Download or read book The Emancipating Death of a Boring Engineer written by Michel Bruneau and published by . This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, Best Second Novel, 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist, Literary Fiction, 2012 Book of the Year Award, Foreword Reviews "My casket shall be filled to the rim with 2005 Saint-Emilion." So read the first line of the specific instructions for Keene's funeral-a funeral that nobody would attend, since he had no friends or family. This had to be a mistake. Carmina's ex-husband had never been one inclined towards such exuberance-"he was a boring engineer for Christ's sake." Besides, she didn't want to have anything to do with this sordid story-they hadn't spoken to each other for more than a decade. A story that would have her treasure hunt for junk, with a suicidal, pyromaniac kid in tow, while being courted by the shyest lawyer on earth. Keene didn't have friends, but he sure had quirky acquaintances; each of the eight Carmina has to visit holds a piece of the puzzle. With its palette of quirky characters, imaginative developments, and unusual perspective on life and death, The Emancipating Death of a Boring Engineer is an inspirational journey that captivates, entertains, and provides food for thought to those of us who happen to know someone who might die someday (rare as it may be). About the author: Michel Bruneau is a boring engineer of the not so boring kind-whether he is emancipated or dead remains to be seen. His previous novel (Shaken Allegiances), which won the 2010 Grand Prize Next Generation Indie Book Awards and received much acclaim, depicted a Kafkaesque post-disaster world at the hands of self-serving actors. On a different tack, The Emancipating Death of a Boring Engineer is an uplifting story with an upbeat ending, because it was written with a pen of a different color. www.michelbruneau.com Reviews "This is certainly one way to go out. A love triangle of the strangest kind. You might find yourself charmed by a so-called boring engineer." ForeWord Reviews "The Emancipating Death of a Boring Engineer tells a compelling, and, at times, funny story. An entertaining read." San Francisco Book Review "Plenty of humor with its own take on the romance, very much recommended reading." Midwest Book Review Truly delightful. A sweet and poignant testimonial to love. Well worth reading. Readers Favorite "Zany with occasional moments of seriousness." IndieReader Review

Download or read book Shaken Allegiances written by Michel Bruneau and published by Cepages Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2nd Place, Fiction, 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner, 1st Place, Regional Fiction, 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Shaken Allegiances spans 48 hours in a world askew-almost absurd-just after a devastating earthquake has struck and isolated Montreal Island in the dead of an icy winter, one week before a referendum on Quebec's secession from Canada. No power, no communications, no access, and -40F, but no heroes to the rescue; no Schwarzenegger, no Stallone, no Charlton Heston. Provincial and federal politicians are busy waging an ideological war, while coordination of emergency response is in the hands of a lunatic; a structural engineer and a disc jockey form an odd couple in their pursuit of fame, while the frustrated media seek ways of leapfrogging the collapsed bridges to undertake some disaster tourism of their own. Their fortuitous encounters, and problems with quirky opportunists, converge to help make things worse. Kafka would feel at home. Shaken Allegiances jolts with a disturbing and witty projection of today's unbridled narcissistic society, a disaster in full bloom that has sprung from the seeds of individualism planted in the 1980s. Its colorful characters, quixotic, ambitious, rapacious, self-righteous, naive, conceited, moronic, lost, or otherwise flawed, provide a fresh, entertaining and cynical view of the inescapable human folly. About Michel Bruneau Michel Bruneau's blend of deadpan humor and keen eye for the nonsensical side of human nature underlie his original perspective on contemporary existence. His previous book of fiction, "Inhumanite - Onze nouvelles qui insultent l'intelligence" (in French) has received excellent reviews, particularly from Radio Canada. In the technical realm, he has been an earthquake engineer for over 20 years, doing his share to reduce the risks of infrastructure collapse. As a professor and researcher, he has extensively published and has received many awards for his work. Born in Quebec City, expatriated by the demands of work, he lives in Buffalo, enjoying its comparatively balmy winters. www.MichelBruneau.com Reviews "Seeing how the civil and political authorities behave, we are forced to conclude that the earthquake, after all, is a lesser evil. (...) They all work toward their own personal agenda. (...) Nobody is spared." "The characters sometimes resemble, to a fault, those we find in our own different parliaments." "A warning to your readers (...) to let them know from the outset that they will encounter things that may slightly unsettle them." -- Line Boily, Radio Canada "An earthquake cuts off Montreal Island from the world, and a whole circus of Canadian politics, media, and so much more erupt around it. A cynical and humorous look at the Quebec issue and modern Canada, "Shaken Allegiances" is uniquely Canadian and deserves a place in world fiction collections." -- Midwest Book Review Michel Bruneau has set the standard for combining excitement with factual content in the earthquake fiction genre. (...) This is not a novel in which to find role models. (...) Recommended to earthquake engineering experts as well as to the general public. -- Robert Reitherman, Executive Director, Consortium of Universities for Research in Earthquake Engineering, EERI Spectra

