William T. Vollmann's Books

Last Stories and Other Stories

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Last Stories and Other Stories

By: William T. Vollmann

Supernaturally tinged stories from William T. Vollmann, author of the National Book Award winner Europe Central Watch for Vollmann’s new work of nonfiction, No Immediate Danger, coming in April of 2018 In this magnificent new work of fiction, his first in nine years, celebrated author William T. Vollmann offers a collection of ghost stories linked by themes of love, death, and the erotic. A Bohemian farmer’s dead wife returns to him, and their love endures, but at a gruesome price. A geisha prolongs her life by turning into a cherry tree. A journalist, haunted by the half-forgotten killing of a Bosnian couple, watches their story, and his own wartime tragedy, slip away from him. A dying American romances the ghost of his high school sweetheart while a homeless salaryman in Tokyo animates paper cutouts of ancient heroes. Are ghosts memories, fantasies, or monsters? Is there life in death? Vollmann has always operated in the shadowy borderland between categories, and these eerie tales, however far-flung their settings, all focus on the attempts of the living to avoid, control, or even seduce death. Vollmann’s stories will transport readers to a fantastical world where love and lust make anything possible.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

706

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

014312756X

ISBN 13

9780143127567

Europe Central

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Europe Central

By: William T. Vollmann

A daring literary masterpiece and winner of the National Book Award In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on the authoritarian cultures of Germany and the USSR in the twentieth century to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime. Through interwoven narratives that paint a composite portrait of these two battling leviathans and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional— a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich and the Stalinist assaults upon his work and life.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

834

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143036599

ISBN 13

9780143036593

Poor People

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Poor People

By: William T. Vollmann

That was the simple yet groundbreaking question William T. Vollmann asked in cities and villages around the globe. The result of Vollmann's fearless inquiry is a view of poverty unlike any previously offered. Poor People struggles to confront poverty in all its hopelessness and brutality, its pride and abject fear, its fierce misery and quiet resignation, allowing the poor to explain the causes and consequences of their impoverishment in their own cultural, social, and religious terms. With intense compassion and a scrupulously unpatronizing eye, Vollmann invites his readers to recognize in our fellow human beings their full dignity, fallibility, pride, and pain, and the power of their hard-fought resilience. Some images that appeared in the print edition of this book are unavailable in the electronic edition due to rights reasons.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

468

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

006204379X

ISBN 13

9780062043795

Uncentering the Earth

Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Uncentering the Earth

Copernicus and the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres

By: William T. Vollmann

The man and the idea that created modern science, as seen by one of today's most celebrated writers.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

308

Publisher

W. W. Norton

Published Date

ISBN 10

0297845683

ISBN 13

9780297845683

An Afghanistan Picture Show

Or, How I Saved the World

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

An Afghanistan Picture Show

Or, How I Saved the World

By: William T. Vollmann

Never before available in paperback and all but invisible for twenty years, a personal account of the origins of America's longest war. In 1982, the young William Vollmann worked odd jobs, including as a secretary at an insurance company, until he'd saved up enough money to go to Afghanistan, where he wanted to join the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets. The resulting book wasn't published until 1992, and Library Journal wrote: "The wrong book written at the wrong time. . . . With the situation in Afghanistan rapidly heading toward resolution . . . libraries may safely skip this." Thirty years later--and with the United States still mired in the longest war of its history--it's time for a reassessment of Vollmann's heartfelt tale of idealism and its terrifying betrayals. An alloy of documentary and autobiographical elements characteristic of Vollmann's later nonfiction, An Afghanistan Picture Show is not a work of conventional reportage; instead, it's an account of a subtle and stubborn consciousness grappling with the limits of will and idealism imposed by violence and chaos.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

281

Publisher

Melville House

Published Date

ISBN 10

1612191991

ISBN 13

9781612191997

Imperial

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Imperial

By: William T. Vollmann

From the author of Europe Central, winner of the National Book Award, a journalistic tour de force along the Mexican-American border – a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award For generations of migrant workers, Imperial Country has held the promise of paradise and the reality of hell. It sprawls across a stirring accidental sea, across the deserts, date groves and labor camps of Southeastern California, right across the border into Mexico. In this eye-opening book, William T. Vollmann takes us deep into the heart of this haunted region, exploring polluted rivers and guarded factories and talking with everyone from Mexican migrant workers to border patrolmen. Teeming with patterns, facts, stories, people and hope, this is an epic study of an emblematic region.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1854

