Download or read book Concrete Island written by J. G. Ballard and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a day in April, just after three o'clock in the afternoon, Robert Maitland's car crashes over the concrete parapet of a high-speed highway onto the island below, where he is injured and, finally, trapped. What begins as an almost ludicrous predicament soon turns into horror as Maitland-a wickedly modern Robinson Crusoe-realizes that, despite evidence of other inhabitants, this doomed terrain has become a mirror of his own mind. Seeking the dark outer rim of the everyday, Ballard weaves private catastrophe into an intensely specular allegory in Concrete Island.
Download or read book Coral and Concrete written by Greg Dvorak and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coral and Concrete, Greg Dvorak’s cross-cultural history of Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands, explores intersections of environment, identity, empire, and memory in the largest inhabited coral atoll on earth. Approaching the multiple “atollscapes” of Kwajalein’s past and present as Marshallese ancestral land, Japanese colonial outpost, Pacific War battlefield, American weapons-testing base, and an enduring home for many, Dvorak delves into personal narratives and collective mythologies from contradictory vantage points. He navigates the tensions between “little stories” of ordinary human actors and “big stories” of global politics—drawing upon the “little” metaphor of the coral organisms that colonize and build atolls, and the “big” metaphor of the all-encompassing concrete that buries and co-opts the past. Building upon the growing body of literature about militarism and decolonization in Oceania, this book advocates a layered, nuanced approach that emphasizes the multiplicity and contradictions of Pacific Islands histories as an antidote to American hegemony and globalization within and beyond the region. It also brings Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, and American perspectives into conversation with Micronesians’ recollections of colonialism and war. This transnational history—built upon a combination of reflective personal narrative, ethnography, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies—thus resituates Kwajalein Atoll as a pivotal site where Islanders have not only thrived for thousands of years, but also mediated between East and West, shaping crucial world events. Based on multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, as well as Dvorak’s own experiences growing up between Kwajalein, the United States, and Japan, Coral and Concrete integrates narrative and imagery with semiotic analysis of photographs, maps, films, and music, traversing colonial tropical fantasies, tales of victory and defeat, missile testing, fisheries, war-bereavement rituals, and landowner resistance movements, from the twentieth century through the present day. Representing history as a perennial struggle between coral and concrete, the book offers an Oceanian paradigm for decolonization, resistance, solidarity, and optimism that should appeal to all readers far beyond the Marshall Islands.
Download or read book Concrete Island written by J. G. Ballard and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2009-03-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chilling novel about our modern world, from the author of Empire of the Sun and Crash.
Download or read book Concrete Island written by J. G. Ballard and published by Picador USA. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Ã1973.
Download or read book Concrete and Countryside written by Carmelo Esterrich and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2018-07-06 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Puerto Rico was swept by a wave of modernization, transforming the island from a predominantly rural society to an unquestionably urban one. A curious paradox ensued, however. While the island underwent rapid urbanization, and the rhetoric of economic development reigned over official discourses, the newly installed insular government, along with some academic circles and radio and television media, constructed, promoted, and sponsored a narrative of Puerto Rican culture based on rural subjects, practices, and spaces. By examining a wide range of cultural texts, but focusing on the film production of the Division of Community Education, the popular dance music of Cortijo y su combo, and the literary texts of Jose Luis Gonzalez and Rene Marques, Concrete and Countryside offers an in-depth analysis of how Puerto Ricans responded to this transformative period. It also shows how the arts used a battery of images of the urban and the rural to understand, negotiate, and critique the innumerable changes taking place on the island.
Download or read book HomeMade Modern written by Ben Uyeda and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You can make the furniture you want at a fraction of the price of store-bought furniture. Not only will you save tons of money, but you'll also make environmentally sustainable pieces that are solidly built, using real materials like metal, wood, concrete, and other recycled ready-mades. The projects in this book don't require special skills, prior experience, or even a garage full of tools. You'll be walked step-by-step through the process of making furniture, from where to buy the materials (or where to scavenge) to how to make the most of the tools you own.
