Download or read book The Givers written by David Callahan and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inside look at the secretive world of elite philanthropists—and how they're quietly wielding ever more power to shape American life in ways both good and bad. While media attention focuses on famous philanthropists such as Bill Gates and Charles Koch, thousands of donors are at work below the radar promoting a wide range of causes. David Callahan charts the rise of these new power players and the ways they are converting the fortunes of a second Gilded Age into influence. He shows how this elite works behind the scenes on education, the environment, science, LGBT rights, and many other issues—with deep impact on government policy. Above all, he shows that the influence of the Givers is only just beginning, as new waves of billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg turn to philanthropy. Based on extensive research and interviews with countless donors and policy experts, this is not a brief for or against the Givers, but a fascinating investigation of a power shift in American society that has implications for us all.

Download or read book Journeys North written by Barney Scout Mann and published by Mountaineers Books. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist in Adventure Travel In Journeys North, legendary trail angel, thru hiker, and former PCTA board member Barney Scout Mann spins a compelling tale of six hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2007 as they walk from Mexico to Canada. This ensemble story unfolds as these half-dozen hikers--including Barney and his wife, Sandy--trod north, slowly forming relationships and revealing their deepest secrets and aspirations. They face a once-in-a-generation drought and early severe winter storms that test their will in this bare-knuckled adventure. In fact, only a third of all the hikers who set out on the trail that year would finish. As the group approaches Canada, a storm rages. How will these very different hikers, ranging in age, gender, and background, respond to the hardship and suffering ahead of them? Can they all make the final 60-mile push through freezing temperatures, sleet, and snow, or will some reach their breaking point? Journeys North is a story of grit, compassion, and the relationships people forge when they strive toward a common goal.

Download or read book The Film Encyclopedia written by Ephraim Katz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-02-26 with total page 4150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wow! What a book!” — Katharine Hepburn “Recommended for any reference collection in need of a world view of film.” — Booklist “The best movie reference book, hands down.” — Newsweek

Download or read book Family in Flavian Epic written by Nikoletta Manioti and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family in Flavian Epic examines the treatment of family bonds in Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, Statius’ Thebaid and Achilleid, and Silius Italicus’ Punica. The eleven contributions consider the representation of epic parents, children, siblings, and spouses, and their interaction with each other, demonstrating the Flavian poets’ engagement with their epic, and more generally literary, tradition. At the same time, Roman attitudes towards the family and Flavian concerns especially related to dynastic harmony and civil war also characterise both historical and mythological members of Flavian epic families.

Download or read book Pradyumna written by Christopher R. Austin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first full-scale English-language study of Pradyumna, the son of the Hindu god Krsna. Often represented as a young man in mid-adolescence, Pradyumna is both a handsome double of his demon-slaying father and the rebirth of Kamadeva, the God of Love. Sanskrit epic, puranic, and kavya narratives of the 300-1300 CE period celebrate Pradyumna's sexual potency, mastery of illusory subterfuges, and military prowess in supporting the work of his avatara father. These materials reflect the values of an evolving Brahminical and Vaisnava tradition that was deeply invested in the imperatives of family, patrilines, the violent but necessary defense of the social and cosmic order, and the celebration of beauty and desire as a means to the divine. Pradyumna's evolving narratives, almost completely absent from existing studies of Hindu mythology, provide a point of access to the development of Krsna bhakti and Vaisnava theism more broadly. Conversely, Jain sources cast Pradyumna as an exemplary figure through whom a pointed rejection of these values can be articulated, even while sharing certain of their elementary premises. Pradyumna: Lover, Magician, and Scion of the Avatara assembles these narratives, presents key Sanskrit materials in translation and summary form, and articulates the social, gender, and religious values encoded in them. Most importantly, the study argues that Pradyumna's signature two-handed maneuver--the audacious appropriation of a feminine partner, enabled by the emasculating destruction of her demonic male protector--communicates a persistent fantasy of male power expressed in the language of a mutually implicating sex and violence.

