In the tradition of The Official Preppy Handbook, The Uptight Seattleite is the Stephen Colbert of left-wing satire.

The author of the wildly popular Seattle Weekly advice column teaches Americans everywhere how to embrace their inner leftist. Artfully balancing the cosmic with the cosmopolitan, the Uptight Seattleite (aka Adrian) delights his loyal readers each week with snide insight on everything from fashion (Can I pull off a Rasta beret?) to ear-bud etiquette.

In A Sensitive Liberal's Guide to Life, he brings his savvy smugness to his widest audience yet, on topics such as the hierarchy of transportation righteousness (what to do with the clunky old Subaru after purchasing a Prius) and ethical behavior at the grocery store, including how to handle the horror of forgetting to bring your reusable burlap sack.

Other day-to-day advice covers what to read on the bus (Vonnegut versus The Kite Runner versus The Economist) and feasting at the buffet of diversity, with tips for shooting a condescending smile at those who don't know how to use chopsticks.

The Uptight Seattleite also helps readers navigate the big issues, such as responsible parenting (which calls for a mini-landfill kit, perfect for the backyard and ready to be stuffed with environmentally unfriendly diapers).

For every insecure liberal - and those who love to make fun of them - the Uptight Seattleite offers us laughs from the pinnacle of political correctness.

Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic and one of the world's great antiwar books, centers on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes the novel as a result of a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. The novel combines elements of historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in the life story of Billy Pilgrim.

Billy, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee, experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he also experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time." An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five established Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as a cult hero in American literature, a status that has only strengthened over time despite censorship challenges. The novel's political edginess, genre-bending inventiveness, frank violence, and transgressive wit have inspired generations of readers to see the world differently and speak out.

More than fifty years after its initial publication during the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety remains darkly humorous and profoundly affecting, serving as an enduring beacon through our own era's uncertainties.

Animal Farm is a brilliant political satire and a powerful and affecting story of revolutions and idealism, power, and corruption. 'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.' Mr. Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm.

Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

When Animal Farm was first published, Stalinist Russia was seen as its target. Today it is devastatingly clear that wherever and whenever freedom is attacked, under whatever banner, the cutting clarity and savage comedy of George Orwell's masterpiece have a meaning and message still ferociously fresh.