Written in 1933 by Hungarian composer Rezso Seress, the song "Gloomy Sunday" has been the subject of several urban legends. Recorded and performed by numerous artists, notably Paul Robeson and Billie Holiday, the song was once called the "Hungarian suicide song" due to claims that it inspired hundreds of suicides in Hungary and in the US. Further legends claimed that performances and radio broadcasts of the song were banned as a result. What fact about Seress likely fueled some of the legends? Discuss

Renaissance fairs, outdoor gatherings in which historical periods—generally the Elizabethan Era—are recreated, were initially intended to be accurate historical reenactments but have since taken on a more theme park-like quality, particularly in the US. At these fairs, visitors may test their archery or axe-throwing skills, interact with costumed entertainers, and take in musical and theatrical acts, including jousting competitions. What famous actors worked at a Renaissance fair in their youth?

The Ishtar Gate was a massive entryway built in the ancient city of Babylon around 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II. Named for the goddess Ishtar—an ancient fertility deity and the most widely worshiped goddess in Babylon—the gate was more than 38 feet (12 m) high and adorned with images of 575 dragons and bulls in 13 rows. Through the gate ran the stone- and brick-paved Processional Way, lined with 120 brick lions. Where is there a reproduction of the Ishtar Gate?

Sellers was a British actor who earned international stardom playing a wide range of characters at a time when rigid typecasting was the norm. The son of vaudeville performers, he began appearing with his parents as a boy. He started making films in the 1950s and later gained enormous popularity as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther series. In Dr. Strangelove, he plays three characters, including the titular role. What fourth character was he initially supposed to play? Discuss

An early rock 'n' roll star, Holly began as a country-and-western singer and gradually added rhythm-and-blues elements to his innovative style. With his band, the Crickets, he established the standard rock instrumentation of two guitars, bass, and drums, and toured the US extensively for two years before his death in a plane crash. He became one of rock's most enduring cult figures and much of his material was released posthumously. Who else died in the plane crash that killed him?

Galt was a British-Canadian statesman. Born in London, he immigrated to Canada in his teens and began his political career there in 1849, eventually serving several terms as minister of finance. Although he signed the 1849 manifesto favoring the annexation of Canada by the US, he became one of the most persistent and influential leaders of the movement for confederation of the provinces and later advocated Canadian independence. He was a founding member of what company that still exists today?

The Honda Point Disaster was the largest peacetime loss of US Navy ships. On the evening of September 8, 1923, 14 destroyers were engaging in simulated combat maneuvers a few miles from the northern side of the Santa Barbara Channel off the California coast. Upon reaching Honda Point, seven destroyers ran aground and were wrecked; two others suffered minor damage. In all, twenty-three sailors lost their lives. What is the "Devil's Jaw," and how did it factor into the incident? Discuss

The thylacine, known also as the Tasmanian wolf and Tasmanian tiger, was a carnivorous marsupial once found on the Australian mainland, New Guinea, and Tasmania. Often cited as an example of convergent evolution, it was superficially similar to a wolf or dog, though it evolved entirely independently of these animals. It was hunted to probable extinction in the 1930s, and the last captive thylacine died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. How many thylacine sightings have been reported since then?

In 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition, a World's Fair in Buffalo, New York. McKinley died a week later, and Czolgosz was convicted of his murder and executed that same year. Though judged sane during the trial, Czolgosz is believed by some to have been mentally unstable after suffering a breakdown years earlier. What Broadway musical incorporates the story of Czolgosz with those of eight other presidential assassins?

DEFINITION: (verb) To squat close to the ground. SYNONYMS: scrunch up, squat, scrunch, crouch. USAGE: The children hunkered down to protect themselves from the sandstorm. Discuss

DEFINITION: (adjective) Existing or occurring before birth. SYNONYMS: antenatal, antepartum. USAGE: Comprehensive prenatal medical care is vital to ensuring the health of new babies.

DEFINITION: (verb) To supply with sustenance, such as food. SYNONYMS: nutrify, nourish. USAGE: He was required by court order to aliment the abandoned family.

List Price: $19.98Price: $11.99You Save: $7.99 (40%)16 used & new from $11.99THE 4 COMPLETE ED SULLIVAN SHOWS STARRING THE BEATLES,DIGITALLY REMASTERED AND INCLUDING SOME PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED MATERIAL, TO BE ISSUED ON DVD BY UNIVERSAL MUSIC ENTERPRISES When The Beatles stepped onto Sullivan's New York stage on Sunday, February 9, 1964, to make their American TV debut, 86 percent of all TVs on at that hour--73 million Americans--tuned in. It was the most-watched program... (read more)

List Price: $11.98Price: $9.99You Save: $1.99 (17%)16 used & new from $9.79Sara Bareilles returns to center stage with her sophomore album Kaleidoscope Heart featuring the hit single, ?King of Anything.? The album is the follow up to Sara?s massive debut, ... (read more)