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101105151

ISBN 13

9781101105153

Argall

Volume Three of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Argall

Volume Three of Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes

By: William T. Vollmann

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central – a hugely original fictional history of Pocahontas, John Smith, and the Jamestown colony in Virginia In Argall, the third novel in his Seven Dreams series, William T. Vollmann alternates between extravagant Elizabethan language and gritty realism in an attempt to dig beneath the legend surrounding Pocahontas, John Smith, and the founding of the Jamestown colony in Virginia-as well as the betrayals, disappointments, and atrocities behind it. With the same panoramic vision, mythic sensibility, and stylistic daring that he brought to the previous novels in the Seven Dreams series--hailed upon its inception as "the most important literary project of the '90s" (The Washington Post)--Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Native Americans and Europeans in the New World. In reconstructing America's past as tragedy, nightmare, and bloody spectacle, Vollmann does nothing less than reinvent the American novel.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

772

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0142001503

ISBN 13

9780142001509

The Ice-shirt

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Ice-shirt

By: William T. Vollmann

Ontdekkingstocht door de geschiedenis van de oudste delen der aarde.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

404

Publisher

[London] : A. Deutsch

Published Date

ISBN 10

0233985069

ISBN 13

9780233985060

Kissing the Mask

Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater, with Some Thoughts on Muses (Especially Helga Testorf), Transgender Women, Kabuki Goddesses, Porn Queens, Poets, Housewives, Makeup Artists, Geishas, Valkyries and Venus Figurines

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Kissing the Mask

By: William T. Vollmann

“Intrepid journalist and novelist William T. Vollman’s colossal body of work stands unsurpassed for its range, moral imperative, and artistry.” —Booklist William T. Vollmann, the National Book Award–winning author of Europe Central, offers a charming, evocative, and piercing examination of the ancient Japanese tradition of Noh theatre and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty. Kissing the Mask is the first major book on Noh by an American writer since the 1916 publication the classic study Pisan Cantos and the Noh by Ezra Pound. But Kissing the Mask is pure Vollman—illustrated with photos by the author with provocative related side-discussions on femininity, transgender, kabuki, pornography, geishas, and more.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

534

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0061985333

ISBN 13

9780061985331

Imperial

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Imperial

By: William T. Vollmann

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1854

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101105151

ISBN 13

9781101105153

The Lucky Star

A Novel

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Lucky Star

A Novel

By: William T. Vollmann

The National Book Award winning author returns to his original fictional territory--the lives of the dispossessed in San Francisco--with a parable about the limitations of desire and life at the margins of society In such earlier works of fiction as The Rainbow Stories and The Royal Family, William T. Vollmann wrote of pimps, prostitutes, addicts and homeless dreamers in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. In this new novel, Vollmann returns there with a story that centers around a woman with magical powers whom everyone loves, and who has to love them all back. After being initiated into a coven of island witches, Neva begins to fulfill her fate in a Tenderloin dive bar. Her worshippers include Richard, the introverted, alcoholic, occasionally omniscient narrator; a profane, aggressive transgender sex worker named Shantelle; the brisk but motherly barmaid Francine; and the former Frank, who has renamed herself after her idol Judy Garland. When Judy starts to love Neva too much, Judy's retired policeman boyfriend embarks on a mission of exposure and destruction. Crafted out of language by turns spiritual and sexually graphic, The Lucky Star aches with compassion as it explores celebrity culture, gender identity, incest, Christian sacrifice and, most of all, the quotidian and sometimes faltering heroism of marginalized people who in the face of humiliation and outright violence seek to love in their own way, and stand up for who they are.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

674

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0399563520

ISBN 13

9780399563522

Last Stories and Other Stories

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Last Stories and Other Stories

