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"A riveting memoir of years of living dangerously."—Kirkus ReviewsFor the countless readers who have admired Philip Caputo's classic memoir of…
Vietnam, A Rumor of War, here is his powerful recounting of his life and adventures, updated with a foreword that assesses the state of the world and the journalist's art. As a journalist, Caputo has covered many of the world's troubles, and in Means of Escape, he tells the reader in moving and clear-eyed prose how he made himself into a writer, traveler, and observer with the nerve to put himself at the center of the world's conflicts. As a young reporter he investigated the Mafia in Chicago, earning acclaim as well as threats against his safety. Later, he rode camels through the desert and enjoyed Bedouin hospitality, was kidnapped and held captive by Islamic extremists, and was targeted and hit by sniper fire in Beirut, with memories of Vietnam never far from the surface. And after it all, he went into Afghanistan. Caputo's goal has always been to bear witness to the crimes, ambitions, fears, ferocities, and hopes of humanity. With Means of Escape, he has done so.The Key: How to Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth
By James N. Frey. 2000
In his widely read guides How to Write a Damn Good Novel and How to Write a Damn Good Novel…
II: Advanced Techniques, popular novelist and fiction-writing coach James N. Frey showed tens of thousands of writers how--starting with rounded, living, breathing, dynamic characters--to structure a novel that sustains its tension and development and ends in a satisfying, dramatic climax.Now, in The Key, Frey takes his no-nonsense, "Damn Good" approach and applies it to Joseph Campbell's insights into the universal structure of myths. Myths, says Frey, are the basis of all storytelling, and their structures and motifs are just as powerful for contemporary writers as they were for Homer. Frey begins with the qualities found in mythic heros--ancient and modern--such as the hero's special talent, his or her wound, status as an "outlaw," and so on. He then demonstrates how the hero is initiated--sent on a mission, forced to learn the new rules, tested, and suffers a symbolic death and rebirth--before he or she can return home. Using dozens of classical and contemporary novels and films as models, Frey shows how these motifs and forms work their powerful magic on the reader's imagination.The Key is designed as a practical step-by-step guide for fiction writers and screen writers who want to shape their own ideas into a mythic story.Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay: Practical Advice for the Grammatically Challenged
By Richard Lederer, Richard Dowis. 1999
For years Richard Lederer has enthralled fans of the English language with his keen insights, commonsense advice, and witty presentation.…
Now Lederer has teamed up with Richard Dowis to take readers on another journey through the world's most wonderful, albeit perplexing, language. How many times have we all heard the word viable used in company meetings? Lederer and Dowis show us how "viable," somewhere along the line, was extracted from medical books, where it literally means "capable of living," and placed into the business lexicon, where it means...well, who knows?The authors clear up once and for all the confusion between lay and lie and put to rest some common myths about language. The book's finale is a ten-minute writing lesson from which everyone, from rank amateur to seasoned pro, can benefit. These and dozens of other features make this book pure pleasure for language buffs, writers, and teachers. Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay is useful and authoritative as well as fun to read, with humorous touches often popping up where least expected and most needed.Writer and editorial consultant Ron Hogan helps readers develop an ongoing writing practice as an end in and of itself,…
not a means to publication. Many people pick up the guitar without eyeing a career as a professional musician, or start painting without caring if they get a gallery. But with writing the assumption seems to be that the goal must be to get published. Why? Why is it acceptable to attain technical proficiency at "Stairway to Heaven" or plein air watercolors as a hobby, while writing is expected to earn its keep? In Our Endless and Proper Work, the second in Belt’s series of books about writing and publishing—along with Belt founder Anne Trubek’s So You Want to Publish a Book? (2020)—Ron Hogan argues writing should be an end in itself for more people. The founder of the literary site Beatrice, and creator of the popular newsletter "Destroy Your Safe and Happy Lives", Hogan offers concrete steps to help writers develop ongoing creative practice in chapters such as “Reclaiming Your Time for Writing,” “Finding Your Groove,” and “Preparing Yourself for the Long Haul.” Sprinkled throughout are adorable illustrations by “Positive Doodles” creator Emm Roy. This concise, inspirational book encourages all people to take up writing not, as so many other handbooks and resources suggest, in order to make money or become famous, but because it can help you become a happier, more whole and engaged person.So You Want to Publish a Book?
