Download or read book City Improbable Writings R E written by Khushwant and published by Penguin Books India. This book was released on 2010-09 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘Delhi is the twin of pure paradise, a prototype of the heavenly throne on an earthlyscroll’—Amir Khusrau A city of contradictions, where ancient traditions and modern aspirations jostle for space, Delhi has often been compared to a phoenix rising from the ashes. Its three thousand years of eventful history have witnessed the rise and fall of several empires, a process that continues today. City Improbable brings together writings by immigrants, residents, refugees, travellers and invaders who have engaged with India’s capital over different epochs. Babur shares his earliest experience of the city and Amir Khusrau praises the fine lads of Delhi; Ibn Battuta and Niccolao Manucci record the glories and follies of prominent rulers; William Dalrymple and Khushwant Singh provide intriguing accounts of the threshold period that saw the coming of the British and the waning of the Mughals. Poets and storytellers—Meer Taqi Meer, Ghalib, Yashpal, Kamleshwar, Ruskin Bond—narrate their versions of the city. Contemporary Delhi is featured in a variety of vignettes: the bureaucracy, the Emergency, the anti-Sikh violence, lovers and joggers in Lodi Gardens, the city’s Sufi legacy as well as its changing cuisine. Among the new pieces in this expanded edition are Sam Miller’s account of his experiences in the suburb of Noida, Manto’s story about a girl from Delhi leaving the city during Partition, Jarnail Singh’s unflinching recollection of the massacre of Sikhs in 1984, a photo essay on Shahpur Jat by Karoki Lewis, and a composite narrative by the young writers of the Cybermohalla Collective about the making of a resettlement colony.
Download or read book City Improbable written by Khushwant Singh and published by Viking Adult. This book was released on 2001 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributed articles on history and social life of Delhi, India.
Download or read book Improbable Scholars written by David L. Kirp and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Improbable Scholars, David L. Kirp challenges the conventional wisdom about public schools and education reform in America through an in-depth look at Union City, New Jersey's high-performing urban school district. In this compelling study, Kirp reveals Union's city's revolutionary secret: running an exemplary school system doesn't demand heroics, just hard and steady work.
Download or read book An Improbable Life written by Michael I. Sovern and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-18 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Columbia University began the second half of the twentieth century in decline, bottoming out with the student riots of 1968. Yet by the close of the century, the institution had regained its stature as one of the greatest universities in the world. According to the New York Times, "If any one person is responsible for Columbia's recovery, it is surely Michael Sovern." In this memoir, Sovern, who served as the university's president from 1980 to 1993, recounts his sixty-year involvement with the institution after growing up in the South Bronx. He addresses key issues in academia, such as affordability, affirmative action, the relative rewards of teaching and research, lifetime tenure, and the role of government funding. Sovern also reports on his many off-campus adventures, including helping the victims of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, stepping into the chairmanship of Sotheby's, responding to a strike by New York City's firemen, a police riot and threats to shut down the city's transit system, playing a role in the theater world as president of the Shubert Foundation, and chairing the Commission on Integrity in Government.
Download or read book The Accidental City written by Lawrence N. Powell and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-13 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the history of the city from its being contended over as swampland through Louisiana's statehood in 1812, discussing its motley identities as a French village, African market town, Spanish fortress, and trade center.
Download or read book The Improbable Voyage written by Tristan Jones and published by Sheridan House, Inc.. This book was released on 1998 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Improbable Voyage is the astonishing account of TRistan Jones' 2,307 mile voyage across Europe in Outward Leg. Continuing his round-the-world journey, Tristan traveled from the North Sea to the Black Sea via the rivers Rhine and Danube. Tristan welcomed each difficulty as a challenge to be met and overcome. Battling ice and cold, life-threatening rapids and narrow defiles, German bureaucrats and Romanian frontier police, Tristan made his way through eight countries and emerged triumphant, if battered, bruised and penniless, at the Black Sea. Tristan gives us a vivid glimpse of the quality of life along Europe's oldest water routes and behind the Iron Curtain.
Download or read book A Most Improbable Adventure written by Jason Thiessen and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2016-05-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty-one-year-old Jason Thiessen was a recently unemployed husband and father of two young boys. During a time when he should have been acting responsibly and being realistic, he did what many thought was reckless and foolhardy. He traveled to Central America and made his way overland from Mexico City to Panama City, with virtually no plan. Rather than succumb to the fears of others, he followed his heart and the wise guidance of his ever-supportive wife and took off on an adventure through one of the worlds most dangerous, yet beautiful, and often overlooked geographies. He was typically twice as old as the travelers he encountered but he also met and teamed up with others in his own age group. With heart, humour, wit, and edginess, Thiessen shares his travel stories in A Most Improbable Adventure. He tells how he ventured through Central America to explore, to expand his mind and spirit, to take advantage of a gift that was given him, and, ultimately, to seek fulfillment.