Download or read book War and Literature written by Rachel McCoppin and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2020-01-24 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Special Issue focuses specifically on the topic of commiseration with the “enemy” within war literature. The articles included in this Special Issue show authors and/or literary characters attempting to understand the motives, beliefs, and cultural values of those who have been defined by their nations as their enemies. This process of attempting to understand the orientation of defined “enemies” often shows that the soldier has begun a process of reflection about why he or she is part of the war experience. The texts included in this issue also show how political authorities often resort to propaganda and myth-making tactics that are meant to convince soldiers that they are fighting opponents who are evil, sub-human, etc., and are therefore their direct enemies. Literary texts that show an author and/or literary character trying to reflect against state-supported definitions of good/evil, right/wrong, and ally/enemy often present an opportunity to reevaluate the purposes of war and one’s moral responsibility during wartime.

Download or read book The Epic World written by Pamela Lothspeich and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reconceptualizing the epic genre and opening it up to a world of storytelling, The Epic World makes a timely and bold intervention toward understanding the human propensity to aestheticize and normalize mass deployments of power and violence. The collection broadly considers three kinds of epic literature: conventional celebratory tales of conquest that glorify heroism, especially male heroism; anti-epics or stories of conquest from the perspectives of the dispossessed, the oppressed, the despised, and the murdered; and heroic stories utilized for imperialist or nationalist purposes. The Epic World illustrates global patterns of epic storytelling, such as the durability of stories tied to religious traditions and/or to peoples who have largely "stayed put"; the tendency to reimagine and retell stories in new ways over centuries; and the imbrication of epic storytelling and forms of colonialism and imperialism, especially those perpetuated and glorified by Euro-Americans over the past 500 years, resulting in unspeakable and immeasurable harms to humans, other living beings, and the planet Earth. The Epic World is a go-to volume for anyone interested in epic literature in a global framework. Engaging with powerful stories and ways of knowing beyond those of the predominantly white Global North, this field-shifting volume exposes the false premises of "Western civilization" and "Classics," and brings new questions and perspectives to epic studies.

Download or read book From Small Screen to Vinyl written by Bob Leszczak and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-06-25 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its infancy, television networks and studios explore others avenues to increase their revenues. Conveniently enough, several film studios and production companies—MGM, MTM, Columbia/Screen Gems, Talent Associates, Warner Brothers—had their own record label divisions. The obvious benefit was cross promotion: a television series could be plugged on the record and the record could be promoted on the TV show. Though few and far between, several television performers went on to become major recording stars. Ricky Nelson started as a child actor on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet before dominating rock and pop charts. Johnny Crawford of The Rifleman, Walter Brennan of The Real McCoys, and even Bruce Willis of Moonlighting all scored Top Ten hit singles. But these were just the standouts from the hundreds of TV actors who recorded songs, and the stories behind their records are simply fascinating. In From Small Screen to Vinyl: A Guide to TV Stars Who Made Records 1950-2000, author Bob Leszczak offers a look at hundreds of stars who performed double duty: as a television performer as well as a recording artist. He looks not only at the show and the performer but the behind-the-scenes dramas that unfolded as each attempted to tackle the two different mediums. Through his interviews with many of these multitaskers, the author has uncovered new, and mostly never before known facts about those who sought to conquer the world of vinyl. As Leszczak stresses, most eagerly embraced the opportunity to record, while others saw it as a necessary evil—the result of contractual obligations or industry pressures. Entries are listed alphabetically from Nick Adams (of The Rebel) to Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (of 77 Sunset Strip). Also included are over 80 photos of these rare releases taken from the author’s private collection. For a new look at your old favorites, From Small Screen to Vinyl, will let you see that just because one is a TV star does not mean that he or she does not have the ability to expand beyond their acting prowess. Baby boomers, fans of classic hits radio, and devotees of classic TV programs will find From Small Screen to Vinyl a treasure trove of TV and record trivia—and no TV or music library can be considered complete without it.

