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Book A Political Fable

Download or read book A Political Fable written by Robert Coover and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 1980 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "As Robert Coover read Dr. Seuss to his children in 1968, he noticed "the little Cat in the Hat symbol on the front cover: 'I can read it all by myself.' It looked remarkably like a campaign button, and, by changing one letter, it was one." Sensing a strange affinity between the anarchic Seussian world and the riots, assassinations, warfare and social upheaval that forever marked 1968 as a year of turmoil, Coover began to write. With the slogan "I can lead it all by myself," he imagines a hedonistic, novelty-crazed public and their shameless, nonsense-spewing, hat-wearing demagogue: the Cat in the Hat. While this mind-bending classic vividly evokes the late 1960s--with psychedelic flights of fancy and tropes of the sexual revolution, civil rights, and Vietnam all heaving out of its pages--it also feels chillingly prescient a half century later. Its hilarity shot through with anger and fear, The Cat in the Hat for President anticipates and diagnoses the unheard-of spectacle of the current political circus, and, well, a cat in a (MAGA) hat."--Goodreads

Book Disorder

    Book Details:
  • Author : Leslie Kaplan
  • Publisher : AK Press
  • Release : 2020-09-15
  • ISBN : 1849353948
  • Pages : 27 pages

Download or read book Disorder written by Leslie Kaplan and published by AK Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this brilliant and hilarious political novella, Leslie Kaplan imagines a series of unconnected crimes occurring throughout France. In each, a subordinate kills someone in a superior position over them—typically with an object used in their work, be it wiring in an auto shop, a huge sack of coffee, or a blackboard eraser. While these acts (no explanation is ever given by the criminals) clearly have a class-related character, the media and public figures are loathe to admit that class struggle still exists. Their denial of reality creates another thread in this joyful, dark satire: the fumbling of “experts” who mobilize theory after theory in order to analyze what is happening without admitting that the events could have any political content.

Book Fables of Power

    Book Details:
  • Author : Annabel Patterson
  • Publisher : Duke University Press
  • Release : 1991-03-26
  • ISBN : 0822382571
  • Pages : 186 pages

Download or read book Fables of Power written by Annabel Patterson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-26 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this imaginative and illuminating work, Annabel Patterson traces the origins and meanings of the Aesopian fable, as well as its function in Renaissance culture and subsequently. She shows how the fable worked as a medium of political analysis and communication, especially from or on behalf of the politically powerless. Patterson begins with an analysis of the legendary Life of Aesop, its cultural history and philosophical implications, a topic that involves such widely separated figures as La Fontaine, Hegel, and Vygotsky. The myth’s origin is recovered here in the saving myth of Aesop the Ethiopian, black, ugly, who began as a slave but become both free and influential, a source of political wisdom. She then traces the early modern history of the fable from Caxton, Lydgate, and Henryson through the eighteenth century, focusing on such figures as Spenser, Sidney, Lyly, Shakespeare, and Milton, as well as the lesser-known John Ogilby, Sir Roger L’Estrange, and Samuel Croxall. Patterson discusses the famous fable of The Belly and the Members, which, because it articulated in symbolic terms some of the most intransigent problems in political philosophy and practice, was still going strong as a symbolic text in the mid-nineteenth century, where it was focused on industrial relations by Karl Marx and by George Eliot against electoral reform.

Book Plato s Fable

    Book Details:
  • Author : Joshua Mitchell
  • Publisher : Princeton University Press
  • Release : 2009-01-10
  • ISBN : 1400827175
  • Pages : 227 pages

Download or read book Plato s Fable written by Joshua Mitchell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an exploration of Plato's Republic that bypasses arcane scholarly debates. Plato's Fable provides refreshing insight into what, in Plato's view, is the central problem of life: the mortal propensity to adopt defective ways of answering the question of how to live well. How, in light of these tendencies, can humankind be saved? Joshua Mitchell discusses the question in unprecedented depth by examining one of the great books of Western civilization. He draws us beyond the ancients/moderns debate, and beyond the notion that Plato's Republic is best understood as shedding light on the promise of discursive democracy. Instead, Mitchell argues, the question that ought to preoccupy us today is neither "reason" nor "discourse," but rather "imitation." To what extent is man first and foremost an "imitative" being? This, Mitchell asserts, is the subtext of the great political and foreign policy debates of our times. Plato's Fable is not simply a work of textual exegesis. It is an attempt to move debates within political theory beyond their current location. Mitchell recovers insights about the depth of the problem of mortal imitation from Plato's magnificent work, and seeks to explicate the meaning of Plato's central claim--that "only philosophy can save us."

