ALMOST HUMAN: MAKING ROBOTS THINK

A remarkable, intense portrait of the robotics subculture and the challenging quest for robot autonomy.

The high bay at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is alive and hyper night and day with the likes of Hyperion, which traversed the Antarctic, and Zoe, the world’s first robot scientist, now back home. Robot Segways learn to play soccer, while other robots go on treasure hunts or are destined for hospitals and museums. Dozens of cavorting mechanical creatures, along with tangles of wire, tools, and computer innards are scattered haphazardly. All of these zipping and zooming gizmos are controlled by disheveled young men sitting on the floor, folding chairs, or tool cases, or huddled over laptops squinting into displays with manic intensity. Lee immerses himself in this frenzied subculture, following these young roboticists and their bold conceptual machines from Pittsburgh to NASA and to the most barren and arid desert on earth. He makes intelligible their discoveries and stumbling points in this lively behind-the-scenes work.

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FOREVER FAT: ESSAYS BY THE GODFATHER

Dubbed the "godfather behind creative nonfiction" by Vanity Fair, Lee uses these essays, and the rich material of his own life, to define, defend, and further expand the genre he has done so much to shape. The result is an explosive and hilarious memoir of his colorful life as a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, an over-aged insecure father, and a literary whipping boy.

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THE BEST SEAT IN BASEBALL, BUT YOU HAVE TO STAND

To provide this unique--and perhaps controversial--inside look at major league baseball, Lee spent the 1974 season traveling with a crew of National League Umpires, immersing himself with these unique and faceless arbiters of America's national past-time. The result is an honest, realistic and insightful study of the private and professional world of major league umpires: their prejudices and petty biases, their unbending pride in their performance, their perspectives on the game and their bitter criticism of the abuse often directed at their profession and their conduct. As relevent today as it was in 1974, this illustrated chronicle shows how little has changed in the lives and duties of umpires.

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THE VETERINARIAN'S TOUCH

Originally titled, AN UNSPOKEN ART, this book re-lives the stories of several very different veterinarians--from the upper east side Manhattan veterinarian for the rich and famous (his clients include the Kennedy family, Henry Kissinger, Mary Tyler Moore) to a zoo veterinarian facing the daily challenges of doctoring elephants, panthers, grizzlies and rattlesnakes. This book focuses on the incredible dedication these doctors have toward the animals they treat, as well as Lee's own wish that MDs be as sensitive to the needs and frailties of their human patients as VMDs are to their animal ones.

STUCK IN TIME: THE TRAGEDY OF CHILDHOOD MENTAL ILLNESS

More than 7.5 million children and adolescents in the United States suffer from serious mental health problems, yet only one fifth receive treatment or services to alleviate their suffering and improve their conditions. Lee examines this major crisis in American health care by dramatically documenting the lives of three adolescents and the pain of a family that is desperate for help. This book moves beyond the stigma of mental illness to convey the children's stories, frustrations and fears, and to provide a prescriptive challenge for the future.

ONE CHILDREN'S PLACE

ONE CHILDREN'S PLACE chronicles Lee's two years inside a pediatric institution from a myriad of viewpoints--patients, parents, nurses, social workers, hospital administrators--and the idiosyncratic and obsessed doctors who establish the pulse and attitude of the institution. The ethical clash between the driving force of high-tech medicine and the helplessness of children is an ongoing theme.

MANY SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

For four years, Lee immersed myself in the world of organ transplantation, scrubbing with surgeons, living with people who traveled halfway around the world--literally on the edge of death--to transplant centers, hoping for miracles. He jets through the night on organ donor harvests and confronts the ethical, moral, scientific and humanistic viewpoints of organ transplantation through the eyes of the people most involved. This book has been translated in five languages--and is the first of Lee's four books to dramatically and personally capture the world of high tech medicine.


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THE PEOPLE OF PENN'S WOODS WEST

From baseball to the backwoods, this series of essays concerns the people Lee met during explorations on his motorcycle, people who could never quite catch up with modern times: a cooper, a one-arm blacksmith living in a tar paper shack, a scotsman who hikes part way across the country in search of the woman and the woods he loved. Lee also wrote, produced and narrated an award winning documentary film about the people of Penn's Woods West called A PLACE JUST RIGHT.

GOD'S HELICOPTER

This novel--Lee's one and only--is about a boy growing up in Pittsburgh and the impact of this best friend's death.