By Anne Trubek. 2020
In So You Want to Publish a Book?, Anne Trubek, founder of Belt Publishing, demystifies the publishing process. This insightful…
guide offers concrete, witty advice and information to authors, prospective authors, and those curioFounding Grammars: How Early America's War Over Words Shaped Today's Language
By Rosemarie Ostler. 2015
Who decided not to split infinitives? With whom should we take issue if in fact, we wish to boldly write…
what no grammarian hath writ before? In Founding Grammars, Rosemarie Ostler delves into the roots of our grammar obsession to answer these questions and many more. Standard grammar and accurate spelling are widely considered hallmarks of a good education, but their exact definitions are much more contentious - capable of inciting a full-blown grammar war at the splice of a comma, battles readily visible in the media and online in the comments of blogs and chat rooms. With an accessible and enthusiastic journalistic approach, Ostler considers these grammatical shibboleths, tracing current debates back to America's earliest days, an era when most families owned only two books - the Bible and a grammar primer. Along the way, she investigates colorful historical characters on both sides of the grammar debate in her efforts to unmask the origins of contemporary speech. Linguistic founding fathers like Noah Webster, Tory expatriate Lindley Murray, and post-Civil War literary critic Richard Grant White,all play a featured role in creating the rules we've come to use, and occasionally discard, throughout the years. Founding Grammars is for curious readers who want to know where grammar rules have come from, where they've been, and where they might go next.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.The Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis (Routledge Revivals)
By Anna Siewierska. 1984
First published in 1984, The Passive surveys a wide range of different constructions, which have all been termed ‘passives’ by…
linguists, using data from a large number of genetically and typologically diverse languages. Chapter 1 raises questions about the nature of passives and exposes some of the difficulties inherent in the traditional assumptions. Chapter 2 examines the ‘personal passive’ and includes a discussion on the relationship between the passive and transitivity. Chapter 3 to 5 deal with impersonal, periphrastic and reflexive passives, exploring the varied problems raised by each construction and focusing particularly on English and Southeast Asian languages. The two final chapters look at various attempts to explain exceptions to the passive in both semantic and syntactic terms, with an additional section on pragmatics. This book will appeal to all of those involved in the field of comparative linguistics.The Origin and Development of the Bengali Language: Volume Three (Routledge Revivals)
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.Guardians of Discourse: Journalism and Literature in Porfirian Mexico
By Kevin M. Anzzolin. 2024
During Porfirio Díaz&’s thirty-year rule, Mexico dealt with the press in disparate ways in hopes of forging an informed and,…
above all, orderly citizenry. Even as innumerable journalists were sent to prison on exaggerated and unfair charges of defamation or slander, Díaz&’s government subsidized multiple newspapers to expand literacy and to aggrandize the image of the regime. In Guardians of Discourse Kevin M. Anzzolin analyzes the role and representation of journalism in literary texts from Porfirian Mexico to argue that these writings created a literate, objective, refined, and informed public. By exploring works by Porfirian writers such as Emilio Rabasa, Ángel del Campo, Rafael Delgado, Laura Méndez de Cuenca, and Salvador Quevedo y Zubieta, Anzzolin demonstrates that a primary goal of the lettered class was to define and shape the character of public life, establish the social position of citizens, and interrogate the character of civil institutions. These elite letrados—whom Anzzolin refers to as &“guardians of discourse&”—aimed to define the type of discourses that would buttress the transformed Mexico of the Díaz regime to forge a truly national literature that could be discussed among an expanded coterie of lettered thinkers. In addition, these Porfirian guardians hoped to construct an extensive and active public able to debate political and social issues via a press befitting a modern nation-state and create a press that would be independent, illuminating, and distinguished. Through an innovative look at Mexico&’s public sphere via literary fiction in the Porfirian era, Anzzolin contributes to our knowledge of Mexican and Latin American political, cultural, and literary history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Interviews with David Sedaris, Dave Barry, Jack Handey, Bob Odenkirk, and other humor-writing pros: &“Sure to captivate anyone who loves…
a good comedy.&” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) If you aspire to write sitcoms, standup, screenplays, or satirical essays—or are just a connoisseur of comedy—you should learn from the professionals. With interviews from twenty-one top humor writers whose credits include everything from Marx Brothers movies to Borat and The Office, readers will score not only professional advice but personal details about their processes, influences, and experiences in the industry—and, of course, more than a few amusing stories. Discover what Paul Feig thinks would have happened to Freaks and Geeks if the show had had another season; what the writers&’ room at SNL is really like; how the Onion editorial staff dealt with the aftermath of 9/11; and much, much more. These humor writers are among the best in the business, ranging from veterans to newcomers, and have collectively been involved with many of the pop culture touchstones of the last half-century.Interviewees include: Stephen Merchant (The Office) · Harold Ramis (Animal House, Groundhog Day) · Dan Mazer (Da Ali G Show, Borat) · Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks) · Bob Odenkirk (The Ben Stiller Show) · Todd Hanson (The Onion) · Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) · David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day) · Al Jaffee (Mad) · Allison Silverman (The Colbert Report) · Robert Smigel (Late Night with Conan O&’Brien) · Dave Barry (Dave Barry Is Not Making This Up) · Larry Wilmore (In Living Color, The Bernie Mac Show) · Jack Handey (Saturday Night Live) · Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H, Tootsie) · Buck Henry · Merrill Markoe · Irving Brecher · Marshall Brickman · George Meyer · Dick Cavett &“Remarkably frank interviews . . . reads like a secret history of popular culture.&” —Time &“Loaded with information for people interested in comedy, not just those who want to work in the business.&” —PopMattersStellar English: A Down-to-Earth Guide to Grammar and Style (Skills for Scholars)
