Download or read book City of Quartz written by Mike Davis and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2006-09-17 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of the visionary social history of Los Angeles is “as central to the L.A. canon as anything that . . . Joan Didion wrote in the seventies” (New Yorker) No metropolis has been more loved or more hated. To its official boosters, “Los Angeles brings it all together.” To detractors, L.A. is a sunlit mortuary where “you can rot without feeling it.” To Mike Davis, the author of this fiercely elegant and wide- ranging work of social history, Los Angeles is both utopia and dystopia, a place where the last Joshua trees are being plowed under to make room for model communities in the desert, where the rich have hired their own police to fend off street gangs, as well as armed Beirut militias. In City of Quartz, Davis reconstructs L.A.’s shadow history and dissects its ethereal economy. He tells us who has the power and how they hold on to it. He gives us a city of Dickensian extremes, Pynchonesque conspiracies, and a desperation straight out of Nathaniel West—a city in which we may glimpse our own future mirrored with terrifying clarity. In this new edition, Davis provides a dazzling update on the city’s current status.
Download or read book Understanding Media written by Marshall McLuhan and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-09-04 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When first published, Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media made history with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications upon man and life in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Nevada written by Imogen Binnie and published by MCD x FSG Originals. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Vogue's Best Books of 2022 So Far, Buzzfeed's Summer Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down, Book Riot's Best Summer Reads for 2022, and Dazed's Queer Books to Read in 2022 "[Nevada] is defiant, terse, not quite cynical, sometimes flip, addressed to people who think they know. It is, if you like, punk rock." —The New Yorker "Nevada is a book that changed my life: it shaped both my worldview and personhood, making me the writer I am. And it did so by the oldest of methods, by telling a wise, hilarious, and gripping story." —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby A beloved and blistering cult classic and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction finally back in print, Nevada follows a disaffected trans woman as she embarks on a cross-country road trip. Maria Griffiths is almost thirty and works at a used bookstore in New York City while trying to stay true to her punk values. She’s in love with her bike but not with her girlfriend, Steph. She takes random pills and drinks more than is good for her, but doesn’t inject anything except, when she remembers, estrogen, because she’s trans. Everything is mostly fine until Maria and Steph break up, sending Maria into a tailspin, and then onto a cross-country trek in the car she steals from Steph. She ends up in the backwater town of Star City, Nevada, where she meets James, who is probably but not certainly trans, and who reminds Maria of her younger self. As Maria finds herself in the awkward position of trans role model, she realizes that she could become James’s savior—or his downfall. One of the most beloved cult novels of our time and a landmark of trans literature, Imogen Binnie’s Nevada is a blistering, heartfelt, and evergreen coming-of-age story, and a punk-smeared excavation of marginalized life under capitalism. Guided by an instantly memorable, terminally self-aware protagonist—and back in print featuring a new afterword by the author—Nevada is the great American road novel flipped on its head for a new generation.
Download or read book Unashamed written by Leah Vernon and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Muslim woman’s searingly honest memoir of her journey toward self-acceptance as she comes to see her body as a symbol of rebellion and hope—and chooses to live her life unapologetically Ever since she was little, Leah Vernon was told what to believe and how to act. There wasn’t any room for imperfection. ‘Good’ Muslim girls listened more than they spoke. They didn’t have a missing father or a mother with a mental disability. They didn’t have fat bodies or grow up wishing they could be like the white characters they saw on TV. They didn’t have husbands who abused and cheated on them. They certainly didn’t have secret abortions. In Unashamed, Vernon takes to task the myth of the perfect Muslim woman with frank dispatches on her love-hate relationship with her hijab and her faith, race, weight, mental health, domestic violence, sexuality, the millennial world of dating, and the process of finding her voice. She opens up about her tumultuous adolescence living at the poverty line with her fiercely loving but troubled mother, her absent dad, her siblings, and the violent dissolution of her 10-year marriage. Tired of the constant policing of her clothing in the name of Islam and Western beauty standards, Vernon reflects on her experiences with hustling paycheck to paycheck, body-shaming, and redefining what it means to be a “good” Muslim. Irreverent, youthful, and funny, Unashamed gives anyone who is marginalized permission to live unapologetic, confident lives. “Vernon’s determined advocacy for body positivity as a feminist and mental health issue, and her painful journey to self-acceptance, are moving and powerful, forcing readers to examine their own preconceptions about beauty standards and health.” —Booklist
Download or read book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire written by Will Hermes and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title provides a group portrait of some of the greatest musicians of the 20th century, including Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Grandmaster Flash and Bob Dylan.