Book Cry Wolf

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul Lake
  • Publisher : BenBella Books, Inc.
  • Release : 2008-05-11
  • ISBN : 1935251104
  • Pages : 197 pages

Download or read book Cry Wolf written by Paul Lake and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2008-05-11 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cry Wolf is an Animal Farm for the 21st century: a brilliant allegory of the political challenges we face in post-9/11 America. The farm animals' struggle to maintain their way of life against an influx of change is a powerful commentary on the importance of balancing freedom with justice, and on how easily even the best of intentions can destroy a community too caught up with what is "fair" to do what is right. Lake's novel raises questions of in the heart of every devoted citizen: Does political correctness ever trump law? Should safety ever be compromised for the sake of inclusion? Are big government and judicial systems tools to create order, or do they provide chaos?

Book The Personal and the Political

Download or read book The Personal and the Political written by Charles de Secondat baron de Montesquieu and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2008 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Personal and the Political presents three fables written by social commentator and political thinker Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu: The Temple of Cnidus (on eros and justice), Lysimachus (on philosophy and imperial ambition), and Dialogue de Sylla et d'Eucrate (on the limits of political ambition). This work is author W.B. Allen's response to attempts that collapse Montesquieu's analysis of modern political philosophy into a general discussion of virtue and morality by raising anew the issues of true and false happiness and pleasures. Allen maintains that Montesquieu's fables demonstrate the continuing relevance of the issue of philosophical morality, and offer a reconciliation of the tension between philosophical morality and political morality. The Personal and the Political provides a translation of each fable (with parallel French text), a brief introduction and commentaries to develop the context in which each is written and the situations that they address. Each fable is suited to introduce Montesquieu's conceptions of ancient virtues and vices, and what they contribute to modern sensibilities.

Book The Cat in the Hat for President

Download or read book The Cat in the Hat for President written by Robert Coover and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Robert Coover remains our foremost verbal wizard, our laughter in the dark."--T.C. Boyle Fifty years after the original release of Coover's satire, this rollicking fable of the grotesque, unhinged Cat in the Hat (and the stuffed shirts who bet on his success) makes for a bitterly funny indictment of politics-as-usual in 2017. As Robert Coover read Dr. Seuss to his children in 1968, he noticed "the little Cat in the Hat symbol on the front cover: 'I CAN READ IT ALL BY MYSELF.' It looked remarkably like a campaign button, and, by changing one letter, it was one." Sensing a strange affinity between the anarchic Seussian world and the riots, assassinations, warfare and social upheaval that forever marked 1968 as a year of turmoil, Coover began to write. With the slogan "I CAN LEAD IT ALL BY MYSELF," he imagines a hedonistic, novelty-crazed public and their shameless, nonsense-spewing, hat-wearing demagogue: the Cat in the Hat. While this mind-bending classic vividly evokes the late 1960s - with psychedelic flights of fancy and tropes of the sexual revolution, civil rights, and Vietnam all heaving out of its pages - it also feels chillingly prescient a half century later. Its hilarity shot through with anger and fear, The Cat in the Hat for President anticipates and diagnoses the 2016 election's dirty tricks, unheard-of spectacle, and, well, a cat in a (MAGA) hat. Includes a new introduction by the author.

Book Imagining World Politics

Download or read book Imagining World Politics written by L.H.M. Ling and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-03 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a non-Western feminist perspective on world politics and international relations. Creative, innovative, and challenging, it seeks completely to transform contemporary Eurocentric and masculinist IR by re-presenting it in non-Western, non-masculinist, and non-academic terms. Drawing on Daoist dialectics, the stories of Sihar and Shenya aim to redress such hegemonic imbalance by completing the IR story. To the yang of power politics, this book offers a yin of fairy-tale. (Both are equally fantastical but to different purposes.) To the yang of binary categories like Self vs Other, West vs Rest, hypermasculinity vs hyperfemininity, Sihar and Shenya show their yin complementarities and complicities, inside and out, top and bottom, center and periphery. And to the yang of intransigent hegemony, Sihar & Shenya explores the yin of emancipation through porous, water-like thought and behavior through venues like aesthetics and emotions. From this basis, we begin to see another world with another kind of politics. Written with students of IR and world politics in mind, this book offers a postcolonial bridge for IR/WP. Following an academic introduction to assist the reader, Ling moves away from traditional scholarship and into three interlocking fables: Book I shows what an alternative world could look and feel like. Book II makes the implications for IR/WP more explicit. It draws on the traditional Chinese notion of the five movements (wu xing) -- fire, metal, earth, wood, and water -- to illustrate iconic elements of IR/WP -- power, wealth, security, love, and knowledge -- and how they could change according to circumstance and context. Epilogue/Introduction: The Return brings the reader back into the Western world and focuses on modern-day PhD student Wanda who is troubled by what she is learning, and searches for a different perspective. Engaging with the substantive problematiques at the heart of international relations studies, this work is a unique and innovative resource for all students and scholars of international relations and world politics.

