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Showing 1 - 20 of 5131 items
By Imogen Lloyd Webber. 2016
Have you ever been at a cocktail party when all of a sudden you feel like an outsider in the…
conversation because you have absolutely no idea what the person is talking about? You're standing around with a glass of wine and someone starts talking about how the stock market did that day leading to the career highs of Ben Bernanke and the best way to short a stock. You stand there completely silent because you know nothing about the stock market, let alone the history of economics. You're being pushed to the outside edge of the pack and there's no way to reach gracefully for your iPhone and Google. Fear not: Imogen Lloyd Webber is on a mission to make everyone as conversationally nimble as she has learned to be as a cable news pundit. Her solution: get a few cheat sheets and study up. Remember cheat sheets, those slips of paper filled with facts? As Imogen might say "Google is good, but a cheat sheet is forever..." In eight cheat sheets, Imogen takes you through the facts that come up in most conversations: the English language, math/economics, religion, history, politics, geography, biology and culture. From the history of money to who signed The Magna Carta, Imogen shows you how to get back in a conversation, win any argument and most importantly, how to pivot out of a tough conversational bind. Imogen Lloyd Webber's The Intelligent Conversationalist will help you talk with anyone about anything anytime.By Byron L. Dorgan. 2019
Through the story of Tamara, an abused Native American child, North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan describes the plight of many…
children living on reservations—and offers hope for the future. On a winter morning in 1990, U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota picked up the Bismarck Tribune. On the front page, a small Native American girl gazed into the distance, shedding a tear. The headline: "Foster home children beaten—and nobody's helping." Dorgan, who had been working with American Indian tribes to secure resources, was upset. He flew to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to meet with five-year-old Tamara who had suffered a horrible beating at a foster home. He visited with Tamara and her grandfather and they became friends. Then Tamara disappeared. And he would search for her for decades until they finally found each other again. This book is her story, from childhood to the present, but it's also the story of a people and a nation. More than one in three American Indian/Alaskan Native children live in poverty. AI/AN children are disproportionately in foster care and awaiting adoption. Suicide among AI/AN youth ages 15 to 24 is 2.5 times the national rate. How has America allowed this to happen? As distressing a situation as it is, this is also a story of hope and resilience. Dorgan, who founded the Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) at the Aspen Institute, has worked tirelessly to bring Native youth voices to the forefront of policy discussions, engage Native youth in leadership and advocacy, and secure and share resources for Native youth. You will fall in love with this heartbreaking story, but end the book knowing what can be done and what you can do.By Sam Magavern. 2009
Primo Levi is best known as a memoirist of Auschwitz, but he was also a scientist, fiction writer, and poet:…
in short, a Renaissance man. Primo Levi's Universe offers a multi-faceted portrait of the heroic man who turned the concentration camp experience into beautiful yet terrifying literature. Over time, Levi developed an original world-view which he conveyed in his writing. Through careful readings of Levi's works, Sam Magavern finally does justice to his calm rationality, dark poetry, essential beliefs and wit. Levi's art and life are inextricably intertwined, and this book presents them together, allowing each to shed light on the other.By Katherine Day. 2024
During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, children’s media use increased (Mesce et al. 2021) while a decrease in print-book reading was…
observed (Nolan et al. 2022). An increase in tablet use suggests that when children were reading, it was mostly online in the form of ePub3 pdf files for illustrated works and prescribed school texts, while smartphone use was linked to apps and games. (Susilowati et al. 2021) For many years now, children’s publishers have experimented with digital picture-book formats but have regarded the genre as not suitable for digitisation.This book documents the findings of a one-year research project engaging the children’s publishing sector for feedback on reading trends and digital publishing in picture-book genres. The research assesses the plight of picture books in the current climate and considers how picture-book publishers cater to diverse readerships and new reading platforms post Covid-19 lockdowns and into the digital age.Written by an academic and editor with over 15 years industry experience, this book offers a nuanced response to children’s picture book publishing and reception for librarians, teachers, publishers and international scholars in the fields of publishing studies, library studies, early childhood studies, early education and childhood psychology.By David Wood. 1990
