Download or read book A Wanderer in the Perfect City written by Lawrence Weschler and published by Ruminator Books. This book was released on 1998 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ... U]npredictable in the way that only the best nonfiction can be....I found myself thinking of the Bhagavad-Gita, ..What struck me was the idea of non-attachment....Weschler writes, One works and works at something, which then happens of its own accord....its happening cannot be said to have resulted from all that work, the way effects are said to result from a series of causes.-M.G. Lord, The New York Times Book Review An excerptA few months ago, a friend I was talking with began to tell me about a friend of his named Gary Isaacs, who was working at the downtown headquarters of one of the city's top investment houses as an executive in the division monitoring the savings-and-loan crisis. Though Isaacs was just thirty-two years old, my friend recounted, he had previously worked on the Street in several other capacities as well, and before that he'd had a notably successful career in an entirely different field; what's more, it seemed he was about to quit this one, too, and to head off in yet another direction. When I asked my friend what the previous career had been, and, for that matter, what the new one was going to be, he replied that it would be far more entertaining for me to hear the whole story from the man himself, which is how, a few days later, I came to find myself in the sleek elevator of one of downtown's better-known headquarters zooming up towards I didn't have the faintest idea what.Mr. Weschler has an extraordinary power to catch the crucial moment in people's lives--that moment (of passion or conviction) which suddenly alters the course of a life. Such 'conversions' may be absurd or tragic, or delightful, or sublime--we see all of these, and more, inthese sometimes very odd, but intensely human, and beautifully told tales. -Oliver Sack

Download or read book The Man Who Saved Geometry written by Siobhan Roberts and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-10-29 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating biography of one of the greatest geometers of the twentieth century Driven by a profound love of shapes and symmetries, Donald Coxeter (1907–2003) preserved the tradition of classical geometry when it was under attack by influential mathematicians who promoted a more algebraic and austere approach. His essential contributions include the famed Coxeter groups and Coxeter diagrams, tools developed through his deep understanding of mathematical symmetry. The Man Who Saved Geometry tells the story of Coxeter’s life and work, placing him alongside history’s greatest geometers, from Pythagoras and Plato to Archimedes and Euclid—and it reveals how Coxeter’s boundless creativity reflects the adventurous, ever-evolving nature of geometry itself. With an incisive, touching foreword by Douglas R. Hofstadter, The Man Who Saved Geometry is an unforgettable portrait of a visionary mathematician.

Download or read book Boggs written by Lawrence Weschler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2000-11-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boggs: A Comedy of Values teases out these transactions and their sometimes dramatic legal consequences, following Boggs on a larkish, though at the same time disconcertingly profound, econo-philosophic chase. For in a madcap Socratic fashion, Boggs is raising all sorts of truly fundamental questions - what is it that we value in art, or, for that matter, in money? Indeed, how do we place a value on anything at all? And in particular, why do we, why should we, how can we place such trust in anything as confoundingly insubstantial as paper money?

Download or read book Viewfinding written by Cathy Jean Mullen and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a collection of essays on the arts, new media, popular culture, and technologies as they influence practices of curriculum development and teaching. The authors - artists, educators, scholars, and researchers with both scholarly and practical expertise - share their teaching practices and curriculum knowledge, and reflect upon challenging issues in contemporary art, popular culture, new media, and technology. Each chapter proposes pedagogical structures and curriculum resources that can be adapted to diverse school contexts and technical resources. The perspectives gathered in this book reflect ideas drawn from several disciplines, including contemporary art, histories of the arts, culture and technology, cultural studies, and media studies, as well as various approaches to the study of technologies; authors also incorporate a range of educational theories and instructional practices, mainly from the visual and performing arts. At times explicit and at others implicit, these wide-ranging conceptual influences inform the varied curriculum and teaching practices described here. Together, these essays and their companion DVD, which illustrates many of these diverse perspectives, provide a comprehensive and thoughtful look at arts-based approaches to new media.