List Price: $18.98Price: $9.99You Save: $8.99 (47%)1 used & new from $9.99Robert Plant's Band of Joy reflects his unquenchable thirst for new songs and new sounds. Not satisfied with his stature as one of the great innovators and heroes of pop music, he continues to let his curiosity guide him to unexplored territory. Building on the roots-imbued sound he achieved with Alison Krauss on the wildly successful Raising Sand, Plant's song selection and incomparable vocals make... (read more)

List Price: $14.98Price: $7.99You Save: $6.99 (47%)18 used & new from $7.99The long-awaited fourth album from New York s INTERPOL finds them exploring dark musical landscapes of layered depth and intensity. In contrast to 2007 s Our Love To Admire, this self-titled opus hangs together as an album, a set of very different songs that thematically connect. From the highly melodic Barricade and Lights through the snarling Memory Serves and the extraordinary triptych of connected... (read more)

List Price: $13.98Price: $11.99You Save: $1.99 (14%)13 used & new from $11.80Deluxe edition includes nine bonus tracks. 2010 release from the Rock 'n' Roll legend. Mean Old Man was produced by Jim Keltner and Steve Bing in Memphis and LA, and features guest appearances from Solomon Burke, Eric Clapton, Sheryl Crow, John Fogerty, Merle Haggard, Mick Jagger, Kid Rock, Kris Kristofferson, Nils Lofgren, Shelby Lynne, Tim McGraw, John Mayer, Willie Nelson, Keith Richards, Robbie... (read more)

List Price: $15.98Price: $9.99You Save: $5.99 (37%)41 used & new from $8.98Written, arranged, performed, and produced by the Arcade Fire and co-produced by Markus Dravs, ... (read more)

List Price: $16.98Price: $10.00You Save: $6.98 (41%)41 used & new from $8.71Grammy nominated and critically acclaimed, Ray LaMontagne returns with his anticipated fourth studio album, God Willin' & The Creek Don't Rise. Entirely self produced (for the first time) the album was recorded in two weeks at LaMontagne's home in the woods of western Massachusetts. The newly restored historic home served as a homemade recording studio for Ray and his fellow musicians. With Ray's... (read more)

List Price: $17.98Price: $9.99You Save: $7.99 (44%)1 used & new from $9.99DELUXE EDITION - Includes 5 Bonus Tracks Maroon 5 is back with its third studio album entitled Hands All Over, produced by Robert John "Mutt" Lange (AC/DC, Foreigner, The Cars). The album, a killer hybrid of rock, pop, funk, and R&B, showcases the band's considerable strengths: buoyant, unforgettable melodies, sleek, stylish grooves, charged lyrics about turbulent relationships, and crisp, dynamic performances. Band member Jesse Carmichael comments on the new a(read more)

List Price: $18.98Price: $11.88You Save: $7.10 (37%)1 used & new from $11.88Clapton(read more)

List Price: $13.98Price: $10.99You Save: $2.99 (21%)56 used & new from $8.85The much-anticipated new album - EMINEM RECOVERY On Recovery, his seventh major label studio album, EMINEM has reached out to an exciting list of first-time collaborators, including DJ Khalil, Just Blaze, Jim Jonsin and Boi-1da, among others. EMINEM releases Recovery just over a year after his last album, 2009's Relapse. Relapse put the cap on an impressive ten years of recorded output, and contributed to EMINEM being the biggest selling artist of 2000-20(read more)

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List Price: $59.98Price: $37.99You Save: $21.99 (37%)14 used & new from $37.99Twenty-six years ago, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a mysterious and demonic supernatural force. Subsequently, their father raised them to be soldiers. He taught them about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America ... and he taught them how to kill it. This haunting series follows the Winchester brothers as they crisscross the lonely and... (read more)

List Price: $59.98Price: $31.99You Save: $27.99 (47%)30 used & new from $31.99Hang on for this high-octane thrill ride that goes even deeper into the gritty world of an outlaw biker gang! Reeling from the combined pressure of an ATF crackdown and an unprovoked murder, the Sons face a far more deadly threat from a cold-blooded enemy who will stop at nothing to drive them out of Charming?for good. As Jax and Clay square off over questions of leadership and loyalty, lines are... (read more)

List Price: $24.98Price: $8.99You Save: $15.99 (64%)63 used & new from $8.99The Dark Knight arrives with tremendous hype (best superhero movie ever? posthumous Oscar for Heath Ledger?), and incredibly, it lives up to all of it. But calling it the best superhero movie ever seems like faint praise, since part of what makes the movie great--in addition to pitch-perfect casting, outstanding writing, and a compelling vision--is that it bypasses the normal fantasy element of the superhero genre and makes it all terrifyingly real. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is Gotham(read more)

List Price: $59.98Price: $37.99You Save: $21.99 (37%)21 used & new from $36.77After a meteor shower bursts from the heavens, raining destruction on the unsuspecting citizens of Smallville, years pass, and the healing process leaves the town's inhabitants with scars and secrets. From the ashes of tragedy, a popular yet awkward teen attempts to decipher the meaning of his life and his clouded past. As he struggles with the transition from boyhood to adulthood, Clark finds that... (read more)