First published in 1990, Philosophers’ Poets is a collection of case studies of philosophers’ readings of poets and other distinctive…
writers. There are those, for example, who find in literary examples ways of exploring the concrete significance of philosophical assertions or distinctions. Others find in poetic discourse linguistic resources simply not available to philosophy, yet of vital importance to it. This is particularly true of philosophers of the limit, such as Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas and Adorno, for whom the very possibility of philosophy was in question. Despite the diversity of subjects covered, the collection maintains an integrity and identity. Above all, it shows how contemporary Continental philosophy raises the issue of philosophy and literature anew in a way that is appealing and challenging.First published in 1970, Leyla and Mejnun provides a thorough introduction to the Leyla and Mejnun love story and the…
various forms in which the story has appeared in the Islamic world. Finally, it offers for the delight of the English poetry lover, an extremely readable translation of the Turkish version of the story. This book will be of interest to students of literature and history.By Suniti Kumar Chatterji. 1972
First published in 1972, The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language (Vol. 3) is the updated supplement to the…
two-volume The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language. It contains certain additions and corrections to the first systematic and detailed history of a Modern Indo-Aryan Language written by an Indian, and incidentally, as it is comparative in its treatment, taking into consideration facts in other Indo-Aryan speeches, it is an invaluable contribution to the scientific study of the Modern Indo-Aryan languages as a whole. This book will be of interest to students of language, linguistics and South Asian studies.By John Quicke. 1985
First published in 1985, Disability in Modern Children’s Fiction presents a case for the inclusion of a planned element in…
the mainstream curriculum, specifically designed to encourage positive attitudes and actions towards children with special needs, and for utilising the possibilities inherent in fiction for helping all children to explore their thoughts and feelings in this area. The central chapters of the book are concerned with a critical examination of specific texts, focusing on how they deal with disability in a story context. Books are grouped for discussion under common themes which have been teased out according to their contemporary relevance: the effects on the family of a severely disabled child; the struggle of a child with a disability for personal identity in oppressive social circumstances; the interaction between disability, race, gender and social class; the different reactions of ‘normal’ children towards disabled peers; the failings of the medical approach to disability; love, sex, adolescence and disability; the relationship between children and handicapped adults. The penultimate chapter is concerned with an evaluation of picture books and quasi-fiction for younger children. This book will be of interest to students of disability studies, pedagogy and literature.By Deben Bhattacharya. 1967
First published in 1967, Love Songs of Chandidās provides an informative introduction which makes vividly clear the importance of Chandidās…
to the Indian peasant masses. As the author tells us, the traveller through the Birbhum area of Bengal hears Chandidās everywhere, in the villages, in the fields, on the roads. Night after night, the people gather in the temple courtyards or on the village greens to listen to professional ‘Kirtan’ singers sing his songs of the divine love of Radha and Krishna. The influence of Chandidās on contemporary Bengali literature is equally important, his songs having enriched the work of great poets such as Rabindranath Tagore, Govindadas, and many others. The author also discusses the interesting topic of the Sahaja (‘spontaneity’) movement in Indian faith and literature, as manifested in the songs of Chandidās, and the worship of love-making, divine and human, as an important aspect of this faith. This book will be of interest to students of literature, music, history, cultural studies and South Asian studies.By William Righter. 1975