Download or read book The New New Journalism written by Robert Boynton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years after Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Gay Talese launched the New Journalism movement, Robert S. Boynton sits down with nineteen practitioners of what he calls the New New Journalism to discuss their methods, writings and careers. The New New Journalists are first and foremost brilliant reporters who immerse themselves completely in their subjects. Jon Krakauer accompanies a mountaineering expedition to Everest. Ted Conover works for nearly a year as a prison guard. Susan Orlean follows orchid fanciers to reveal an obsessive subculture few knew existed. Adrian Nicole LeBlanc spends nearly a decade reporting on a family in the South Bronx. And like their muckraking early twentieth-century precursors, they are drawn to the most pressing issues of the day: Alex Kotlowitz, Leon Dash, and William Finnegan to race and class; Ron Rosenbaum to the problem of evil; Michael Lewis to boom-and-bust economies; Richard Ben Cramer to the nitty gritty of politics. How do they do it? In these interviews, they reveal the techniques and inspirations behind their acclaimed works, from their felt-tip pens, tape recorders, long car rides, and assumed identities; to their intimate understanding of the way a truly great story unfolds. Interviews with: Gay Talese Jane Kramer Calvin Trillin Richard Ben Cramer Ted Conover Alex Kotlowitz Richard Preston William Langewiesche Eric Schlosser Leon Dash William Finnegan Jonathan Harr Jon Krakauer Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Michael Lewis Susan Orlean Ron Rosenbaum Lawrence Weschler Lawrence Wright

Download or read book Teethmarks on My Tongue written by Eileen Battersby and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-07-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Stockton DeFoe's world disintegrates after her mother is gunned down on the streets of Richmond. The more intently she begins to observe her remote, detached father, the more she learns about her place within the rarefied world she inhabits. Just when it appears she is at last becoming closer to him, it all falls apart as he coldly undermines her abiding passions, causing her to question the identity she's created. Her rebellion leads her to Europe on a disturbing path dominated by chance and evolving self-realisation. A hugely impressive, beautifully written debut novel narrated by an increasingly obsessive teenager as she embarks on a physical and psychological journey towards maturity.

Download or read book The New Kings of Nonfiction written by Ira Glass and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-10-02 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of stories-some well known, some more obscure- capturing some of the best storytelling of this golden age of nonfiction. An anthology of the best new masters of nonfiction storytelling, personally chosen and introduced by Ira Glass, the producer and host of the award-winning public radio program This American Life. These pieces-on teenage white collar criminals, buying a cow, Saddam Hussein, drunken British soccer culture, and how we know everyone in our Rolodex-are meant to mesmerize and inspire.

