Download or read book The KGB Bar Reader written by Ken Foster and published by Quill. This book was released on 1998 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The KGB Bar Reading Series, originally conceived as a small, weekly literary event in a funky bar in New York City's East Village, has grown into a showcase for lively writing that draws a response - and is quickly earning national recognition. Now, fiction and nonfiction selections from the series are gathered together in this unique anthology."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Download or read book The KGB Bar Nonfiction Reader written by Mark Jacobson and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best nonfiction writing ever presented onstage at New York City's famous KGB Bar includes the work of Jimmy Breslin, Susan Orlean, Budd Schulberg, Natalie Angier, Jack Newfield, Joyce Carol Oates, Luc Sante, Steve Earle, and many others. Original.
Download or read book The Dogs Who Found Me written by Ken Foster and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now regarded as a classic in dog literature, Ken Foster's memoir chronicles his journey from first-time dog owner to rescuer--and all the lessons and mistakes he made along the way. Bookended by the tragedies of 9/11 and Katrina, Foster finds that dogs open his eyes to the benefits of compassion, selflessness, and the chaotic beauty of living each day in the moment. But more than Foster's own story, readers remember the dogs. Among them are Duque, a Costa Rican stray; Brando, Foster's first adopted dog and a supposed pit bull mix who outgrew his Manhattan studio apartment; Rocco, a clownish red pit bull whose owner mistakenly gives him away to the wrong person; Zephyr, a cheerful Rottweiler mix who awakens Foster by sitting on his chest when his heart stops working; and Sula, the tiny lost pit bull who showed up at Foster's door one day and stayed. Whether bearing witness to national tragedy, grieving the death of a friend, or dealing with his own mortality, Foster finds strength in his dogs, and in the reciprocal nature of rescue.
Download or read book Sister Stop Breathing written by Chiara Barzini and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction. Art. SISTER STOP BREATHING is Chiara Barzini's debut collection of short fictions (with color art by Cal A. Mari). Gary Shteyngart described it as: "The best thing to come out of Italy since espresso, and it opens your eyes and quickens your heart just as fast." And Jonathan Ames had this to say about it: "These kaleidoscopic arrangements of sentences and situations are of freakish originality and beauty. They are stories like smashed mirrored jewels, which we look into, recognize ourselves and others, then look closely again and realize we're staring at the delicate close markings of a flower. I found these stories to be like life full of horror and comedy and wonderment for a world that is both grotesque and fantastical."
Download or read book From the Memoirs of a Non Enemy Combatant written by Alex Gilvarry and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-01-05 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The critically acclaimed debut from Alex Gilvarry, a darkly comic love letter to New York, told through the eyes of Boy Hernandez: Filipino immigrant, glamour junkie, Guantánamo detainee. Alex Gilvarry's widely acclaimed first novel is the story of designer Boy Hernandez: Filipino immigrant, New York glamour junkie, Guantánamo detainee. Locked away indefinitely and accused of being linked to a terrorist plot, Boy prepares for the tribunal of his life with this intimate confession, a dazzling swirl of soirees, runways, and hipster romance that charts one small man's undying love for New York City and his pursuit of the big American dream—even as the present nightmare of detainment chisels away at his vital wit and chutzpah. A New York Times Editor's Choice, From the Memoirs of a Non-Enemy Combatant unveils two of America's most illusory realms—high fashion and Homeland Security—in a funny, wise, and beguiling, and Kafkaesque tale for our strange times.
Download or read book Putin s People written by Catherine Belton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of the year by The Economist | Financial Times | New Statesman | The Telegraph "[Putin's People] will surely now become the definitive account of the rise of Putin and Putinism." —Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic "This riveting, immaculately researched book is arguably the best single volume written about Putin, the people around him and perhaps even about contemporary Russia itself in the past three decades." —Peter Frankopan, Financial Times Interference in American elections. The sponsorship of extremist politics in Europe. War in Ukraine. In recent years, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has waged a concerted campaign to expand its influence and undermine Western institutions. But how and why did all this come about, and who has orchestrated it? In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe. The result is a chilling and revelatory exposé of the KGB’s revanche—a story that begins in the murk of the Soviet collapse, when networks of operatives were able to siphon billions of dollars out of state enterprises and move their spoils into the West. Putin and his allies subsequently completed the agenda, reasserting Russian power while taking control of the economy for themselves, suppressing independent voices, and launching covert influence operations abroad. Ranging from Moscow and London to Switzerland and Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach—and assembling a colorful cast of characters to match—Putin’s People is the definitive account of how hopes for the new Russia went astray, with stark consequences for its inhabitants and, increasingly, the world.
