Download or read book Flying Over Sonny Liston written by Gary Short and published by Western Literature and Fiction. This book was released on 1996 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Western States Book Award for poetry, Flying Over Sonny Liston explores with courage, compassion, and bone-deep wisdom the complicated and some times heartbreaking task of being human in the modern world, in the modern West. Whether he writes about the tortuous interior landscape of the family or the vast and often abused terrain of the Nevada desert, Gary Short is unfailingly honest, tender, and gifted with a vision for the all-revealing detail, the larger, wrenching truth. Although many of the poems are about death or express a deep and painful anger, the book is about survival. We often find in these poems a movement from the dark into a blazing light of realization that acts as a counter to sorrow, from comprehension to forgiveness, and an awareness that the daunting challenge of being human is won not in loud victories but through the delicate graces of mercy, trust, and hope.
Download or read book Getting Over the Color Green written by Scott Slovic and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Desert vistas are often deemed vacant, inhospitable wastelands. Don't suggest that to Joy Harjo, Pat Mora, or other contemporary southwestern writers. In these arid stretches, often devoid of green, today's southwestern writers see pyrotechnic colors and Gothic shapes that excite and often overwhelm the imagination. And they capture this excitement in words that fix these desert images in the minds of readers who may too often look at the world through green-colored glasses. This anthology of contemporary nature writing from the Greater Southwest brings together a host of writers including peers of Edward Abbey such as Charles Bowden and Ann Zwinger and representatives of a new generation of writers such as Rick Bass and Terry Tempest Williams. The book is an eclectic blend of nonfiction and fiction, field notes and poetry, through which artists of diverse backgrounds both celebrate and illuminate the unique vitality and complexity of southwestern literature— proving that green is only one of many colors on their palette. The selections included here range all across the southwestern landscape and explore adventures in the wild, topics in natural history, living close to the land, and efforts at conservation and restoration. They clearly demonstrate that there is grace and beauty in this often-maligned part of the world— both in the human traditions that have developed in the region and in the natural features of the desert itself.
Download or read book Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty First Century An Encyclopedia written by Steven A. Riess and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-26 with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides practical help for the day-to-day concerns that keep managers awake at night. This book aims to fill the gap between the legal and policy issues that are the mainstay of human resources and supervision courses and the real-world needs of managers as they attempt to cope with the human side of their jobs.
Download or read book Driving by Memory written by William L. Fox and published by UNM Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Road trips to Las Vegas are the occasion for this entertaining meditation on the quintessentially American experience of driving across the desert. William Fox, successively exiled from California, Nevada, and New Mexico, has spent more time than most of us driving to Las Vegas--and he has taken notes on three recent trips, his own way of bringing cohesion to the vast and mind-numbing aspects of the freeway. Approaching the most postmodern city on the planet from three directions, he examines the landscape and what we do to it while also trying to figure out who he is, what that means, and the nature of the transformations of land into landscape through art and architecture, landscape design, and advertising. Fox's history of the region, both natural and cultural, highlights the creep of the urban supergrid across the most extensively traveled desert in the world. This is a profoundly personal, even idiosyncratic book about the most public of subjects--living in the postmodern West at the end of the millennium and what the cities, the freeways, the open spaces, and the billboards tell us about ourselves.
