Download or read book House of Wits written by Paul Fisher and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 904 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An American odyssey that reveals the fascinating complexities of one of history's most brilliant, eccentric, and daring families The James family, one of America's most memorable dynasties, gave the world three famous children: a novelist of genius (Henry), an influential philosopher (William), and an invalid (Alice) who became a feminist icon, despite her sheltered life and struggles with mental illness. Although much has been written on them, many truths about the Jameses have long been camouflaged. The conflicts that defined one of American's greatest families— homosexuality, depression, alcoholism, female oppression—can only now be thoroughly investigated and discussed with candor and understanding. Paul Fisher's grand family saga, House of Wits, rediscovers a family traumatized by the restrictive standards of their times but reaching out for new ideas and ways to live. He follows the five James offspring ("hotel children," Henry called them) and their parents through their privileged travels across the Atlantic; interludes in Newport and Cambridge; the younger boys' engagement in the Civil War; and William and Henry's later adventures in London, Paris, and Italy. He captures the splendor of their era and all the members of the clan—beginning with their mercurial father, who nurtured, inspired, and damaged them, setting the stage for lives of colorful passions, intense rivalries, and extraordinary achievements. House of Wits is a revealing cultural history that revises and completes our understanding of its remarkable protagonists and the changing world where they came of age.
Download or read book The Vienna Coffeehouse Wits 1890 1938 written by Harold B. Segel and published by Purdue University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Segel's extensive introduction provides a wealth of information concerning the social, political, and cultural background of turn-of-the-century Vienna. The eight artists assembled here are concerned with their world, Austria and particularly Vienna. They exchange ideas, argue, gossip, tell stories, read each other's works and even write in the coffeehouse.
Download or read book The Sorcerer s House written by Gene Wolfe and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2010-04-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a contemporary town in the American midwest where he has no connections, Bax, an educated man recently released from prison, is staying in a motel. He writes letters to his brother and to others, including a friend still in jail, to whom he progressively reveals the intriguing pieces of a strange and fantastic narrative. When he meets a real estate agent who tells him he is, to his utter surprise, the heir to a huge old house in town, long empty, he moves in. He is immediately confronted by an array of supernatural creatures and events, by love and danger. His life is utterly transformed and we read on, because we must know more. We revise our opinions of him, and of others, with each letter, piecing together more of the story as we go. We learn things about magic, and another world, and about the sorcerer Mr. Black, who originally inhabited the house. And then knowing what we now know only in the end, perhaps we read it again. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Elements of Wit written by Benjamin Errett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Got wit? We’ve all been in that situation where we need to say something clever, but innocuous; smart enough to show some intelligence, without showing off; something funny, but not a joke. What we need in that moment is wit—that sparkling combination of charm, humor, confidence, and most of all, the right words at the right time. Elements of Wit is an engaging book that brings together the greatest wits of our time, and previous ones from Oscar Wilde to Nora Ephron, Winston Churchill to Christopher Hitchens, Mae West to Louis CK, and many in between. With chapters covering the essential ingredients of wit, this primer sheds light on how anyone—introverts, extroverts, wallflowers, and bon vivants—can find the right zinger, quip, parry, or retort…or at least be a little bit more interesting.
Download or read book Richard Osman s House of Games written by Richard Osman and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you know how many post boxes there are in the UK? Could you guess how many times the word 'goat' appear in the King James Version of the bible? Fancy playing a game of charades where all of the books, films and plays are entirely made up? Now, look around the room. Is anyone there the kind of person who’ll say ‘I just don’t understand this’, when faced with something that’s not just perfectly easy to understand, but is ... well, fun? Ask them to leave. Have they gone? Good. Now welcome inside the House of Games ... Featuring questions based on some of the most loved rounds from the hit BBC2 show, including Roonerspisims, Venn Will I Be Famous?, Dim Sums and Answer Smash, Richard Osman’s House of Games Quiz Book is the ultimate test of wit, wisdom and imagination. Curated by Richard Osman and Alan Connor and featuring over 50 new and exclusive games to try out, this is your chance to step inside the House of Games and pitch your trivia skills against your family and friends. Quirky, unique and exactly the right amount of silly, House of Games contains hours of guaranteed fun!
Download or read book The English Wits written by Michelle O'Callaghan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-08 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries the Inns of Court and fashionable London taverns developed a culture of clubbing, urban sociability and wit. The convivial societies that emerged created rituals to define social identities and to engage in literary play and political discussion. Michelle O'Callaghan argues that the lawyer-wits, including John Hoskyns, in company with authors such as John Donne, Ben Jonson and Thomas Coryate, consciously reinvigorated humanist traditions of learned play. Their experiments with burlesque, banquet literature, parody and satire resulted in a volatile yet creative dialogue between civility and licence, and between pleasure and the violence of scurrilous words. The wits inaugurated a mode of literary fellowship that shaped the history and literature of sociability in the seventeenth century. This study will provide many insights for historians and literary scholars of the period.