BIKE FEVER

Lee's first book - BIKE FEVER - is about the motorcycle culture and his travels around the country on a two-wheeled machine.

KEEP IT REAL: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT RESEARCHING AND WRITING CREATIVE NONFICTION

This handy guide begins by defining creative nonfiction. Then it explores the flexibility of the form—the liberties and the boundaries that allow writers to be as truthful, factual, and artful as possible. A succinct but rich compendium of ideas, terms, and techniques, Keep It Real will clarify the ins and outs of writing creative nonfiction. Starting with the acknowledgment of sources, then running through fact-checking, metaphor and navel gazing, and ending with writers’ responsibilities to their subjects. This book provides all the information writers need to write with verve while remaining true to their story.

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THE ART OF CREATIVE NONFICTION

This popular volume serves as a complete guide to the art and craft of creative nonfiction. The challenge of creative nonfiction is to write the truth in a style that is as accurate and informative as reportage, yet as personal, provocative and dramatic as fiction. In this one-of-a-kind guide, Lee offers concise, pointed advice on every aspect of writing and selling your work, including guidelines for choosing provocative and salable topics; smart research techniques; tips for focusing and structuring a piece for maximum effectiveness; advice on working successfully with editors and literary agents; and more.

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CREATIVE NONFICTION: HOW TO LIVE IT AND WRITE IT

CREATIVE NONFICTION: HOW TO LIVE IT AND WRITE IT is an introduction for the beginning writer--anyone from 12-year-olds to senior citizens--who wants to quickly understand the creative nonfiction techniques. While serving as both workbook and writers resource, this book explores the possibilities of creative nonfiction--how to live as a creative nonfiction writer while experiencing all of the potential benefits of a writer's rich and fulfilling profession.

THE ESSAYIST AT WORK

In creative nonfiction, writers must be poetic and journalistic. THE ESSAYIST AT WORK discusses how to meet this dual demand, offering insight into the lifestyles, techniques and literary philosophies of some of the genre's most respected writers, including Annie Dillard, John McPhee, Gay Talese and Phillip Lopate. The nineteen profiles in this book introduce the "real writer" and the "real person" in intimate and revealing settings--immersed in research, in the midst of an interview, on the road or at the office trying to meet a dealine--and offer proven methods for making a mark in this competitive genre.

SILENCE KILLS: SPEAKING OUT AND SAVING LIVES

The dozen personal essays in this collection, from patients and their caregivers, nurses, social workers, and physicians, address the devastating human results that can occur from a lack of communication and understanding among those in the health care profession. Medical error--much of it traceable to simple lack of communication--costs billions of dollars each year, in addition to the less quantifiable costs of the loss of trust in doctor-patient relationships and the decline in morale among health care professionals. These powerful stories illustrate the need to find ways to break these potentially lethal silences. Supported by the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Lee, has collected the essays in this volume with the hope that these voices, speaking out, taking action and risks, will inspire others to make changes that will improve communication within our troubled health care system.

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THE BEST CREATIVE NONFICTION, VOLUME I

Creative Nonfiction scoured alternative publications, blogs, literary journals and other often-overlooked publications in search of new voices and innovative ideas for essays written with panache and power. In these works, writers explore the sport of competitive eating; ponder the identity of a mysterious woman who killed herself in a Seattle hotel room; undergo medical testing to see what the future might hold; follow a pack of wild dogs around Manhattan; and trace the migration of one of China's first SARS victims during the "Era of Wild Flavor." Editor Lee Gutkind writes, "Beneath the cover of The Best Creative Nonfiction is an unusual and unforgettable literary experience for readers, writers and bookstore browsers seeking a porthole into literature that makes a personal connection with the writer and captures real life with the power of cinema and the integrity of fact."

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OUR ROOTS ARE DEEP WITH PASSION: CREATIVE NONFICTION COLLECTS NEW ESSAYS BY ITALIAN AMERICAN WRITERS

In the twenty-one nonfiction narratives collected in OUR ROOTS ARE DEEP WITH PASSION, established and emerging writers reflect on the ways that their lives have been accented with uniquely Italian American flavors. The pieces are as varied as their authors, but all explore the unique intersections of language, tradition, cuisine and culture that characterize the diverse experience of Americans of Italian heritage.