Download or read book Build Beyond Zero written by Bruce King and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Net Zero” has been an effective rallying cry for the green building movement, signaling a goal of having every building generate at least as much energy as it uses. Enormous strides have been made in improving the performance of every type of new building, and even more importantly, renovating the vast and energy-inefficient collection of existing buildings in every country. If we can get every building to net-zero energy use in the next few decades, it will be a huge success, but it will not be enough. In Build Beyond Zero, carbon pioneers Bruce King and Chris Magwood re-envision buildings as one of our most practical and affordable climate solutions instead of leading drivers of climate change. They provide a snapshot of a beginning and map towards a carbon-smart built environment that acts as a CO2 filter. Professional engineers, designers, and developers are invited to imagine the very real potential for our built environment to be a site of net carbon storage, a massive drawdown pool that could help to heal our climate. The authors, with the help of other industry experts, show the importance of examining what components of an efficient building (from windows to solar photovoltaics) are made with, and how the supply chains deliver all those products and materials to a jobsite. Build Beyond Zero looks at the good and the bad of how we track carbon (Life Cycle Assessment), then takes a deep dive into materials (with a focus on steel and concrete) and biological architecture, and wraps up with education, policy and governance, circular economy, and where we go in the next three decades. In Build Beyond Zero, King and Magwood show how buildings are culprits but stand poised to act as climate healers. They offer an exciting vision of climate-friendly architecture, along with practical advice for professionals working to address the carbon footprint of our built environment.
Download or read book Concrete Jungle written by Niles Eldredge and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If they are to survive, cities need healthy chunks of the world’s ecosystems to persist; yet cities, like parasites, grow and prosper by local destruction of these very ecosystems. In this absorbing and wide-ranging book, Eldredge and Horenstein use New York City as a microcosm to explore both the positive and the negative sides of the relationship between cities, the environment, and the future of global biodiversity. They illuminate the mass of contradictions that cities present in embodying the best and the worst of human existence. The authors demonstrate that, though cities have voracious appetites for resources such as food and water, they also represent the last hope for conserving healthy remnants of the world’s ecosystems and species. With their concentration of human beings, cities bring together centers of learning, research, government, finance, and media—institutions that increasingly play active roles in solving environmental problems. Some of the topics covered in Concrete Jungle: --The geological history of the New York region, including remnant glacial features visible today --The early days of urbanization on Manhattan Island, focusing on the history of Central Park, Collect Pond, and Manhattan Square --The history of early railway lines and the development of New York’s iconic subway system --The problem of producing enough safe drinking water for an ever-expanding population --Prominent civic institutions, including universities, museums, and zoos
Download or read book The Best Short Stories of J G Ballard written by J. G. Ballard and published by Holt Paperbacks. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1978, this collection of nineteen of J. G. Ballard's best short stories is as timely and informed as ever. This collection includes “The Garden of Time,” the inspiration for the 2024 Met Gala–fashion’s biggest night. His tales of the human psyche and its relationship to nature and technology, as viewed through a strong microscope, were eerily prescient and now provide greater perspective on our computer-dominated culture. Ballard's voice and vision have long served as a font of inspiration for today's cyber-punks, the authors and futurists who brought the information age into the mainstream.
Download or read book Nine Island written by Jane Alison and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 “Nine Island is a crackling incantation, brittle and brilliant and hot and sad and full of sideways humor that devastates and illuminates all at once.” —Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies Nine Island is an intimate autobiographical novel, told by J, a woman who lives in a glass tower on one of Miami Beach’s lush Venetian Islands. After decades of disaster with men, she is trying to decide whether to withdraw forever from romantic love. Having just returned to Miami from a monthlong reunion with an old flame, “Sir Gold,” and a visit to her fragile mother, J begins translating Ovid’s magical stories about the transformations caused by Eros. “A woman who wants, a man who wants nothing. These two have stalked the world for thousands of years,” she thinks. When not ruminating over her sexual past and current fantasies, in the company of only her aging cat, J observes the comic, sometimes steamy goings–on among her faded–glamour condo neighbors. One of them, a caring nurse, befriends her, eventually offering the opinion that “if you retire from love . . . then you retire from life.”