Download or read book House of Wits B written by Paul Fisher and published by . This book was released on 2008-05 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five siblings: two celebrated (novelist Henry and the philosopher William James); two brothers overshadowed by them; and one dazzling sister, Alice. Beginning with the peculiar courtship of Henry James Sr and Mary Walsh in the late 1830s and ending with the death of Henry James Jr in 1916, HOUSE OF WITS tells the story of the James family's driven and anguished quest through some of the most glittering and varied scenes of the nineteenth century. Restless and striving, the Jameses were always searching for a better house or palazzo, a better school for the children, a more exciting metropolis to live in, a snobbier club to join, a bigger and brainier magnum opus to write. Never satisfied with their conquests, they shifted from New York to grand imperial Victorian London, jaunting to German spas and Italian ruins, before they at last settled in fiercely academic Boston, a city that matched their ambitious intellectual aims and afterward launched the younger Jameses towards careers, marriages and never-satisfied international house-hunts of their own. With a narrative that calls to mind the spirit of a Henry James novel, but with an even stranger cast of characters, HOUSE OF WITS dazzlingly recreates the interactions in the lives of an astounding family.
Download or read book A Match of Wits Ladies of Distinction Book 4 written by Jen Turano and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After his departure from New York two years ago to meet up with his almost-fiancée, Zayne Beckett is the last person Agatha Watson wanted to stumble upon in her travels as a reporter with the New York Tribune. Quite pathetically bedraggled, he clearly needs to be taken in hand and sent back East to his family. Although she no longer has feelings for him, Agatha realizes, by hook or by crook, she'll have to be the one to get the obstinate man home. Zayne has no desire to be taken anywhere and is prepared to drag his heels all the way home... until he finds himself slipping back into the familiar banter of his former friendship with Agatha. Once they arrive in New York, Zayne realizes Agatha's determined nose for news has earned her a few enemies, and he hopes to repay her help with some help of his own. When she rebuffs all his attempts to prove himself a knight in shining armor, the lengths to which they'll go to win this battle of wills lead to some memorable antics. Everyone else may think them a match, but nothing could be further from the truth--until Agatha finds herself in real trouble. Have these two stubborn, too-smart-for-their-own-good people been meant for each other all along?
Download or read book At Wit s End written by Erma Bombeck and published by Fawcett. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "America's irrepressible doyenne of domestic satire." THE BOSTON GLOBE Madcap, bittersweet humor in classic Erma Bombeck-style. You'll laugh until it hurts and love it! "Any mother with half a skull knows that when Daddy's little boy becomes Mommy's little boy, the kid is so wet, he's treading water. What do you mean you're a participle in the school play and you need a costume? Those rotten kids. If only they'd let me wake up in my own way. Why do they have to line up along my bed and stare at me like Moby Dick just washed up onto a beach somewhere?"
Download or read book This Is All I Got written by Lauren Sandler and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • From an award-winning journalist, a poignant and gripping immersion in the life of a young, homeless single mother amid her quest to find stability and shelter in the richest city in America LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD • “Riveting . . . a remarkable feat of reporting.”—The New York Times Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila’s life—from the birth of her son to his first birthday—as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience. Every day, more than forty-five million Americans attempt to survive below the poverty line. Every night, nearly sixty thousand people sleep in New York City-run shelters, 40 percent of them children. In This Is All I Got, Sandler brings this deeply personal issue to life, vividly depicting one woman's hope and despair and her steadfast determination to change her life despite the myriad setbacks she encounters. This Is All I Got is a rare feat of reporting and a dramatic story of survival. Sandler’s candid and revealing account also exposes the murky boundaries between a journalist and her subject when it becomes impossible to remain a dispassionate observer. She has written a powerful and unforgettable indictment of a system that is often indifferent to the needs of those it serves, and that sometimes seems designed to fail. Praise for This Is All I Got “A rich, sociologically valuable work that’s more gripping, and more devastating, than fiction.”—Booklist “Vivid, heartbreaking. . . . Readers will be moved by this harrowing and impassioned call for change.”—Publishers Weekly “A closely observed chronicle . . . Sandler displays her journalistic talent by unerringly presenting this dire situation. . . . An impressive blend of dispassionate reporting, pungent condemnation of public welfare, and gritty humanity.” —Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book House of Ash written by Hope Cook and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After hearing voices among an eerie copse of trees in the woods, seventeen-year-old Curtis must confront his worst fear: that he has inherited his father’s mental illness. A desperate search for answers leads him to discover Gravenhearst, a labyrinth mansion that burned down in 1894. When he locks eyes with a steely Victorian girl in a forgotten mirror, he’s sure she’s one of the fire’s victims. If he can unravel the mystery, he can save his sanity . . . and possibly the girl who haunts his dreams. But more than 100 years in the past, the girl in the mirror is fighting her own battles. When her mother disappears and her sinister stepfather reveals his true intentions, Mila and her sister fight to escape Gravenhearst and unravel the house’s secrets—before it devours them both.
