Bøger udgivet af Harper Perennial

Why would a talented young woman enter into a torrid affair with hunger, drugs, sex, and death? Through five lengthy hospital stays, endless therapy, and the loss of family, friends, jobs, and all sense of what it means to be "normal," Marya Hornbacher lovingly embraced her anorexia and bulimia -- until a particularly horrifying bout with the disease in college put the romance of wasting away to rest forever. A vivid, honest, and emotionally wrenching memoir, Wasted is the story of one woman's travels to reality's darker side -- and her decision to find her way back on her own terms.

"A remarkable--and singularly chilling--glimpse of human behavior. . .This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."--Newsweek Christopher R. Browning's shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews--now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever.While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today.

A Boston Globe and San Francisco Chronicle "Best Book of the Year"Told with perfect rhythm and unyielding brutality, these stories expose unsuspecting men and women to the realities of nature, the primal instincts of man, and the dark humor and heartbreak of our struggle to not only thrive but also survive. In "Girl on Girl," a high school freshman goes to disturbing lengths to help an old friend. An insatiable temptress pursues the one man she can't have in "Meteorologist Dave Santana." And in the title story, a long-fraught friendship comes undone when three buddies get impossibly lost on a lake it is impossible to get lost on. Other stories explore situations pulled directly from the wild, imposing on human lives the danger, tension, and precariousness of the natural world.As entertaining as it is dangerous, this accomplished collection explores the boundary between the wild and the civilized, where nature acts as a catalyst for human drama and lays bare our vulnerabilities, fears, and desires.

Drawn from the cutting-edge frontiers of science, This Explains Everything will revolutionize your understanding of the world.What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website"?The Guardian), posed to the world's most influential minds. Flowing from the horizons of physics, economics, psychology, neuroscience, and more, This Explains Everything presents 150 of the most surprising and brilliant theories of the way of our minds, societies, and universe work.Jared Diamond on biological electricity • Nassim Nicholas Taleb on positive stress • Steven Pinker on the deep genetic roots of human conflict • Richard Dawkins on pattern recognition • Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on simplicity • Lisa Randall on the Higgs mechanism • BRIAN Eno on the limits of intuition • Richard Thaler on the power of commitment • V. S. Ramachandran on the "neural code" of consciousness • Nobel Prize winner ERIC KANDEL on the power of psychotherapy • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on "Lord Acton's Dictum" • Lawrence M. Krauss on the unification of electricity and magnetism • plus contributions by Martin J. Rees • Kevin Kelly • Clay Shirky • Daniel C. Dennett • Sherry Turkle • Philip Zimbardo • Lee Smolin • Rebecca Newberger Goldstein • Seth Lloyd • Stewart Brand • George Dyson • Matt Ridley

"The Hellbound Heart" is one of Clive Barker's best, a nerve-shattering novella about the human heart and all the great terrors and ecstasies within its endless domain. It is about greed and love, lovelessness and despair, desire and death, life and captivity, bells and blood. It is one of the most dead-frightening stories you are likely to ever read.

The Classic Bestseller that has Changed the Lives of Millions"Extraordinary. Harris has helped millions find the freedom to change, liberate their adult effectiveness, and achieve joyful intimacy with others." --Los Angeles TimesTransactional analysis delineates three ego-states (Parent, Adult and Child) as the basis for the content and quality of interpersonal communication. "Happy childhood" notwithstanding, says Harris, most of us are living out the not OK feelings of a defenseless child wholly dependent on others (parents) for stroking and caring. At some stage early in our lives we adopt a "position" about ourselves and others that determines how we feel about everything we do. And for a huge portion of the population, that position is "I'm Not OK-You're OK." This negative "life position," shared by successful and unsuccessful people alike, contaminates our rational adult capabilities, leaving us vulnerable to inappropriate, emotional reactions of our child and uncritically learned behavior programmed into our parent. By exploring the structure of our personalities and understanding old decisions, Harris believes we can find the freedom to change our lives.

