Download or read book Under Heaven written by Guy Gavriel Kay and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning author Guy Gavriel Kay evokes the dazzling Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China in an masterful story of honor and power. It begins simply. Shen Tai, son of an illustrious general serving the Emperor of Kitai, has spent two years honoring the memory of his late father by burying the bones of the dead from both armies at the site of one of his father's last great battles. In recognition of his labors and his filial piety, an unlikely source has sent him a dangerous gift: 250 Sardian horses. You give a man one of the famed Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You give him four or five to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank, and earn him jealousy, possibly mortal jealousy. Two hundred and fifty is an unthinkable gift, a gift to overwhelm an emperor. Wisely, the gift comes with the stipulation that Tai must claim the horses in person. Otherwise he would probably be dead already...

Download or read book 501 Writing Prompts written by LearningExpress (Organization) and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This eBook features 501 sample writing prompts that are designed to help you improve your writing and gain the necessary writing skills needed to ace essay exams. Build your essay-writing confidence fast with 501 Writing Prompts!" --

Download or read book Albion s Seed written by David Hackett Fischer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1991-03-14 with total page 981 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating book is the first volume in a projected cultural history of the United States, from the earliest English settlements to our own time. It is a history of American folkways as they have changed through time, and it argues a thesis about the importance for the United States of having been British in its cultural origins. While most people in the United States today have no British ancestors, they have assimilated regional cultures which were created by British colonists, even while preserving ethnic identities at the same time. In this sense, nearly all Americans are "Albion's Seed," no matter what their ethnicity may be. The concluding section of this remarkable book explores the ways that regional cultures have continued to dominate national politics from 1789 to 1988, and still help to shape attitudes toward education, government, gender, and violence, on which differences between American regions are greater than between European nations.

Download or read book Full Grown People written by Jennifer Niesslein and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of thirty essays from the site fullgrownpeople.com.

Download or read book Ysabel written by Guy Gavriel Kay and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-02-05 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The multiple award-winning fantasy author of The Fionavar Tapestry brings his extraordinary imagination to a tale of mythic figures in contemporary times... Ned Marriner is in France with his father, a celebrated photographer shooting the Saint-Sauveur Cathedral of Aix-en-Provence. While exploring the cathedral, Ned meets Kate, an American exchange student with a deep knowledge of the area’s history. But even Kate is at a loss when she and Ned surprise a scar-faced stranger, wearing a leather jacket and carrying a knife. “I think you ought to go now,” he tells them. “You have blundered into a corner of a very old story...” In this ancient place, where the borders between the living and the long-dead are thin, Ned and his family are about to be drawn into a haunted story, as mythic figures from conflicts of long ago erupt into the present, changing—and claiming—lives.

Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.

Download or read book The Talent Code written by Daniel Coyle and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009-04-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism. Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything. • Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice. • Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development. • Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students. These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished. Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.

Download or read book Inked written by Joe Dator and published by Turner Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Joe Dator makes me laugh. Everybody loves to look behind the scenes and his new book shows the secrets, inspirations, heartaches, and triumphs of a life in cartoons. Christopher Guest and I have a collection of original cartoons, and we love our Joe Dator!" —Jamie Lee Curtis From inspiration to conception and all the trials in-between. Inked is a collection of cartoons from one of the New Yorker’s most beloved cartoonists. Filled with more than 150 of Dator’s single-panel cartoons, this lively, quick-witted book betrays a deadpan sense of humor. But Inked is more than a book of cartoons. Dator also dives into the creative process, offering bonus commentary on how ideas have come to fruition, how one idea has led to another, and the various attempts to get an idea right. Along the way, he shows how a spark of imagination has turned into a laugh-out-loud moment with only a single image and caption, and how other attempts have found themselves on the cutting-room floor.

Download or read book BRIDESHEAD REVISITED THE SACRED AND PROFANE MEMORIES OF CAPTAIN CHARLES RYDER written by Evelyn Waugh and published by Alien Ebooks. This book was released on 2023-06-01 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat And Other Clinical Tales written by Oliver Sacks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores neurological disorders and their effects upon the minds and lives of those affected with an entertaining voice.

Download or read book Killing Hope written by William Blum and published by . This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Killing Hope, William Blum, author of the bestselling Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, provides a devastating and comprehensive account of America's covert and overt military actions in the world, all the way from China in the 1940s to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and - in this updated edition - beyond. Is the United States, as it likes to claim, a global force for democracy? Killing Hope shows the answer to this question to be a resounding 'no'.