First published in 1975, Myth and Literature considers three points at which the concept of myth has entered modern literary…
imagination: the use of myth – or atleast their understanding of myth -- as a creative opening by modern writers, its exploration by critics as an interpretive device, and the analogy between certain ‘sense-making’ functions of ‘myth’, ‘fiction’ and literature itself. All three of these roles show the gradual movement from a point of precise demand to a diffuse and variable concept which is more pervasive because less distinct. The paradox of myth is shown to lie in its simultaneity of its corruption with the growth of its power over the modern literary mind. This book will be of interest to students of literature and history.By Marco Orru. 1987
First published in 1987, Anomie examines essential moments of Western thought, tracing the complex concept of anomie. The Greek origin…
of the term (a-nomia, absence of joy) relates it to the notions of disorder, inequity and anarchy. 20th century sociology has long called into question an over simple dichotomy between law and the absence of law. The book shows that this questioning is not new. It has its roots in Ancient Greek thought and in the founding texts of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It appears in the legal and religious states of the English Renaissance, and in the emerging sociology of 19th century French, where Orrù opposes the collectivism of Durkheim to the individualism of Jean-Marie Guyau. The latter’s thought, little recognized at that time, finds an echo in contemporary sociology, notably in American sociologist R. K. Merton. To write the history of the concept, to account for the fluctuations in meaning that it undergoes in the changing prism of diverse societies, to uncover the subterranean continuities between yesterday and today: this is the aim of the book. This book will be of interest to students of history, sociology, literature and philosophy.By Daisy Hay. 2010
Young Romantics tells the story of the interlinked lives of the young English Romantic poets from an entirely fresh perspective—celebrating…
their extreme youth and outsize yearning for friendship as well as their individuality and political radicalism. The book focuses on the network of writers and readers who gathered around Percy Bysshe Shelley and the campaigning journalist Leigh Hunt. They included Lord Byron, John Keats, and Mary Shelley, as well as a host of fascinating lesser-known figures: Mary Shelley's stepsister and Byron's mistress, Claire Clairmont; Hunt's botanist sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent; the musician Vincent Novello; the painters Benjamin Haydon and Joseph Severn; and writers such as Charles and Mary Lamb, Thomas Love Peacock, and William Hazlitt. They were characterized by talent, idealism, and youthful ardor, and these qualities shaped and informed their politically oppositional stances—as did their chaotic family arrangements, which often left the young women, despite their talents, facing the consequences of the men's philosophies.In Young Romantics, Daisy Hay follows the group's exploits, from its inception in Hunt's prison cell in 1813 to its disintegration after Shelley's premature death in 1822. It is an enthralling tale of love, betrayal, sacrifice, and friendship, all of which were played out against a background of political turbulence and intense literary creativity.By Norman Saadi Nikro. 2024
This book adapts the Arabic term nafsiyya to trace the phenomenological contours of Edward Said’s analysis of the affective dimensions…
of colonial and imperial racism. Reflecting on what he called his “colonial education,” Said rendered his Palestinian/Arab background and experience of racism an enabling component of his academic work. The argument focuses on his “personal dimension” section in his introduction to his famous volume Orientalism, discussing key notions of Said’s oeuvre—such as ‘elaboration,’ ‘circumstance,’ ‘humanism,’ ‘worldliness,’ ‘inventory,’ and ‘critical consciousness.’ Providing a lengthy study of his earlier and somewhat neglected Beginnings: Intention and Method, the book discusses the significance of the style of the essay as a key component of what the author calls Said’s interventionist brand of scholarship. The final chapter outlines how Said’s oeuvre can be situated in a genealogy of a radical phenomenology of racism that emerged from the colonies.By Philip Burnham. 2024
In The Education of Clarence Three Stars Philip Burnham tells the life story of the remarkable Packs the Dog, a…
