of three to one. Making extensive use of both the company archives and anecdotes from former employees and customers, McKeesport native Togyer recreates with outstanding detail the world in which the G. C. Murphy Company emerged; its survival and growth during the Great Depression; its response to a strained economy during World War II; its fight against rapidly expanding competitors such as K—Mart; its struggle and recovery in the 1970s; and its unsuccessful battle to stave off Wall Street raiders in the 1980s.

Though modern-day shoppers may not know the Murphy name, they know the legacy it left behind. From its adventurous selling tactics to its strict code of corporate ethics, the G. C. Murphy Company should be remembered not as a dusty relic, but as a pioneer in the American business world.

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Price: $23.07 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Situated beautifully at the intersection of Michael Pollan, Ruth Reichl, and Barbara Kingsolver, Heirloom is an inspiring, elegiac, and gorgeously written memoir about rediscovering an older and still vital way of life.

Fourteen years ago, Tim Stark was living in Brooklyn, working days as a management consultant, and writing unpublished short stories by night. One evening, chancing upon a Dumpster full of discarded lumber, he carried the lumber home and built a germination rack for thousands of heirloom tomato seedlings. His crop soon outgrew the brownstone in which it had sprouted, forcing him to cart the seedlings to his family’s farm in Pennsylvania, where they were transplanted into the ground by hand. When favorable weather brought in a bumper crop, Tim hauled his unusual tomatoes to New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket, at a time when the tomato was unanimously red. The rest is history. Today, Eckerton Hill Farm does a booming trade in heirloom tomatoes and obscure chile peppers. Tim’s tomatoes are featured on the menus of New York City’s most demanding chefs and have even made the cover of Gourmet magazine.

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Price: $14.31 [Notify me when price goes down.]