Download or read book A World Made of Fire written by Mark Childress and published by Overture Books. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mark Childress is is an artist, with an ear comparable to Eudora Welty's, which to me is the highest praise one can give. I haven't read a Southern novel since Losing Battles that has given me such pleasure. -- Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird The sense of reality with which Childress imbues his characters and their situation is remarkable. He has the true novelist's ability to commit himself entirely to the people and events he envisions, and this is rare; the reader is certain at all points that the author is not playing with the subject, but writing from deep within it. A truly outstanding book is the result. -- James Dickey A World Made of Fire is earthy, adroit, moving -- an excellent novel by a writer of great promise and talent. -- Jesse Hill Ford Mark Childress is a young novelist who has written a memorable story out of the land and people of the Deep South that throughout its length is constantly intruguing with unexpected innovations. The ever-present undercurrent of mystical events will probably startle many readers by arousing and bringing forth unfamiliar emotions. -- Erskine Caldwell A wonderful and powerful novel...Childress's debut in the world of fiction is a cause to be celebrated; he is the real thing. -- Pat Conroy Mark Childress's new-fashioned saga is full of delicate electricity and raw power. -- Barry Hannah This is a damned fine story. There is more here than story, though. This baby resonates. Mark Childress is a writer of almost uncanny stylistic ability and clear vision. His eye for detail is extraordinary. It makes you want to holler Oh yeah! like a guy who's gotten religion at a riverside camp meeting. It's close; it's luxurious in its rightness; it fulfills the central demand of art...to make us see more in what we always thought we were seeing. -- Stephen King A haunting first novel...There is a clear light of genuine story-telling talent shining through it all. -- Library Journal In an impressive debut, Childress has produced a spellbinding tale in the Southern gothic tradition. A writer of poetic acuity, he evokes the atmospher of a small Southern town and brings its inhabitants to life through their colorful, softly cadenced speech. Childress's remarkable command of language -- he uses imagery with sensuous skill -- his sure sense of plot, fueled by mysticism and mystery, and most of all, his beautifully nuanced depiction of Stella's coming of age, will keep readers enthralled. -- Publishers Weekly That rarest of finds, an unsentimental coming-of-age story, A World Made of Fire is also an engrossing mystery. Wrapped in its tale of voodoo and midnight rides is a detailed bestiary of human emotions and behaviors. San Francisco Chronicle Mark Childress's first novel is a complex allegory of pagan magic and Christian retribution... Mr. Childress writes his haunting novel with poetic cadences in brief, intense chapters. He is an author of imagination. Stella's coming of age in grief and loneliness is drawn wtih graceful authenticity. -- Valerie Miner, The New York Times Book Review A startlingly original first novel. Not only do a great many marvelous things happen, they do so in a time and place so untapped that Childress is able to claim the territory as his alone. He has marked himself, at the tender age of twenty-six, as a major new fictional voice. -- Bruce van Wyngarden, Saturday Review

Download or read book Paths of Fire written by Andrew Nahum and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2021-06-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Type “Mikhail Kalashnikov” into Google and the biography of the inventor will come back to you almost at the speed of light. Squeeze the trigger of a Kalashnikov and a bullet is kicked up the barrel by an archaic chemical explosion that would have been quite familiar to Oliver Cromwell or General Custer. The gun—antique, yet contemporary—still dominates the world. Geopolitical events and even consumer culture have been molded by the often-unseen research that firearms evoked. The new science of Galileo Galilei and Isaac Newton owed much to the Renaissance study of ballistics. But research into making guns and aiming them also brought on the more recent invention of mass production and kickstarted the contemporary field of artificial intelligence. This book follows the history of the gun and its often-unsuspected wider linkages, looking from the first cannons to modern gunnery, and to the yet-to-be-realized electrical futures of rays and beams.