Download or read book The Spy and the Traitor written by Ben Macintyre and published by Crown. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The celebrated author of Double Cross and Rogue Heroes returns with a thrilling Americans-era tale of Oleg Gordievsky, the Russian whose secret work helped hasten the end of the Cold War. “The best true spy story I have ever read.”—JOHN LE CARRÉ Named a Best Book of the Year by The Economist • Shortlisted for the Bailie Giffords Prize in Nonfiction If anyone could be considered a Russian counterpart to the infamous British double-agent Kim Philby, it was Oleg Gordievsky. The son of two KGB agents and the product of the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Gordievsky grew to see his nation's communism as both criminal and philistine. He took his first posting for Russian intelligence in 1968 and eventually became the Soviet Union's top man in London, but from 1973 on he was secretly working for MI6. For nearly a decade, as the Cold War reached its twilight, Gordievsky helped the West turn the tables on the KGB, exposing Russian spies and helping to foil countless intelligence plots, as the Soviet leadership grew increasingly paranoid at the United States's nuclear first-strike capabilities and brought the world closer to the brink of war. Desperate to keep the circle of trust close, MI6 never revealed Gordievsky's name to its counterparts in the CIA, which in turn grew obsessed with figuring out the identity of Britain's obviously top-level source. Their obsession ultimately doomed Gordievsky: the CIA officer assigned to identify him was none other than Aldrich Ames, the man who would become infamous for secretly spying for the Soviets. Unfolding the delicious three-way gamesmanship between America, Britain, and the Soviet Union, and culminating in the gripping cinematic beat-by-beat of Gordievsky's nail-biting escape from Moscow in 1985, Ben Macintyre's latest may be his best yet. Like the greatest novels of John le Carré, it brings readers deep into a world of treachery and betrayal, where the lines bleed between the personal and the professional, and one man's hatred of communism had the power to change the future of nations.
Download or read book The Ask written by Sam Lipsyte and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-02-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dark comic novel by the author of Home Land, a college development officer’s last chance to keep his job comes at a high cost. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Milo Burke—husband, father, development officer at a third-tier university—has just joined the burgeoning class of the newly unemployed. Grasping after off jobs to support his wife and child, Milo is relieved to get another chance from his former boss. All he has to do is reel in a potential donor who, mysteriously, has requested Milo’s involvement. But it turns out that the ask is Milo’s sinister college classmate Purdy Stuart. And the “give” won’t come cheap. Exploring such themes as work, war, sex, class, child rearing, romantic comedies, Benjamin Franklin, cooking shows on death row, and the eroticization of chicken wire, The Ask is a hilarious tour de force from a writer who has already shown that the deepest fictions are often the funniest.
Download or read book I m a Good Dog written by Ken Foster and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-10-25 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Filled with inspiring stories and photographs, this heartfelt tribute to the pit bull celebrates one of America’s most popular yet misunderstood dogs. Perhaps more than any other breed, the pit bull has been dogged by negative stereotypes. In truth, pit bulls are innately wonderful family pets, as capable of love and good deeds as any other type of dog. Setting the record straight, Ken Foster sings the praises of pit bulls in I’m a Good Dog, a gorgeously illustrated, tenderly written tribute to this most misunderstood of canines. Founder of the Sula Foundation, which promotes responsible pit bull ownership in New Orleans, and the author of two acclaimed books about abandoned dogs, Foster has made it his mission to bring overlooked canines into the limelight. I’m a Good Dog traces the fascinating history of this particularly maligned breed. A century ago, the pit bull was considered a family dog, featured in family photos and trusted as loving companions for children. More recently, pit bulls have been portrayed by the media as stereotypes of everything they are not. Foster shatters that reputation through moving profiles of pit bulls that serve as therapy dogs, athletic heroes, search-and-rescue dogs, and educators, not to mention as loving pets. Foster also profiles many pit bull lovers, from Helen Keller and Dr. Seuss to actor Todd Cerveris, who took his pit bull on tour with him for the musical Spring Awakening. Proving that there’s much to love and nothing to fear, I’m a Good Dog restores the pit bull to its rightful place as friend, family member, athlete and entertainer.
