Download or read book Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five written by Ervin E. Szpek and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 670 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shadows of Slaughterhouse Five chronicles the story of 150 American POWs captured in the Battle of the Bulge and eventually caught up in one of the greatest tragedies of World War II - the firebombing of Dresden. This collection includes oral histories, previously unpublished memoirs, and letters from home and from the front that together tell their compelling story in their own words. From simple hometown beginnings through the awakenings of military life in basic training, from assignment on the supposed "quiet zone" in Belgium to the unexpected Battle of the Bulge, from forced march and entrainment to eventual assignment on work details in Dresden - the "Florence of the Elbe," to the inferno of Dresden on February 13-14, 1945, and the gruesome work details to follow, the individual and collective recollections and reflections of these 150 young men, the men housed in the famed Slaughterhouse Five, reveal a very personal side of war and the struggle for survival. Yet repatriation did not bring closure to this chapter of their young lives for like shadows their memories would forever be part of them. Today more than sixty years after the firebombing of Dresden, the statue of a steer wishing health and happiness to the citizens of Dresden still stands at the entrance to the public slaughterhouse, a silent witness to the maelstrom that descended upon Dresden and this group of 150 American POWs housed within. Now after more than 60 years of silence for most of these men, Kurt Vonnegut's fellow POWs tell their story of Slaughterhouse Five, in their words as they saw it - dog face young soldiers assured that the war was soon to be over!
Download or read book Slaughterhouse Five written by Kurt Vonnegut and published by Dial Press Trade Paperback. This book was released on 1999-01-12 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five is “a desperate, painfully honest attempt to confront the monstrous crimes of the twentieth century” (Time). Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.” An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it. Authors as wide-ranging as Norman Mailer, John Irving, Michael Crichton, Tim O’Brien, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, David Sedaris, Jennifer Egan, and J. K. Rowling have all found inspiration in Vonnegut’s words. Jonathan Safran Foer has described Vonnegut as “the kind of writer who made people—young people especially—want to write.” George Saunders has declared Vonnegut to be “the great, urgent, passionate American writer of our century, who offers us . . . a model of the kind of compassionate thinking that might yet save us from ourselves.” More than fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut’s portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.
Download or read book And So It Goes written by Charles J. Shields and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book for 2011 A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book for 2011 The first authoritative biography of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., a writer who changed the conversation of American literature. In 2006, Charles Shields reached out to Kurt Vonnegut in a letter, asking for his endorsement for a planned biography. The first response was no ("A most respectful demurring by me for the excellent writer Charles J. Shields, who offered to be my biographer"). Unwilling to take no for an answer, propelled by a passion for his subject, and already deep into his research, Shields wrote again and this time, to his delight, the answer came back: "O.K." For the next year—a year that ended up being Vonnegut's last—Shields had access to Vonnegut and his letters. And So It Goes is the culmination of five years of research and writing—the first-ever biography of the life of Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut resonates with readers of all generations from the baby boomers who grew up with him to high-school and college students who are discovering his work for the first time. Vonnegut's concise collection of personal essays, Man Without a Country, published in 2006, spent fifteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has sold more than 300,000 copies to date. The twenty-first century has seen interest in and scholarship about Vonnegut's works grow even stronger, and this is the first book to examine in full the life of one of the most influential iconoclasts of his time.
Download or read book Lucifer s Shadow written by David Hewson and published by Delta. This book was released on 2005 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disillusioned by the darker side of Venice, English cataloguer Daniel Forster discovers a lost musical masterpiece within a library of dusty manuscripts and is drawn into a treacherous game of deception that spans three centuries, from the periods of Vivaldi and Rousseau to the present. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
Download or read book Shadow Season written by Tom Piccirilli and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An ex-cop, Finn was left literally blinded by violence. The one thing he can still see is the body of his wife, Dani, and a crime scene that won’t fade from his mind’ s eye. Now a professor, Finn never would have guessed that an isolated girls’ prep school could be every bit as dangerous as city streets. Especially when he stumbles upon a local girl lying in a graveyard in the middle of a raging blizzard. Finn may live in a world of total darkness, but it’s about to get a splash of red. The memories that torment him still have the power to kill, and a group of innocent students has been put in harm’s way by a pair of vicious criminals stalking Finn for unknown reasons. Secrets are creeping from the shadows around him—the kind that even a man with perfect vision never sees until it’s too late. They’re about to become terrifyingly clear to Finn—and it all begins with the scent of blood. BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Tom Piccirilli's The Last Kind Words.