Download or read book Updating the Literary West written by and published by TCU Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 1072 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Western writers," says Thomas J. Lyon in his epilogue to Updating the Literary West, "have grown up with the frontier myth but now find themselves in the early stages of creating a new western myth." The editors of the Literary History of the American West (TCU Press, 1987) hoped that the first volume would begin, not conclude, their exploration of the West's literary heritage. Out of this hope comes Updating the Literary West, a comprehensive reference anthology including essays by over one hundred scholars. A selected bibliography is included with each piece. In the ten years since publication of LHAW, western writing has developed a significantly larger presence in the national literary stream. A variety of cultural viewpoints have developed, along with new tactics for literary study. New authors have risen to prominence, and the range of subjects has changed and widened. Updating the Literary West looks at topics ranging from western classics to cowboys and Cadillacs and considers children's literature, ethnicity, environmental writing, gender issues and other topics in which change has been rapid since publication of LHAW. This volume again affirms the West's literary legitimacy--status hard earned by the Western Literary Association--and the lasting place of popular western writing as part of the growing and changing literary--and American--experience. An excellent reference for a wide range of readers and an invaluable resource for scholars and libraries. Selected list of contributors: James Maguire Fred Erisman Susan J. Rosowski Gerald Haslam Tom Pilkington A. Carl Bredahl Richard Slotkin John G. Cawelti Robert F. Gish Ann Ronald Mick McAllister
Download or read book Eclipse of the Sun written by Red Shuttleworth and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2023-08-08 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tribute to the improbable dreams of valiant men in a rough sport. In this striking poetry collection, Red Shuttleworth, who holds the record as the oldest active boxer (professional or amateur), offers evocative imagery that unapologetically reveals the life of a boxer. From the inspiring hopes of an early career to agonizing defeats, the poems in Eclipse of the Sun take readers on a journey from moderate successes to the realization that a dream of a promising future has become the reality of the long haul of a journeyman. Along the way, Shuttleworth rubs elbows with greats like Muhammad Ali, Chickie Ferrara, and Ron Lyle, exposing the resolute path and difficult end of a hard-lived life. This collection is an homage to boxing at its grittiest levels, and to fighters who persevere—with hope, blood, and bone—against sense and loss. Few professional boxers earn a living in the ring, and even fewer arrive in their forties with any money left from their sport. In this collection, boxers attain poverty rather than riches, end up in post-career menial jobs, and have no pension plan to fall back on. Shuttleworth’s poetry is a visceral inside look at the brutality and humanity at the heart of boxing.
Download or read book Regionalism and the Humanities written by Timothy R. Mahoney and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the framework of regionalist studies may seem to be crumbling under the weight of increasing globalization, this collection of seventeen essays makes clear that cultivating regionalism lies at the center of the humanist endeavor. With interdisciplinary contributions from poets and fiction writers, literary historians, musicologists, and historians of architecture, agriculture, and women, this volume implements some of the most innovative and intriguing approaches to the history and value of regionalism as a category for investigation in the humanities. In the volume’s inaugural essay, Annie Proulx discusses landscapes in American fiction, comments on how she constructs characters, and interprets current literary trends. Edward Watts offers a theory of region that argues for comparisons of the United States to other former colonies of Great Britain, including New Zealand, Australia, and Canada. Whether considering a writer's connection to region or the idea of place in exploring what is meant by regionalism, these essays uncover an enduring and evolving concept. Although the approaches and disciplines vary, all are framed within the fundamental premise of the humanities: the search to understand what it means to be human.
Download or read book Sonny Liston Was a Friend of Mine written by Thom Jones and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-11-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author's world encompasses dilapidated fight arenas, state mental hospitals & chaotic emergency rooms. The inhabitants are his brilliantly etched characters, who battle desperately against fate in a game of life they cannot win but dare not lose. As we approach the end of the century & the millennium, no one writes better or more vividly than Jones does about the personal, private apocalypses we all face in our darkest moments. In one story, a Vietnam vet, a Recon Marine, swims alone across the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar, & the Bosporus to maintain "the edge" that kept him alive in wartime - & that is all he now has left. In another, a brilliant doctor verges on a breakdown. In the title story, a young amateur fighter stoically endures repetitive beatings because he knows the world of boxing shields & protects him from the even crueler world outside of the ring. A number of these stories have appeared in different forms in the New Yorker, Playboy, & Esquire.
