With a glance at the present, Ben Nicholson’s THE WORLD, WHO WANTS IT? peers into America’s future in this hilarious, thought-provoking satire. This is world of credit card funerals, orgasm by pill, and “Are You With Us or Against Us?” parades. At once a scathing look at the direction we could be headed and a hopeful vision of what we might achieve, TWWWI might make you want to cry at your own laughter, and laugh at your own tears.

H.G. Carrillo’s fiery,accomplished literary debut, LOOSING MY ESPANISH, chronicles the struggles and vicissitudes of a tiny Cuban-American community in Chicago, haunted by history, memory, and myth as they encounter the American dream. Óscar Delossantos has recently been dismissed for a perceived indiscretion from the Jesuit boys’ high school where he has taught for twenty-two years. As his last semester comes to an end, he gives a daring, extended final history lesson: a kaleidoscopic portrait of Cuba as it exists in the hearts and minds of its exiled and dispossessed.

In CHANGO’S FIRE Ernesto Quiñonez paints the face of a neighborhood we can all identify with, helping to solidify his status as one of the chief literary chroniclers of our time. Julio Santana is an arsonist for hire burning down buildings looked upon as unseemly by investors trying to transform his Spanish Harlem neighborhood. From the well-intentioned neighborhood pastor who sells illegal citizenship papers, to the wise Santero priest, to Julio’s doting, streetwise parents, the characters here are given life in a novel whose themes are both current and timeless.

He was the first black heavyweight champion, the most celebrated and reviled African American of his age. In UNFORGIVABLE BLACKNESS prizewinning biographer Geoffrey Ward brings to life the real Jack Johnson, a figure more complex and compelling than the newspaper headlines he inspired could convey. Johnson battled his way from obscurity to the top of the heavyweight ranks and in 1908 won the greatest prize in American sports-one that had always been the private preserve of white boxers. At a time when whites ran everything in America, Johnson took orders from no one and resolved to live as if color did not exist.

She’s beautiful, clever, personable, a great cook- heck-a domestic goddess, and she even has her own, very cool, t.v. show, but we love her anyway. Barbara’s Bookstore and Marshall Field’s are excited to host the British queen of comfort food Nigella (Nigella Bites) Lawson, signing copies of her latest cookbook FEAST: Food to Celebrate Life. Just in time for the holiday season comes this cookbook to be treasured all-year long. Please call 312.781.3033 for details.