Download or read book The Encyclopedia of Epic Films written by Constantine Santas and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2014-03-21 with total page 713 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Soon after film came into existence, the term epic was used to describe productions that were lengthy, spectacular, live with action, and often filmed in exotic locales with large casts and staggering budgets. The effort and extravagance needed to mount an epic film paid off handsomely at the box office, for the genre became an immediate favorite with audiences. Epic films survived the tribulations of two world wars and the Depression and have retained the basic characteristics of size and glamour for more than a hundred years. Length was, and still is, one of the traits of the epic, though monolithic three- to four-hour spectacles like Gone with the Wind (1939) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962) have been replaced today by such franchises as the Harry Potter films and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Although the form has evolved during many decades of existence, its central elements have been retained, refined, and modernized to suit the tastes of every new generation. The Encyclopedia of Epic Films identifies, describes, and analyzes those films that meet the criteria of the epic—sweeping drama, panoramic landscapes, lengthy adventure sequences, and, in many cases, casts of thousands. This volume looks at the wide variety of epics produced over the last century—from the silent spectacles of D. W. Griffith and biblical melodramas of Cecil B. DeMille to the historical dramas of David Lean and rollercoaster thrillers of Steven Spielberg. Each entry contains: Major personnel behind the camera, including directors and screenwriters Cast and character listings Plot summary Analysis Academy Award wins and nominations DVD and Blu-ray availability Resources for further study This volume also includes appendixes of foreign epics, superhero spectaculars, and epics produced for television, along with a list of all the directors in the book. Despite a lack of overall critical recognition and respect as a genre, the epic remains a favorite of audiences, and this book pays homage to a form of mass entertainment that continues to fill movie theaters. The Encyclopedia of Epic Films will be of interest to academics and scholars, as well as any fan of films made on a grand scale.

Download or read book Reading the Sphinx written by L. Parramore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-10-13 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading the Sphinx unearths buried conflicts in religion, myth, and the memory of Egypt in the West, illuminating issues of identity, inheritance, gender, and sexuality through cultural productions ranging from Herodotus to Freud.

Download or read book The Heroine with 1001 Faces written by Maria Tatar and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World-renowned folklorist Maria Tatar reveals an astonishing but long-buried history of heroines, taking us from Cassandra and Scheherazade to Nancy Drew and Wonder Woman. The Heroine with 1,001 Faces dismantles the cult of warrior heroes, revealing a secret history of heroinism at the very heart of our collective cultural imagination. Maria Tatar, a leading authority on fairy tales and folklore, explores how heroines, rarely wielding a sword and often deprived of a pen, have flown beneath the radar even as they have been bent on redemptive missions. Deploying the domestic crafts and using words as weapons, they have found ways to survive assaults and rescue others from harm, all while repairing the fraying edges in the fabric of their social worlds. Like the tongueless Philomela, who spins the tale of her rape into a tapestry, or Arachne, who portrays the misdeeds of the gods, they have discovered instruments for securing fairness in the storytelling circles where so-called women’s work—spinning, mending, and weaving—is carried out. Tatar challenges the canonical models of heroism in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, with their male-centric emphases on achieving glory and immortality. Finding the women missing from his account and defining their own heroic trajectories is no easy task, for Campbell created the playbook for Hollywood directors. Audiences around the world have willingly surrendered to the lure of quest narratives and charismatic heroes. Whether in the form of Frodo, Luke Skywalker, or Harry Potter, Campbell’s archetypical hero has dominated more than the box office. In a broad-ranging volume that moves with ease from the local to the global, Tatar demonstrates how our new heroines wear their curiosity as a badge of honor rather than a mark of shame, and how their “mischief making” evidences compassion and concern. From Bluebeard’s wife to Nancy Drew, and from Jane Eyre to Janie Crawford, women have long crafted stories to broadcast offenses in the pursuit of social justice. Girls, too, have now precociously stepped up to the plate, with Hermione Granger, Katniss Everdeen, and Starr Carter as trickster figures enacting their own forms of extrajudicial justice. Their quests may not take the traditional form of a “hero’s journey,” but they reveal the value of courage, defiance, and, above all, care. “By turns dazzling and chilling” (Ruth Franklin), The Heroine with 1,001 Faces creates a luminous arc that takes us from ancient times to the present day. It casts an unusually wide net, expanding the canon and thinking capaciously in global terms, breaking down the boundaries of genre, and displaying a sovereign command of cultural context. This, then, is a historic volume that informs our present and its newfound investment in empathy and social justice like no other work of recent cultural history.