By Frank L. Cioffi. 2024
An indispensable guide to essential principles of English grammar and usageStellar English lays out the fundamentals of effective writing, from…
word choice and punctuation to parts of speech and common errors. Frank Cioffi emphasizes how formal written English—though only a subdialect of the language—enables writers to reach a wide and heterogenous audience.Cioffi&’s many example sentences illustrating grammatical principles tilt in an otherworldly direction, making up a science fiction story involving alien invasion. Reading the book through will not only help you with your grammar but also reveal how the story ends!An invaluable brief handbook for native and nonnative speakers alike, Stellar English avoids the jargon and emphasis on outdated rules found in typical grammar guides and shows how good writing uses carefully constructed language that&’s at once appropriate to an audience and communicates—without distractions or confusion—just what the writer wants.The definitive guide to starting and running a freelance editing business. You’ve been thinking about shifting into the world of…
freelance editing, but you don’t know where to start. In a time when editors are seeking greater flexibility in their work arrangements and schedules, freelancing is an increasingly common career option. But deciding to go it alone means balancing the risks with the rewards. From the publisher of The Chicago Manual of Style comes The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors, the definitive guide to running your business and finding greater control and freedom in your work life. In this book, Erin Brenner—an industry leader and expert on the business of editorial freelancing—gathers everything you need to know into a single resource. Brenner has run her own successful editing business for over two decades and has helped hundreds of editors launch or improve their businesses through her teaching, blog writing, and coaching. The Chicago Guide for Freelance Editors will walk you through the entire process of conceiving, launching, and working in a freelance editing business, from deciding on services and rates to choosing the best business structure to thinking through branding and marketing strategies and beyond. This book is ideal for beginning freelancers looking to get set up and land their first clients, but it’s equally valuable to those who have already been freelancing, with detailed coverage of such issues as handling difficult clients and continuing professional development. You’ll find a collection of advice from other successful freelance editors in this guide, as well as an extensive list of resources and tools. In the final and perhaps most important chapter, Brenner teaches you how to care for the key component of the business: yourself.Writing Empirical Research Reports: A Basic Guide For Students Of The Social And Behavioral Sciences
By Fred Pyrczak, Randall R. Bruce. 2000
• Designed for students who will be writing research proposals, reports, theses, and dissertations. • The 15 chapters cover 191…
guidelines for effective scientific writing. The guidelines are fully illustrated with easy-to-follow examples. • The guidelines describe the types of information that should be included, how this information should be expressed, and where various types of information should be placed within a research report. • End-of-chapter questions help students master the writing process.Backpack Writing
By Lester Faigley. 2016
For college courses in Composition and Rhetoric. Backpack Writing, Fourth Edition presents writing, reading, and research processes dynamically, using a…
variety of visuals to illustrate how readers interact with texts and how writers compose. One of the first textbook authors to focus on multimedia composing, Lester Faigley employs his own advice to engage students in every step of the writing process – for both college composition and everyday life – and pulls back the curtain on how writers work. Aligned with the learning goals for a first-year college writing course identified in the 2014 Outcomes Statement from the Council of Writing Program Administrators, Backpack Writing gives students the support they need to succeed in first-year composition, in their other courses, and in their careers. In the Fourth Edition, students can also practice and explore what they’ve learned chapter-by-chapter with interactive MyWritingLab tools, assignments, and projects.The Composition Commons: Writing a New Idea of the University
By Jessica Yood. 2024
The Composition Commons delivers a timely take on invigorating higher education, illustrating how college composition courses can be dynamic sites for…
producing a democratic, just, and generally educated public. Jessica Yood traces the century-long origins of a writing-centered idea of the American university and tracks the resurgence of this idea today. Drawing on archival and classroom evidence from public colleges and universities and written in a lively autoethnographic voice, Yood names “genres of the commons”: intimate, informal writing activities that create peer-to-peer knowledge networks. She shows how these unique genres create collectivity—an academic commons—and calls on scholars to invest in composition as a course cultivating reflective, emergent, shared knowledge. Yood departs from movements that divest from the first-year composition classroom and details how an increasingly diverse student population composes complex, evolving cultural literacies that forge social bonds and forward innovation and intellectual and civic engagement. The Composition Commons reclaims the commons as critical idea and writing classroom activities as essential practices for remaking higher education in the United States.Why is Q Always Followed by U?: Word-Perfect Answers to the Most-Asked Questions About Language
