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The 2013 Winners are In!



Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

North America

• USA
• Canada

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  Tales of the Pacific by Jack London

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  During the last few months of his life Jack London lived in Hawaii, these are the fantastic, half-forgotten stories, part fact and part fiction, that he wrote there. Searching for an Eden and an untouched civilisation, he discovered harshness, cruelty and ignorance as well as raw natural beauty.

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  Miami and the Siege of Chicago by Norman Mailer

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  Norman Mailer uses his vivid prose to describe the events of 1968, probably the most turbulent year in modern American history with the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, race riots, police violence and fierce anti-war demonstration. A fantastic piece of non-fiction written like a novel.

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  The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  Norman Mailer tells the story of Gary Gilmore, a felon who robbed and murdered two men, and then demanded the right to an execution although America had not put anyone to death for ten years. An exhaustive exploration of the mind of a killer based entirely on interviews with his family and friends.

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  John Adams by David McCullough

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  An excellent biography of the second President of the United States John Adams by Pulitzer prize-winning author David McCullough. Part love story, part epic adventure and part energetic history, this is the definitive biography.

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  Wandering Home by Bill McKibben

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  A lovingly produced copy of Bill McKibben's travels through Vermont to the Adirondack Mountains. He reflects on the wilderness around him, climate change and the awe-inspiring hope this landscape lights up within him.

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  New Orleans: A Cultural and Literary History by Louise McKinney

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A fascinating history of New Orleans from the French colonists to the jazz legends.

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  Battle Cry of Freedom by James M. McPherson

  Price: £16.99    Add to Basket

  The definitive, scholarly and, in spite of its 900 pages, a compulsive history of 1850s America and the Civil War.

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  The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  The Civil War profoundly affected intellectual discourse in America. Five prominent scholars of the time are depicted in this book: William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey. These men crucially altered and modernised the manner in which science, politics and jurisprudence influenced a traumatized country.

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  DC Confidential by Christopher Meyer

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  A high profile, controversial book from Christopher Meyer, Ambassador to the United States from 1997 to 2003. A fascinating read.

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  Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich

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  The true story of how six students became professional card counters, fleecing casinos all over Vegas. A thrilling, real-life Ocean's Eleven.

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  Aller Retour New York by Henry Miller

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  A splendid Hesperus edition of Henry Miller's letters home describing a journey to New York. A vigorous and entertaining description of the city in the 1930s.

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  Stupid White Men by Michael Moore

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  A blistering attack on President Bush, the American electoral system, political corruption and economic control from the director of Bowling for Columbine. Hilarious and informative if you can handle his angry, didactic prose.

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  Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris

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  Teddy Roosevelt rose to the presidency unexpectedly after his predecessor's assassination, to become one of the most influential commanders in chief. The ramifications and justifications of his foreign policy and environmental activism still reverberate today.

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  Travels in Alaska by John Muir

  Price: £19.99    Add to Basket

  John Muir an intrepid explorer passionate about Alaska describes his travels through Alaska during the last two decades of the 19th century. These are the tense and exhilarating stories of a free spirit in an untamed land.

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  My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

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  Lyrical and passionate descriptions of the landscape of California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, which John Muir would help to protect as Yosemite National Park.

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  The Yosemite by John Muir

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  In 1869 John Muir spent the spring working as a sheep herder in the Sierra Nevada, the description of his experiences is a minutely observed and lovingly described ode to the nature and the landscape of this American wilderness.

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  Our National Parks by John Muir

  Price: £12.99    Add to Basket

  A collection of essays from treasured American explorer, travel writer and conservationist John Muir on the national parks of the West. First published in 1901, these lovingly observed descriptions inspired Theodore Roosevelt's groundbreaking conservation programme.

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  A Turn in the South by V. S. Naipaul

  Price: £7.99    Add to Basket

  Reflections and tales from V. S. Naipaul's journey through the Deep South in the 1980s. Fascinating, philosophical and poetic, the Nobel Prize winner discusses issues of race, religion, nationhood and culture.

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  Divine Magnetic Lands: A Journey in America by Timothy O'Grady

  Price: £8.99    Add to Basket

  Timothy O'Grady embarks on a road trip of over fifteen thousand miles across America, determined to uncover the story of his homeland since he left it in 1973. He speaks to war veterans, academics, billionaires, Klu Klux Klansmen and rappers about the political and cultural landscape of modern America.

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  Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

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  An exquistely well-written, witty and honest biography from the new President and certainly the more readable of his two books.

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  The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama

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  Less of a memoir and more political in bent than Dreams from my Father, Obama speaks of his faith, his values and his vision for America's future.

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  The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean

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  A botanical thriller about the orchid poachers of the Florida swamps. Part history of the area, part adventure and part entertaining exploration of this strange world of orchid obsessives from collectors to smugglers.

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  Tocqueville in America by George Wilson Pierson

  Price: £20.99    Add to Basket

  To better understand the context and appreciate the insight of Alexis de Tocqueville's work "Democracy in America", this introduction is a necessary component for students of American politics and sociology.

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  A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 & the Descent into Depression by Richard Posner

  Price: £17.95    Add to Basket

  Unique from the usual authors on this topic who are entwined within the banking industry, Posner is a senior American judge and intellectual. This book takes a step back to critique not the banks and regulators, but how the fundamental pillars of capitalism ultimately confounded the system.

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  The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons by John Wesley Powell

  Price: £9.99    Add to Basket

  In May 1869 ten men set off to explore the last remaining unmapped territories of the Colorado River. This journal describes their remarkable journey and how they faced attack, mutiny, terrifying rapids and famine. A thrilling adventure story from a true wilderness of mid-America.