Download or read book The Writer s Crusade written by Tom Roston and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Kurt Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse-Five, an enduring masterpiece on trauma and memory Kurt Vonnegut was twenty years old when he enlisted in the United States Army. Less than two years later, he was captured by the Germans in the single deadliest US engagement of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. He was taken to a POW camp, then transferred to a work camp near Dresden, and held in a slaughterhouse called Schlachthof Fünf where he survived the horrific firebombing that killed thousands and destroyed the city. To the millions of fans of Vonnegut’s great novel Slaughterhouse-Five, these details are familiar. They’re told by the book’s author/narrator, and experienced by his enduring character Billy Pilgrim, a war veteran who “has come unstuck in time.” Writing during the tumultuous days of the Vietnam conflict, with the novel, Vonnegut had, after more than two decades of struggle, taken trauma and created a work of art, one that still resonates today. In The Writer’s Crusade, author Tom Roston examines the connection between Vonnegut’s life and Slaughterhouse-Five. Did Vonnegut suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Did Billy Pilgrim? Roston probes Vonnegut’s work, his personal history, and discarded drafts of the novel, as well as original interviews with the writer’s family, friends, scholars, psychologists, and other novelists including Karl Marlantes, Kevin Powers, and Tim O’Brien. The Writer’s Crusade is a literary and biographical journey that asks fundamental questions about trauma, creativity, and the power of storytelling.
Download or read book Kurt Vonnegut s Slaughterhouse five written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of critical essays about Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five.
Download or read book The Brothers Vonnegut written by Ginger Strand and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Worlds collide in this true story of weather control in the Cold War era and the making of Kurt Vonnegut In the mid-1950s, Kurt Vonnegut takes a job in the PR department at General Electric in Schenectady, where his older brother, Bernard, is a leading scientist in its research lab--or "House of Magic." Kurt has ambitions as a novelist, and Bernard is working on a series of cutting-edge weather-control experiments meant to make deserts bloom and farmers flourish. While Kurt writes zippy press releases, Bernard builds silver-iodide generators and attacks clouds with dry ice. His experiments attract the attention of the government; weather proved a decisive factor in World War II, and if the military can control the clouds, fog, and snow, they can fly more bombing missions. Maybe weather will even be the "New Super Weapon." But when the army takes charge of his cloud-seeding project (dubbed Project Cirrus), Bernard begins to have misgivings about the harmful uses of his inventions, not to mention the evidence that they are causing alarming changes in the atmosphere. In a fascinating cultural history, Ginger Strand chronicles the intersection of these brothers' lives at a time when the possibilities of science seemed infinite. As the Cold War looms, Bernard's struggle for integrity plays out in Kurt's evolving writing style. The Brothers Vonnegut reveals how science's ability to influence the natural world also influenced one of our most inventive novelists.
Download or read book The Alienated War Veteran in Film and Literature written by Emmett Early and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-17 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The veterans' culture in postwar eras from World War I to the present is examined in this book, with specific attention to the historic events of each era as they influence veterans, and the literature and movies produced about veterans and by veterans. The intention is to highlight the reciprocal interactions among the influences of the war, the veterans, and the culture. The common alienation of the veterans of foreign wars is thoroughly explored. Films and literary works featuring war veterans of each era are examined in detail for their various views of alienation. Homer's Odyssey, myths, fairy tales, modern novels, memoirs, and short stories are all discussed with an emphasis on detailing what is common and expected with returning veterans, and what is unique for each postwar era.
Download or read book The House of Small Shadows written by Adam Nevill and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2014-07-15 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catherine's last job ended badly. Corporate bullying at a top TV network saw her fired and forced to leave London, but she was determined to get her life back. A new job and a few therapists later, things look much brighter. Especially when a challenging new project presents itself — to catalogue the late M. H. Mason's wildly eccentric cache of antique dolls and puppets. Rarest of all, she'll get to examine his elaborate displays of posed, costumed and preserved animals, depicting bloody scenes from the Great War. Catherine can't believe her luck when Mason's elderly niece invites her to stay at Red House itself, where she maintains the collection until his niece exposes her to the dark message behind her uncle's "Art." Catherine tries to concentrate on the job, but Mason's damaged visions begin to raise dark shadows from her own past. Shadows she'd hoped therapy had finally erased. Soon the barriers between reality, sanity and memory start to merge and some truths seem too terrible to be real... in The House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill.
Download or read book Player Piano written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurt Vonnegut?s first novel Player Piano, published in 1952, heralded the beginning of one of the most diverting and provocative adventures in modern American fiction. Vonnegut went on to write novels that perhaps had greater formal skill and technique, but Player Piano is a tour de force of imaginative insight into modern life and a shrewd satire of American progress.