Download or read book The Idea of the City written by Joan Fitzpatrick and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays emerges from a two-day international conference held at the University of Northampton, UK. It contains the best of the papers presented by 45 delegates from 12 countries (UK, India, USA, Canada, Italy, France, Ireland, Australia, Romania, Japan, Germany, Portugal) involving both established academics and new scholars. The collection is divided into three parts: Part 1: ‘Medieval and Early-Modern Cities: Performance and Poetry’, Part 2: ‘Defining Urban Space: the Metropolis and the Provincial’, and Part 3: ‘Modern and Postmodern Cities: Marginal Urban Identities’. The chapters explore the nature of the modern city in literature, history, film and culture from its origins in the early-modern period to post-modern dislocations and considers the city as a context within which literature is created, structured, and inspired, and as a space within which distinct voices and genres emerge. Much interest has developed recently on the city and its contexts but there is a tendency to focus on London (for example there is the journal Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London and the annual Literary London Conference, a major conference that has run since 2002). This collection fills an important gap in the market by having a truly global focus. "Joan Fitzpatrick’s The Idea of the City represents a fascinating snapshot of the current state of literary urban studies. Conference proceedings can often seem diffuse or tokenistic, but this collection offers unity on several levels. For a start, many of the contributors ask similar questions of their material, approaching it with an informed awareness of the ways in which the city has been theorised as well as actually traversed from the medieval period to the present. While one would expect work of this type and standard from established and widely-published scholars such as Pamela Gilbert and Julian Wolfreys, it is refreshing to see how new researchers are blending the cartographic with the psychological to raise important questions about the perception, analysis, and mythologisation of urban and metropolitan space. The collection is impressively eclectic, ranging from Petrarch’s Avignon to modern Los Angeles, and from 18th century Lichfield to operatic re-imaginings of Venice. As I said, however, the collection is unified at a deep level by the contributors’ shared interest in city writing, and by their conviction that there is a complex relationship between space, place, and self. This means that the book would be of use and interest to those working on individual writers (including contemporary novelists such as Niall Griffiths, on whom little has yet been published) and in the more general areas of urban and cultural studies and critical theory. The collection as a whole allows the reader to revisit the ideas of influential works from the previous decade, such as Keith Tester’s The Flâneur (1994), Sophie Watson and Katherine Gibson’s Postmodern Cities and Spaces (1995), and Susana Onega and John Stotesbury’s London in Literature: Visionary Mappings of the Metropolis (2002). It is therefore both a useful round-up of established ideas from various city-centred disciplines, and a starting point for the fresh consideration of enduringly suggestive material." —Dr Nick Freeman, Loughborough University, Author of Conceiving the City: London, Literature, and Art 1870-1914 "In this substantial volume the editor has assembled an international line-up of scholars working on the city from the Renaissance to the present. This is an important and timely work that has depth as well as breadth. Interdisciplinary and cross-period collections like this which straddle several historical periods run the risk of appealing only in part to coherent scholarly communities, but Dr Fitzpatrick has structured the collection in a way which plays to the strength of critics working within particular periods while clearly displaying the latticework of links between the book's strongly marked sections. There is an excellent balance between historical and theoretical readings, between textual and contextual approaches, and between interventions that are author or text based and those that deal with broader themes and issues. The range of contributors is matched by the richness and variety of perspectives. I would strongly recommend this book to students working in the early modern period, and also to those interested in modern developments. It is a comprehensive, intelligently organized and richly researched volume that is likely to be well received, well reviewed and well read. I will certainly be ordering copies for my own University library and including it on reading lists for future courses." —Professor Willy Maley, University of Glasgow

Download or read book A Wanderer s Notes written by William Beatty-Kingston and published by . This book was released on 1888 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Wanderers written by David Brown Morris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-24 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces the idea and experience of wandering, as reflected in cultural texts from popular songs to philosophical analysis, providing both a fascinating informal history and a necessary vantage point for understanding - in our era - the emergence of new wanderers. Wanderers offers a fast-paced, wide-ranging, and compelling introduction to this significant and recurrent theme in literary history. David Brown Morris argues that wandering, as a primal and recurrent human experience, is basic to the understanding of certain literary texts. In turn, certain prominent literary and cultural texts (from Paradise Lost to pop songs, from Wordsworth to the blues, from the Wandering Jew to the film Nomadland) demonstrate how representations of wandering have changed across cultures, times, and genres. Wanderers provides an initial overview necessary to grasp the importance of wandering both as a perennial human experience and as a changing historical event, including contemporary forms such as homelessness and climate migration that make urgent claims upon us. Wanderers takes you on a thoroughly enjoyable and informative stroll through a significant concept that will be of interest to those studying or researching literature, cultural studies, and philosophy.