member of the Minneconjou Lakotas who was born in 1864 east of the Black Hills. His father, Yellow Knife, died when the boy was five, and the family eventually enrolled at Pine Ridge Agency with the Oglalas under an uncle&’s name, Three Stars. In 1879 Packs the Dog joined the first class of Indian students to be admitted to the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. An enthusiastic student, Clarence Three Stars, as he would come to be known, was one of five Lakota children who volunteered to stay at Carlisle after the three-year plan of instruction was finished—though he eventually left the school in frustration. Three Stars returned to Pine Ridge and married Jennie Dubray, another Carlisle veteran, and they had seven children. The life of Lakota advocate Three Stars spanned a time of dramatic change for Native Americans, from the pre-reservation period through the Dawes Act of 1887 until just before the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Three Stars was a teacher, interpreter, catechist, lawyer, and politician who lived through the federal policy of American Indian assimilation in its many guises, including boarding school education, religious conversion, land allotment, and political reorganization. He used the fundamentals of his own boarding school education to advance the welfare of the Oglala Lakota people, even when his efforts were deemed threatening or subversive. His dedication to justice, learning, and self-governance informed a distinguished career of classroom excellence and political advocacy on his home reservation of Pine Ridge.By Robert Aquinas McNally. 2024
John Muir is widely and rightly lauded as the nature mystic who added wilderness to the United States&’ vision of…
itself, largely through the system of national parks and wild areas his writings and public advocacy helped create. That vision, however, came at a cost: the conquest and dispossession of the tribal peoples who had inhabited and managed those same lands, in many cases for millennia. Muir argued for the preservation of wild sanctuaries that would offer spiritual enlightenment to the conquerors, not to the conquered Indigenous peoples who had once lived there. &“Somehow,&” he wrote, &“they seemed to have no right place in the landscape.&”Cast Out of Eden tells this neglected part of Muir&’s story—from Lowland Scotland and the Wisconsin frontier to the Sierra Nevada&’s granite heights and Alaska&’s glacial fjords—and his take on the tribal nations he encountered and embrace of an ethos that forced those tribes from their homelands. Although Muir questioned and worked against Euro-Americans&’ distrust of wild spaces and deep-seated desire to tame and exploit them, his view excluded Native Americans as fallen peoples who stained the wilderness&’s pristine sanctity. Fortunately, in a transformation that a resurrected and updated Muir might approve, this long-standing injustice is beginning to be undone, as Indigenous nations and the federal government work together to ensure that quintessentially American lands from Bears Ears to Yosemite serve all Americans equally.D. H. Lawrence is renowned for his scathing criticism of the ruling class, industrialisation of the country and wartime patriotism.…
However, his texts bear the imprint of contemporary dominant ideologies and discourses of the period. Comparing Lawrence’s texts to various major and minor contemporary novels, journal articles, political pamphlets and history books, this book aims to demonstrate that Lawrence’s texts are ambivalent: his texts harbour the dynamism of conflicting power struggles between the subversive and the reactionary. For example, in some apparently apolitical texts such as The White Peacock and Movements in European History, reactionary ideologies and wartime propaganda are embedded. Some texts like Lady Chatterley’s Lover are intended to be a radical critique of the period wherein it was composed, but they also bear discernible traces of the contemporary frame of reference that they intend to subvert. Focusing on Lawrence’s stories and novels set in the mining countryside and the works composed under the impact of the First World War, this book establishes that Lawrence’s texts in fact consist of multiple layers that are often in conflict with each other, serving as a testimony to the age of modernity.By Janet Todd. 1986
The cult of sensibility jangled the nerves of Europe in the mid-eighteenth century. It touched all literary genres and brought…
into prominence those qualities of tenderness, compassion, sympathy and irrational benevolence associated with women by the binary psychology of the time. It privileged spontaneous emotion and found this expressed in the bodily manifestations of tears, fainting fits, flushes and palpitations. Valuing the pure victim, it took as its archetypes the innocent dying Clarissa and the benevolent, suffering man of feeling.In Sensibility, originally published in 1986, Janet Todd charts the growth and decline of sentimental writing as a privileged mode in the eighteenth century. She shows how sentimental writing is riven with contradictions: while it applauds fellowship, it also expresses a yearning for isolation, and while it stresses the ties of friendship and family, it does so at the expense of sexual feeling, which grows menacing and destructive.By the 1770s, as the idea of sensibility was losing ground, ‘sentimentality’ came in as a pejorative term. Janet Todd ends her study of sensibility by detailing the various attacks on the cult, from radicals and conservatives, feminists and Christian moralists; from Coleridge who saw it as unmanning the nation to Jane Austen who considered it an elaborate shamBy John Beall. 2024