Download or read book A World Lit Only by Fire written by William Manchester and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-09-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "lively and engaging" history of the Middle Ages (Dallas Morning News) from the acclaimed historian William Manchester, author of The Last Lion. From tales of chivalrous knights to the barbarity of trial by ordeal, no era has been a greater source of awe, horror, and wonder than the Middle Ages. In handsomely crafted prose, and with the grace and authority of his extraordinary gift for narrative history, William Manchester leads us from a civilization tottering on the brink of collapse to the grandeur of its rebirth: the dense explosion of energy that spawned some of history's greatest poets, philosophers, painters, adventurers, and reformers, as well as some of its most spectacular villains. "Manchester provides easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born." --Chicago Tribune

Download or read book Magnificent Vibration written by Rick Springfield and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Horatio Cotton, aka "Bob," has been looking for some combination of spiritual and carnal salvation his entire life. When he steals a self-help book called Magnificent Vibration: Discover Your True Purpose from a bookstore and calls the number scrawled inside the front cover, he discovers that he has a direct line to God, and that God likes to mess with him. Soon enough Bob finds a partner in Alice, a surprisingly sexy and good-humored nun, and they travel from America to Scotland and try to answer questions, such as Why are we here? What is love? Is there a Loch Ness monster? Does God send text messages? MAGNIFICENT VIBRATION is smart, savvy, rambunctious, and hilarious novel, about the biggest questions that one man - or mankind - has ever asked"--

Download or read book Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire written by Rebecca Henderson and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2020-04-28 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned Harvard professor debunks prevailing orthodoxy with a new intellectual foundation and a practical pathway forward for a system that has lost its moral and ethical foundation. Free market capitalism is one of humanity's greatest inventions and the greatest source of prosperity the world has ever seen. But this success has been costly. Capitalism is on the verge of destroying the planet and destabilizing society as wealth rushes to the top. The time for action is running short. Rebecca Henderson's rigorous research in economics, psychology, and organizational behavior, as well as her many years of work with companies around the world, give us a path forward. She debunks the worldview that the only purpose of business is to make money and maximize shareholder value. She shows that we have failed to reimagine capitalism so that it is not only an engine of prosperity but also a system that is in harmony with environmental realities, the striving for social justice, and the demands of truly democratic institutions. Henderson's deep understanding of how change takes place, combined with fascinating in-depth stories of companies that have made the first steps towards reimagining capitalism, provide inspiring insight into what capitalism can be. Together with rich discussions of important role of government and how the worlds of finance, governance, and leadership must also evolve, Henderson provides the pragmatic foundation for navigating a world faced with unprecedented challenge, but also with extraordinary opportunity for those who can get it right.

Download or read book How to Set the World on Fire written by T.K. Riggins and published by Franchise Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Quest Series is an annual competition at The Academy that challenges warrior, wizard and scholar students. In teams of four, they travel across the realm to collect magical items, race through castles, and interact with enchanting creatures in pursuit of championship glory. Kase Garrick is a warrior that strives for greatness and wants to prove himself a champion, but can only compete if he convinces two scholars and a wizard to come together. Although their team defies normal convention, it does not lack strength, wisdom or heart. Their journey tests their individual skills, dares them to look past their differences, and stretches them beyond their limits in order to overcome adversity. It’s a quest of self-discovery and growth, trust and patience, friendship and teamwork.

Download or read book The World Ending Fire written by Wendell Berry and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive―and only author-authorized―Wendell Berry reader, "America's greatest philosopher on sustainable life and living" (Chicago Tribune). In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his fifty-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work. These are essays written in defiance of the false call to progress and in defense of local landscapes, essays that celebrate our cultural heritage, our history, and our home. With grace and conviction, Wendell Berry shows that we simply cannot afford to succumb to the mass-produced madness that drives our global economy―the natural world will not allow it. Yet he also shares with us a vision of consolation and of hope. We may be locked in an uneven struggle, but we can and must begin to treat our land, our neighbors, and ourselves with respect and care. As Berry urges, we must abandon arrogance and stand in awe.

Download or read book Bird on Fire written by Andrew Ross and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Phoenix, Arizona is one of America's fastest growing metropolitan regions. It is also its least sustainable one, sprawling over a thousand square miles, with a population of four and a half million, minimal rainfall, scorching heat, and an insatiable appetite for unrestrained growth and unrestricted property rights. In Bird on Fire, eminent social and cultural analyst Andrew Ross focuses on the prospects for sustainability in Phoenix--a city in the bull's eye of global warming--and also the obstacles that stand in the way. Most authors writing on sustainable cities look at places that have excellent public transit systems and relatively high density, such as Portland, Seattle, or New York. But Ross contends that if we can't change the game in fast-growing, low-density cities like Phoenix, the whole movement has a major problem. Drawing on interviews with 200 influential residents--from state legislators, urban planners, developers, and green business advocates to civil rights champions, energy lobbyists, solar entrepreneurs, and community activists--Ross argues that if Phoenix is ever to become sustainable, it will occur more through political and social change than through technological fixes. Ross explains how Arizona's increasingly xenophobic immigration laws, science-denying legislature, and growth-at-all-costs business ethic have perpetuated social injustice and environmental degradation. But he also highlights the positive changes happening in Phoenix, in particular the Gila River Indian Community's successful struggle to win back its water rights, potentially shifting resources away from new housing developments to producing healthy local food for the people of the Phoenix Basin. Ross argues that this victory may serve as a new model for how green democracy can work, redressing the claims of those who have been aggrieved in a way that creates long-term benefits for all. Bird on Fire offers a compelling take on one of the pressing issues of our time--finding pathways to sustainability at a time when governments are dismally failing in their responsibility to address climate change.