By: William T. Vollmann

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

706

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

014312756X

ISBN 13

9780143127567

The Dying Grass

A Novel of the Nez Perce War

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Dying Grass

A Novel of the Nez Perce War

By: William T. Vollmann

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central – a dazzling fictional account of the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians In this fifth installment in his acclaimed Seven Dreams series of novels examining the collisions between Native Americans and European colonizers, William T. Vollmann tells the story of the epic fighting retreat of the Nez Perce Indians, with flashbacks to the Civil War. Defrauded and intimidated at every turn, the Nez Perces finally went on the warpath in 1877, subjecting the U.S. Army to its greatest defeat since Little Big Horn the previous year, as they fled from northeast Oregon across Montana to the Canadian border. Vollmann’s main character is not the legendary Chief Joseph but his pursuer, General Oliver Otis Howard, the brave, shy, tormented, devoutly Christian Civil War veteran. In this novel, we see him as commander, father, son, husband, friend, and killer. Teeming with many vivid characters on both sides of the conflict, and written in an original style in which the printed page works as a stage with multiple layers of foreground and background, The Dying Grass is another mesmerizing achievement from one of the most ambitious writers of our time.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1378

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143109405

ISBN 13

9780143109402

Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Thirteen Stories and Thirteen Epitaphs

By: William T. Vollmann

This stunning new collection of stories confirms William T. Vollmann's growing reputation as the American writer whose books tower over the work of his contemporaries by virtue of their enormous range, huge ambition, stylistic daring, wide learning, audacious innovation, and sardonic wit (Washington Post Book World). All these qualities are in evidence in this collection in which the character of the writer and that of some of his intimates - both real and imaginary - surface and resurface in a series of extraordinary situations and encounters. Two astonishing stories frame this collection. The first, The Ghost of Magnetism, tells about a young man leaving San Francisco to become a sort of literary hobo living on his freeze-dried memories. The last, The Grave of Lost Stories, describes the death of Poe in a fungus-encrusted tomb somewhere deep in the earth. Here is the colorful and disreputable group of people familiar to us from Vollmann's earlier fiction - pimps, tramps, pornographers, witch doctors and massage-parlor girls. Within these stories, Vollmann gives us one of the most searching, bizarre, and subversive views of America today.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

340

Publisher

Grove Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802133959

ISBN 13

9780802133953

No Good Alternative

Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

No Good Alternative

Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies

By: William T. Vollmann

“The most honest book about climate change yet.” —The Atlantic “The Infinite Jest of climate books.” —The Baffler An eye-opening look at the consequences of coal mining and oil and natural gas production—the second of a two volume work by award-winning author William T. Vollmann on the ideologies of energy production and the causes of climate change The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, where "America's best friend" is not merely a fuel, but a "heritage." Over the course of four years Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money. To write about natural gas, Vollmann journeys to Greeley, Colorado, where he interviews anti-fracking activists, a city planner, and a homeowner with serious health issues from fracking. Turning to oil production, he speaks with, among others, the former CEO of Conoco and a vice president of the Bank of Oklahoma in charge of energy loans, and conducts furtive roadside interviews of guest workers performing oil-related contract labor in the United Arab Emirates. As with its predecessor, No Immediate Danger, this volume seeks to understand and listen, not to lay blame--except in a few corporate and political cases where outrage is clearly due. Vollmann is a carbon burner just like the rest of us; he describes and quantifies his own power use, then looks around him, trying to explain to the future why it was that we went against scientific consensus, continually increasing the demand for electric power and insisting that we had no good alternative.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

690

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0525558519

ISBN 13

9780525558514

No Immediate Danger

Volume One of Carbon Ideologies

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

No Immediate Danger

Volume One of Carbon Ideologies

By: William T. Vollmann

“The most honest book about climate change yet.” —The Atlantic “The Infinite Jest of climate books.” —The Baffler A timely, eye-opening book about climate change and energy generation that focuses on the consequences of nuclear power production, from award-winning author William T. Vollmann In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age, from poverty to violence to the dark soul of American imperialism as it has played out on the U.S./Mexico border. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come--the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger, the first volume of Carbon Ideologies, by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort. Turning to nuclear power first, Vollmann then recounts multiple visits that he made at significant personal risk over the course of seven years to the contaminated no-go zones and sad ghost towns of Fukushima, Japan, beginning shortly after the tsunami and reactor meltdowns of 2011. Equipped first only with a dosimeter and then with a scintillation counter, he measured radiation and interviewed tsunami victims, nuclear evacuees, anti-nuclear organizers and pro-nuclear utility workers. Featuring Vollmann's signature wide learning, sardonic wit, and encyclopedic research, No Immediate Danger, whose title co-opts the reassuring mantra of official Japanese energy experts, builds up a powerful, sobering picture of the ongoing nightmare of Fukushima.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