Download or read book Women Pain and Death written by Evy Johanne Håland and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-10-02 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Women, Pain and Death: Rituals and Everyday-Life on the Margins of Europe and Beyond” is a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary collection of articles representing different perspectives and topics related to the general theme Women and Death from different periods and parts of Europe, as well as the Middle East and Asia, i.e. areas where, through the ages, there have been a constant interaction and discourse between a variety of people, often with different ethnic backgrounds. The studies illustrate many parallels between the various societies and religious groupings, despite of many differences, both in time and space. The theme, death, is mostly seen from what have been regarded as the geographical margins of society as well as concerning the people involved: women. Thus, the articles, most of them presenting original material from areas which are not very known for English readers, offer new perspectives on the processes of cultural changes. The collection has important ramification for current research surrounding the shaping of a “European identity”, the marketing of regional and national heritages. In connection with the present-day aim of connecting the various European heritages, and developing a vision of Europe and its constituent elements that is both global and rooted, the work has great relevance. One may also mention the new international initiative on intangible heritage, spearheaded by UNESCO.

Download or read book Season of the Witch The Book of Goth written by Cathi Unsworth and published by Nine Eight Books. This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Times Book of the Year A Mojo Book of the Year A Louder Than War Book of the Year A Waterstones Book of the Year A Resident Book of the Year 'A beautifully written, meticulously researched account. 4/5.' - CLASSIC POP 1979. Months of industrial action throughout the winter have left the dead unburied and mountains of rubbish piling up in the streets. Punk has reached its bleak climax with the fatal heroin overdose of Sid Vicious while awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend. Unlikely alliances of outsiders prepare to seize power, set the political agenda and write the soundtrack for the years to come. Their figureheads are two very different kinds of dominatrices... As Margaret Thatcher enters 10 Downing Street, a handful of bands born of punk - Siouxsie and the Banshees, Joy Division and the Cure - find a way to distil the dissonance and darkness of the shifting decade into a new form of music. Pushing at the taboos the Sex Pistols had unlocked and dancing with the fetishistic, all will become global stars of goth. By the time Thatcher is cast out of office in 1990, the arrival of goth will have imprinted on the cultural landscape as much as the Iron Lady herself. Forty years on, author Cathi Unsworth provides the first comprehensive overview of the music, context and lasting legacy of goth. This is the story of how goth was shaped by the politics of the era - from the miners' strikes and privatisation to the Troubles and AIDS - as well as how its rock 'n' roll outlaw imagery and music cross-pollinated throughout Britain and internationally, speaking to a generation of alienated youths. A fascinating social history, Season of the Witch tells the tale of an enduring counter-culture, one that steadfastly refuses to give up the ghost.

Download or read book Berlusconi written by Alan Friedman and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2015-10-20 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before there was real estate tycoon cum President-Elect Donald J. Trump, there was Silvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul turned prime minster who dominated Italian life for the past twenty years. In a candid, warts-and-all portrait of the leader who played hard in office and in private life. From the bunga-bunga parties to his most secret moments with world leaders, this biography is rich in anecdotes and revelations involving Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel , and many others. Berlusconi's incredible rise to power started from nothing. A self-created man, he was a cruise ship crooner as a young man, became a real estate tycoon in the '70s, started the first commercial television network in history, and turned AC Milan into a world-class soccer club. And that was all before he survived the squalid swampland of Italian politics to become prime minister who has not only served the longest in Italian history, but also has generated the most controversy of arguably any world leader today.