Download or read book The Rosewater Insurrection written by Tade Thompson and published by Orbit. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rosewater Insurrection continues the award-winning science fiction trilogy by one of science fiction's most engaging voices. All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. Those who know the truth of the invasion keep the secret. The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive Kaaro, is at the forefront of the cold, silent conflict. She must capture a woman who is the key to the survival of the human race. But Aminat is stymied by the machinations of the Mayor of Rosewater and the emergence of an old enemy of Wormwood. Innovative and genre-bending, Tade Thompson's ambitious Afrofuturist series is perfect for fans of Jeff Vandermeer, N. K. Jemisin, and Ann Leckie. Praise for The Wormwood Trilogy: "Smart. Gripping. Fabulous!" —Ann Leckie, award winning-author of Ancillary Justice "Mesmerising. There are echoes of Neuromancer and Arrival in here, but this astonishing debut is beholden to no one." —M. R. Carey, bestselling author of The Girl with All the Gifts "A magnificent tour de force, skillfully written and full of original and disturbing ideas." —Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author of Children of Time The Wormwood Trilogy Rosewater The Rosewater Insurrection The Rosewater Redemption
Download or read book Dancing with Mrs Dalloway written by Celia Blue Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every great book begins with an idea, whether it comes to a writer's mind with lightning speed or tugs at the imagination over time. Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway offers stories of the inspiration behind fifty classic works, from The Sound and the Fury, Jane Eyre, and Frankenstein to Anna Karenina, The Bell Jar, and Winnie-the-Pooh. Gabriel García Márquez was driving to Acapulco with his family when he slammed on the brakes, turned the car around, and insisted they abandon their trip so he could return home to write. He had good reason to cut the trip short-a childhood memory of touching ice had suddenly sparked the first line to a novel that would become his most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude. C. S. Lewis, on the other hand, spent decades pondering the scene that inspired The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When Lewis was sixteen, he had a peculiar daydream: a faun carried a bundle of parcels and an umbrella through snow-covered woods. Lewis was almost forty when he decided to write a novel that grew around the vision. In Dancing with Mrs. Dalloway, you'll discover who Edgar Allan Poe's raven really belonged to, whether Jane Austen's heartthrob Mr. Darcy actually existed, who got into mischief with a young Mark Twain, and what the real Sherlock Holmes did for a living. These delightful stories reveal the often unknown reasons our literary heroes put quill to parchment, pen to paper, or finger to keyboard to write some of the world's best-loved books.
Download or read book Shadow of a Bull written by Maia Wojciechowska and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-06-19 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Maia Wojciechowska's 1965 Newbery Medal winner about a young boy struggling with his father's legacy. Manolo was only three when his father, the great bullfighter Juan Olivar, died. But Juan is never far from Manolo's consciousness--how could he be, with the entire town of Arcangel waiting for the day Manolo will fulfill his father's legacy? But Manolo has a secret he dares to share with no one--he is a coward, without afición, the love of the sport that enables a bullfighter to rise above his fear and face a raging bull. As the day when he must enter the ring approaches, Manolo finds himself questioning which requires more courage: to follow in his father's legendary footsteps or to pursue his own destiny?
Download or read book Behind the Screen written by Sarah T. Roberts and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening look at the invisible workers who protect us from seeing humanity’s worst on today’s commercial internet Social media on the internet can be a nightmarish place. A primary shield against hateful language, violent videos, and online cruelty uploaded by users is not an algorithm. It is people. Mostly invisible by design, more than 100,000 commercial content moderators evaluate posts on mainstream social media platforms: enforcing internal policies, training artificial intelligence systems, and actively screening and removing offensive material—sometimes thousands of items per day. Sarah T. Roberts, an award-winning social media scholar, offers the first extensive ethnographic study of the commercial content moderation industry. Based on interviews with workers from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, at boutique firms and at major social media companies, she contextualizes this hidden industry and examines the emotional toll it takes on its workers. This revealing investigation of the people “behind the screen” offers insights into not only the reality of our commercial internet but the future of globalized labor in the digital age.
Download or read book Lucky Mud Other Foma written by Christina Jarvis and published by Seven Stories Press. This book was released on 2022-11-22 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating deep dive into Kurt Vonnegut’s oeuvre and legacy, illuminating his unique perspective on environmental stewardship and our shared connections as humans, Earthlings, and stardust. Vonnegut’s major apocalyptic trio—Cat’s Cradle, Slapstick, and Galápagos—prompt broad global, national, and species-level thinking about environmental issues through dramatic and fantastic scenarios. This book, Lucky Mud and Other Foma, tells the story of the origins and legacy of what Kurt Vonnegut understood as “planetary citizenship” and explores key roots, influences, literary techniques, and artistic expressions of his interest in environmental activism through his writing. Vonnegut saw writing itself as an act of good citizenship, as a way of “poisoning” the minds of young people “with humanity . . . to encourage them to make a better world.” Often that literary activism meant addressing real social and environmental problems—polluted water, soil, and air; racial and economic injustice; isolating and dehumanizing technologies; and lives and landscapes desolated by war. Vonnegut’s remedies took many forms, from the redemptive power of the arts to artificial extended families to vital communities and engaged democracies. Reminding us of our shared connections as humans, as Earthlings, as stardust, Lucky Mud helps fans, scholars, and book lovers of all kinds experience how Vonnegut’s writings purposely challenge readers to think, create, and love.
Download or read book Snow Steel written by Peter Caddick-Adams and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new assessment of the Battle of the Bulge, the largest and bloodiest battle fought by U.S. forces in World War II, offers a balanced perspective that considers both the German and American viewpoints and discusses the failings of intelligence; Hitler's strategic grasp; effects of weather and influence of terrain; and differences in weaponry, understanding of aerial warfare, and doctrine.
