Download or read book The Story I Am written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For those who write and those who want to, a book on the joys and fascinations of the literary life by an author whose work has pleased millions.

Download or read book Rules for Ageing written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Prelude Books. This book was released on 2011-11-04 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People never learn. They make the same mistakes generation after generation. So here are the things that everyone should learn about life, then hope to remember. With a wry sense of humour, Rules for Ageing presents the most realistic, practical, pleasurable and, most importantly, painless advice you will ever receive. This book offers timeless advice for anyone still young enough to learn, and richly amusing reflections on life for those who have seen it all before.

Download or read book The Book of Love written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-01-20 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beloved New York Times bestselling author Making Toast and Kayak Morning returns with a powerful meditation on a universal subject: love. In The Book of Love, Roger Rosenblatt explores love in all its moods and variations—romantic love, courtship, battle, mystery, marriage, heartbreak, fury, confusion, melancholy, delirium, ecstasy; love of family, of friends; love of home, of country, of work, of writing, of solitude, of art; love of nature; love of life itself. Rosenblatt is on a quest to illuminate this elusive and essential emotion, to define this thing called love. Cleverly using lines from love songs to create a flowing ballad—as infectious and engaging as a jazz riff—he intersperses fictional vignettes that capture lovers in different situations, ages, and temperaments along with notes addressed to “you,” his wife of fifty years. “The story I have to tell is of you. Of others, too. Other people, other things. But mainly of you. It begins and ends with you. It always comes back to you.” Lively yet profound, poignant yet joyous, The Book of Love is a triumph of intellect and imagination: a personal discourse on love that is both novel and timeless.

Download or read book The Boy Detective written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Washington Post hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as "a textbook on what constitutes perfect writing," and People lauded Kayak Morning as "intimate, expansive and profoundly moving." Classic tales of love and grief, the New York Times bestselling memoirs are also original literary works that carve out new territory at the intersection of poetry and prose. Now comes The Boy Detective, a story of the author's childhood in New York City, suffused with the same mixture of acute observation and bracing humor, lyricism and wit. Resisting the deadening silence of his family home in the elegant yet stiflingly safe neighborhood of Gramercy Park, nine-year-old Roger imagines himself a private eye in pursuit of criminals. With the dreamlike mystery of the city before him, he sets off alone, out into the streets of Manhattan, thrilling to a life of unsolved cases. Six decades later, Rosenblatt finds himself again patrolling the territory of his youth: The writing class he teaches has just wrapped up, releasing him into the winter night and the very neighborhood in which he grew up. A grown man now, he investigates his own life and the life of the city as he walks, exploring the New York of the 1950s; the lives of the writers who walked these streets before him, such as Poe and Melville; the great detectives of fiction and the essence of detective work; and the monuments of his childhood, such as the New York Public Library, once the site of an immense reservoir that nourished the city with water before it nourished it with books, and the Empire State Building, which, in Rosenblatt's imagination, vibrates sympathetically with the oversize loneliness of King Kong: "If you must fall, fall from me." As he walks, he is returned to himself, the boy detective on the case. Just as Rosenblatt invented a world for himself as a child, he creates one on this night—the writer a detective still, the chief suspect in the case of his own life, a case that discloses the shared mysteries of all our lives. A masterly evocation of the city and a meditation on memory as an act of faith, The Boy Detective treads the line between a novel and a poem, displaying a world at once dangerous and beautiful.

Download or read book Making Toast written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Ecco. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From O magazine to the New York Times, from authors such as E. L. Doctorow to Ann Beattie, critics and writers across the country have hailed Roger Rosenblatt's Making Toast as an evocative, moving testament to the enduring power of a parent's love and the bonds of family. When Roger's daughter, Amy—a gifted doctor, mother, and wife—collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition at age thirty-eight, Roger and his wife, Ginny, leave their home on the South Shore of Long Island to move in with their son-in-law, Harris, and their three young grandchildren: six-year-old Jessica, four-year-old Sammy, and one-year-old James, known as Bubbies. Long past the years of diapers, homework, and recitals, Roger and Ginny—Boppo and Mimi to the kids—quickly reaccustom themselves to the world of small children: bedtime stories, talking toys, play-dates, nonstop questions, and nonsequential thought. Though reeling from Amy's death, they carry on, reconstructing a family, sustaining one another, and guiding three lively, alert, and tenderhearted children through the pains and confusions of grief. As he marvels at the strength of his son-in-law and the tenacity and skill of his wife, Roger attends each day to "the one household duty I have mastered"—preparing the morning toast perfectly to each child's liking. Luminous, precise, and utterly unsentimental, Making Toast is both a tribute to the singular Amy and a brave exploration of the human capacity to move through and live with grief.