The bestselling classic that redefined our view of the relationship between beauty and female identity.In today's world, women have more power, legal recognition, and professional success than ever before. Alongside the evident progress of the women's movement, however, writer and journalist Naomi Wolf is troubled by a different kind of social control, which, she argues, may prove just as restrictive as the traditional image of homemaker and wife. It's the beauty myth, an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society's impossible definition of "the flawless beauty."

A highly original approach from best selling author Thomas Moore, restoring sex to its rightful place in the human psyche as an experience of the soul. In The Soul of Sex, Thomas Moore at last restores sex to its rightful place in the human psyche. Describing sex as an experience of the soul, Thomas Moore here brings out the fully human side of sex - the roles of fantasy, desire, meaning, and morality - and draws on religion, mythology art, literature, and film to show how sex is one of the most profound mysteries of life. While finding spirituality inherent in sex, Moore also explores how spiritual values can sometimes wound our sexuality. Blending rather than opposing spirituality and sexuality, The Soul of Sex offers a fresh, livable way of becoming more deeply sexual and loving in all areas of life.

The beloved New York Times bestselling author of Birds of California hits it out of the park with this smart, sexy, thrilling take on the celebrity-athlete story--a funny, sizzling, ripped-from-the-headlines romance between an international pop star and a major league baseball player who thought his best days were behind him.Taylor and Travis. Jennifer and A-Rod. Marilyn and Joe. When a professional athlete and a megawatt star fall in love, the world is obsessed . . .With four chart-topping albums, Lacey Logan is a superstar whose life no longer feels like her own. Her every move is photographed, videoed, and dissected online, and her carefully curated Instagram feed studied by fans worldwide. To maintain her privacy, Lacey skillfully controls her narrative, showing fans and paparazzi what she wants them to see.But when Lacey discovers her boyfriend is hiding two devastating secrets--a bad cocaine habit and a pregnant girlfriend--she begins to lose confidence and control of her own story. Then big-shouldered baseball player Jimmy Hodges, a former Rookie of the Year when Lacey was in high school, walks into the bar where she's venting to a friend. With his shaggy beard and unfashionable button-down, Jimmy is the opposite of the picture-perfect guy Lacey thinks she wants. Soon, sparks fly and inhibitions go out the window when Lacey dares to take some chances.Lacey and Jimmy are polar opposites. But could this be the forever after they both need?

"Reinterprets two of Sophocles' Theban plays, Oedipus Tyrannus and Antigone. . . . the alternating structure proves powerful."--The New Yorker"A passionate and gripping account of a famously dysfunctional family. Haynes balances a fresh take on the material with a deep love for her sources, wearing her scholarship with grace, and giving new voice to the often-overlooked but fascinating Jocasta and Ismene."--Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of The Song of Achilles and CirceThe New York Times bestselling author of Pandora's Jar and Stone Blind returns with a powerful retelling of Oedipus and Antigone from the perspectives of the women the myths overlooked.When you have grown up as I have, there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can't be faced . . . Because that is what happened the last time, and that is why my siblings and I have grown up in a cursed house, children of cursed parents . . .Jocasta is just fifteen when she is told that she must marry the King of Thebes, an old man she has never met. Her life has never been her own, and nor will it be, unless she outlives her strange, absent husband.Ismene is the same age when she is attacked in the palace she calls home. Since the day of her parents' tragic deaths a decade earlier, she has always longed to feel safe with the family she still has. But with a single act of violence, all that is about to change.With the turn of these two events, a tragedy is set in motion. But not as we've known it.