Download or read book The Barbarians Are Here written by Michael Youssef and published by Worthy Books. This book was released on 2017-03-07 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, Americans were vaguely aware that Islamist barbarians were in the deserts of the Middle East and in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, executing "infidels" and raiding villages with unrecognizable names. But the Muslim world seemed far away, remote, and irrelevant to our daily lives. Then came the terrorist attacks of 9/11, followed by attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, and more. Now terrorists seem to be emerging everywhere, unleashing senseless death and destruction on our nation. They are here, and their goal is nothing less than global conquest. Motivated by ancient prophecies, they are flooding into Western countries determined to conquer our countries and establish a global Muslim caliphate. In The Barbarians Are Here, Dr. Michael Youssef provides clear insight into the motives and mission of the Islamic extremists. He offers practical steps we can take right now to begin a New Reformation that will restore the hope of Western civilization. It's not too late. We are not doomed to destruction, even though the barbarians are already here. But we haven't a moment to lose. "Let this book shape how you think, pray, and take the Gospel to the ends of the earth." -- R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary "I want every American, every citizen, and every member of my family to read this book. It is foolhardy not to." -- Pat Boone, Entertainer, Pat Boone Enterprises

Download or read book Murder City The Bloody History of Chicago in the Twenties written by Michael Lesy and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-02-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Vivid, laconic, and crisp. The bodies fall like dominoes, and every word sounds like it was shot from a gun. And as you might expect from Lesy, the photographs are extraordinary." —Luc Sante Things began as they usually did: Someone shot someone else. So begins a chapter of Michael Lesy's disturbingly satisfying account of Chicago in the 1920s, the epicenter of Murder in America. Just as Lesy’s first book, Wisconsin Death Trip, subverted the accepted notion of the Gay Nineties, so Murder City exposes the dark side of the Jazz Age. Revisiting seventeen Chicago murder cases—including that of Belva and Beulah, two murderesses whose trials inspired the musical Chicago—Lesy's sharp, fearless storytelling makes a compelling case that this collection of criminals may be progenitors of our modern age.

Download or read book The Sporting Library of Mr William Brewster of New York City written by William Brewster and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book After the City written by Lars Lerup and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An architect's view of the new metropolitan consciousness and the suburban metropolis as the future frontier.

Download or read book Comics through Time 4 volumes written by M. Keith Booker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-10-28 with total page 2104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing especially on American comic books and graphic novels from the 1930s to the present, this massive four-volume work provides a colorful yet authoritative source on the entire history of the comics medium. Comics and graphic novels have recently become big business, serving as the inspiration for blockbuster Hollywood movies such as the Iron Man series of films and the hit television drama The Walking Dead. But comics have been popular throughout the 20th century despite the significant effects of the restrictions of the Comics Code in place from the 1950s through 1970s, which prohibited the depiction of zombies and use of the word "horror," among many other rules. Comics through Time: A History of Icons, Idols, and Ideas provides students and general readers a one-stop resource for researching topics, genres, works, and artists of comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels. The comprehensive and broad coverage of this set is organized chronologically by volume. Volume 1 covers 1960 and earlier; Volume 2 covers 1960–1980; Volume 3 covers 1980–1995; and Volume 4 covers 1995 to the present. The chronological divisions give readers a sense of the evolution of comics within the larger contexts of American culture and history. The alphabetically arranged entries in each volume address topics such as comics publishing, characters, imprints, genres, themes, titles, artists, writers, and more. While special attention is paid to American comics, the entries also include coverage of British, Japanese, and European comics that have influenced illustrated storytelling of the United States or are of special interest to American readers.

Download or read book From Florence to the Heavenly City written by ClaireE. Honess and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dante's political thought has long constituted a major area of interest for Dante studies, yet the poet's political views have traditionally been considered a self-contained area of study and viewed in isolation from the poet's other concerns. Consequently, the symbolic and poetic values which Dante attaches to political structures have been largely ignored or marginalised by Dante criticism. This omission is addressed here by Claire Honess, whose study of Dante's poetry of citizenship focuses on more fundamental issues, such as the relationship between the individual and the community, the question of what it means to be a citizen, and above all the way in which notions of cities and citizenship enter the imagery and structure of the Commedia.

Download or read book From the Lower East Side to Hollywood written by Paul Buhle and published by Verso. This book was released on 2004-06-17 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lively, extensively illustrated history of the widespread influence of Jews on American popular culture through the twentieth century.