Download or read book Hedwig and the Angry Inch written by Stephen Trask and published by Dramatists Play Service Inc. This book was released on 2003 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the story of transsexual rocker Hedwig Schmidt, an East German immigrant whose sex change operation has been botched and who finds herself living in a trailer park in Kansas.
Download or read book The Beatles Swan Song written by and published by 498 Productions, LLC. This book was released on 2007 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Covers the singles and albums released by labels that had the rights to only a limited number of Beatles recordings ... [including] Swan, United Artists, Decca, MGM, Atco, and Polydor"--Page 4 of cover
Download or read book Kiss written by Gene Simmons and published by Three Rivers Press (CA). This book was released on 2002 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With over 150 photos--most of which are published here for the first time--Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley take readers on an intimate tour of the early days of KISS. Full color and b&w.
Download or read book Linguistic Engineering written by Ji Fengyuan and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2003-11-30 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Mao and the Chinese Communist Party won power in 1949, they were determined to create new, revolutionary human beings. Their most precise instrument of ideological transformation was a massive program of linguistic engineering. They taught everyone a new political vocabulary, gave old words new meanings, converted traditional terms to revolutionary purposes, suppressed words that expressed "incorrect" thought, and required the whole population to recite slogans, stock phrases, and scripts that gave "correct" linguistic form to "correct" thought. They assumed that constant repetition would cause the revolutionary formulae to penetrate people's minds, engendering revolutionary beliefs and values. In an introductory chapter, Dr. Ji assesses the potential of linguistic engineering by examining research on the relationship between language and thought. In subsequent chapters, she traces the origins of linguistic engineering in China, describes its development during the early years of communist rule, then explores in detail the unprecedented manipulation of language during the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976. Along the way, she analyzes the forms of linguistic engineering associated with land reform, class struggle, personal relationships, the Great Leap Forward, Mao-worship, Red Guard activism, revolutionary violence, Public Criticism Meetings, the model revolutionary operas, and foreign language teaching. She also reinterprets Mao’s strategy during the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, showing how he manipulated exegetical principles and contexts of judgment to "frame" his alleged opponents. The work concludes with an assessment of the successes and failures of linguistic engineering and an account of how the Chinese Communist Party relaxed its control of language after Mao's death.
Download or read book Cool Town written by Grace Elizabeth Hale and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the summer of 1978, the B-52's conquered the New York underground. A year later, the band's self-titled debut album burst onto the Billboard charts, capturing the imagination of fans and music critics worldwide. The fact that the group had formed in the sleepy southern college town of Athens, Georgia, only increased the fascination. Soon, more Athens bands followed the B-52's into the vanguard of the new American music that would come to be known as "alternative," including R.E.M., who catapulted over the course of the 1980s to the top of the musical mainstream. As acts like the B-52's, R.E.M., and Pylon drew the eyes of New York tastemakers southward, they discovered in Athens an unexpected mecca of music, experimental art, DIY spirit, and progressive politics--a creative underground as vibrant as any to be found in the country's major cities. In Athens in the eighties, if you were young and willing to live without much money, anything seemed possible. Cool Town reveals the passion, vitality, and enduring significance of a bohemian scene that became a model for others to follow. Grace Elizabeth Hale experienced the Athens scene as a student, small-business owner, and band member. Blending personal recollection with a historian's eye, she reconstructs the networks of bands, artists, and friends that drew on the things at hand to make a new art of the possible, transforming American culture along the way. In a story full of music and brimming with hope, Hale shows how an unlikely cast of characters in an unlikely place made a surprising and beautiful new world.
Download or read book All About Love written by bell hooks and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' "Love Song to the Nation" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about love, and inspiration to help us instill caring, compassion, and strength in our homes, schools, and workplaces. “The word ‘love’ is most often defined as a noun, yet we would all love better if we used it as a verb,” writes bell hooks as she comes out fighting and on fire in All About Love. Here, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. As bell hooks uses her incisive mind to explore the question “What is love?” her answers strike at both the mind and heart. Razing the cultural paradigm that the ideal love is infused with sex and desire, she provides a new path to love that is sacred, redemptive, and healing for individuals and for a nation. The Utne Reader declared bell hooks one of the “100 Visionaries Who Can Change Your Life.” All About Love is a powerful, timely affirmation of just how profoundly her revelations can change hearts and minds for the better.