Download or read book Wayward written by Dana Spiotta and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “furious and addictive new novel” (The New York Times) about mothers and daughters, and one woman's midlife reckoning as she flees her suburban life. “Exhilarating ... reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad.” —The New York Times Book Review Samantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and at fifty-two she finds herself staring into "the Mids"—that hour of supreme wakefulness between three and four in the morning in which women of a certain age suddenly find themselves contemplating motherhood, mortality, and, in this case, the state of our unraveling nation. When she falls in love with a beautiful, decrepit house in a hardscrabble neighborhood in Syracuse, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life—and her family—as she grapples with how to be a wife, a mother, and a daughter, in a country that is coming apart at the seams. Dana Spiotta's Wayward is a stunning novel about aging, about the female body, and about female complexity in contemporary America. Probing and provocative, brainy and sensual, it is a testament to our weird times, to reforms and resistance and utopian wishes, and to the beauty of ruins.

Download or read book A World on Fire written by Amanda Foreman and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 1010 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 10 BEST BOOKS • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • 2011 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • The New Yorker • Chicago Tribune • The Economist • Nancy Pearl, NPR • Bloomberg.com • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In this brilliant narrative, Amanda Foreman tells the fascinating story of the American Civil War—and the major role played by Britain and its citizens in that epic struggle. Between 1861 and 1865, thousands of British citizens volunteered for service on both sides of the Civil War. From the first cannon blasts on Fort Sumter to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, they served as officers and infantrymen, sailors and nurses, blockade runners and spies. Through personal letters, diaries, and journals, Foreman introduces characters both humble and grand, while crafting a panoramic yet intimate view of the war on the front lines, in the prison camps, and in the great cities of both the Union and the Confederacy. In the drawing rooms of London and the offices of Washington, on muddy fields and aboard packed ships, Foreman reveals the decisions made, the beliefs held and contested, and the personal triumphs and sacrifices that ultimately led to the reunification of America. “Engrossing . . . a sprawling drama.”—The Washington Post “Eye-opening . . . immensely ambitious and immensely accomplished.”—The New Yorker WINNER OF THE FLETCHER PRATT AWARD FOR CIVIL WAR HISTORY

Download or read book Fire and Light written by James MacGregor Burns and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With this profound and magnificent book, drawing on his deep reservoir of thought and expertise in the humanities, James MacGregor Burns takes us into the fire's center. As a 21st-century philosopher, he brings to vivid life the incandescent personalities and ideas that embody the best in Western civilization and shows us how understanding them is essential for anyone who would seek to decipher the complex problems and potentialities of the world we will live in tomorrow." --Michael Beschloss, New York Times bestselling author of Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 "James MacGregor Burns is a national treasure, and Fire and Light is the elegiac capstone to a career devoted to understanding the seminal ideas that made America - for better and for worse - what it is." --Joseph J. Ellis, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning author Revolutionary Summer Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling historian James MacGregor Burns explores the most daring and transformational intellectual movement in history, the European and American Enlightenment In this engaging, provocative history, James MacGregor Burns brilliantly illuminates the two-hundred-year conflagration of the Enlightenment, when audacious questions and astonishing ideas tore across Europe and the New World, transforming thought, overturning governments, and inspiring visionary political experiments. Fire and Light brings to vivid life the galaxy of revolutionary leaders of thought and action who, armed with a new sense of human possibility, driven by a hunger for change, created the modern world. Burns discovers the origins of a distinctive American Enlightenment in men like the Founding Fathers Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, and their early encounters with incendiary European ideas about liberty and equality. It was these thinker-activists who framed the United States as a grand and continuing experiment in Enlightenment principles. Today the same questions Enlightenment thinkers grappled with have taken on new urgency around the world: in the turmoil of the Arab Spring, in the former Soviet Union, and China, as well as in the United States itself. What should a nation be? What should citizens expect from their government? Who should lead and how can leadership be made both effective and accountable? What is happiness, and what can the state contribute to it? Burns's exploration of the ideals and arguments that formed the bedrock of our modern world shines a new light on these ever-important questions.