Download or read book Western Solstice written by Leonore Wilson and published by Hiraeth Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Leonore Wilson's Western Solstice contains poems that spring whole and marvelous, shimmering from the earth. Born from a profound, wide-ranging, original and feminine mind, they bewitch the reader with a lush, passionate voice that is 'all impulse of towards' and a tensile form that is as breathtaking as its content. This book is a true treasure." --Cathy Colman, author of Borrowed Dress and Beauty's Tattoo
Download or read book Wild Nevada written by Roberta Moore and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2005-03-01 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many people beyond Nevada’s borders, the state is no more than the nation’s desert dumping ground for dangerous waste. Others know it only for its hedonistic centers of gambling and entertainment. This scandal belies the extraordinary beauty and wonder of the state’s wilderness areas and the precious natural, aesthetic, and cultural resources to be found there. In Wild Nevada, editors Roberta Moore and Scott Slovic have assembled twenty-nine writers who know and love the Nevada wilderness to testify on its behalf. Contributors include literary artists and scholars, environmental and community activists, leading politicians, ranchers, scientists, and park rangers. Some essays offer observations on the political and philosophical discussions of wilderness that heat up the halls of academia and Congress; others recount moving personal encounters with wild places within Nevada; and still others comment on the ambiguities of preserving wild places through wilderness designation. But despite the eclectic backgrounds of the writers and their varied perspectives on public policy, they are all united in their devotion to the ecological and aesthetic values of Nevada’s threatened wilderness areas. Foreword by Michael Frome.
Download or read book Literary Nevada written by Cheryll Glotfelty and published by University of Nevada Press. This book was released on 2016-06-01 with total page 902 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 200 writings about Nevada with selections from Native American tales to contemporary writings on urban experience and environmental concerns. The state of Nevada embodies paradox and contradiction—home to one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation and to isolated ranches scattered across a sparsely populated backcountry. Nevada is a place where the lust for sudden wealth has prompted both wild mining booms and glittering casinos, and where forbidding atomic test sites coexist with alluring tourist meccas. The variety and distinctiveness of Nevada’s landscape and peoples have inspired writers from the beginning of immigrant contact with the region. This contact has produced abundant literary wealth that includes the rich oral traditions of Native American peoples and an amazing spectrum of contemporary voices. Literary Nevada is the first comprehensive literary anthology of Nevada. It contains over 200 selections ranging from traditional Native American tales, explorers’ and emigrants’ accounts, and writing from the Comstock Lode and other mining boomtowns, as well as compelling fiction, poetry, and essays from throughout the state’s history. There is work by well-known Nevada writers such as Sarah Winnemucca, Mark Twain, and Robert Laxalt, by established and emerging writers from all parts of the state, and by some nonresident authors whose work illuminates important facets of the Nevada experience. The book includes cowboy poetry, travel writing, accounts of nuclear Nevada, narratives about rural life and urban life in Las Vegas and Reno, poetry and fiction from the state’s best contemporary writers, and accounts of the special beauty of wild Nevada’s mountains and deserts. Editor Cheryll Glotfelty provides insightful introductions to each section and author. The book also includes a photo gallery of selected Nevada writers and a generous list of suggested further readings. Nevada has inspired an exceptionally rich panorama of fine writing and a dazzling array of literary voices. The selections in Literary Nevada will engage and delight readers while revealing the complex and exciting diversity of the state’s history, people, and life.
Download or read book The Murder of Sonny Liston written by Shaun Assael and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Las Vegas, the 1970s. Richard Nixon was launching America's first war on heroin; boxing was in its glory days; The Strip was being transformed from a playground for the mob to a mecca for corporate dollars. Sonny Liston was cashing in on his fading notoriety in the casinos, dealing drugs, working as an enforcer for a crime syndicate, and trying to break into Hollywood as an action star. On January 5, 1971, Liston was found dead in his home, with heroin in his blood. Accidental OD-- or murder? Assael treats Liston's death as a cold case, and takes a fresh look at Liston and the town he called home.
