diff --git a/recipes/american_thinker.recipe b/recipes/american_thinker.recipe
index 718a5f76d3..5390a19eb8 100644
--- a/recipes/american_thinker.recipe
+++ b/recipes/american_thinker.recipe
@@ -8,11 +8,6 @@ from calibre.web.feeds.news import BasicNewsRecipe
 from calibre.utils.cleantext import clean_xml_chars
 from lxml import etree
 
-def CSSSelect(expr):
-    from cssselect import HTMLTranslator
-    from lxml.etree import XPath
-    return XPath(HTMLTranslator().css_to_xpath(expr))
-
 class AmericanThinker(BasicNewsRecipe):
     title          = u'American Thinker'
     description    = "American Thinker is a daily internet publication devoted to the thoughtful exploration of issues of importance to Americans."
@@ -27,7 +22,6 @@ class AmericanThinker(BasicNewsRecipe):
 
     remove_javascript     = True
     auto_cleanup = True
-    #remove_tags_before = dict(name='h1')
 
     conversion_options = {
                           'comment'   : description
@@ -41,13 +35,10 @@ class AmericanThinker(BasicNewsRecipe):
         root = html5lib.parse(
             clean_xml_chars(raw), treebuilder='lxml',
             namespaceHTMLElements=False)
-        for x in CSSSelect('.article_body.bottom')(root):
+        for x in root.xpath('''descendant-or-self::*[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' article_body ') and (@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' bottom '))]'''):
             x.getparent().remove(x)
         return etree.tostring(root, encoding=unicode)
 
     feeds = [(u'http://feeds.feedburner.com/americanthinker'),
                      (u'http://feeds.feedburner.com/AmericanThinkerBlog')
             ]
-
-    #def print_version(self, url):
-        #return 'http://www.americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=' + url
diff --git a/recipes/newsweek.recipe b/recipes/newsweek.recipe
index 0ec94aea0c..f4de4cb0df 100644
--- a/recipes/newsweek.recipe
+++ b/recipes/newsweek.recipe
@@ -1,11 +1,6 @@
 from calibre.web.feeds.jsnews import JavascriptRecipe
-from cssselect import HTMLTranslator
-from lxml.etree import XPath
 import datetime
 
-def CSSSelect(expr):
-    return XPath(HTMLTranslator().css_to_xpath(expr))
-
 BASE = 'http://www.newsweek.com'
 def href_to_url(a, add_piano=False):
     return BASE + a.get('href') + ('?piano_t=1' if add_piano else '')
@@ -40,16 +35,16 @@ class Newsweek(JavascriptRecipe):
     def get_publication_data(self, browser):
         browser.wait_for_element('nav.main-menu a[href]')
         root = self.index_to_soup(browser.html)
-        for a in CSSSelect('nav.main-menu a[href]')(root):
+        for a in root.xpath('''descendant-or-self::nav[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' main-menu ')]/descendant-or-self::*/a[@href]'''):
             if a.text and a.text.strip() == 'This Week\'s Edition':
                 return self.get_newsweek_publication_data(browser, href_to_url(a, True))
 
     def get_newsweek_publication_data(self, browser, url):
         root = self.index_to_soup(url)
-        sel = lambda expr: CSSSelect(expr)(root)
+        sel = lambda expr: root.xpath(expr)
         ans = {}
 
-        for img in sel('div.cover-story div.info img[src]'):
+        for img in sel('''descendant-or-self::div[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' cover-story ')]/descendant-or-self::*/div[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' info ')]/descendant-or-self::*/img[@src]'''):
             if '_Cover_' in img.get('title', ''):
                 ans['cover'] = browser.get_resource(img.get('src'))
                 break
@@ -59,7 +54,7 @@ class Newsweek(JavascriptRecipe):
                 self.timefmt = datetime.datetime.strptime(raw, '%Y/%m/%d').strftime(' [%b %d]')
 
         sections = []
-        for div in sel('div.cover-story div.info'):
+        for div in sel('''descendant-or-self::div[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' cover-story ')]/descendant-or-self::*/div[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' info ')]'''):
             url = None
             for a in div.xpath('descendant::a[@href]'):
                 url = href_to_url(a)
@@ -68,7 +63,7 @@ class Newsweek(JavascriptRecipe):
                 sections.append(('Cover Story', [{'title':'Cover Story', 'date':'', 'url':url, 'description':self.tag_to_string(s)}]))
                 break
         features = []
-        for li in sel('div.features li'):
+        for li in sel('''descendant-or-self::div[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' features ')]/descendant-or-self::*/li'''):
             url = None
             for a in li.xpath('descendant::a[@class="article-link"]'):
                 url = href_to_url(a)
@@ -77,7 +72,7 @@ class Newsweek(JavascriptRecipe):
         if features:
             sections.append(('Features', features))
 
-        for div in sel('div.issue-list-block'):
+        for div in sel('''descendant-or-self::div[@class and contains(concat(' ', normalize-space(@class), ' '), ' issue-list-block ')]'''):
             for d in div.xpath('descendant::div[@class="block-title"]'):
                 section_title = self.tag_to_string(d)
                 articles = []