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RAGE AND RECONCILIATION: INSPIRING A HEALTH CARE REVOLUTION

Rage and Reconciliation, one of Creative Nonfiction's most popular issues, has been re-released. The book includes new essays and an 80- minute CD containing three essays read by professional actors and a panel discussion of the ethical dimensions of the issues raised. In this special issue, produced in conjunction with Pittsburgh's Jewish Healthcare Foundation, writers tackle healthcare in America, including problems of patient rights and professional responsibility. In ''Notes on a Difficult Case,'' Ruthann Robson details the traumatic results of a dangerous misdiagnosis; in ''A Merging of Head and Heart,'' Judith Dancoff discusses her painful sexual dysfunction, the result of a pituitary tumor; and in ''Postpartum,'' Nancy Linnon reveals her struggles with Postpartum depression.

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IN FACT: THE BEST CREATIVE NONFICTION

IN FACT, published by W.W. Norton, offers much more than twenty-five creative nonfiction essays—it offers twenty-five of the best. Culled from the 300 pieces published in the journal Creative Nonfiction over the past ten years, themselves chosen from over 10,000 manuscripts, the stories now published in IN FACT showcase the magnificent possibilities of this emergent genre in pieces by the famous, and those surely destined to be so. Not only that, each author has included a reflection on the process of composing their particular piece,as well as valuable advice for those hoping to find their own writing voice. Annie Dillard's sassy introduction, Notes for Young Writers, sets the tone for the whole volume. Over and over again, she and the other contributors stress the importance of reading good work, as well as writing it, and the aspiring poet, novelist, journalist, essayist, creative nonfiction writer—or simply curious reader who relishes good writing—could do no better than to begin with IN FACT.

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ON NATURE: GREAT WRITERS ON THE GREAT OUTDOORS

The evocative essays in ON NATURE comprise a wide range of experiences and adventures. In "Against Nature," Joyce Carol Oates explains why writers generally resist nature as a topic, and at the same time comments on her place in the surrounding world. Diane Ackerman swims with a right whale and her calf in "The Moon by Whale Light," and sees how the whales treat her with the same respect with which she treats them. In "Pieces of the Frame," John McPhee explores the mystery of the Loch Ness monster and the people who obsess over it. Sherry Simpson looks at the conflict-riddled business of trapping and killing Alaskan wolves, sympathizing with both the trapper and the wolves. On Nature also includes essays by such renowned voices as Mark Doty, Bill Bryson, Barry Lopez, and Vaclav Havel, all of whom share their poignant, intimate connections to the natural world.

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HEALING: 20 PROMINENT AUTHORS WRITE ABOUT INSPIRATIONAL MOMENTS OF REGAINING HEALTH

At some time in our lives, most of us have been in need of healing--whether physical recovery from illness or rebounding from an emotional wound. In HEALING, twenty distinguished writers offer inspiration for such times of crisis with their compelling personal acounts of regaining health and stability in the face of adversity. With contributions by such renowned voices as Diane Ackerman, Oliver Sacks, Tracy Kidder, and Anatole Broyard, this remarkable anthology offers invaluable insight into the epiphany of recovery: the memorable burst of clarity and recognition that marks our healing moments.

LESSONS IN PERSUASION

In this collection, writers from across the nation but with a special connection to the city of Pittsburgh, cover topics as varied as West Virginia's famed Matewan shootout to a pre-Donald Trump Atlantic City Boardwalk. Features Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Stewart O' Nan, Hillary Masters, and a photo essay on photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris.

VIEW FROM THE DIVIDE

This powerful collection of nearly twenty essays captures an eclectic range of ideas combining literary style and intellectual substance. Written by poets, immunologists and physicists, established writers and up-and-coming new talent, A VIEW FROM THE DIVIDE demonstrates the many ways in which aspects of the scientific world--biology, medicine, physics, and astronomy--can be captured and dramatized for a humanities-oriented readership.

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CONNECTING

CONNECTING is a stirring and forthright collection from writers who have contributed to the success of the genre, their essays and narratives focusing on the impact and legacy of family and friends. Offering readers insight and wisdom as it sparks their memories of remarkable people in their lives, CONNECTING chronicles the personal and familial relationships of some of America's best-loved authors, including Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Alec Wilkinson, and more. More than just stories of interaction, this book celebrates the people who sculpt and define our lives.

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SURVIVING CRISIS

In SURVIVING CRISIS, twenty prominent authors write about the events that proved to be turning points or memorable moments of catharsis and personal growth in their lives. The in stories in this book provide nuggets of insight from which all readers will gather wisdom, and from which practicing writers will gain the courage to put pen to paper, culling the essence of story from their own lives.