Download or read book Armageddon in Retrospect and Other New and Unpublished Writings on War and Peace written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Putnam Adult. This book was released on 2008 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve previously unpublished writings on war and peace include such pieces as an essay on the destruction of Dresden, a story about the first-meal fantasies of three soldiers, and a meditation on the impossibility of shielding children from the temptations of violence.
Download or read book Armageddon In Retrospect written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve previously unpublished writings on war and peace include such pieces as an essay on the destruction of Dresden, a story about the first-meal fantasies of three soldiers, and a meditation on the impossibility of shielding children from the temptations of violence.
Download or read book Palm Sunday written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press. This book was released on 2009-09-30 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Kurt Vonnegut] is either the funniest serious writer around or the most serious funny writer.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut’s singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth. “Vonnegut is at the top of his form, and it is wonderful.”—Newsday
Download or read book God Bless You Dr Kevorkian written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Slapstick's "Turkey Farm" to Slaughterhouse-Five's eternity in a Tralfamadorean zoo cage with Montana Wildhack, the question of the afterlife never left Kurt Vonnegut's mind. In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy.
Download or read book Look at the Birdie written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2009-10-20 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Relentlessly fun to read.”—Dave Eggers • A collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and funny portrait of life in post–World War II America—a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Here are tales both cautionary and hopeful, each brimming with Vonnegut’s trademark humor and profound humanism. A family learns the downside of confiding their deepest secrets into a magical invention. A man finds himself in a Kafkaesque world of trouble after he runs afoul of the shady underworld boss who calls the shots in an upstate New York town. A quack psychiatrist turned “murder counselor” concocts a novel new outlet for his paranoid patients. While these stories reflect the anxieties of the postwar era that Vonnegut was so adept at capturing—and provide insight into the development of his early style—collectively, they have a timeless quality that makes them just as relevant today as when they were written. It’s impossible to imagine any of these pieces flowing from the pen of another writer; each in its own way is unmistakably, quintessentially Vonnegut. Featuring a foreword by author and longtime Vonnegut confidant Sidney Offit and illustrated with Vonnegut’s characteristically insouciant line drawings, Look at the Birdie is an unexpected gift for readers who thought his unique voice had been stilled forever—and serves as a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius. Includes these never-before-published stories: “Confido” “FUBAR” “Shout About It from the Housetops” “Ed Luby’s Key Club” “A Song for Selma” “Hall of Mirrors” “The Nice Little People” “Hello, Red” “Little Drops of Water” “The Petrified Ants” “The Honor of a Newsboy” “Look at the Birdie” “King and Queen of the Universe” “The Good Explainer” “[Look at the Birdie] brings us the late writer’s young voice as he skewers—sometimes gently, always lethally—post World War II America.”—The Boston Globe
Download or read book Love Kurt written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Random House. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A never-before-seen collection of deeply personal love letters from Kurt Vonnegut to his first wife, Jane, compiled and edited by their daughter “A glimpse into the mind of a writer finding his voice.”—The Washington Post “If ever I do write anything of length—good or bad—it will be written with you in mind.” Kurt Vonnegut’s eldest daughter, Edith, was cleaning out her mother’s attic when she stumbled upon a dusty, aged box. Inside, she discovered an unexpected treasure: more than two hundred love letters written by Kurt to Jane, spanning the early years of their relationship. The letters begin in 1941, after the former schoolmates reunited at age nineteen, sparked a passionate summer romance, and promised to keep in touch when they headed off to their respective colleges. And they did, through Jane’s conscientious studying and Kurt’s struggle to pass chemistry. The letters continue after Kurt dropped out and enlisted in the army in 1943, while Jane in turn graduated and worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. They also detail Kurt’s deployment to Europe in 1944, where he was taken prisoner of war and declared missing in action, and his eventual safe return home and the couple’s marriage in 1945. Full of the humor and wit that we have come to associate with Kurt Vonnegut, the letters also reveal little-known private corners of his mind. Passionate and tender, they form an illuminating portrait of a young soldier’s life in World War II as he attempts to come to grips with love and mortality. And they bring to light the origins of Vonnegut the writer, when Jane was the only person who believed in and supported him supported him, the young couple having no idea how celebrated he would become. A beautiful full-color collection of handwritten letters, notes, sketches, and comics, interspersed with Edith’s insights and family memories, Love, Kurt is an intimate record of a young man growing into himself, a fascinating account of a writer finding his voice, and a moving testament to the life-altering experience of falling in love.