Download or read book What Drives Men written by Susan Tepper and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Gulf War vet battling PTSD is tricked into chauffeuring millionaire country music legend Billy Bud Wilcox from Newark to Colorado. Everything goes wrong. Tepper expertly skewers a vast collection of characters on a wildly entertaining road trip from hell. Kafka meets Lost in America in Susan Tepper's quirky, irreverent, and incisive novel What Drives Men. Part nightmare, part slapstick comedy, with a generous dose of social critique, here everything slithers out of the flummoxed protagonist's control. -Beate Sigriddaughter, author of Xanthippe and Her Friends Susan Tepper's What Drives Men is a picaresque masterpiece. Tepper's cast of characters: a Gulf War vet, an octogenarian C&W singer, and three twenty-three-year-olds, are as diverse a group of nutcases you'll come across this side of The Master and Margarita. Tepper spins a marvelous tale, sure to tickle the funny bone. - James Claffey, author of Blood A Cold Blue
Download or read book My Misspent Youth written by Meghan Daum and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cult classic essay collection from “one of the most emotionally exacting, mercilessly candid, deeply funny . . . writers of our time” (Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book Review). First published in 2001, My Misspent Youthcaptured a generation’s uneasy coming of age as the world made its chaotic way into a new millennium. It also established Meghan Daum as a leading literary voice, widely celebrated for her fresh, provocative approach to the hidden fault lines of America’s cultural landscape. From her New Yorker essays about the financial demands of big-city ambition and the ethereal, strangely old-fashioned allure of cyber-relationships to her dazzlingly hilarious riff about musical passions that give way to middle-brow paraphernalia, Daum delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her.
Download or read book Hold Me Closer Necromancer written by Lish McBride and published by Henry Holt and Company (BYR). This book was released on 2010-10-12 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam leads a pretty normal life. He may not have the most exciting job in the world, but he's doing all right—until a fast food prank brings him to the attention of Douglas, a creepy guy with an intense violent streak. Turns out Douglas is a necromancer who raises the dead for cash and sees potential in Sam. Then Sam discovers he's a necromancer too, but with strangely latent powers. And his worst nightmare wants to join forces . . . or else. With only a week to figure things out, Sam needs all the help he can get. Luckily he lives in Seattle, which has nearly as many paranormal types as it does coffee places. But even with newfound friends, will Sam be able to save his skin? Hold Me Closer, Necromancer is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.
Download or read book American Kompromat written by Craig Unger and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** Kompromat n.—Russian for "compromising information" This is a story about the dirty secrets of the most powerful people in the world—including Donald Trump. It is based on exclusive interviews with dozens of high-level sources—intelligence officers in the CIA, FBI, and the KGB, thousands of pages of FBI investigations, police investigations, and news articles in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. American Kompromat shows that from Trump to Jeffrey Epstein, kompromat was used in operations far more sinister than the public could ever imagine. Among them, the book addresses what may be the single most important unanswered question of the entire Trump era: Is Donald Trump a Russian asset? The answer, American Kompromat says, is yes, and it supports that conclusion backs with the first richly detailed narrative on how the KGB allegedly first “spotted” Trump as a potential asset, how they cultivated him as an asset, arranged his first trip to Moscow, and pumped him full of KGB talking points that were published in three of America’s most prestigious newspapers. Among its many revelations, American Kompromat reports for the first time that: • According to Yuri Shvets, a former major in the KGB, Trump first did business over forty years ago with a Manhattan electronics store co-owned by a Soviet émigré who Shvets believes was working with the KGB. Trump’s decision to do business there triggered protocols through which the Soviet spy agency began efforts to cultivate Trump as an asset, thus launching a decades-long “relationship” of mutual benefit to Russia and Trump, from real estate to real power. • Trump’s invitation to Moscow in 1987 was billed as a preliminary scouting trip for a hotel, but according to Shvets, was actually initiated by a high-level KGB official, General Ivan Gromakov. These sorts of trips were usually arranged for ‘deep development,’ recruitment, or for a meeting with the KGB handlers, even if the potential asset was unaware of it. . • Before Trump’s first trip to Moscow, he met with Natalia Dubinina, who worked at the United Nations library in a vital position usually reserved as a cover for KGB operatives. And many more...
Download or read book Dead Collections written by Isaac Fellman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A whirlwind romance between an eccentric archivist and a grieving widow explores what it means to be at home in your own body in this clever, humorous, and heartfelt novel. When archivist Sol meets Elsie, the larger than life widow of a moderately famous television writer who's come to donate her wife's papers, there's an instant spark. But Sol has a secret: he suffers from an illness called vampirism, and hides from the sun by living in his basement office. On their way to falling in love, the two traverse grief, delve into the Internet fandom they once unknowingly shared, and navigate the realities of transphobia and the stigmas of carrying the "vampire disease." Then, when strange things start happening at the collection, Sol must embrace even more of the unknown to save himself and his job. DEAD COLLECTIONS is a wry novel full of heart and empathy, that celebrates the journey, the difficulties and joys, in finding love and comfort within our own bodies.
