Welcome to Massolit Books & Café!
Massolit is an independent English-language bookstore, both used and new, located in Krakow's old town. We specialize in popular and academic books, most at significantly discounted prices. Browse on-line through our more than 20,000 titles, or better, visit us in person! We welcome customers to browse the shelves and read our books or periodicals in the café or in the furnished back rooms.
The Boy with the Topknot: Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton
by Sanghera, Sathnam (A),
It's 1979, I'm three years old, and like all breakfast times during my youth it begins with Mum combing my hair, a ritual for which I have to sit down on the second-hand, floral-patterned settee, and lean forward, like I'm presenting myself for execution. For Sathnam Sanghera, growing up in Wolverhampton in the eighties was a confusing business. On the one hand, these were the heady days of George Michael mix-tapes, Dallas on TV and, if he was lucky, the occasional Bounty Bar. On the other, there was his wardrobe of tartan smocks, his 30p-an-hour job at the local sewing factory and the ongoing challenge of how to tie the perfect top-knot. And then there was his family, whose strange and often difficult behaviour he took for granted until, at the age of twenty-four, Sathnam made a discovery that changed everything he ever thought he knew about them. Equipped with breathtaking courage and a glorious sense of humour, he embarks on a journey into their extraordinary past - from his father's harsh life in rural Punjab to the steps of the Wolverhampton Tourist Office - trying to make sense of a life lived among secrets.
Read more The Boy with the Topknot Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton.
The God Delusion
by Dawkins, Richard (A),
Discovery" magazine has recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwins Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. In his "New York Times" bestseller, Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.
Read more The God Delusion .
Public Places: My Life in the Theater, with Peter O'Toole and Beyond
by Phillips, Sian (A),
Sian Phillips and Peter O'Toole were one of the theaters most fabulous couples--a marriage perhaps rivaled only by that of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in terms of glamour, power, and public fascination. In her exceptional memoir, Phillips reveals in thoughtful detail their tumultuous life together. She describes the mad and impulsive times with the infamous hellraiser alongside the tempestuous, insecure, and often lonely periods in their marriage. When OToole's career took off with "Lawrence of Arabia," Sian found life increasingly difficult in her parallel roles as wife, mother, and actress, and watched as her own career became progressively sidelined. Against all expectations, though, their union endured for twenty years. When it ended, incredibly, even to herself, Sian plunged straight into another marriage, to a much younger man. Ultimately she emerges alone--triumphant and unrepentant--and the story she recounts here ranks alongside the very best in show business. Show Less
Read more Public Places My Life in the Theater, with Peter O'Toole and Beyond.
Armagedon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970 - 2000
by Kotkin, Stephen (A),
In the Cold War era that dominated the second half of the twentieth century, nobody envisaged that the collapse of the Soviet Union would come from within, still less that it would happen meekly, without global conflagration. In this brilliantly compact, original, engaging book, Stephen Kotkin shows that the Soviet collapse resulted not from military competition but, ironically, from the dynamism of Communist ideology, the long-held dream for "socialism with a human face." The neo-liberal reforms in post-Soviet Russia never took place, nor could they have, given the Soviet-era inheritance in the social, political, and economic landscape. Kotkin takes us deep into post-Stalin Soviet society and institutions, into the everyday hopes and secret political intrigues that affected 285 million people, before and after 1991. He conveys the high drama of a superpower falling apart while armed to the teeth with millions of loyal troops and tens of thousands of weapons of mass destruction. Armageddon Averted vividly demonstrates the overriding importance of history, individual ambition, geopolitics, and institutions, and deftly draws out contemporary Russia's contradictory predicament.
Read more Armagedon Averted The Soviet Collapse 1970 - 2000.
The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes
by Zerby, Chuck (A),
Footnotes have not had it easy. Their dominance of eighteenth- and nineteenth- century literature and scholarship was both hard-won -- following many years of struggle -- and doomed, as it led to belittlement in the twentieth century. In "The Devil's Details, " Chuck Zerby playfully explores footnotes' long and illustrious history and makes a clarion call to save them from the new world of the Internet and hypertext. In a story that boasts a marvelous plot and a rogues' gallery of players, Zerby examines traditional footnotes and their less-buttoned-down incarnations, as when used by pornographers. Yes, "The Devil's Details" is full of surprises: Zerby hunts down the first bona fide fully functioning footnote; unearths a multivolume history of Northumberland County, England, that uses one volume for a single footnote; and uncovers a murder plot. He even explains why footnotes are like blind dates. Carefully researched and highly opinionated, "The Devil's Details" affirms that delight in reading can come from unexpected places.
Read more The Devil's Details A History of Footnotes.
Kultura, Osoba, Tożsamość. Z Zagadnień Socjologii i Antropologi 
Temporary Break in Children's Readings on Sunday