Download or read book The Lost Art of Reading written by David L. Ulin and published by Sasquatch Books. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 89 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading is a revolutionary act, an act of engagement in a culture that wants us to disengage. In The Lost Art of Reading, David L. Ulin asks a number of timely questions - why is literature important? What does it offer, especially now? Blending commentary with memoir, Ulin addresses the importance of the simple act of reading in an increasingly digital culture. Reading a book, flipping through hard pages, or shuffling them on screen - it doesn't matter. The key is the act of reading, and it's seriousness and depth. Ulin emphasizes the importance of reflection and pause allowed by stopping to read a book, and the accompanying focus required to let the mind run free in a world that is not one's own. Are we willing to risk our collective interest in contemplation, nuanced thinking, and empathy? Far from preaching to the choir, The Lost Art of Reading is a call to arms, or rather, to pages.

Download or read book Dragonworld written by Byron Preiss and published by ibooks. This book was released on 2009-02-02 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dragonworld goes far beyond the flashy pyrotechnics of contemporary fantasy and fantasy illustration. Joe Zucker is a superlative and original illustrator, and he reveals a rare and astonishing gift for infusing a richness of character into his pictures, which do justice to Byron Preiss's and Michael Reaves's compelling story.” —Maurice Sendak “Until now, there have been only two real grandmasters of modern epic fantasy—J.R.R. Tolkien and Ann McCaffrey. With the team of Preiss and Reaves, there are three, and may they write and write and write.” —United Press International Somewhere beyond the northern mists lies a land where dreams live and dragons are real. This is the tale of the twilight of the dragons, of two nations plunged into war by a tragic misunderstanding, of a shy dreamer's incredible voyage of peace to a long-forgotten land where nightmares are born. A magnificent creation, a sweeping epic of high fantasy set in a richly imagined world, vividly brought to life with over eighty pages of stunning illustrations by Joseph Zucker.

Download or read book Nothing Lasts Forever Basis for the film Die Hard written by Roderick Thorp and published by Graymalkin Media. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: High atop a Los Angeles skyscraper, an office Christmas party turns into a deadly cage-match between a lone New York City cop and a gang of international terrorists. Every action fan knows it could only be the explosive big-screen blockbuster Die Hard. But before Bruce Willis blew away audiences as unstoppable hero John McClane, author Roderick Thorp knocked out thriller readers with the bestseller that started it all. A dozen heavily armed terrorists have taken hostages, issued demands, and promised bloodshed — all according to plan. But they haven’t counted on a death-defying, one-man cavalry with no shoes, no backup, and no intention of going down easily. As hot-headed cops swarm outside, and cold-blooded killers wield machine guns and rocket launchers inside, the stage is set for the ultimate showdown between anti-hero and uber-villains. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good fight... to the death. Ho ho ho!

Download or read book Story of General Dann and Mara s Daughter Griot and the Snow Dog written by Doris Lessing and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Doris Lessing is one of the most important writers of the past 100 years, a shrewd visionary. . . . Her new, short, haunting novel . . . succors us with . . . unforgettable visual images. We shiver and marvel as we lose ourselves in time.”— The Times (London) In her visionary novel Mara and Dann, Doris Lessing introduced a brother and sister battling through a future landscape defined by extreme climates in the north and south. In this new novel the odyssey continues. Dann is grown up, hunting for knowledge and despondent over the inadequacies of his civilization, traveling with his friend, a snow dog who saves him from the depths of despair. Here, too, are Mara’s daughter and Griot with the green eyes, an abandoned child-soldier who discovers the meaning of love and the ability to sing stories. Like its predecessor, this brilliant novel from one of our greatest living writers explains as much about our world as it does about the future we may be heading toward.