Download or read book Ductile Design of Steel Structures 2nd Edition written by Michel Bruneau and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2011-07-14 with total page 929 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive coverage of the background and design requirements for plastic and seismic design of steel structures Thoroughly revised throughout, Ductile Design of Steel Structures, Second Edition, reflects the latest plastic and seismic design provisions and standards from the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and the Canadian Standard Association (CSA). The book covers steel material, cross-section, component, and system response for applications in plastic and seismic design, and provides practical guidance on how to incorporate these principles into structural design. Three new chapters address buckling-restrained braced frame design, steel plate shear wall design, and hysteretic energy dissipating systems and design strategies. Eight other chapters have been extensively revised and expanded, including a chapter presenting the basic seismic design philosophy to determine seismic loads. Self-study problems at the end of each chapter help reinforce the concepts presented. Written by experts in earthquake-resistant design who are active in the development of seismic guidelines, this is an invaluable resource for students and professionals involved in earthquake engineering or other areas related to the analysis and design of steel structures. COVERAGE INCLUDES: Structural steel properties Plastic behavior at the cross-section level Concepts, methods, and applications of plastic analysis Building code seismic design philosophy Design of moment-resisting frames Design of concentrically braced frames Design of eccentrically braced frames Design of steel energy dissipating systems Stability and rotation capacity of steel beams

Download or read book They Made America written by David Lefer and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-03-03 with total page 922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illustrated history of American innovators -- some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating -- by the author of the bestselling The American Century.

Download or read book The End and the Beginning written by Hermynia Zur Mühlen and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2010 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in Germany in 1929, The End and the Beginning is a lively personal memoir of a vanished world and of a rebellious, high-spirited young woman's struggle to achieve independence. Born in 1883 into a distinguished and wealthy aristocratic family of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hermynia Zur Muhlen spent much of her childhood travelling in Europe and North Africa with her diplomat father. After five years on her German husband's estate in czarist Russia she broke with both her family and her husband and set out on a precarious career as a professional writer committed to socialism. Besides translating many leading contemporary authors, notably Upton Sinclair, into German, she herself published an impressive number of politically engaged novels, detective stories, short stories, and children's fairy tales. Because of her outspoken opposition to National Socialism, she had to flee her native Austria in 1938 and seek refuge in England, where she died, virtually penniless, in 1951. This revised and corrected translation of Zur Muhlen's memoir - with extensive notes and an essay on the author by Lionel Gossman - will appeal especially to readers interested in women's history, the Central European aristocratic world that came to an end with the First World War, and the culture and politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Download or read book Engineering written by and published by . This book was released on 1870 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Real North Korea written by Andrei Lankov and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes cold, clear analysis for the overheated rhetoric surrounding this opaque police state. Based on vast expertise, this book reveals how average North Koreans live, how their leaders rule, and how both survive

Download or read book Expanded Cinema written by Gene Youngblood and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was the first serious treatment of video, computers, and holography as cinematic technologies. Long considered the bible for media artists, Youngblood’s insider account of 1960s counterculture and the birth of cybernetics remains a mainstay reference in today’s hypermediated digital world. This fiftieth anniversary edition includes a new Introduction by the author that offers conceptual tools for understanding the sociocultural and sociopolitical realities of our present world. A unique eyewitness account of burgeoning experimental film and the birth of video art in the late 1960s, this far- ranging study traces the evolution of cinematic language to the end of fiction, drama, and realism. Vast in scope, its prescient formulations include “the paleocybernetic age,” “intermedia,” the “artist as design scientist,” the “artist as ecologist,” “synaesthetics and kinesthetics,” and “the technosphere: man/machine symbiosis.” Outstanding works are analyzed in detail. Methods of production are meticulously described, including interviews with artists and technologists of the period, such as Nam June Paik, Jordan Belson, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Carolee Schneemann, Stan VanDerBeek, Les Levine, and Frank Gillette. An inspiring Introduction by the celebrated polymath and designer R. Buckminster Fuller—a perfectly cut gem of countercultural thinking in itself—places Youngblood’s radical observations in comprehensive perspective. Providing an unparalleled historical documentation, Expanded Cinema clarifies a chapter of countercultural history that is still not fully represented in the arthistorical record half a century later. The book will also inspire the current generation of artists working in ever-newer expansions of the cinematic environment and will prove invaluable to all who are concerned with the technologies that are reshaping the nature of human communication.