"A rare voice, someone who challenges orthodoxies in the way that many journalists and public intellectuals claim to do but don't. It is bracing to spend time in the company of such a smart, plain-spoken and unpredictable person."--Wall Street JournalA striking collection of essays from the prize-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Should We Stay or Should We Go, So Much for That, and The Post-Birthday World.Novelist, cultural observer, and social satirist Lionel Shriver is among the sharpest talents of our age. A writer who embraces "under-expressed, unpopular or downright dangerous" points of view, she filets cherished shibboleths and the conformity of thought and attitude that has overtaken us.Bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator, the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper's Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces, Abominations reveals Shriver at her most iconoclastic and personal. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver's piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes.In her characteristically frank manner, Shriver shrewdly skewers the concept of language "crimes," while chafing at arbitrary limitations on speech and literature that crimp artistic expression and threaten intellectual freedom. Each essay in Abominations reflects sentiments that have "brought hell and damnation down on my head," as she cheerfully explains, and have threatened her with "cancellation" more than once.Throughout, Shriver offers insights on her novels and explores the perks and pitfalls of becoming a successful artist. In revisiting old pieces and rejected essays, Shriver updates and expands her thinking. "Enlightened" progressive readers will find plenty to challenge here. But they may find, to their surprise, insights with which they agree.A timely synthesis of Shriver's expansive work, Abominations reveals this provocative, talented writer at her most assured.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A "rich, Chekhovian novel" about family and forgiveness from the acclaimed author of Fire on the Mountain (The New Yorker). At the heart of this wonderful novel are the moving relationships between the estranged members of the Das family. Bimla is a dissatisfied but ambitious teacher at a women's college who lives in her childhood home, where she cares for her mentally challenged brother, Baba. Tara is her younger, unambitious sister, married and with children of her own. Raja is their popular, brilliant, and successful brother. When Tara returns for a visit with Bimla and Baba, old memories and tensions resurface, blending into a domestic drama that leads to beautiful and profound moments of self-understanding.Set in the vividly portrayed environs of Old Delhi, "Clear Light of Day does what only the very best novels can do: it totally submerges us. It also takes us so deeply into another world that we almost fear we won't be able to climb out again" (New York Times Book Review).

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize"An intense and powerful novel about losing one's way and then finding it again in the unlikeliest of places. I found it moving, thought-provoking and gripping in equal measure." -- Ian McGuire, New York Times bestselling author of The North WaterTrapped undersea in a capsized shrimping trawler, a damaged former war correspondent is forced to confront a deadly secret from his past as he struggles to survive in this gripping novel of trauma, loss, love, and redemption from award-winning journalist and author of The Things They Cannot Say Kevin Sites.Former war correspondent Lukas Landon is alone, trapped under 150-feet of water in an overturned shrimp trawler at the bottom of the ocean. The only thing keeping him alive is an air bubble in the ship's bow. But the water level is rising, and time is running out. Landon doesn't know if he will survive . . . or if he even deserves to.After years of covering bloody battles in Afghanistan and Iraq, Landon's once promising life took a steep nosedive. But he may have found a path to redemption: a series of in-depth stories on the Philomena, the rarest of South Carolina shrimp boats skippered by decorated former army sergeant Clarita Esteban.A Black woman struggling to survive in a white man's world, Clarita has assembled a crew of misfits as deeply wounded as herself; a Cuban first mate who came to America during the Mariel boatlift and his troubled younger cousin; a quiet Haitian cook with a secret black book; a deckhand, the only member of the ship's former crew willing to work for a Black female skipper; and Clarita's daughter, who lost a college basketball scholarship to an injury.As Landon slowly earns the disparate crew's trust, uncovering their pasts--and how each landed aboard this rusty bucket of bolts with its own shaded history--he keeps his own story and the events that unmoored the foundation of his life a secret. But when catastrophe strikes--leaving him twenty-fathoms deep in exquisite isolation--Landon has no one to question but himself. Will he finally come clean? And if he does, will he make it out alive from this 110-ton steel tomb under the sea to finally tell the truth to those who need to hear it?A thrilling fight for survival and a poignant story of loss and redemption, The Ocean Above Me is a literary masterpiece that explores the effects of trauma, the pain of forgiveness, and the light of love that burns in the darkest depths.

One of The Atlantic's Great American Novels"One of the greats. . . . Not just a science fiction writer; a literary icon." --Stephen King"Engrossing. . . . [Le Guin] is a philosopher; an explorer in the landscape of the mind." --Cincinnati EnquirerUrsula K. Le Guin's award-winning classic--a profound and thoughtful tale of anarchism and capitalism, individualism and collectivism, and one ambitious man's quest to bridge the ideological chasm separating two worldsA bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras--a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart.To visit Urras--to learn, to teach, to share--will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist's gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.

An unemployed young man is invited to his lover's wedding and decides to gift her a bottle of his own blood. Rumours of a great big flood or the end of days or a rebellion of refugees in Calcutta fly through the country. Haran majhi's starved widow's corpse floats down rivers and swamps and drains as the nation awaits eagerly the unveiling of the golden Gandhi statue from America. The early stories of Subimal Misra took the Bengali literary world by storm upon their publication in the late 1960s. Distinct from the conventional modes of storytelling that preceded him, Misra's pieces are more anti-stories than stories, a montage of images that flow into each other and tell a tale with greater power and urgency than narrative fiction. Every story hits hard, gripping the reader with intensity and an underlying fantastical horror that is firmly rooted in reality. V. Ramaswamy's exceptional translation brings to the fore the contemporaneity of Misra's work while retaining the verve and pungency of the original. Anti establishment and revolutionary, t hese stories by a writer whom many consider to be a cult figure in Bengali literature resonate with truths that are undeniable even today, forty years after they were written

Meet Tanya, Gwen, Emma, Mia, and Claire, five girls from the same hometown whose lives intersect under unforgettable circumstances. Tanya grows up with an abusive brother and a prostitute's daughter for a best friend. Gwen dreams of being a super-model but, like Tanya on the rougher side of town, must surviveviolence. Emma has a hard-working single mother who can't always protect her. Emma's best friend, Mia, loses her father to suicide. And finally, there's Claire, who escapes their small town but finds she can't escape the past.Through these remarkable characters, Christina Fitzpatrick captures not only the anger and fear in being young and unprotected but also the strength and compassion that unite all who have suffered and survived. In this dark, breathtaking work, Ms. Fitzpatrick's haunting prose elevates the female experience into a powerful, raw read.

"Fifty years ago, the three funniest writers in the English language were named Shaw, Mencken and Muggeridge. Today, they're named Thompson, O'Rourke and Christopher Buckley.Read this book and you'll die laughing. But as Wrong-Way Kennedy said, 'What a way to go.'" -- Tom Wolfe"Funny and devastating." -- Entertainment Weekly"Clever, erudite, sophisticated, funny and flip. Buckley shows that his antennae are ever alert to the absurdities in our world." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer"Buckley's comic muse -- and as Wry Martinis attests, he is one of the rarest specimens in his generation of that endangered species, the authentically inventive comic writer -- adorns the Benchley-Thurber line of social observation. He is probably the most versatile practitioner of that tradition today.... Wry Martinis has an astonishing range, all the way from the history of the miniskirt to the language of the New American Bible." -- Boston Globe

Just out of prison after serving time on a drug charge, Roper Rackard comes across a woman's body while mowing the tall grass at the far end of his new boss's property, and although he is innocent of her death, Roper panics. Terrified that he will be charged with murdering a white woman and sent back to jail, he decides to hide the body where it won't be found. As days and then weeks pass, and the search for the missing woman continues, Roper begins to doubt himself. Did he do the right thing? Why didn't he call for help? Will anybody believe he is innocent and, most important, how can he possibly come forward now?

Blake Morrison has woven a stunning novel around the few facts known about the life and work of Johann Gensfleisch (aka Gutenberg), master printer, charmer, con man, and visionary -- the man who invented "artificial writing" and printed the Gutenberg Bible, putting thousands of monks out of work.In this dazzling debut novel, Morrison gives Gutenberg's final testament: a justification and apologia he dictated, ironically, to one of the young scribes made obsolete by his invention of movable metal type. Through the eyes of the aging narrator, we see the Middle Ages in a strange new light and witness a moment of cultural transition as dramatic as the communications revolution of today.