Download or read book Deadeye Dick written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolf Waltz's principal objection to life was that it was too easy to make horrible mistakes. He was himself to become a double-murderer at the age of twelve - on Mother's Day. This would at least make subsequent mistakes seem fairly trivial. Rudolf's father, Otto Waltz, had in 1910 bought a painting in Vienna from a destitute Adolf Hitler, thereby possibly saving him from starvation for a future generation. He made the further mistake of setting himself up as an artist when he returned from Europe to Midland City, Ohio, where everyone knew Otto couldn't draw for sour apples. He had funds to indulge this grand illusion (in the splendor of a vast converted 'medieval granary' studio, reminiscent of Mount Fujiyama) because his father had made a fortune producing an opium-and-cocaine-laced quack medicine called Saint Elmo's Remedy, popularly known to be 'absolutely harmless unless discontinued'. The Waltz inheritance even stretched to a troupe of black servants, which was just as well since Rudy's mother was as disinclined to look after a home as his 'artist' father was to paint.
Download or read book Pity the Reader written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Rosetta Books. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A rich, generous book about writing and reading and Kurt Vonnegut as writer, teacher, and friend . . . Every page brings pleasure and insight.”—Gail Godwin, New York Times bestselling author Here is an entirely new side of Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut as a teacher of writing. Of course he’s given us glimpses before, with aphorisms and short essays and articles and in his speeches. But never before has an entire book been devoted to Kurt Vonnegut the teacher. Here is pretty much everything Vonnegut ever said or wrote having to do with the writing art and craft, altogether a healing, a nourishing expedition. His former student, Suzanne McConnell, has outfitted us for the journey, and in these 37 chapters covers the waterfront of how one American writer brought himself to the pinnacle of the writing art, and we can all benefit as a result. Kurt Vonnegut was one of the few grandmasters of American literature, whose novels continue to influence new generations about the ways in which our imaginations can help us to live. Few aspects of his contribution have not been plumbed—fourteen novels, collections of his speeches, his essays, his letters, his plays—so this fresh view of him is a bonanza for writers and readers and Vonnegut fans everywhere. “Part homage, part memoir, and a 100% guide to making art with words, Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style is a simply mesmerizing book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!”—Andre Dubus III, #1 New York Times bestselling author “The blend of memory, fact, keen observation, spellbinding descriptiveness and zany characters that populated Vonnegut’s work is on full display here.”—James McBride, National Book Award-winning author
Download or read book Swimming in a Sea of Death written by David Rieff and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both a memoir and an investigation, Swimming in a Sea of Death is David Rieff's loving tribute to his mother, the writer Susan Sontag, and her final battle with cancer. Rieff's brave, passionate, and unsparing witness of the last nine months of her life, from her initial diagnosis to her death, is both an intensely personal portrait of the relationship between a mother and a son, and a reflection on what it is like to try to help someone gravely ill in her fight to go on living and, when the time comes, to die with dignity. Rieff offers no easy answers. Instead, his intensely personal book is a meditation on what it means to confront death in our culture. In his most profound work, this brilliant writer confronts the blunt feelings of the survivor -- the guilt, the self-questioning, the sense of not having done enough. And he tries to understand what it means to desire so desperately, as his mother did to the end of her life, to try almost anything in order to go on living. Drawing on his mother's heroic struggle, paying tribute to her doctors' ingenuity and faithfulness, and determined to tell what happened to them all, Swimming in a Sea of Death subtly draws wider lessons that will be of value to others when they find themselves in the same situation.
Download or read book While Mortals Sleep written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Foreword by Dave Eggers These previously unpublished, beautifully rendered works of fiction are a testament to Kurt Vonnegut’s unique blend of observation and imagination. Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads fritters away his free time with miniature trains—until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays—a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. Featuring a Foreword by Dave Eggers, While Mortals Sleep is a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be. Includes the following stories: “Jenny” “The Epizootic” “Hundred-Dollar Kisses” “Guardian of the Person” “With His Hand on the Throttle” “Girl Pool” “Ruth” “While Mortals Sleep” “Out, Brief Candle” “Tango” “Bomar” “The Man Without No Kiddleys” “Mr. Z” “$10,000 a Year, Easy” “Money Talks” “The Humbugs” Praise for While Mortals Sleep “Immensely readable and thoroughly entertaining.”—The Washington Post “Taut, concise . . . The stories set themselves up with neat swiftness, proceed at a clip, and shut down with equal speed, [showing Vonnegut] honing his skills in structure and satire.”—Los Angeles Times “A lovely reminder of the mischievous moral voice we lost when we lost Kurt Vonnegut.”—San Francisco Chronicle “These stories were all good when they were written decades ago, but many strike me as great now. Never has the voice of Kurt Vonnegut, humanist and humorist, been more relevant.”—The Seattle Times “There’s something distinctly timeless about Vonnegut’s vision.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune
Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Fates Worse Than Death written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-11-07 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second volume of Vonnegutâe(tm)s autobiographical writings âe" a collage of his own life story, snipped up and stuck down alongside his views on everything from suicidal depression to the future of the planet and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Honest, dark, rambling, funny; this rare glimpse of Vonnegut's soul is a dagger to the heart of Western complacency.