Download or read book The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci Complete written by Leonardo da Vinci and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 1118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most famous of Leonardo da Vinci's works. Two of the three most important were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time, which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the Sforza Monument and the Wall-painting of the Battle of Anghiari, while the third—the picture of the Last Supper at Milan—has suffered irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to which it was recklessly subjected during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries. Nevertheless, no other picture of the Renaissance has become so wellknown and popular through copies of every description. Vasari says, and rightly, in his Life of Leonardo, "that he laboured much more by his word than in fact or by deed", and the biographer evidently had in his mind the numerous works in Manuscript which have been preserved to this day. To us, now, it seems almost inexplicable that these valuable and interesting original texts should have remained so long unpublished, and indeed forgotten. It is certain that during the XVIth and XVIIth centuries their exceptional value was highly appreciated. This is proved not merely by the prices which they commanded, but also by the exceptional interest which has been attached to the change of ownership of merely a few pages of Manuscript. That, notwithstanding this eagerness to possess the Manuscripts, their contents remained a mystery, can only be accounted for by the many and great difficulties attending the task of deciphering them. The handwriting is so peculiar that it requires considerable practice to read even a few detached phrases, much more to solve with any certainty the numerous difficulties of alternative readings, and to master the sense as a connected whole. Vasari observes with reference to Leonardos writing: "he wrote backwards, in rude characters, and with the left hand, so that any one who is not practised in reading them, cannot understand them". The aid of a mirror in reading reversed handwriting appears to me available only for a first experimental reading. Speaking from my own experience, the persistent use of it is too fatiguing and inconvenient to be practically advisable, considering the enormous mass of Manuscripts to be deciphered. And as, after all, Leonardo's handwriting runs backwards just as all Oriental character runs backwards—that is to say from right to left—the difficulty of reading direct from the writing is not insuperable. This obvious peculiarity in the writing is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of mastering the text. Leonardo made use of an orthography peculiar to himself; he had a fashion of amalgamating several short words into one long one, or, again, he would quite arbitrarily divide a long word into two separate halves; added to this there is no punctuation whatever to regulate the division and construction of the sentences, nor are there any accents—and the reader may imagine that such difficulties were almost sufficient to make the task seem a desperate one to a beginner. It is therefore not surprising that the good intentions of some of Leonardo s most reverent admirers should have failed.

Download or read book Last Things written by Jacqueline West and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Everything I love in a book."—Victoria Schwab, author of #1 New York Times bestseller This Savage Song “The kind of taut, atmospheric thriller that gets your heart racing and sets your imagination on fire. Sensational.”—Claire Legrand, New York Times-bestselling author of Furyborn Finalist for the Minnesota Book Award New York Times–bestselling author Jacqueline West captivates readers with a dark, hypnotic story about the cost of talent—and the evil that lurks just out of sight. Fans of Holly Black and Victoria Schwab will be mesmerized by this gorgeous, magnetic novel. High school senior Anders Thorson is unusually gifted. His band, Last Things, is legendary in their northern Minnesota hometown. With guitar skills that would amaze even if he weren’t only eighteen, Anders is the focus of head-turning admiration. And Thea Malcom, a newcomer to the insular town, is one of his admirers. Thea seems to turn up everywhere Anders goes: gigs at the local coffeehouse, guitar lessons, even in the woods near Anders’s home. When strange things start happening to Anders, blame immediately falls on Thea. But is she trying to hurt him? Or save him? Can he trust a girl who doesn’t seem to know the difference between dreams and reality? And how much are they both willing to sacrifice to get what they want? Told from Anders’s and Thea’s dual points of view, this exquisitely crafted novel is full of unexpected twists and is for fans of Holly Black’s The Darkest Part of the Forest and Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood.

Download or read book Cadillac Desert written by Marc Reisner and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1993-06-01 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023 "The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --Newsweek The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage. This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.

Download or read book The Big East written by Dana O'Neil and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2023-02-28 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive, compulsively readable story of the greatest era of the most iconic league in college basketball history—the Big East “This book, full of long-standing rivalries, unmatched moments in the lives of coaches and players, and juicy insider gossip, is, like the game of basketball, a ton of fun.”—Philadelphia magazine The names need no introduction: Thompson and Patrick, Boeheim and the Pearl, and of course Gavitt. And the moments are part of college basketball lore: the Sweater Game, Villanova Beats Georgetown, and Six Overtimes. But this is the story of the Big East Conference that you haven’t heard before—of how the Northeast, once an afterthought, became the epicenter of college basketball. Before the league’s founding, East Coast basketball had crowned just three national champions in forty years, and none since 1954. But in the Big East’s first ten years, five of its teams played for a national championship. The league didn’t merely inherit good teams; it created them. But how did this unlikely group of schools come to dominate college basketball so quickly and completely? Including interviews with more than sixty of the key figures in the conference’s history, The Big East charts the league’s daring beginnings and its incredible rise. It transports fans inside packed arenas to epic wars fought between transcendent players, and behind locker-room doors where combustible coaches battled even more fiercely for a leg up. Started on a handshake and a prayer, the Big East carved an improbable arc in sports history, an ensemble of Catholic schools banding together to not only improve their own stations but rewrite the geographic boundaries of basketball. As former UConn coach Jim Calhoun eloquently put it, “It was Camelot. Camelot with bad language.”