During the nineteenth century, the roughest but most important ocean passage in the world lay between Britain and the United States. Bridging the Atlantic Ocean by steamship was a defining, remarkable feat of the era. Over time, Atlantic steamships became the largest, most complex machines yet devised. They created a new transatlantic world of commerce and travel, reconciling former Anglo-American enemies and bringing millions of emigrants who transformed the United States.In Transatlantic, the experience of crossing the Atlantic is re-created in stunning detail from the varied perspectives of first class, steerage, officers, and crew. The dynamic evolution of the Atlantic steamer is traced from Brunel's Great Western of 1838 to Cunard's Mauretania of 1907, the greatest steamship ever built.

In this anthology twenty-six contemporary fiction writers and poets offer short essays on a single movie that inspired, seduced, horrified, or fascinated them, giving readers a rare glimpse of the writer's perspective on film.

As a young man, Bill Argus abandoned his wife, their young son, and his family's dairy farm in the Sonoma County hamlet of Pianto. Now sixty-three, the once-famous photographer is overcome with the need to find forgiveness from those he left behind. Journeying back to the small dreary California town, he is disoriented after finding a ragged skeleton of the boyhood farm he remembers, and a family unmoved and indifferent to his return. Bill's awkward homecoming is seen through the eyes of his second wife, Nora (twenty years his junior), who has her own troubled family history. Bearing witness to Bill's reception in Pianto sparks in Nora a revisiting of her own complicated past, and soon, she too sets off on a spiritual journey to explore her own parts unknown.Set against the wild beauty of the California desert, this deftly imagined first novel lovingly maps the diverse terrain of the human heart as it probes the intricate bonds of family and the complex nature of forgiveness and love.

Three fables by Bengal's most remarkable children's writer and artist.Adapted from The Wonderful Adventures of Nils by Nobelprize winning Swedish writer Selma Lagerlof, Booro Angla is an allegorical tale about a boy's adventures in a forest in British-occupied Bengal. Alor Phulki is an adaptation of the play Chantecler written by the French poet Edmond Rostand. It is a satire inspired by the barnyard animals in his home in the south of France. Khirer Putul is a charming fable that draws on the rich oral tradition of Bengal. An all-time favourite children's classic by Abanindranath Tagore, it is the story of the sugar doll and the two queens, and tells us how Duorani triumphs over her jealous co-wife with the help of her clever monkey-son.

Mukund Joshi is fourteen and newly in love. He attends the same private tuitions as his classmate, Shirodkar, just for a glimpse of her, and follows her back home every day. Sadly, she has not a clue that he is pining away for her, because in their society, boys and girls don't interact freely, much less talk about love. When he's not negotiating the tricky alleys of love, Mukund sits around the school field or loafs about town with his close friends, Surya, Chitre and Phawdya, railing against the education system, and debating ideas such as discipline and Bohemianism. Set in a small Maharashtrian town during the Emergency of 1975, Shala is a heartwarming, nuanced novel about the adolescent struggles that are as tortuous in real time as they are amusing in retrospect.

Arranged in a dynamic question-and-answer format, this engaging reference addresses the most asked and least understood questions about Black history, ranging through such topics as African culture, slavery and the Black resistance, important Black inventors, the origins of jazz and rap music and more. Written with wit and candor, using the most up-to-date scholarship and research available, and featuring timelines and a bibliography for further reading, America Is Me explodes the myths and misconceptions to reveal the human side of the Black experience in America. It is a vitally important resource for the many individuals, parents and teachers who want to know more about Black history.