Download or read book The Book of Pleasures written by Raoul Vaneigem and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Women Race Class written by Angela Y. Davis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-06-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From one of our most important scholars and civil rights activist icon, a powerful study of the women’s liberation movement and the tangled knot of oppression facing Black women. “Angela Davis is herself a woman of undeniable courage. She should be heard.”—The New York Times Angela Davis provides a powerful history of the social and political influence of whiteness and elitism in feminism, from abolitionist days to the present, and demonstrates how the racist and classist biases of its leaders inevitably hampered any collective ambitions. While Black women were aided by some activists like Sarah and Angelina Grimke and the suffrage cause found unwavering support in Frederick Douglass, many women played on the fears of white supremacists for political gain rather than take an intersectional approach to liberation. Here, Davis not only contextualizes the legacy and pitfalls of civil and women’s rights activists, but also discusses Communist women, the murder of Emmitt Till, and Margaret Sanger’s racism. Davis shows readers how the inequalities between Black and white women influence the contemporary issues of rape, reproductive freedom, housework and child care in this bold and indispensable work.

Download or read book Crossing Boundaries Building Bridges written by Annie Canel and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-08 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women engineers have been in the public limelight for decades, yet we have surprisingly little historically grounded understanding of the patterns of employment and education of women in this field. Most studies are either policy papers or limited to statistical analyses. Moreover, the scant historical research so far available emphasizes the individual, single and unique character of those women working in engineering, often using anecdotal evidence but ignoring larger issues like the patterns of the labour market and educational institutions. Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges offers answers to the question why women engineers have required special permits to pass through the male guarded gates of engineering and examines how they have managed this. It explores the differences and similarities between women engineers in nine countries from a gender point of view. Through case studies the book considers the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion of women engineers.

Download or read book Crown of Coral and Pearl written by Mara Rutherford and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fabulous interweaving of fantasy, politics, and sisterhood—this unusual, tense tale will have you on the edge of your seat!”—#1 New York Times bestselling author Tamora Pierce Red Queen meets House of Salt and Sorrow in Mara Rutherford's debut YA fantasy Crown of Coral and Pearl, which follows a young woman from a village on the sea who must impersonate her twin on land to save everyone she loves from a tyrannical prince. For generations, the crown princes of Ilara have married the most beautiful maidens from the ocean village of Varenia. Nor once dreamed of seeing the mysterious mountain kingdom for herself, but after a childhood accident left her with a scar, she knew her twin sister, Zadie, would likely be chosen to marry the crown prince. Then Zadie is injured, and Nor is sent to Ilara in her place. She soon discovers her future husband, Prince Ceren, is as forbidding and cold as his home. And as she grows closer to Ceren’s brother, Prince Talin, Nor learns of a failing royal bloodline, a murdered queen...and a plot to destroy her village. To save her people, Nor must learn to negotiate the treacherous protocols of a court where lies reign and obsession rules...but discovering her own formidable strength may cost her everything she loves. Books in the Crown of Coral and Pearl duology: Crown of Coral and Pearl Kingdom of Sea and Stone

Download or read book A Patriot s History of the United States written by Larry Schweikart and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2004-12-29 with total page 1373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.

Download or read book Joan and Peter written by Herbert George Wells and published by . This book was released on 1918 with total page 602 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Light in the Ruins written by Chris Bohjalian and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the New York Times bestselling author of The Flight Attendant comes a spellbinding novel of love, despair, and revenge—set in war-ravaged Tuscany. 1943: Tucked away in the idyllic hills of Tuscany, the Rosatis, an Italian family of noble lineage, believe that the walls of their ancient villa will keep them safe from the war raging across Europe. But when two soldiers—a German and an Italian—arrive at their doorstep asking to see an ancient Etruscan burial site, the Rosatis’ bucolic tranquility is shattered. 1955: Serafina Bettini, an investigator with the Florence Police Department, has successfully hidden her tragic scars from WWII, at least until she’s assigned to a gruesome new case—a serial killer who is targeting the remaining members of the Rosati family one by one. Soon, she will find herself digging into past secrets that will reveal a breathtaking story of moral paradox, human frailty, and the mysterious ways of the heart.

Download or read book The State written by Anthony De Jasay and published by Collected Papers of Anthony de. This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The State is a brilliant analysis of some of the fundamental issues of modern political thought from the perspective, not of individuals or subjects, but of the state itself. The author poses the query, "What would you do if you were the state?" The state usually is understood as an instrument, not a personality, and it is presumed to exist so that people can achieve their common ends. However, Jasay asks, what if we suppose the state to have a will and ends of its own? To answer these questions, the author traces the logical and historical progression of the state from a modest-sized protector of life and property through its development into an "agile seducer of democratic majorities, to the welfare-dispensing drudge that it is in many countries today ... Is the rational next step a totalitarian enhancement of its power?" The State presents what has been termed "a disturbingly logical 'agenda' for the state in pursuit of its 'self-fulfillment.'"--Inside jacket flap.

Download or read book In Defense of Lost Causes written by Slavoj Žižek and published by Verso. This book was released on 2009-10-19 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb