Download or read book Tenth of December written by George Saunders and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-01-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prize-winning, New York Times bestselling short story collection from the internationally bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo 'The best book you'll read this year' New York Times 'Dazzlingly surreal stories about a failing America' Sunday Times WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of Darkenfloxx(TM) in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

Download or read book Liz and Len written by Anders Hanson and published by ABDO. This book was released on 2005 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains single words to sound out, simple rebus sentences, and a fun short story.

Download or read book The Big Picture Story Bible written by David R. Helm and published by Crossway Bibles. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Simple text and illustrations present the stories of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.

Download or read book The Catcher in the Rye written by J. D. Salinger and published by ببلومانيا للنشر والتوزيع. This book was released on 2024-06-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Catcher in the Rye," written by J.D. Salinger and published in 1951, is a classic American novel that explores the themes of adolescence, alienation, and identity through the eyes of its protagonist, Holden Caulfield. The novel is set in the 1950s and follows Holden, a 16-year-old who has just been expelled from his prep school, Pencey Prep. Disillusioned with the world around him, Holden decides to leave Pencey early and spend a few days alone in New York City before returning home. Over the course of these days, Holden interacts with various people, including old friends, a former teacher, and strangers, all the while grappling with his feelings of loneliness and dissatisfaction. Holden is deeply troubled by the "phoniness" of the adult world and is haunted by the death of his younger brother, Allie, which has left a lasting impact on him. He fantasizes about being "the catcher in the rye," a guardian who saves children from losing their innocence by catching them before they fall off a cliff into adulthooda. The novel ends with Holden in a mental institution, where he is being treated for a nervous breakdown. He expresses some hope for the future, indicating a possible path to recovery..

Download or read book Monster Talk written by Michael Jarmer and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012-05 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two hundred and sixty-four years after the first awakening, the family line stops momentarily, perhaps forever, in the body of a child. Victor is a second-grader growing up with a very unique family history: he is a direct descendant of the monster created by his namesake, Victor Frankenstein. Understandably proud of this distinction, his effort to share this remarkable fact with his classmates and teachers backfires, and he becomes a target on the playground. He is not without allies. With the help of his grandmother, Elizabeth, and his best friend, Michelle, he learns the origin of his family's strange history straight from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He learns how that story continued with the surprising journey of the monster and his monster-bride to America. And finally, he learns about the end of making monsters on earth. But there are elements in this history about which even those closest to it are unaware. Wonders abound and dangers lurk for Victor and his loved ones in unexpected places. Monster Talk is a poignant tale about the power of reading, the complexity of love, the wonder and terror of growing up, and the moral ambiguity of the species, human and monster both.

Download or read book Eros Unbroken written by Annie Kim (Lawyer) and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Women's Studies. Art. Music. Winner of the 2019 Washington Prize. Kim explores to devastating effect the complicity between art, intimacy, and violence. Weaving contemporary meditations with an ongoing dialogue between two musicians in 18th century Spain on the nature of friendship and creativity, Kim's brave new collection explores our nature--to live both broken and whole. Says Peg Alford Purcell, Here is charged beauty, the rich and generous consciousness in which nothing is forgiven, everything laid bare. The lyrical and narrative genius of these poems interweaves two voices, one that's contemporary and autobiographical and one in the persona of an eighteenth-century castrato opera singer.

Download or read book A Year with Swollen Appendices written by Brian Eno and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A diary that covers the author's four recording projects caught at different times in their evolution.

Download or read book Forthcoming Books written by Rose Arny and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 1306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Marine Mammals Ashore written by Joseph R. Geraci and published by National Aquarium in Baltimore. This book was released on 2005 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive manual for understanding and carrying out marine mammal rescue activities for stranded seals, manatees, dolphins, whales, or sea otters.

Download or read book No God but God written by Geneive Abdo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2002-10-24 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shrouded in mystery, the Islamic presence in the Middle East evokes longstanding Western fears of terrorism and holy war. Our media have consistently focused on these extremes of Islam, overlooking a quiet yet pervasive religious movement that is now transforming the nation of Egypt. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, No God But God opens up previously inaccessible segments of Egyptian society--from the universities and professional sectors to the streets--to illustrate the deep penetration of "Popular Islamic" influence. Abdo provides a firsthand account of this peaceful movement, allowing its moderate leaders, street preachers, scholars, doctors, lawyers, men and women of all social classes to speak for themselves. Challenging Western stereotypes, she finds that this growing number of Islamists do not seek the violent overthrow of the government or a return to a medieval age. Instead, they believe their religious values are compatible with the demands of the modern world. They are working within and beyond the secular framework of the nation to gradually create a new society based on Islamic principles. Abdo narrates fascinating accounts of their methods and successes. Today, for example, university students meet in underground unions, despite a state ban. In addition, sheikhs have recently used their new legislative power to censor books and movies deemed to violate religious values. Both fascinating and unsettling, Abdo's findings identify a grassroots model for transforming a secular nation-state to an Islamic social order that will likely inspire other Muslim nations. This model cannot be ignored, for it will soon help organized Islamists to undermine secular control of Egypt and potentially jeopardize Western interests in the Arab world.