Download or read book Kayak Morning written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Roger Rosenblatt, author of the bestsellers Making Toast and Unless It Moves the Human Heart, comes a moving meditation on the passages of grief, the solace of solitude, and the redemptive power of love In Making Toast, Roger Rosenblatt shared the story of his family in the days and months after the death of his thirty-eight-year-old daughter, Amy. Now, in Kayak Morning, he offers a personal meditation on grief itself. “Everybody grieves,” he writes. From that terse, melancholy observation emerges a work of art that addresses the universal experience of loss. On a quiet Sunday morning, two and a half years after Amy’s death, Roger heads out in his kayak. He observes,“You can’t always make your way in the world by moving up. Or down, for that matter. Boats move laterally on water, which levels everything. It is one of the two great levelers.” Part elegy, part quest, Kayak Morning explores Roger’s years as a journalist, the comforts of literature, and the value of solitude, poignantly reminding us that grief is not apart from life but encompasses it. In recalling to us what we have lost, grief by necessity resurrects what we have had.

Download or read book Consuming Desires written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2006-12 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Consider this paradox: Ecologists estimate that it would take three planets Earth to provide an American standard of living to the entire world. Yet it is that standard of living to which the whole world aspires.In Consuming Desires, award-winning writer and social commentator Roger Rosenblatt brings together a brilliant collection of thinkers and writers to shed light on the triumphs and tragedies of that disturbing paradox. The book represents a captivating salon, offering a rich and varied dialogue on the underlying roots of consumer culture and its pervasive impact on ourselves and the world around us. Each author offers a unique perspective, their layers of thoughts and insights building together to create a striking, multifaceted picture of our society and culture.Jane Smiley probes the roots of consumerism in the emancipation of women from household drudgery afforded by labor-saving devices and technological innovation; Alex Kotlowitz describes the mutual reinforcement of fashion trends as poor inner-city kids and rich suburban kids strive to imitate each other; Bill McKibben discusses the significance, and the irony, of defining yourself not by what you buy, but by what you don't buy.The essays range widely, but two ideas are central to nearly all of them: that consumption is driven by yearning and desire -- often unspoken, seemingly insatiable -- and that what prevents us from keeping our consumptive impulse in check is the western concept of self, the solitary and restless self, entitled to all it can pay for.As Rosenblatt explains in his insightful introduction: "Individualism and desire are what makes us great and what makes us small. Freedom is our dream and our enemy. The essays touch on these paradoxes, and while all are too nuanced and graceful to preach easy reform, they give an idea of what reform means, where it is possible, and, in some cases, where it may not be as desirable as it appears."

Download or read book Black Fiction written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this illuminating book Roger Rosenblatt offers both sensitive analyses of individual works and a provocative and compelling thesis. He argues that black fiction has a unity deriving not from any chronological sequence, or simply from its black authorship, but from a particular cyclical conception of history on which practically every significant black American novel and short story is based. Marked for oppression by an external physical characteristic, black characters struggle constantly against and within a hostile world. Rosenblatt's analysis of the way black protagonists try to break historical patterns provides an integrated and sustained interpretation of motives and methods in black fiction. The black hero, after starting on a circular track, may try to change direction by means of his youth, love, education, or humor; or he may try to escape into his own elusive and vague history. But, as Rosenblatt demonstrates, these attempts all fail. And the black hero discovers in the failure of his attempts that the society which caused all this failure is not only unattainable but undesirable. Neither a sociological study nor a routine survey, this is distinctly a work of literary criticism which concentrates on black fiction as literature.

Download or read book Thomas Murphy written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-01-19 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed, award-winning essayist and memoirist returns to fiction with this reflective, bittersweet tale that introduces the irrepressible aging poet Thomas Murphy—a paean to the mystery, tragedy and wonder of life. Trying his best to weasel out of an appointment with the neurologist his only child, Máire, has cornered him into, the poet Thomas Murphy—singer of the oldies, friend of the down-and-out, card sharp, raconteur, piano bar player, bon vivant, tough and honest and all-around good guy—contemplates his sunset years. Máire worries that Murph is losing his memory. Murph wonders what to do with the rest of his life. The older mind is at issue, and Murph’s jumps from fact to memory to fancy, conjuring the islands that have shaped him—Inishmaan, a rocky gumdrop off the Irish coast where he was born, and New York, his longtime home. He muses on the living, his daughter and precocious grandson William, and on the dead, his dear wife Oona, and Greenberg, his best friend. Now, into Murphy’s world comes the lovely Sarah, a blind woman less than half his age, who sees into his heart, as he sees into hers. Brought together under the most unlikely circumstance, Murph and Sarah begin in friendship and wind up in impossible possible love. An Irishman, a dreamer, a poet, Murph, like Whitman, sings lustily of himself and of everyone. Through his often-extravagant behavior and observations, both hilarious and profound, we see the world in all its strange glory, equally beautiful and ridiculous. With memory at the center of his thoughts, he contemplates its power and accuracy and meaning. Our life begins in dreams, but does not stay with them, Murph reminds us. What use shall we make of the past? Ultimately, he asks, are relationships our noblest reason for living? Behold the charming, wistful, vibrant, aging Thomas Murphy, whose story celebrates the ageless confusion that is this dreadful, gorgeous life.