By Michael Quinion. 2009
Long-time word-detective and bestselling author of Port Out, Starboard Home, Michael Quinion brings us the answers to nearly two hundred…
of the most intriguing questions he's been asked about language over the years. Sent to him by enquiring readers from all around the globe, Michael's answers about the meanings and histories behind the quirky phrases, slang and language that we all use are set to delight, amuse and enlighten even the most hardened word-obsessive.Did you know that 'Blighty' comes from an ancient Arabic word? Or that Liberace cried his way to the bank so many times people think he came up with the phrase? That 'cloud nine' started out as 'cloud seven' in the speakeasies of '30s America? And that the first person to have their thunder stolen was a dismal playwright from Drury Lane? Michael Quinion's Why is Q Always Followed By U? is full of surprising discoveries, entertaining quotations and memorable information. There are plenty of colourful stories out there, but Michael Quinion will help you discover the truth that lies behind the cock-and-bull stories and make sure you're always linguistically on the ball.The Voice: 40 years of Black British Lives
By The Voice. 2022
Launched at the 1982 Notting Hill Carnival, The Voice newspaper captured and addressed a generation figuring out what it meant…
to be Black and British. Written for and by Black people, the newspaper shone a light on systematic injustices as well as celebrating Black Britain's success stories. From hard hitting news reports covering the murder of Stephen Lawrence to championing the likes of Sir Lewis Hamilton and Idris Elba, the newspaper has campaigned, celebrated and educated people for the last forty years.As well as celebrating amazing successes in sport, politics and the arts, The Voice documented everyday life in the community, from the emergence of a Black middle class in the '90s and the achievements of Black entrepreneurs to how different facets of the community were explored in contemporary music and literature. Since its small beginnings in Hackney, The Voice has also become a fantastic training ground for prominent journalists and figures including former politician Trevor Phillips, broadcaster Rageh Omaar and writer Afua Hirsch. Today, The Voice is Britain's longest running and only Black newspaper.Told through news reports, editorials and readers' personal letters, this emotive book documents the social history of Black Britain over the last four decades. Each chapter is illustrated with amazing newspaper pages from The Voice's extensive archives as well as iconic and dramatic front covers from 1982 to the present day.With a foreword from Sir Lenny Henry and written by former and current Voice journalists, this powerful book is a celebration of the ground-breaking paper which gave a voice to the voiceless.Ukraine 22: Ukrainian Writers Respond to War
By Mark Andryczyk. 2023
'The extraordinary writers in this volume articulate the taste, the terror, and the dialect of war; they command their powers…
of description to face a shameless empire intent on annihilating them' Ellena SavageA selection of Ukraine's leading writers convey the reality of life within Ukraine during the first year of the invasionOn 24 February 2022, the lives of Ukrainians were devastatingly altered. Since that day, many of Ukraine's writers have attempted to fathom what is happening to them and to their country. This anthology brings together writing from inside Ukraine, by Ukrainians, available in English for the first time. Here they document everyday life, ponder the role of culture amid conflict, denounce Russian imperialism and revisit their relations with the world, especially Europe and its ideals, as they try to comprehend the horrors of war.From tearing-downs of Russia's use of culture as justification of the war to moving descriptions of nights spent sheltering in corridors, poignant snatched moments with a husband on his single night away from the army, to descriptions of the eerie weather in the months leading up to the invasion, as if nature was trying to warn Ukraine, these essays reveal the texture, rawness and reality of life in Ukraine under war as never before.Innovations in Journalism: Comparative Research in Five European Countries (Routledge Research in Journalism)
By Klaus Meier, Jose A. García-Avilés, Andy Kaltenbrunner, Colin Porlezza, Vinzenz Wyss, Renée Lugschitz, Korbinian Klinghardt. 2024
This volume explores innovations in journalism: the goals and expectations associated with them, promoting and hindering framework conditions, and their…
social and industrial impact.Drawing on an international research project conducted in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, the book takes a complex approach, considering media policy preconditions and the social impact of journalistic innovation from a comparative perspective. The key findings are examined and presented on different levels: theoretical, methodological, and – as the focus – empirical.Having identified the most relevant innovations in each of the five countries, a total of 100 case studies are examined to explore the influence of these innovations on the quality of journalism and its normative role in democratic societies and to analyze which preconditions support or inhibit the development and implementation of the innovations in news organizations. The interdependencies between journalistic innovations and their media policy preconditions are compared in a system-analytical way – concluding with the lessons that can be learned from the macrolevel (policies) and the mesolevel (organizations).This insightful and truly international volume will interest professionals, scholars and students of journalism, media and communication studies, media industry studies, and related fields.