Download or read book Earth under Fire written by Gary Braasch and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-03-24 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than a warning, Earth under Fire is the most complete illustrated guide to the effects of climate change now available. It offers an upbeat and intelligent account of how we can lessen the effects of our near-total dependence on fossil fuels using technologies and energy sources already available. A thorough revision and a new preface for the paperback edition bring the compelling facts about climate change up to date.

Download or read book Memory of Fire written by Holly Lisle and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lauren Dane discovers a doorway to another reality in Cat Creek, North Carolina -- and she crosses over, driven by a strange compulsion she can neither resist nor comprehend. Molly McColl is brought there against her will -- kidnapped from her trailer and carried into a realm that traps her, terrifies her...yet offers her a strange and wondrous escape. In an extraordinary universe of magic and monsters, two strangers sharing only pain and loss must now pursue the destiny that has united them. Because worlds are suddenly threatened by an evil beyond imagining -- the world they have entered...and the one the have left behind.

Download or read book The Last Dragon Chronicles 6 Fire World written by Chris D'Lacey and published by Orchard Books. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris d'Lacey's wonderful storytelling takes us on a journey with familiar characters - in an unfamiliar place. Evil Aunts, intriguing firebirds and a dangerous universe await in another action-packed, compelling story.

Download or read book World on Fire written by Amy Chua and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2004-01-06 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The reigning consensus holds that the combination of free markets and democracy would transform the third world and sweep away the ethnic hatred and religious zealotry associated with underdevelopment. In this revelatory investigation of the true impact of globalization, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua explains why many developing countries are in fact consumed by ethnic violence after adopting free market democracy. Chua shows how in non-Western countries around the globe, free markets have concentrated starkly disproportionate wealth in the hands of a resented ethnic minority. These “market-dominant minorities” – Chinese in Southeast Asia, Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, whites in Latin America and South Africa, Indians in East Africa, Lebanese in West Africa, Jews in post-communist Russia – become objects of violent hatred. At the same time, democracy empowers the impoverished majority, unleashing ethnic demagoguery, confiscation, and sometimes genocidal revenge. She also argues that the United States has become the world’s most visible market-dominant minority, a fact that helps explain the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. Chua is a friend of globalization, but she urges us to find ways to spread its benefits and curb its most destructive aspects.

Download or read book A Fire Upon The Deep written by Vernor Vinge and published by Tor Science Fiction. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now with a new introduction for the Tor Essentials line, A Fire Upon the Deep is sure to bring a new generation of SF fans to Vinge's award-winning works. A Hugo Award-winning Novel! “Vinge is one of the best visionary writers of SF today.”-David Brin Thousands of years in the future, humanity is no longer alone in a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures, and technology, can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence. Fleeing this galactic threat, Ravna crash lands on a strange world with a ship-hold full of cryogenically frozen children, the only survivors from a destroyed space-lab. They are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. Tor books by Vernor Vinge Zones of Thought Series A Fire Upon The Deep A Deepness In The Sky The Children of The Sky Realtime/Bobble Series The Peace War Marooned in Realtime Other Novels The Witling Tatja Grimm's World Rainbows End Collections Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge True Names At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Download or read book World on Fire written by Mark Rowlands and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We face three epoch-defining environmental problems: climate, extinction and pestilence. Our climate is changing in ways that will have serious consequences for humans, and may even profoundly affect the ability of the planet to support life. All around us, other species are disappearing at a rate between several hundred and several thousand times the normal background rate of extinction. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which has wreaked social and economic havoc, is merely the latest model off a blossoming production line of newly emerging infectious diseases, many of which have the potential to be far worse. At the heart of these problems lies an ancient habit: eating animals. This habit is the most significant driver of species extinction and of newly emerging infectious diseases, and one of the most important drivers of climate change. This is a habit we can no longer afford to indulge. Breaking it will substantially reduce climate emissions. It will stem our insatiable hunger for land that is at the heart of both the problems of extinction and pestilence. Most importantly, breaking this habit will make available vast areas of land suitable for afforestation: the return of forests to where they once grew. Afforestation will significantly mitigate all three problems. But only if we stop eating animals will we have enough land for this strategy to work"--