Download or read book The Man in the Water written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Random House (NY). This book was released on 1994 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of America's most thoughtful and provocative social commentators comes a new collection of essays, reportage, and criticism. Featuring Rosenblatt's most memorable writing in years, this sampling includes his "Man of the Year" profile of Ronald Reagan for Time.

Download or read book Where We Stand written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2013-02-19 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these 30 essays, Roger Rosenblatt draws on his 27 years of reporting and commenting on America to reaffirm the core values of our complex and wonderful country. Famous for his ability to put wise and important ideas into witty and instructive prose, the prize-winning journalist and commentator provides comfort and resolve for Americans in a time of threat. With his charm and humor, Rosenblatt reminds us of the fundamental political and moral strengths of America. During the last 30 years, Rosenblatt believes, we have been living outside history in a bubble of wealth and power. The events of September 11, 2001, have given us a chance to reacquaint ourselves with what the country stands for and what it should become. If we have lost our way as a country, it is because we have lost sight of the idealism on which America was founded. The fundamentals of American justice and society are more than America's virtues—they are standards by which a civilization measures its worth.

Download or read book Lapham Rising written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-11-17 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harry March is something of a wreck and more than half nuts. Up until now, he has lived peacefully on an island in the Hamptons with his talking dog, Hector, a born-again Evangelical and unapologetic capitalist. But March’s life starts to completely unravel when Lapham—an ostentatious multimillionaire who made his fortune on asparagus tongs—begins construction of a gargantuan mansion just across the way. To Harry, Lapham’s monstrosity-to-be represents the fetid and corrupt excess that has ruined modern civilization. Which means, quite simply, that this is war.

Download or read book Blunt written by Nigel Parry and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a premier magazine runs a story about a high profile celebrity, there is only one photographer they call: Nigel Parry. His brilliant lens has captured the most powerful politicos, the most famous celebrities and the most beautiful people of our day. His in-your-face style and exacting precision yields portraits like no others. His newest project, Blunt, is a deluxe volume with 145 iconic images, each in Parry's own signature style - intimate, honest and wholly original.

Download or read book Swimming to Cambodia written by Spalding Gray and published by Theatre Communications Grou. This book was released on 2005 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reissue of Spalding Gray's masterpiece.

Download or read book Mein Kampf written by David Levinthal and published by Twin Palms Pub. This book was released on 1996 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of soft-focus color photographs of toys staged to re-enact the Holocaust.

Download or read book Exploring Happiness written by Sissela Bok and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the nature of happiness, discussing how it has been treated in philosophy and religion and by the modern disciplines of psychology, economics, and neurocience, and considers the place of individual happiness within the context of modern life.

Download or read book Coming Apart written by Roger Rosenblatt and published by Little Brown. This book was released on 1997 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the afternoon of April 9, 1969, Roger Rosenblatt, then a young English instructor at Harvard, stepped out of his classroom building. There, across the Yard, he saw students hanging out of the windows of the main administrative building, waving revolutionary flags and chanting. The student uprisings that were rocking the country had finally come to America's most prestigious university. In short order, the demonstrators forcibly ejected deans from their offices. Less than twenty-four hours later - in an act unprecedented in Harvard's history - the University president invited local police to storm the Yard, and in riot gear, they attacked the students with tear gas and truncheons. In the turbulent weeks that followed, Rosenblatt soon found himself at the center of the chaos. As the Senior Tutor in an undergraduate House, he sat up night after night counseling angry, frightened students. As a member of the faculty committee formed to investigate the takeover and determine punishments, he saw just how fragile the bonds were that held the University together. For himself, Rosenblatt gained a very special Harvard education. Drawing on the recollections of faculty - Archibald Cox, Derek Bok, John Kenneth Galbraith, John Dunlop, James Q. Wilson, and Martin Peretz - and of students - Al Gore, Michael Kinsley, James Fallows, Frank Rich, Christopher Durang, and Mark Helprin - Rosenblatt has written an eloquent, often ironic, sometimes funny memoir that can be read as modern history and as a moral tale about a time when people persuaded themselves that they could fix things by taking them apart.