Download or read book The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers written by Johnny Saldana and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers is unique in providing, in one volume, an in-depth guide to each of the multiple approaches available for coding qualitative data. In total, 29 different approaches to coding are covered, ranging in complexity from beginner to advanced level and covering the full range of types of qualitative data from interview transcripts to field notes. For each approach profiled, Johnny Saldaña discusses the method’s origins in the professional literature, a description of the method, recommendations for practical applications, and a clearly illustrated example.

Download or read book On the Come Up written by Angie Thomas and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-02-05 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestseller · Seven starred reviews · Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor Book “For all the struggle in this book, Thomas rarely misses a step as a writer. Thomas continues to hold up that mirror with grace and confidence. We are lucky to have her, and lucky to know a girl like Bri.”—The New York Times Book Review This digital edition contains a letter from the author, deleted scenes, a picture of the author as a teen rapper, an annotated playlist, Angie’s top 5 MCs, an annotated rap, illustrated quotes from the book, and an excerpt from Concrete Rose, Angie's return to Garden Heights. Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri’s got massive shoes to fill. But it’s hard to get your come up when you’re labeled a hoodlum at school, and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri pours her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral . . . for all the wrong reasons. Bri soon finds herself at the center of a controversy, portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. But with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri doesn’t just want to make it—she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be. Insightful, unflinching, and full of heart, On the Come Up is an ode to hip hop from one of the most influential literary voices of a generation. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; and about how, especially for young black people, freedom of speech isn’t always free. Don't miss Concrete Rose, Angie Thomas's powerful prequel to her phenomenal bestseller, The Hate U Give!

Download or read book Swell written by LIZ. CLARK and published by Patagonia. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Crimes Committed by Terrorist Groups written by Mark S. Hamm and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Examines terrorists¿ involvement in a variety of crimes ranging from motor vehicle violations, immigration fraud, and mfg. illegal firearms to counterfeiting, armed bank robbery, and smuggling weapons of mass destruction. There are 3 parts: (1) Compares the criminality of internat. jihad groups with domestic right-wing groups. (2) Six case studies of crimes includes trial transcripts, official reports, previous scholarship, and interviews with law enforce. officials and former terrorists are used to explore skills that made crimes possible; or events and lack of skill that the prevented crimes. Includes brief bio. of the terrorists along with descriptions of their org., strategies, and plots. (3) Analysis of the themes in closing arguments of the transcripts in Part 2. Illus.

Download or read book India s Legendary Wootz Steel written by Sharada Srinivasan and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book No Logo written by Naomi Klein and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-01-15 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What corporations fear most are consumers who ask questions. Naomi Klein offers us the arguments with which to take on the superbrands." Billy Bragg from the bookjacket.

Download or read book Pinocchio the Tale of a Puppet written by Carlo Collodi and published by . This book was released on 2011-02 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pinocchio, The Tale of a Puppet follows the adventures of a talking wooden puppet whose nose grew longer whenever he told a lie and who wanted more than anything else to become a real boy.As carpenter Master Antonio begins to carve a block of pinewood into a leg for his table the log shouts out, "Don't strike me too hard!" Frightened by the talking log, Master Cherry does not know what to do until his neighbor Geppetto drops by looking for a piece of wood to build a marionette. Antonio gives the block to Geppetto. And thus begins the life of Pinocchio, the puppet that turns into a boy.Pinocchio, The Tale of a Puppet is a novel for children by Carlo Collodi is about the mischievous adventures of Pinocchio, an animated marionette, and his poor father and woodcarver Geppetto. It is considered a classic of children's literature and has spawned many derivative works of art. But this is not the story we've seen in film but the original version full of harrowing adventures faced by Pinnocchio. It includes 40 illustrations.

Download or read book Dragon Slayer written by Rosemary Sutcliff and published by Puffin. This book was released on 1966 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Beowulf's life, his battle with the monster Grendel, and his death after a fight with a dragon.

Download or read book The Sun the Earth and Near earth Space written by John A. Eddy and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2009 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " ... Concise explanations and descriptions - easily read and readily understood - of what we know of the chain of events and processes that connect the Sun to the Earth, with special emphasis on space weather and Sun-Climate."--Dear Reader.