Download or read book Making the Modern World written by Vaclav Smil and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-12-16 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How much further should the affluent world push its material consumption? Does relative dematerialization lead to absolute decline in demand for materials? These and many other questions are discussed and answered in Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization. Over the course of time, the modern world has become dependent on unprecedented flows of materials. Now even the most efficient production processes and the highest practical rates of recycling may not be enough to result in dematerialization rates that would be high enough to negate the rising demand for materials generated by continuing population growth and rising standards of living. This book explores the costs of this dependence and the potential for substantial dematerialization of modern economies. Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization considers the principal materials used throughout history, from wood and stone, through to metals, alloys, plastics and silicon, describing their extraction and production as well as their dominant applications. The evolving productivities of material extraction, processing, synthesis, finishing and distribution, and the energy costs and environmental impact of rising material consumption are examined in detail. The book concludes with an outlook for the future, discussing the prospects for dematerialization and potential constrains on materials. This interdisciplinary text provides useful perspectives for readers with backgrounds including resource economics, environmental studies, energy analysis, mineral geology, industrial organization, manufacturing and material science.
Download or read book Quotes written by Tamara Kudelic and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2023-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quotes can be considered as jewels of human minds and thinking because of their inherent beauty and value. Just like precious gems, quotes are polished and refined expressions of human wisdom, insight, and creativity. Each quote is a unique and exquisite creation that encapsulates a particular idea or perspective, and is crafted with precision and care. Just as precious jewels are treasured for their rarity and beauty, quotes are treasured for their ability to capture the essence of a moment, inspire us with their wisdom, and transform our thinking. They are valuable because they reflect the depth and complexity of human experience, and offer us a glimpse into the minds and souls of some of the greatest thinkers, poets, philosophers, and artists throughout history. Quotes are like little gems that we can carry with us always, and that can light up our lives with their brilliance and beauty.
Download or read book High Rise A Novel written by J. G. Ballard and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2012-03-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Harsh and ingenious! High Rise is an intense and vivid bestiary, which lingers unsettlingly in the mind." —Martin Amis, New Statesman When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.
Download or read book Applied Ballardianism written by Simon Sellars and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-04-13 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An existential odyssey weaving together lived experience and theoretical insight, this startling autobiographical hyperfiction surveys and dissects a world where everything connects and global technological delirium is the norm. The mediascapes of late capitalism reconfigure erotic responses and trigger primal aggression; under constant surveillance, we occupy simulations of ourselves, private estates on a hyperconnected globe; fictions reprogram reality, memories are rewritten by the future… Fleeing the excesses of 1990s cyberculture, a young researcher sets out to systematically analyse the obsessively reiterated themes of a writer who prophesied the disorienting future we now inhabit. The story of his failure is as disturbingly psychotropic as those of his magus—J.G. Ballard, prophet of the post-postmodern, voluptuary of the car crash, surgeon of the pathological virtualities pulsing beneath the surface of reality. Plagued by obsessive fears, defeated by the tedium of academia, yet still certain that everything connects to Ballard, his academic thesis collapses into a series of delirious travelogues, deranged speculations and tormented meditations on time, memory, and loss. Abandoning literary interpretation and renouncing all scholarly distance, he finally accepts the deep assignment that has run throughout his entire life, and embarks on a rogue fieldwork project: Applied Ballardianism, a new discipline and a new ideal for living. Only the darkest impulses, the most morbid obsessions, and the most apocalyptic paranoia can uncover the technological mutations of inner space. An existential odyssey inextricably weaving together lived experience and theoretical insight, this startling autobiographical hyperfiction surveys and dissects a world where everything connects and global technological delirium is the norm—a world become unmistakably Ballardian.
Download or read book The Concrete Battleship written by Francis J. Allen and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hangman s Curfew written by Gladys Mitchell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-04-30 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A VINTAGE MURDER MYSTERY Rediscover Gladys Mitchell – one of the 'Big Three' female crime fiction writers alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. A friend staying with distinguished psychoanalyst and sometime detective Mrs Bradley is alarmed by a chance meeting with a pale young man who claims his uncle is being poisoned - is there a detective who could help discover the culprit? Mrs Bradley is soon on the case, but upon investigation it seems the uncle is in the best of health. But then the old man does indeed die suddenly, followed by his nephew, and Mrs Bradley finds herself in the murderer's firing line. Opinionated, unconventional, unafraid... If you like Poirot and Miss Marple, you’ll love Mrs Bradley.
Download or read book Island written by Aldous Huxley and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While shipwrecked on the island of Pala, Will Farnaby, a disenchanted journalist, discovers a utopian society that has flourished for the past 120 years. Although he at first disregards the possibility of an ideal society, as Farnaby spends time with the people of Pala his ideas about humanity change. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