Download or read book Promising Young Women written by Suzanne Scanlon and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Suzanne Scanlon enters the inverted space of grief and near-madness with courage, intelligence, and wit—and with a small, sharp light for us to follow.” —Dawn Raffel A series of fragmentary tales tells the story of Lizzie, a young woman who, in her early twenties, unexpectedly embarks on a journey through psychiatric institutions, a journey that will end up lasting many years. With echoes of Sylvia Plath, and against a cultural backdrop that includes Shakespeare, Woody Allen, and Heathers, Suzanne Scanlon’s first novel is both a deeply moving account of a life of crisis and a brilliantly original work of art.
Download or read book Barracuda in the Attic written by Kipp Friedman and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2013-10-04 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The son of writer and satirist Bruce Jay Friedman, Kipp Friedman, wrote a memoir about growing up and getting into hi-jinx on both coasts with his brothers Drew and Josh Friedman (both famous in their own right): with appearances by mobster Joe Gallo, Groucho Marx, and others. Whether shooting pool with the mobster Crazy Joey Gallo, attending a dinner party hosted by an aged but remarkably spry Groucho Marx, or simply playing doctor with a classmate in the former estate of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kipp Friedman led a colorful childhood. The youngest son of celebrated writer and satirist Bruce Jay Friedman, Kipp looks back fondly on the amusing and sometimes confusing events and encounters that helped shape his early life in this moving tribute to growing up among a family of creative artists―swept up in the whirlwind of the New York arts scene of the 1960s and ’70s. Follow Kipp’s exploits as bystander and willing participant as he joins older brothers Josh (writer and musician) and Drew (renowned cartoonist and illustrator) as three musketeers on a youthful quest to discover the scariest low-budget horror movies along 42nd Street and Times Square. Delight in their search for classic comic books, monster magazines (and the occasional “nudie” magazine) at their beloved, dingy “Back-Issue Store” in midtown Manhattan. Encounter his family’s bizarre Cold War-like relationship with their new neighbors in an updated suburban Jewish version of the Hatfields vs. the McCoys. Witness their Marx Brothers-like antics while on an all-expenses-paid junket at the Beverly Hills Hotel courtesy of CBS. The stage shifts from New York City to the Caribbean to the suburbs of Long Island, and from the South of France to Broadway and Hollywood as Kipp retraces his family’s defining moments―with the backdrop of his father’s meteoric rise from editor of men’s adventure magazines to successful novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. Through it all, Kipp paints a loving portrait of a childhood and family life that is both magical and yet familiar and real. Barracuda in the Attic is truly a family affair, written by Kipp, with a cover illustration by Drew Friedman, an introduction by paterfamilias Bruce Jay Friedman, and an afterword by Josh Friedman, and is copiously illustrated with photos of the family and their literati friends and hangers-on.
Download or read book Bloodlines written by Jason Starr and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-02-25 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From provocative peeks into the lives of jockeys, trainers, owners, and breeders, to the down and dirty doings of bookies and gamblers, here is a literary tribute to a favorite national pastime. Editors Maggie Estep (Diary of an Emotional Idiot; Flamethrower) and Jason Starr (Twisted City; Lights Out) have brought together original fiction and nonfiction from some of our most beloved writers. Lee Child heads off the collection with a thrilling story about a hit man hired to knock off a horse mid-race. Laura Lippman contributes a vivid tale about a young man who makes money selling parking places at the Preakness and the intriguing woman he meets. Here is Bill Barich on the misfortunes of an Irish gambler, Joe R. Lansdale on one man’s ambition to win a mule race in east Texas, Laura Hillenbrand on the Kentucky Derby, and James Surowiecki on the wisdom of horse-racing crowds. Jonathan Ames adds his unique theory of horse love, Meghan O’Rourke shares her touching recollections of going to Saratoga as a child, and Jane Smiley tells of her experiences raising thoroughbreds. This standout collection on horse-racing featuring twenty authors, from national bestsellers to Pulitzer Prize winners, is as page-turning as it is diverse.Also includes pieces by Ken Bruen, Steven Crist, Maggie Estep, William Nack, Scott Phillips, John Schaefer, Jerry Stahl, Jason Starr, Charlie Stella, Wallace Stroby, and Daniel Woodrell.