Download or read book Wit s End What Wit Is How It Works and Why We Need It written by James Geary and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2018-11-13 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entertaining, illuminating, and entirely unique, Wit’s End “convey[s] the power of wit to refresh the mind” (Henry Hitchings, Wall Street Journal). In “this inventive and playful book” (Tom Beer, Newsday), James Geary explores every facet of wittiness, from its role in innovation to why puns are the highest form of wit. Adopting a different style for each chapter—from dramatic dialogue to sermon, heroic couplets to a barroom monologue—Geary embodies wit in all its forms. Wit’s End agilely balances psychology, folktale, visual art, and literary history with lighthearted humor and acute insight, demonstrating that wit and wisdom are really the same thing.
Download or read book The Dreamweavers written by G. Z. Schmidt and published by Holiday House. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twin siblings sneak into the emperor’s palace to break a curse in this Chinese folklore-inspired fantasy adventure set in the Ming Dynasty. "[A] magical adventure, which shoots for the moon—and succeeds."—Entertainment Weekly Twins Mei and Yun can’t wait for the Mid-Autumn Harvest Festival, even though strange things keep happening in their village. A gloomy atmosphere has settled over the land and their grandpa’s usually delicious mooncakes instead taste horrible and bitter, insulting the prince who tastes them. Determined to clear grandpa’s name, Mei and Yun journey through the City of Ashes, visit the mysterious Jade Rabbit, and encounter a powerful poet, who makes them a pact: infiltrate the royal palace to expose a past royal injustice, and the poet will remove the curse that has ensnared their grandfather and village. Seamlessly weaving together folklore, palace intrigue, and historical detail, G. Z. Schmidt delivers an unforgettable adventure set in the Ming Dynasty about sibling bonds and the importance of the past. The beautifully illustrated cover by artist Feifei Ruan shows the twins riding a floating cloud, whose softly curved edges shine with printed gloss. Back matter includes further information on Chinese mythology, philosophy, and more. An enchanting experience, The Dreamweavers is perfect for young fantasy readers. A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year A CCBC Choice
Download or read book House Rivals written by Mike Lawson and published by Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. This book was released on 2015-07-07 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “suspenseful and smart” thriller, Washington, DC, heavy hitter Joe DeMarco is out of town—and out of his element—facing his deadliest enemy yet (Booklist). Author of House Witness, 2019 Edgar Award Finalist for Best Novel Working behind the scenes in the nation’s capital, Joe DeMarco knows how to repay a debt. But now he’s repaying a debt owed by his boss—Minority Leader John Mahoney. Years ago, a man saved Mahoney’s life in Vietnam. Now, that man’s granddaughter, Sarah, is in dire need of help. Sarah has been battling against a billionaire oil tycoon with her online blog, trying to prevent him from despoiling any more of her beloved North Dakota landscape. Now she’s being threatened and physically assaulted by the tycoon’s hired muscle—and DeMarco is the only one who can protect her. But as DeMarco tracks his adversaries in the unfamiliar territory, the situation turns unexpectedly violent, and the fixer finds himself in a battle against a pair of ruthless corporate “problem solvers” who will stop at nothing to take Sarah and DeMarco out for good.
Download or read book Alice James written by Jean Strouse and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jameses are perhaps the most extraordinary and distinguished family in American intellectual life. Henry’s novels, celebrated as among the finest in the language, and William’s groundbreaking philosophical and psychological works, have won these brothers a permanent place at the center of the nation’s cultural firmament. Less well known is their enigmatic younger sister, Alice. As Jean Stouse’s generous, probing, and deeply imaginative biography shows, however, Alice James was a fascinating and exceptional figure in her own right. Tortured throughout her short life by an array of nervous disorders, constrained by social convention from achieving the worldly success she so desired, Alice nevertheless emerges from this remarkable book as a personality every bit as peculiar and engaging as her two famous brothers. “The moral and philosophical questions that Henry wrote up as fiction and William as science,” writes Strouse, “Alice simply lived.” With a psychological penetration and high eloquence that are altogether Jamesian, Strouse traces the formation of a unique identity, from Alice’s unconventional peripatetic childhood in continental Europe through her years of spinsterhood in the United Sates and later England. It was there that she began to keep her celebrated diary, full of fitting social observation and unblinking self-analysis. “I consider myself one of the most potent creations of my time,” she wrote to William, with characteristic tartness, towards the end of her life, “and though I may not have a group of Harvard students sitting at my feet drinking in psychic truth, I shall not tremble, I assure you, at the last trump.”
Download or read book A Spy in the House written by Y. S. Lee and published by Candlewick Press (MA). This book was released on 2011 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan and thief Mary Quinn is offered a place at Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls where she is trained to be part of an all-female investigative unit called The Agency and, at age seventeen, she infiltrates a rich merchant's home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships.
Download or read book The Wits and Beaus of Society written by Mrs. A. T. Thomson and published by . This book was released on 1890 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