Download or read book Happy Birthday Wanda June written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Richly and often pertinently funny [with] a sure instinct for the carefully considered irrelevance . . . a great deal of incidental hilarity [and] inspired idiocy.”—The New York Times Happy Birthday Wanda June was Kurt Vonnegut’s first play, which premiered in New York in 1970 and was then adapted into a film in 1971. It is a darkly humorous and searing examination of the excesses of capitalism, patriotism, toxic masculinity, and American culture in the post-Vietnam War era. Featuring behind-the-scenes photographs from the original stage production, this play captures Vonnegut’s brilliantly distinct perspective unlike we have ever seen it before. “A great artist.”—The Cincinnati Enquirer
Download or read book Seize the High Ground written by James A. Walker and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2003 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[Seize the high ground is a] narrative history of the Army's aerospace experience from the 1950s to the present. The focus is on ballistic missile defense, from the early NIKE-HERCULES missile program through the SAFEGUARD acquisition site allowed by the 1972 ABM Treaty to the more advanced 'Star Wars' concepts studies toward the end of the century. [What is] covered is not only the technological response to the threat but the organizational and tactical development of the commands and units responsible for the defense mission"--CMH website.
Download or read book Talking Vonnegut written by Chuck Augello and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-04-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of 29 interviews explores the outer reaches of the Kurt Vonnegut universe. Conversations reveal how Robert B. Weide's letter to Kurt led to a long friendship and an acclaimed documentary, how readers in the former Soviet Union fell in love with Vonnegut during the Cold War, how Ryan North and Albert Monteys adapted Slaughterhouse-Five into a graphic novel, how two podcasters introduced him to a new generation of readers, and how Vonnegut's time teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop helped transform him from an unknown paperback writer into a literary superstar. Also included are eight essays by the author. These cover Vonnegut's thoughts on guns and loneliness, evaluate his posthumous publications, offer a guide to the best Vonnegut videos available online, and ask questions like "Was Kurt Vonnegut secretly a romance writer?" A resource for students, scholars and fans, this book offers windows into Vonnegut's life and art that are often overlooked in standard biographies.
Download or read book We Modern People written by Anindita Banerjee and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How science fiction forged a unique Russian vision of modernity distinct from Western models Science fiction emerged in Russia considerably earlier than its English version and instantly became the hallmark of Russian modernity. We Modern People investigates why science fiction appeared here, on the margins of Europe, before the genre had even been named, and what it meant for people who lived under conditions that Leon Trotsky famously described as "combined and uneven development." Russian science fiction was embraced not only in literary circles and popular culture, but also by scientists, engineers, philosophers, and political visionaries. Anindita Banerjee explores the handful of well-known early practitioners, such as Briusov, Bogdanov, and Zamyatin, within a much larger continuum of new archival material comprised of journalism, scientific papers, popular science texts, advertisements, and independent manifestos on social transformation. In documenting the unusual relationship between Russian science fiction and Russian modernity, this book offers a new critical perspective on the relationship between science, technology, the fictional imagination, and the consciousness of being modern.
Download or read book More Than Just War written by Charles A. Jones and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book raises questions about the just war tradition through a critical examination of its revival and by juxtaposing it with a literary phenomenology of war. Recent public debate about war has leaned heavily on a just-war tradition dating back many centuries. This book examines the recent revival of that tradition in the United States and Britain, arguing that it is less coherent and comprehensive as an approach to the ethical issues arising from war than is generally supposed, and that it is inconsistent in important ways with the theology on which it was originally based. A second line of criticism is mounted through close readings of modern texts in English - from Britain, Australia and the USA - that together constitute a more subjective, bottom-up understanding of the moral dilemmas of military life. In this second tradition the task of representing war is seen as more problematic, and its rationality more questionable, than in just war discourse. Works by William Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, James Fennimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Tim O'Brien and Kurt Vonnegut are featured. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of security studies, military studies, theology and international relations.