Book A More Beautiful and Terrible History

Download or read book A More Beautiful and Terrible History written by Jeanne Theoharis and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a “helpmate” but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband’s activism in these directions. Moving from “the histories we get” to “the histories we need,” Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and “polite racism” in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice—which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred. A More Beautiful and Terrible History will change our historical frame, revealing the richness of our civil rights legacy, the uncomfortable mirror it holds to the nation, and the crucial work that remains to be done. Winner of the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize in Nonfiction

Book The Wanderer

    Book Details:
  • Author : R. Michael Hoy
  • Publisher : Trafford Publishing
  • Release : 2006-05-19
  • ISBN : 141225356X
  • Pages : 87 pages

Download or read book The Wanderer written by R. Michael Hoy and published by Trafford Publishing. This book was released on 2006-05-19 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chapter XIII His walk back to the inn that afternoon was not only long, but he was beginning to comprehend some of the reasons for the uneasiness he felt when he first met with the citizens in the marketplace. The problems were many; and much of the malaise seemed to be caused by the moral integrity, or lack thereof, in the kingdom. If moral decay appeared to be at the center of the multitude of problems facing the kingdom, where better to further his investigation than at its religious core? To this point his investigation had revealed many troublesome problems. Some of the citizens had given him indications as to the nature of these problems, and even possible solutions to some of them. However, they were only partial and superficial solutions to a problem that was more endemic and threatening to the survival of the kingdom. If the kingdom was to survive, its morality had to be dominant. Should this morality not be intact, then was the kingdom worth saving? During his many visits to the university grounds he could not help but notice at the center of the university complex the cathedral, an awe-inspiring edifice that had been grandly designed and constructed many years before. The logic to his search inevitably led him to this moral center of the kingdom... As he neared the cathedral, citizens were entering in small groups. The wanderer, once inside, located a pew toward the rear of the chamber so he might better observe some of the citizens and their reactions to the sermon that morning. His first impression of this house of worship was the artistic detail that predominated. There were intimately detailed statues that almost humanized, yet idealized, those figures representing church history from early times, and a series of artistically detailed and colorful murals on the walls, which further developed the history of the religion. The multi-colored stained glass panels, which permitted the outside light to filter into the cathedral, colorfully accented the interior. The atmosphere reflected a well-organized and strategic plan, orchestrated many years before, to visually and spiritually elevate this sanctuary above and beyond the common existence of its believers... The minister, a gray-haired elderly citizen, from his pulpit high above the faithful appeared to be a fatherly and accepting church leader. This was unexpected to the wanderer, who had envisioned a more powerful and domineering representative of the church. The fatherly minister began his sermon with a scripted presentation, which was apparently part of the religious rhetoric used over many years to establish a reverent tone for his presentation that was to follow. This device, which was more mechanical than inspiring, had apparently functioned over the years, so it became an integral part of the weekly presentation. Once past this mechanical portion of his address, he began his sermon by identifying some of the major problems that the church believed were of concern to the citizens. His identification of those problems was certainly in consonance with many of those problems presented to the wanderer during his travels. The difficulty the wanderer was having with the fatherly minister's presentation was that his critique was more accepting than critical. His message seemed to be that the times were changing, and many of these issues that would have been severely criticized or acted upon in past years, were now being accepted, or at least tolerated, in the name of change.... Upon completion of the service, the wanderer visited the minister's quarters, a rather plain attachment to the rear of the cathedral. As was the case with the minister at the sermon, his quarters were similarly unremarkable in appearance. The wanderer knocked on the large wooden door and presently a pleasant appearing lady, who was apparently in the employ of the ministers, opened the door. After a congenial exchange of greetings, he was ushered into the home and asked to wait while the pleasant looking lady departed to fetch the minister... The minister's discussion was both moving and believable, unlike his earlier presentation at the church. But behind this compelling presentation, the wanderer detected a fatalism and acceptance of the changing position of the church. The church, the wanderer concluded, would not, in and of itself, be the vehicle around which the kingdom could rally to stem this decline. As the wanderer departed, thanking the minister for his valuable time, he observed the minister hobbling back up the stairs, again the aged religious leader he had observed when he first arrived.