Download or read book The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine written by James Landers and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, monthly issues of Cosmopolitan magazine scream out to readers from checkout counters and newsstands. With bright covers and bold, sexy headlines, this famous periodical targets young, single women aspiring to become the quintessential “Cosmo girl.” Cosmopolitan is known for its vivacious character and frank, explicit attitude toward sex, yet because of its reputation, many people don’t realize that the magazine has undergone many incarnations before its current one, including family literary magazine and muckraking investigative journal, and all are presented in The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine. The book boasts one particularly impressive contributor: Helen Gurley Brown herself, who rarely grants interviews but spoke and corresponded with James Landers to aid in his research. When launched in 1886, Cosmopolitan was a family literary magazine that published quality fiction, children’s stories, and homemaking tips. In 1889 it was rescued from bankruptcy by wealthy entrepreneur John Brisben Walker, who introduced illustrations and attracted writers such as Mark Twain, Willa Cather, and H. G. Wells. Then, when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst purchased Cosmopolitan in 1905, he turned it into a purveyor of exposé journalism to aid his personal political pursuits. But when Hearst abandoned those ambitions, he changed the magazine in the 1920s back to a fiction periodical featuring leading writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and William Somerset Maugham. His approach garnered success by the 1930s, but poor editing sunk Cosmo’s readership as decades went on. By the mid-1960s executives considered letting Cosmopolitan die, but Helen Gurley Brown, an ambitious and savvy businesswoman, submitted a plan for a dramatic editorial makeover. Gurley Brown took the helm and saved Cosmopolitan by publishing articles about topics other women’s magazines avoided. Twenty years later, when the magazine ended its first century, Cosmopolitan was the profit center of the Hearst Corporation and a culturally significant force in young women’s lives. The Improbable First Century of Cosmopolitan Magazine explores how Cosmopolitan survived three near-death experiences to become one of the most dynamic and successful magazines of the twentieth century. Landers uses a wealth of primary source materials to place this important magazine in the context of history and depict how it became the cultural touchstone it is today. This book will be of interest not only to modern Cosmo aficionadas but also to journalism students, news historians, and anyone interested in publishing.
Download or read book Improbable Women written by William Woods Cotterman and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zenobia was the third-century Syrian queen who rebelled against Roman rule. Before Emperor Aurelian prevailed against her forces, she had seized almost one-third of the Roman Empire. Today, her legend attracts thousands of visitors to her capital, Palmyra, one of the great ruined cities of the ancient world. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during the time of Ottoman rule, travel to the Middle East was almost impossible for Westerners. That did not stop five daring women from abandoning their conventional lives and venturing into the heart of this inhospitable region. Improbable Women explores the lives of Hester Stanhope, Jane Digby, Isabel Burton, Gertrude Bell, and Freya Stark, narrating the story of each woman’s pilgrimage to Palmyra to pay homage to the warrior queen. Although the women lived in different time periods, ranging from the eighteenth century to the mid–twentieth century, they all had middle- to upper-class British backgrounds and overcame great societal pressures to pursue their independence. Cotterman situates their lives against a backdrop of the Middle Eastern history that was the setting for their adventures. Divided into six sections, one devoted to Zenobia and one on each of the five women, Improbable Women is a fascinating glimpse into the experiences and characters of these intelligent, open-minded, and free-spirited explorers.
Download or read book Imperfect written by Jim Abbott and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2013-03-26 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Honest, touching, and beautifully rendered . . . Far more than a book about baseball, it is a deeply felt story of triumph and failure, dreams and disappointments. Jim Abbott has hurled another gem.”—Jonathan Eig, New York Times bestselling author of Luckiest Man NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Born without a right hand, Jim Abbott dreamed of someday being a great athlete. Raised in Flint, Michigan, by parents who encouraged him to compete, Jim would become an ace pitcher for the University of Michigan. But his journey was only beginning: By twenty-one, he’d won the gold medal game at the 1988 Olympics and—without spending a day in the minor leagues—cracked the starting rotation of the California Angels. In 1991, he would finish third in the voting for the Cy Young Award. Two years later, he would don Yankee pinstripes and pitch one of the most dramatic no-hitters in major-league history. In this honest and insightful book, Jim Abbott reveals the challenges he faced in becoming an elite pitcher, the insecurities he dealt with in a life spent as the different one, and the intense emotion generated by his encounters with disabled children from around the country. With a riveting pitch-by-pitch account of his no-hitter providing the ideal frame for his story, this unique athlete offers readers an extraordinary and unforgettable memoir. “Compelling . . . [a] big-hearted memoir.”—Los Angeles Times “Inspirational.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer Includes an exclusive conversation between Jim Abbott and Tim Brown in the back of the book.
