The day after his mother's death in 1977, Barthes began a diary of mourning. He reflected on the ebb and flow of sadness, and on modern society's quick dismissal of it. He provides a unique study of grief: intimate, deeply moving, and universal.

"An old friend summons dashing linguistics professor Thomas Lourds to Jerusalem to examine an ancient text. But Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also wants the same document. Khamenei and many others believe that the book contains a secret that will allow its owner to rule all of Islam and wage a Global Jihad the likes of which has never been seen before. Arriving in Jerusalem, Lourds discovers that his friend has been murdered and his...

"More than an immersive tale of the picaresque life of cowboy linguist, doctor, ethnographer, and author Jaime de Angulo--the Old Coyote of Big Sur--but an exploration of the persecuted Native Californian cultures and languages that had thrived for millennia and endured into his day. Jaime de Angulo's linguistic and ethnographic work, his writings, as well as the legends that cloak the Old Coyote himself, vividly reflect the particulars of the Pacific...