Book Freedom Fables

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
  • Publisher : Zubaan
  • Release : 2022-07-22
  • ISBN : 9385932853
  • Pages : 102 pages

Download or read book Freedom Fables written by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and published by Zubaan. This book was released on 2022-07-22 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932), the writer of the feminist utopian fantasy ‘Sultana’s Dream’, come these tales of gumptious wit, describing the twists and turns of India’s two-hundred-year relationship with the imperial British. Freedom Fables begins with the two eponymous fables, both compact in form but temporally vast. The first story ‘Muktiphal’ (translated in this volume as ‘The Freedom Tree’) traces the rise of and divisions within India’s Congress party. ‘Gyanphal’ or ‘The Tree of Knowledge’, the second fable, begins in the Garden of Eden and moves swiftly to an idealised Kanakadwipa where a trading company beguiles the prosperous country and proceeds to ruin it. Throughout both, the fantastic floats easily over mere facts. Adam and Eve, the Almighty, djinns, paris, demons, and Mayavi magicians: these classic characters play decisive, intriguing roles. These major political satires are accompanied in this edition by six essays and two poems, which the intrepid Hossain wrote over a period of seventeen years. Interwoven through her writings are ideals that endure even today: education and emancipation for women, dignity for those living in the subcontinent, and freedom from colonial rule and influence.

Book Fables of Power

    Book Details:
  • Author : Annabel Patterson
  • Publisher : Duke University Press
  • Release : 1991-03-26
  • ISBN : 9780822311188
  • Pages : 188 pages

Download or read book Fables of Power written by Annabel Patterson and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-26 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this imaginative and illuminating work, Annabel Patterson traces the origins and meanings of the Aesopian fable, as well as its function in Renaissance culture and subsequently. She shows how the fable worked as a medium of political analysis and communication, especially from or on behalf of the politically powerless. Patterson begins with an analysis of the legendary Life of Aesop, its cultural history and philosophical implications, a topic that involves such widely separated figures as La Fontaine, Hegel, and Vygotsky. The myth’s origin is recovered here in the saving myth of Aesop the Ethiopian, black, ugly, who began as a slave but become both free and influential, a source of political wisdom. She then traces the early modern history of the fable from Caxton, Lydgate, and Henryson through the eighteenth century, focusing on such figures as Spenser, Sidney, Lyly, Shakespeare, and Milton, as well as the lesser-known John Ogilby, Sir Roger L’Estrange, and Samuel Croxall. Patterson discusses the famous fable of The Belly and the Members, which, because it articulated in symbolic terms some of the most intransigent problems in political philosophy and practice, was still going strong as a symbolic text in the mid-nineteenth century, where it was focused on industrial relations by Karl Marx and by George Eliot against electoral reform.

Book Social Power and Political Freedom

Download or read book Social Power and Political Freedom written by Gene Sharp and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Execution Channel

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael McCord
  • Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
  • Release : 2013-07-13
  • ISBN : 9781483983356
  • Pages : 218 pages

Download or read book The Execution Channel written by Michael McCord and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2013-07-13 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With colorful characters so ludicrous they could only be real, McCord's satire of profit, politics, and capital punishment should be required reading." -- Clarion ReviewWhat will readers encounter when exploring the wicked and witty satirical universe of Michael McCord's The Execution Channel: A Political Fable?First, they will travel to the not-so-distant future and discover the emerging new country of Real America and the Galtian Imperatives, a faith-based economic religion which promises that extreme austerity and tax cut policies will ensure "prosperity for all" though the exact details of the magic remain elusive. Next, readers will see that John Galt, the fictional hero of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, has become the founding father icon of Real America and the Real American Party, the new political force sweeping the land. Local militias do their patriotic duty and lead the privatization craze throughout Real America while employing a creative protection racket plan to fit every business budget.Finally, readers will behold the majesty of The Execution Channel - a televintet network that promotes a focus-group tested variety of live executions in football stadium settings. As foretold by the Galtian Imperatives, The Execution Channel has been hailed as a model of modern economic policy that seamlessly merges massive private sector profits and public sector bankruptcy.Set in 2018 in an increasingly non-United States of America, The Execution Channel: A Political Fable is fantastical in its imaginative scope of American political rhetoric and public policy run amok. McCord, an award-winning journalist and writer who lives in New Hampshire, offers fictional reportage with a provocative twist and more than a few punch lines."The initial spark for this satirical romp came from a 2011 Republican presidential primary debate when some of the audience cheered at the notion that if people without health insurance died, there was nothing anyone could do," McCord said. "I then made the leap to a perfectly sensible investment scheme of publicly televised executions in which guilt or innocence matter less than profit margins. From there, the theme menu grew to include the cult of Ayn Rand, political ambition, incoherence as a political virtue, greed redefined, secession, free market economics with no restraint, the primacy of sperm, backyard rocket launchers, psychic readings, reality TV mortgage foreclosures and monuments to austerity. The book aspires, as Lewis Carroll's White Queen so eloquently put it, to believe six impossible things at once, if not before breakfast then certainly by supper."Readers also will encounter an intriguing, colorful cast of characters that embrace a higher calling of extreme self-interest:* Gov. Lawrence C. "Demon Seed" Bowie of the Real American Republic of Texas is in a political fix because his 'War on the Poor' tax plan isn't working. * Texas militia leader Col. Rufus T. Fairbush wants to replace Bowie by the bullet or ballot while running on a platform to eliminate the idea of government. * Conservative televinet producer Jason Bravtart seeks redemption following the scandalous cancellation of The Real Homeless of Malibu Beach.* Billionaire speculator James "Big Stake" Frimmer II wants another big financial score to spread his political influence. * In the SoCal Liberty Territory of California, Penelope the Psychic is forced to be a confidential informant for Mr. Jones, the most feared security operator in Real America.The Execution Channel: A Political Fable is a subversive satire for our times and will leave readers wondering: Just how REAL is Real America?Learn more about The Execution Channel: A Political Fable and Michael McCord at www.the-execution-channel.com.