Download or read book Indonesia Etc Exploring the Improbable Nation written by Elizabeth Pisani and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A spectacular achievement and one of the very best travel books I have read." —Simon Winchester, Wall Street Journal Declaring independence in 1945, Indonesia said it would "work out the details of the transfer of power etc. as soon as possible." With over 300 ethnic groups spread across over 13,500 islands, the world’s fourth most populous nation has been working on that "etc." ever since. Author Elizabeth Pisani traveled 26,000 miles in search of the links that bind this disparate nation.
Download or read book Atlas of Improbable Places written by Travis Elborough and published by Aurum Press. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atlas of Improbable Places shows the modern world from surprising new vantage points that will inspire urban explorers and armchair travellers alike to consider a new way of understanding the world we live in.
Download or read book Improbable written by J. D. Brucker and published by J. D. Brucker. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Does God exist?" - This question has plagued humanity since its beginning. From the primitive to the sophisticated, human kind has worshipped gods of every shape, gender, size, and creed. One god, however, reigns supreme: The God of Abraham. Giving birth to the three most prevalent monotheistic religions existing today, Yahweh has dominated the theological landscape. A recent intellectual movement has taken place, however, challenging the religious status quo. This movement has given many the right to approach the God hypothesis with skepticism. Improbable: Issues with the God Hypothesis critically examines the claims made by the religious, determining whether a belief in Yahweh is actually as reasonable as long believed.
Download or read book Cues from All Quarters Or The Literary Musings of a Clerical Recluse written by Francis Jacox and published by . This book was released on 1871 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Silent Theft written by David Bollier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'They hang the man and flog the woman That steal the goose from off the common, But let the greater villain loose That steals the common from the goose.' - Traditional nursery rhyme Until a 1998 federal court decision, a Minnesota publisher claimed to own every federal court decision, including Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. A Texas company was recently allowed to calm a patent on basmati rice, a kind of rice grown in India for hundreds of years. The Mining Act of 1872 is still in effect, allowing companies to buy land from the government at USD5 and acre if they pan to mine it. These are resources that belong to al of use, yet they are being given away to companies with anything but the common interest in mind. Where was the public outcry, or the government intervention, when these were happening? The answers are alarming. Private corporations are consuming the resources that the American people collectively own at a staggering rate, and the government is not protecting the commons on our behalf. In Silent Theft , David Bollier exposes the audacious attempts of companies to appropriate medical breakthroughs, public airwaves, outer space, state research, and even the DNA of plants and animals. Amazingly, these abuses often go unnoticed, Bollier argues, because we have lost our ability to see the commons. Publicly funded technological innovations create common wealth (cell phone airwaves, internet addresses, gene sequences) at blinding speed, while an economic atmosphere of deregulation and privatization ensures they will be quickly bought and sold. In an age of market triumphalism, does the notion of the commons have any practical meaning? Crisp and revelatory, Silent Theft is a bold attempt to develop a new language of the commons, a new ethos of commonwealth in the face of a market ethic that knows no bounds.
Download or read book Charas the Improbable Dome Builders written by Syeus Mottel and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Pioneer Works Press, in partnership with The Song Cave, is pleased to present the release of CHARAS: The Improbable Dome Builders, by Syeus Mottel (2017), a fascinating account of six ex-gang members who broke ground to construct a geodesic dome on a vacant lot in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge after a 1970 meeting with the celebrated and revolutionary architect R. Buckminster Fuller, also known as Bucky. Originally published in 1973, this republication speaks to the issues at the heart of the CHARAS project as gentrification seems to multiply faster than communities can work to preserve themselves against it. The book acts as a record to highlight ways people have united to activate empty spaces before gentrification. As a group, CHARAS was interested in physically altering the housing conditions in their immediate neighborhood, the Lower East Side. Influenced by Bucky's teachings, the young men of CHARAS began a period of devoted study to solid geometry, spherical trigonometry, and the principles of dome building. Following this period, CHARAS developed a program that encouraged community autonomy and the reclaiming public space. More than simply a documentation of the project, the book offers stories, profiles, interviews, and images, and the group's process from their intensive study to the obstacles they faced while physically constructing domes."--pioneerworks.org
Download or read book The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire written by Edward Gibbon and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2022-05-14 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1862.