List Price: $39.99Price: $24.99You Save: $15.00 (38%)1 used & new from $24.99After the high-flying adventures of the first Iron Man picture, the billionaire arms manufacturer and irrepressible bon vivant Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) finds himself nursing a hangover. But not like any hangover he's had before: this one is toxic, a potentially deadly condition resulting from heavy metals (or something) bleeding out of the hardware he's installed in the middle of his chest. This is the problem Stark needs to solve in Iron Man 2, not to mention the threat from(read more)

List Price: $49.99Price: $24.99You Save: $25.00 (50%)25 used & new from $22.89Unfolding with tragic inevitability, Dexter's fourth season is a taut game of cat and mouse between Dexter (Emmy nominee Michael C. Hall) and Arthur Mitchell, "a very special kind of monster," unnervingly portrayed by John Lithgow in his Emmy and Golden Globe-winning performance. Whoever guest stars in seasons to come has a very hard act to follow. (Never mind all the blood, Mitchell's greeting, "Hello, Dexter Morgan," from the episode of the same name, will disturb your sleep.) But let's(read more)

List Price: $44.98Price: $28.99You Save: $15.99 (36%)1 used & new from $28.99From Emmy? nominees Chuck Lorre (Two and a Half Men, Dharma & Greg, Cybill, Grace Under Fire) & Bill Prady (Dharma & Greg) comes The Big Bang Theory. Leonard (Galecki) and Sheldon (Parsons) are brilliant physicists, the kind of "beautiful minds" that understand how the universe works. But none of that genius helps them interact with people ? especially women. All this changes when a free-spirited beauty named Penny (Cuoco) moves in next door. Sheldon(read more)

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List Price: $79.99Price: $32.99You Save: $47.00 (59%)33 used & new from $32.29Die Hard is the movie franchise that made a movie star out of TV star Bruce Willis, and created an entire action-movie genre of its own. In the original 1988 film, Willis plays wisecracking New York cop John McClane, who arrives at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles to meet up with his estranged wife, Holly (Bonny Bedelia), at her office Christmas party. As luck would have it, the company ends up in the middle of a terrorist plot led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) and his gang of expert kil(read more)

List Price: $14.95Amazon Best of the Month, September 2008: Once you start The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, there's no turning back. This debut thriller--the first in a trilogy from the late Stieg Larsson--is a serious page-turner rivaling the best of Charlie Huston and Michael Connelly. Mikael Blomkvist, a once-respected financial journalist, watches his professional life rapidly crumble around him. Prospects appear bleak until an unexpected (and unsettling) offer to resurrect his name(read more)

List Price: $27.95Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2010 As the finale to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is not content to merely match the adrenaline-charged pace that made international bestsellers out of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Instead, it roars with an explosive storyline that blows the doors off the series and announces that the very best has been saved for last. A familiar evil (read more)

List Price: $15.95Amazon Best of the Month, July 2009: The girl with the dragon tattoo is back. Stieg Larsson's seething heroine, Lisbeth Salander, once again finds herself paired with journalist Mikael Blomkvist on the trail of a sinister criminal enterprise. Only this time, Lisbeth must return to the darkness of her own past (more specifically, an event coldly known as "All the Evil") if she is to stay one step ahead--and alive. The Girl Who Played with Fire is a break-out-in-a-cold-swea(read more)

List Price: $28.00Price: $15.39You Save: $12.61 (45%)15 used & new from $15.39Stephen Hawking on The Grand Design How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? Over twenty years ago I wrote A Brief History of Time, to try to explain where the universe came from, and where it is going. But that book left some important questions unanswered. Why is there a universe--why is(read more)

List Price: $27.99Amazon Best of the Month, August 2010: "The awful thing about life is this:" says Octave to the Marquis in Renoir's Rules of the Game. "Everyone has his reasons." That could be a motto for novelists as well, few more so than Jonathan Franzen, who seems less concerned with creating merely likeable characters than ones who are fully alive, in all their self-justifying complexity. Freedom is his fourth novel, and, yes, his first in nine years since The Correct(read more)

Amazon Exclusive: Carolyn Parkhurst Reviews A Scattered Life Carolyn Parkhurst is the author of the bestselling novels The Dogs of Babel and Lost and Found, and recently published the acclaimed novel The Nobodies Album. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and their two children. Read her exclusive guest review of Karen McQuestion's A Scattered Life:

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List Price: $17.99Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she-s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she-s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what-s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss-s family, not her friends, not the people of District... (read more)

List Price: $29.95Price: $16.47You Save: $13.48 (45%)13 used & new from $15.99As Americans, liberty is an inalienable right that is granted to us by God, protected by the Constitution, and upheld by our government. Yet, Barack Obama doesn?t seem to share that view. To him, liberty is a threat to the government?s power and something to be squashed by any means possible, as bestselling author David Limbaugh shows to devastating affect in his new book, Crimes Against Liberty. In Crimes Against Liberty, Limbaugh issues a damning indictment of President Bara(read more)

List Price: $27.95Price: $11.92You Save: $16.03 (57%)77 used & new from $7.99Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2010 As the finale to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is not content to merely match the adrenaline-charged pace that made international bestsellers out of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Instead, it roars with an explosive storyline that blows the doors off the series and announces that the very best has been saved for last. A familiar evil (read more)