Book Cry Wolf

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul Lake
  • Publisher : BenBella Books, Inc.
  • Release : 2009-06-22
  • ISBN : 1935251104
  • Pages : 224 pages

Download or read book Cry Wolf written by Paul Lake and published by BenBella Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-06-22 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A brilliant piece of literature. Fifty years from now, I would not be surprised to see this book studied alongside Animal Farm in classrooms” (The Stanford Review). Cry Wolf is a perceptive allegory of the political challenges we face in post-9/11 America. The farm animals’ struggle to maintain their way of life against an influx of change is a powerful commentary on the importance of balancing freedom with justice, and on how easily even the best of intentions can destroy a community too caught up with what is “fair” to do what is right. Paul Lake’s novel raises questions in the heart of every devoted citizen: Does political correctness ever trump law? Should safety ever be compromised for the sake of inclusion? Are big government and judicial systems tools to create order, or do they beget chaos? “Lake writes vividly and characterizes shrewdly, producing an anti-immigration fable more polished than Orwell’s anti-Communist satire.” —Booklist “What seems, at first, a gentle fable about farm animals who enjoy a kind of ordered liberty, turns quickly into a grim allegory about man’s dark impulse toward the collective.” —Laurie Morrow, political columnist, The Montpelier Bridge “A charming and chilling fable that underscores the fragility of a world achieved with great difficulty and so easily undone by good intentions gone awry.” —Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief, First Things “In the great tradition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I can only hope that it will be as widely read and will be as powerful an influence as was Orwell’s masterpiece in awakening civilization to its present deadly peril.” —American Spectator

Book Radio Free Vermont

    Book Details:
  • Author : Bill McKibben
  • Publisher : Penguin
  • Release : 2017-11-07
  • ISBN : 0735219877
  • Pages : 240 pages

Download or read book Radio Free Vermont written by Bill McKibben and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We've got a long history of resistance in Vermont and this book is testimony to that fact.” –Bernie Sanders A book that's also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben's debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic. As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law. In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that's become more popular than ever--seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of 'Ethan Allen Day' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben's fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.

Book The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

Download or read book The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable written by Elizabeth Knowles and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Dictionary is part of the Oxford Reference Collection: using sustainable print-on-demand technology to make the acclaimed backlist of the Oxford Reference programme perennially available in hardback format. What is a ham-and-egger? What are Anglo-Saxon attitudes? Who or what is liable to jump the shark? Who first tried to nail jelly to the wall? The answers to these and many more questions are in this fascinating book. Here in one volume you can track down the stories behind the names and sayings you meet, whether in classic literature or today's news. Drawing on Oxford's unrivalled bank of reference and language online resources, this dictionary covers classical and other mythologies, history, religion, folk customs, superstitions, science and technology, philosophy, and popular culture. Extensive cross referencing makes it easy to trace specific information, while every page points to further paths to explore. A fascinating slice of cultural history, and a browser's delight from start to finish. What is the fog of war? Who first wanted to spend more time with one's family? When was the Dreamtime? How long since the first cry of Women and children first? Where might you find dark matter? Would you want the Midas touch? Should you worry about grey goo?