Download or read book Reinforcement Learning second edition written by Richard S. Sutton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.

Download or read book The Sourcebook for Teaching Science Grades 6 12 written by Norman Herr and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-08-11 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sourcebook for Teaching Science is a unique, comprehensive resource designed to give middle and high school science teachers a wealth of information that will enhance any science curriculum. Filled with innovative tools, dynamic activities, and practical lesson plans that are grounded in theory, research, and national standards, the book offers both new and experienced science teachers powerful strategies and original ideas that will enhance the teaching of physics, chemistry, biology, and the earth and space sciences.

Download or read book Healing with Poisons written by Yan Liu and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/9780295749013 At first glance, medicine and poison might seem to be opposites. But in China’s formative era of pharmacy (200–800 CE), poisons were strategically employed as healing agents to cure everything from abdominal pain to epidemic disease. Healing with Poisons explores the ways physicians, religious figures, court officials, and laypersons used toxic substances to both relieve acute illnesses and enhance life. It illustrates how the Chinese concept of du—a word carrying a core meaning of “potency”—led practitioners to devise a variety of methods to transform dangerous poisons into effective medicines. Recounting scandals and controversies involving poisons from the Era of Division to the Tang, historian Yan Liu considers how the concept of du was central to how the people of medieval China perceived both their bodies and the body politic. He also examines the wide range of toxic minerals, plants, and animal products used in classical Chinese pharmacy, including everything from the herb aconite to the popular recreational drug Five-Stone Powder. By recovering alternative modes of understanding wellness and the body’s interaction with foreign substances, this study cautions against arbitrary classifications and exemplifies the importance of paying attention to the technical, political, and cultural conditions in which substances become truly meaningful. Healing with Poisons is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem) and the generous support of the University of Buffalo.

Download or read book Dawn of the Akashic Age written by Ervin Laszlo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A preview of the post-mechanistic, holistic world in 2020 and 2030 as well as a map of the obstacles we must overcome to get there • Reveals how the youngest generation is seeding the shift in consciousness • Explains how society will be reorganized into grassroots networks like those revealed by quantum physics and experienced through social media • With contributions from futurist John L. Petersen, ex-CEO of Sanyo Tomoya Nonaka, media activist Duane Elgin, and other visionaries The world is changing. The transition from the mechanistic worldview to one that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life is upon us. It is the dawning of the Akashic Age. The Akashic field that connects the universe is now recognized by cutting-edge science. What we know about communication, energy, and consciousness is rapidly evolving in tandem with the new quantum worldview. Many adults are consciously evolving to meet the transitional challenges at hand, while today’s youth have arrived already hard-wired with the new consciousness. Rising from the ashes of the old systems, this Phoenix generation of radical change agents is seeding our evolution and spiritual transformation, a process that will continue over the next few decades. Authors Ervin Laszlo and Kingsley Dennis look at the chief engine of the coming changes--the growing global understanding of nonlocality--and the development of practical applications for it. They examine how the new values and new consciousness taking hold will reorganize society from top-down hierarchies into grassroots networks like those revealed through quantum physics’ understanding of energy and information waves and experienced daily by millions through social media. With contributions from visionary thinkers such as futurist John L. Petersen, ex-CEO of Sanyo Tomoya Nonaka, media activist Duane Elgin, systems scientist Alexander Laszlo, and spiritual economist Charles Eisenstein, this book explores the future of education, spirituality, the media, economics, food, and planetary citizenship as well as the expansion of consciousness necessary to reach that future.

Download or read book The Sum of Us written by Heather McGhee and published by One World. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color. WINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. magazine, BookRiot, Library Journal “This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist Look for the author’s new podcast, The Sum of Us, based on this book! Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare. But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL

Download or read book Juan Goytisolo and the Poetics of Contagion written by Stanley Black and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Juan Goytisolo is arguably Spain’s foremost contemporary novelist. This book is one of the few major studies in English to examine all of his mature works, from Señas de identidad in 1966 to Las semanas del jardín, published in 1997. It focuses on the interface between the thematic content of the novels and its formal expression, viewing this as the crucial nexus of their meaning. Goytisolo’s writing is, in his own words, a "commitment of myself ... for a transformation of the world". The Poetics of Contagion dissects the nature of the relationship between writer and reader to show how Goytisolo’s political commitment is reflected in his work.

Download or read book Tao written by Alan Watts and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 1977-01-12 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on ancient and modern sources, "a lucid discussion of Taoism and the Chinese language [that's] profound, reflective, and enlightening." —Boston Globe According to Deepak Chopra, "Watts was a spiritual polymatch, the first and possibly greatest." Watts treats the Chinese philosophy of Tao in much the same way as he did Zen Buddhism in his classic The Way of Zen. Critics agree that this last work stands as a perfect monument to the life and literature of Alan Watts. "Perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West, . . . Watts begins with scholarship and intellect and proceeds with art and eloquence to the frontiers of the spirit."—Los Angeles Times