In 1992, Martin L. Gross shocked the nation with his New York Times bestseller, The Government Racket: Washington Waste A to Z, after whcih he testified before Congress five times on hidden catastrophic waste. Now he has returned to the scene of the crime and found that things have gotten even worse.He shows how the claim that the "era of a big government is over" is a blatant lie. With 2 percent inflation, federal spending rose 7 percent and is now more than $2 trillion annually. The Social Security fund is empty and $1.2 trillion in debt, while its FCA surplus is squandered on everything except the aged.In this provacative follow-up volume, the author outlines an encylcopedia of new wastem shows what happened to his previous suggestions to cut costs, and lays out a blueprint for governent reform that could stop Washington's dysfunstional behavoir . In thirty-six chapters he gives scores of examples of giant new waste and abuse, including: Duplication and overlap cost us billions in 154 different failing job-training programs and 127 different teenage bureaucracies, nine alone in Department of Justice. Billions are rountinely wasted on ludicrious Washinton projects, from golf courses for congressman to large cash pensions for hyperactive children.While the taxpayer pays, Washinton subsizes General Motors, Intel, Pillsbury, and scores of gaint firms to the tune of $75 billion a year.The Defense Department regualry flies members of Congress around the world, with spouses, for freebie holidays on liquor-loaded planes.

No writer in America has a better feel for the country's rythms, richness, and rewards than bestselling author and syndicated columnist Bob Greene. With the color and depth of a novel, this treasury of best-loved columns captures America's small triumphs and all-too-human tragedies as Greene travels across the country to tell the stories that don't make the headlines. A small-town cop saves a child's life by double-checking, on a hunch, a closed case of suspected abuse. Frank Sinatra, on his last concert tour, shares off-the-cuff wisdom about fame, craft, and shifting fortunes. An impoverished father gives his son the best trip he can -- on the free trains out to the Atlanta airport's boarding gates. Funny, gripping, heartrending, and exhilarating, these unforgettable stories are guaranteed to lift the spirit and stir the soul.

"With the advent of the internet, any topic we want to know about is instantly available with the touch of a smartphone button. With so much knowledge at our fingertips, what is there left for our brains to do? At a time when we seem to be stripping all value from the idea of knowing things--no need for math, no need for map-reading, no need for memorization--are we risking our ability to think? As we empty our minds, will we one day be incapable of thoughtfulness? Addressing these questions, Simon Winchester explores how humans have attained, stored, and disseminated knowledge. Examining such disciplines as education, journalism, encyclopedia creation, museum curation, photography, and broadcasting, he looks at a whole range of knowledge diffusion--from the cuneiform writings of Babylon to the machine-made genius of artificial intelligence, by way of Gutenberg, Google, and Wikipedia to the huge Victorian assemblage of the Mundanaeum, the collection of everything ever known, currently stored in a damp basement in northern Belgium. Studded with strange and fascinating details, Knowing What We Know is a deep dive into learning and the human mind. Throughout this fascinating tour, Winchester forces us to ponder what rational humans are becoming. What good is all this knowledge if it leads to lack of thought? What is information withoutwisdom? Does Rene Descartes's Cogito, ergo sum--"I think therefore I am," the foundation for human knowledge widely accepted since the Enlightenment--still hold? And what will the world be like if no one in it is wise?"--

"Funny, touching and infused with wonder, as all love stories should be." --San Francisco ExaminerThe iconic tale of love and loss that has touched the hearts of millions, Love Story has become one of the most adored novels of our time. It has sold more than twenty-one million copies worldwide and became a blockbuster film starring Ryan O'Neal and Ali McGraw. It is the story that told the world, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." This special anniversary edition includes an introduction by the author's daughter, Francesca Segal.This is the story of Oliver Barrett IV, a rich jock from a stuffy WASP family on his way to a Harvard degree and a career in law, and Jenny Cavilleri, a wisecracking working-class beauty studying music at Radcliffe.Opposites in nearly every way, Oliver and Jenny are kindred spirits from vastly different worlds. Their attraction to each other is immediate and powerful, and together they share a love that defies everything.This is their story--a story of two young people and a love so uncompromising it will bring joy to your heart and tears to your eyes.