Download or read book America s National Anthem written by John R. Vile and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This A–Z encyclopedia is a one-stop resource for understanding the history and evolution of the national anthem in American politics, culture, and mythology, as well as controversies surrounding its emergence as a lightning rod for political protests and statements. This reference work serves as a comprehensive resource for understanding all aspects of the national anthem and its significance in U.S. history and American life and culture. It covers the origins of the song and its selection as the nation's official anthem and acknowledges other musical compositions proposed as national anthems. It discusses famous performances of the anthem and details laws and court decisions related to its performance, and it also explains notable phrases in its lyrics, describes the meaning of the national anthem to different demographic groups, and surveys presentations and celebrations of "The Star-Spangled Banner" in popular culture. Moreover, it summarizes famous political protests undertaken during renditions of the national anthem, from the Black Power salutes by U.S. athletes during the 1968 Olympics to the kneeling protests undertaken by Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players to bring attention to racial inequality in America.
Download or read book Hunger for the Wild written by Michael L. Johnson and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 564 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.
Download or read book Dear Samuel written by Barry Ivker and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2015-09-26 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the things I most enjoy doing is going to estate sales. Call it the excitement of the huntthe prospects of finding a book by an author I had not known before, an artifact from some exotic culture, or even some dishes with a pattern I remembered from childhood. There is always the mystique of trying to reconstruct the life of someone who has diedseeing the things they valued spread out, to be snatched up by anyone willing to pay the asking price, much as my things will be dispersed when I am gone. There is always the prospect of finding something totally unexpected. Thus, it was some months ago when I came across a box of envelopes all marked First Day of Issue. The United States Postal Service designates a city on the first day a given stamp is issued, and all letters mailed from that city on that day can be cancelled with that marking. Frequently, dealers get bundles of such cancelled envelopes and sell them to collectors for a good price. Here was a boxful of these envelopes. I offered the sellers a price for the whole box. It was near the end of the sale. The sellers wanted to get rid of as much as possible, and they accepted my offer. I should add that I am not a stamp collector. I do have friends who collect stamps and thought this would make a nice gift for one of them. When I got home, I arranged the collection chronologically. They spanned a period of twelve years, from 1959 to 1971. They were all addressed to the same person in Birmingham, Alabama, a Samuel . They were all written by the same person, a Dwayne , who was born and raised in Birmingham. My curiosity was piqued. Who was this son of Birmingham who absented himself from his native town during one of the most turbulent periods of its history? What was the relationship of the two men that warranted such a long and voluminous correspondencefor me, a one-way correspondence, since I had no way of retrieving the letters Samuel sent to Dwayne. Why the long period of exile during that particular period of time? Why the widespread traveling? How did Dwayne manage to support himself? What did he do to occupy his time? My mind was filled with questions. When I started reading the letters, the answers I received were far more intriguing than I could have imagined. It is with this in mind that I offer this correspondence to the reading public. It reflects the psychological history not only of an unusual personality but also of an important era of American history. I have let the letters stand as they were written, preserving the style, grammar, and orthography of the author. I know little enough of the details of his childhood. He was obviously well read, even if he was not formally educated to any advanced degree. He was clearly an astute observer of the events of his time. It is my hope that the reader will find the letters edifying and entertaininguseful and pleasingand that my effort to bring them to public view will be deemed worthwhile.
Download or read book Index of American Periodical Verse 1997 written by Rafael Català and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 1999-11 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catala, president of the Ometeca Institute, and a poet and critic, and Anderson (communication, information, and library science, Rutgers U.) have collaborated to produce this index to the poetry in 290 periodicals in North America and the Caribbean. Although the editors limited inclusion based upon the quality of the poems, their presentation, and the reputation of the poets, the poetry and periodicals indexed come from a wide variety of styles and genres, from scholarly, to popular, to small independent publications. The Index includes 7,210 entries for individual poets listed alphabetically by last name, as well as a separate index using poem titles or first lines. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