626

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0399563512

ISBN 13

9780399563515

Europe Central

National Book Award Winner

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Europe Central

National Book Award Winner

By: William T. Vollmann

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A daring literary masterpiece of historical fiction that weaves together the gripping stories of those caught in the web of authoritarian rule. Through interwoven narratives that paint a portrait of 20th century Germany and the USSR and the monstrous age they defined, Europe Central captures a chorus of voices both real and fictional—a young German who joins the SS to fight its crimes, two generals who collaborate with the enemy for different reasons, and the tumultuous life of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich amidst Stalinist oppression. In this magnificent work of fiction, acclaimed author William T. Vollmann turns his trenchant eye on these two authoritarian cultures to render a mesmerizing perspective on human experience during wartime.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

834

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

1101118199

ISBN 13

9781101118191

Rising Up and Rising Down

Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Rising Up and Rising Down

Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means

By: William T. Vollmann

Rising Up and Rising Down' is William T. Vollman's meditation on the age-old conundrum: when is violence justified?

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

752

Publisher

Bloomsbury Academic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0715635255

ISBN 13

9780715635254

The Dying Grass

A Novel of the Nez Perce War

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Dying Grass

A Novel of the Nez Perce War

By: William T. Vollmann

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

1378

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143109405

ISBN 13

9780143109402

WHORES FOR GLORIA

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

WHORES FOR GLORIA

By: William T. Vollmann

With his first three works of fiction—the novels You Bright and Risen Angels and The Ice-Shirt, and the collection The Rainbow Stories—William T. Vollmann announced himself as a writer of rare and ferocious talent, with critics comparing him to William Burroughs, Thomas Pynchon, and T.C. Boyle. His new novel is the story of Jimmy, who has been deserted by his lover, a prostitute by the name of Gloria. In the despair of his loneliness, and his drunken grief, he reassembles Gloria’s presence out of whatever he can buy from the hookers on the street—the fragments of their lives and dreams, and locks of hair they are willing to share for a price. In his search for these snatches of intimacy he meets the hustlers, drunks, and prostitutes of San Francisco’s Tenderloin district: Candy, who beats her customers when they ask for it but refuses to let them call her a bitch; Snake, who pimps his wife; Nicole, whose job it is to give men AIDS; Jack, who shoots his woman’s earnings into his arm but still likes Chopin even though he doesn’t have a record player; and Gloria, who may or may not be a figment of Jimmy’s imagination. Vollmann writes with explosive power of the inner city, unflinching in the way he confronts the solitude of the homeless and unloved, the insulted and the injured of skid-row America. His exhilarating, high-voltage style and lyric language touch the heart and retrieve a jubilant integrity from the harsh struggles of his characters. Here is a world of harrowing truth, beautifully expressed by a writer of prodigious gifts.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

163

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307827720

ISBN 13

9780307827722

WHORES FOR GLORIA

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

WHORES FOR GLORIA

By: William T. Vollmann

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

163

Publisher

Pantheon

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307827720

ISBN 13

9780307827722

Kissing the Mask

Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater

By: William T. Vollmann

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Kissing the Mask

Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater

By: William T. Vollmann

From the National Book Award-winning author of Europe Central, a charming, evocative and piercing examination of an ancient Japanese tradition and the keys it holds to our modern understanding of beauty What is a woman? To what extent is femininity a performance? Writing with the extra-ordinary awareness and endless curiosity that have defined his entire oeuvre, William T. Vollmann takes an in-depth look at the Japanese craft of Noh theater, using the medium as a prism to reveal the conception of beauty itself. Sweeping readers from the dressing room of one of Japan's most famous Noh actors to a trans-vestite bar in the red-light district of Kabukicho, Kissing the Mask explores the enigma surrounding Noh theater and the traditions that have made it intrinsic to Japanese culture for centuries. Vollmann then widens his scope to encompass such modern artists of desire and loss as Mishima, Kawabata and Andrew Wyeth. From old Norse poetry to Greek cult statues, from elite geisha dancers to American makeup artists, from Serbia to India, Vollmann uncovers secrets of staged femininity and mysteries of perceived and expressed beauty, including specific makeup procedures furnished by an L.A. transgender bar girl, a Kabuki female impersonator, and the owner of a semi-clandestine studio for Tokyo cross-dressers. Kissing the Mask is illustrated with many evocative sketches and photographs by the author.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

530

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0061228494

ISBN 13

9780061228490

Book's by William T. Vollmann

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email