Download or read book My Remarkable Uncle written by Stephen Leacock and published by New Canadian Library. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This celebrated collection of sketches sparkles with Stephen Leacock’s humour and shines with the warmth of his wit. The comical E.P., star of the title essay, “My Remarkable Uncle,” is a classic Leacock character. He is president of a railway with a letterhead but no rails, and he heads a bank that boasts credit but no cash whatsoever – all of which trouble E.P. not in the least. My Remarkable Uncle, a wonderful smorgasbord of mirth served up by a master of comedy, includes several essays, a short story, a political parable, and personal reflections on a dizzying array of subjects. Here, in rich abundance, are the inspired nonsense and the unerring eye for human folly that have made Stephen Leacock Canada’s most celebrated humorist.

Download or read book Proofreading Revising Editing Skills Success in 20 Minutes a Day written by Brady Smith and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this eBook, you'll learn the principles of grammar and how to manipulate your words until they're just right. Strengthen your revising and editing skills and become a clear and consistent writer." --

Download or read book Black Swan Green written by David Mitchell and published by Random House. This book was released on 2006-04-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time

Download or read book Ninth House written by Leigh Bardugo and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The best fantasy novel I’ve read in years, because it’s about real people... Impossible to put down." —Stephen King The smash New York Times bestseller from Leigh Bardugo, a mesmerizing tale of power, privilege, and dark magic set among the Ivy League elite. Goodreads Choice Award Winner Locus Finalist Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug-dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. In fact, by age twenty, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most prestigious universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her? Still searching for answers, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. Their eight windowless “tombs” are the well-known haunts of the rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street’s biggest players. But their occult activities are more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive. They tamper with forbidden magic. They raise the dead. And, sometimes, they prey on the living. Don't miss the highly-anticipated sequel, Hell Bent.

Download or read book Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal written by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The bestselling author of Encyclopedia an Ordinary Life returns with a literary experience that is unprecedented, unforgettable, and explosively human. Ten years after her beloved, groundbreaking Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, #1 New York Times bestselling author Amy Krouse Rosenthal delivers a book full of her distinct blend of nonlinear narrative, wistful reflections, and insightful wit. It is a mighty, life-affirming work that sheds light on all the ordinary and extraordinary ways we are connected. Like she did with Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse Rosenthal ingeniously adapts a standard format—a textbook, this time—to explore life’s lessons and experiences into a funny, wise, and poignant work of art. Not exactly a memoir, not just a collection of observations, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal is a beautiful exploration into the many ways we are connected on this planet and speaks to the awe, bewilderment, and poignancy of being alive. “…a groundbreaking new twist on the traditional literary experience… Textbook is a delightful collection of interesting scenarios that directly point to life lessons. Rosenthal manages to spotlight grand moments and everyday moments with equal curiosity, proving that it can be both a privilege — and petrifying — to peek into one’s humanity.”—Associated Press “Rosenthal is a marvel… a talented storyteller with an experimental flair for formatting… This engaging, playful, and clever glimpse into one woman’s life offers lots of photographs, graphic illustrations, and diagrams, resulting in a book that will make readers smile as their notions of story delivery expand.” —Booklist

Download or read book The Years with Ross written by James Thurber and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From iconic American humorist James Thurber, a celebrated and poignant memoir about his years at The New Yorker with the magazine’s unforgettable founder and longtime editor, Harold Ross “Extremely entertaining. . . . life at The New Yorker emerges as a lovely sort of pageant of lunacy, of practical jokes, of feuds and foibles. It is an affectionate picture of scamps playing their games around a man who, for all his brusqueness, loved them, took care of them, pampered and scolded them like an irascible mother hen.” —New York Times With a foreword by Adam Gopnik and illustrations by James Thurber At the helm of America’s most influential literary magazine from 1925 to 1951, Harold Ross introduced the country to a host of exciting talent, including Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Ogden Nash, Peter Arno, Charles Addams, and Dorothy Parker. But no one could have written about this irascible, eccentric genius more affectionately or more critically than James Thurber, whose portrait of Ross captures not only a complex literary giant but a historic friendship and a glorious era as well. "If you get Ross down on paper," warned Wolcott Gibbs to Thurber," nobody will ever believe it." But readers of this unforgettable memoir will find that they do. Offering a peek into the lives of two American literary giants and the New York literary scene at its heyday, The Years with Ross is a true classic, and a testament to the enduring influence of their genius.