Download or read book Dark Night of the Soul written by Grant Montgomery Wolfe and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is precisely 3:00 a.m. Detective Toni Rome's cell chirps, waking her from a recurring nightmare. "I've been bad again, Detective," the voice on the other end tells her. It is the voice of the Rosary Reaper, christened so by Toronto's media and members of the force. At each crime scene, a black rosary is found around the throats of his victims. It is the fourth call she has received in the past month, and as always, a brutalized body waits to be discovered. No trace and no clues other than the early hour whispers and the bloody taunts Catch me, carved into the victim's torsos. With a grandmother deep in the clutches of dementia to care for and a reawakened passion for the man who has just moved in next door, Toni and her partner Detective Sid Tillman find themselves pitted against a ruthless killer. A mind gone wrong. A vendetta long overdue. * You, my darlings, are my confidants, my audience, spying while I exact my vengeance. Together we will wait in the woods, scheming, planning. Our hands are treacherous, glorious, guilty weapons. And so the vine ripens. Each of its sacrosanct thorns exacting another prick of blood owed. I am a master of disguise. I am wealthy beyond your imagination. I am thirty-four and will not celebrate my thirty-fifth birthday. My name is Nathan. I am a killer.

Download or read book Autoethnographic Perspectives on Multilingual Life Stories written by Hanc?-Azizoglu, Eda Ba?ak and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Storytelling is an ideal avenue for language learners to share their experiences and journeys and find a sense of identity. Everyone who has learned an additional language has a story to tell, but there is a unique type of autoethnographic and linguistic story that can be read in scholarly platforms. Autoethnographic Perspectives on Multilingual Life Stories presents the life stories of multilingual people and their experiences by using autoethnography as a research method. It proposes narrative as an autobiographical research method that provides the technique and opportunity to express how transnationals construct their identities in foreign and new contexts through partial or full life stories. Covering topics such as identity, life stories, and self-discovery, this reference work is ideal for academicians, researchers, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

Download or read book Dictionary of World Biography written by Barry Jones and published by ANU Press. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 977 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jones, Barry Owen (1932- ). Australian politician, writer and lawyer, born in Geelong. Educated at Melbourne University, he was a public servant, high school teacher, television and radio performer, university lecturer and lawyer before serving as a Labor MP in the Victorian Parliament 1972-77 and the Australian House of Representatives 1977-98. He took a leading role in reviving the Australian film industry, abolishing the death penalty in Australia, and was the first politician to raise public awareness of global warming, the 'post-industrial' society, the IT revolution, biotechnology, the rise of 'the Third Age' and the need to preserve Antarctica as a wilderness. In the Hawke Government, he was Minister for Science 1983-90, Prices and Consumer Affairs 1987, Small Business 1987-90 and Customs 1988-90. He became a member of the Executive Board of UNESCO, Paris 1991-95 and National President of the Australian Labor Party 1992-2000, 2005-06. He was Deputy Chairman of the Constitutional Convention 1998. His books include Decades of Decision 1860- (1965), Joseph II (1968), Age of Apocalypse (1975), and he edited The Penalty is Death (1968). Sleepers, Wake!: Technology and the Future of Work was published by Oxford University Press in 1982, became a bestseller and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Swedish and braille. The fourth edition was published in 1995. Knowledge Courage Leadership, a collection of speeches and essays, appeared in 2016. He received a DSc for his services to science in 1988 and a DLitt in 1993 for his work on information theory. Elected FTSE (1992), FAHA (1993), FAA (1996) and FASSA (2003), he is the only person to have become a Fellow of four of Australia's five learned Academies. Awarded an AO in 1993, named as one of Australia's 100 'living national treasures' in 1998, he was elected a Visiting Fellow Commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1999. His autobiography, A Thinking Reed, was published in 2006 and The Shock of Recognition, about music and literature, in 2016. In 2014 he received an AC for services 'as a leading intellectual in Australian public life.