In Hemingway’s Art of Revision, John Beall analyzes more than a dozen pieces of the author’s celebrated short fiction, with…
a focus on manuscripts and typescripts, as part of a broader examination of how Ernest Hemingway crafted his distinctive prose through a rigorous process of revision. Ranging from two vignettes in the first version of In Our Time through early touchstones such as “Indian Camp” and “The Killers” to later masterpieces including “Fathers and Sons,” Beall’s study considers the modernist influences, aesthetic choices, and experimental effects that characterized Hemingway’s approach to the short story. Revisions to “Big Two-Hearted River,” for example, were not simply cuts and omissions, but involved adding paragraphs to slow down the narrative and represent Nick Adams’s careful observations of fish as he watched their shadows on the river. For “A Way You’ll Never Be,” Hemingway’s revisions developed Nick’s interior monologues, manic lecture about grasshoppers, and wacky sense of humor to show the character restoring a sense of emotional balance despite his traumatic memories of being wounded.By drawing attention to the meticulous omissions, additions, and replacements that shaped these texts, Beall reveals how extensively and richly Hemingway revised his drafts. Hemingway’s Art of Revision gives a detailed view of a great prose stylist at work.By D. Marcel DeCoste. 2024
Professing Darkness confirms the centrality of Catholic thought, imagery, and sacrament to the spiritual and ethical outlook of the work…
of Cormac McCarthy and, more specifically, its consistent assessment of Enlightenment values and their often-catastrophic realization in American history. D. Marcel DeCoste surveys McCarthy’s fiction from both his Tennessee and Southwest periods, with chapters devoted to eight of his published novels—from Outer Dark to The Road—and a conclusion that examines the writer’s screenplay for The Counselor and the duology of The Passenger and Stella Maris. DeCoste’s attentive, wide-ranging interpretations demonstrate that McCarthy’s work mounts a sustained critique of core Enlightenment ideals and their devastating results in the American context, especially for Indigenous peoples, the environment, the viability of community, and the integrity of a self irreducible to the status of a commodity. Professing Darkness shows that Roman Catholic understandings of Penance and Eucharist, along with specific Catholic teachings—such as those regarding the goodness of Creation, the nature of evil, the insufficiency of the self, and the radical invitation to conversion—enable McCarthy’s revelatory engagement with American Enlightenment. An important contribution to the ever-expanding critical literature on a towering contemporary author, Professing Darkness offers an innovative reading of both the spiritual and political valences of McCarthy’s writing.By Diane J. Purvis. 2024
As the environmental justice movement slowly builds momentum, Diane J. Purvis highlights the work of Indigenous peoples in Alaska&’s small…
rural villages, who have faced incredible odds throughout history yet have built political clout fueled by vigorous common cause in defense of their homes and livelihood. Starting with the transition from Russian to American occupation of Alaska, Alaska Natives have battled with oil and gas corporations; fought against U.S. plans to explode thermonuclear bombs on the edge of Native villages; litigated against political plans to flood Native homes; sought recompense for the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster; and struggled against the federal government&’s fishing restrictions that altered Native paths for subsistence. In They Came but Could Not Conquer Purvis presents twelve environmental crises that occurred when isolated villages were threatened by a governmental monolith or big business. In each, Native peoples rallied together to protect their land, waters, resources, and a way of life against the bulldozer of unwanted, often dangerous alterations labeled as progress. In this gripping narrative Purvis shares the inspiring stories of those who possessed little influence over big business and regulations yet were able to protect their traditional lands and waterways anyway.