Download or read book The Crystal Shard written by R.A. Salvatore and published by Wizards of the Coast. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drizzt Do’Urden finds new friends and foes in the windswept towns of Icewind Dale, also the setting of the Dungeons & Dragons adventure book Rime of the Frostmaiden. With his days in the Underdark far behind him, drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden sets down roots in the windswept Ten-Towns of Icewind Dale. A cold and unforgiving place, Ten-Towns sits on the brink of a catastrophic war, threatened by the barbarian tribes of the north. It’s in the midst of battle that a young barbarian named Wulfgar is captured and made the ward of Bruenor, a grizzled dwarf leader and a companion to Drizzt. With Drizzt’s help, Wulfgar will grow from a feral child to a man with the heart of a dwarf, the instincts of a savage, and the soul of a hero. But it will take even more than that to defeat the corrupt wizard who wields the demonic power of Crenshininbon—the fabled Crystal Shard. The Crystal Shard is first book in the Icewind Dale Trilogy and the fourth book in the Legend of Drizzt series.
Download or read book Songs in the Key of Z written by Irwin Chusid and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2000-04-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outsider musicians can be the product of damaged DNA, alien abduction, drug fry, demonic possession, or simply sheer obliviousness. This book profiles dozens of outsider musicians, both prominent and obscure—figures such as The Shaggs, Syd Barrett, Tiny Tim, Jandek, Captain Beefheart, Daniel Johnston, Harry Partch, and The Legendary Stardust Cowboy—and presents their strange life stories along with photographs, interviews, cartoons, and discographies. About the only things these self-taught artists have in common are an utter lack of conventional tunefulness and an overabundance of earnestness and passion. But, believe it or not, they're worth listening to, often outmatching all contenders for inventiveness and originality. A CD featuring songs by artists profiled in the book is also available.
Download or read book The Winner Stands Alone written by Paulo Coelho and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2010 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Winner Stands Alone is the enthralling new novel by the incomparable Paulo Coelho.
Download or read book Brian Eno written by Eric Enno Tamm and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 1995-08-22 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musician, composer, producer: Brian Eno is unique in contemporary music. Best known in recent years for producing U2's sensational albums, Eno began his career as a synthesizer player for Roxy Music. He has since released many solo albums, both rock and ambient, written music for film and television soundtracks, and collaborated with David Bowie, David Byrne, Robert Fripp, and classical and experimental composers. His pioneering ambient sound has been enormously influential, and without him today's rock would have a decidedly different sound. Drawing on Eno's own words to examine his influences and ideas, this book—featuring a new afterword and an updated discography and bibliography—will long remain provocative and definitive.
Download or read book Options written by Daniel Lyons and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2009-03-25 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome to the mind, to the world of Fake Steve Jobs. Fake Steve the counterintuitive management guru: "Obviously we can't literally put our employees' lives at risk. But we have to make them feel that way." Fake Steve the political hobnobber: "I can see why they keep Nancy Pelosi under wraps. Wacky as a dime watch." Fake Steve quoting friend/musician/philosopher Bono on road etiquette: "Tink about dat next toim yer cuttin off some bloke and you don't know who it is, right? Could be Jay-sus. Or Boutros Boutros-Ghali or sumfin." And on, yes, himself: "Geniuses have feelings, too." In the tradition of Thank You for Smoking and in the spirit of The Onion, Options is a novelistic sendup and takedown of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Washington, D.C., as viewed by a central character who exists, to his immense self-satisfaction, at the crossroads of all three worlds: "It's like in one of those movies where a guy realizes he's got telekinetic powers and it's just too bad if he doesn't want them, he's got them. Likewise, I have this gift. It's who I am."
Download or read book A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication written by Richard Jackson Harris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fifth edition of A Cognitive Psychology of Mass Communication, author Richard Jackson Harris continues his examination of how our experiences with media affect the way we acquire knowledge about the world, and how this knowledge influences our attitudes and behavior. Presenting theories from psychology and communication along with reviews of the corresponding research, this text covers a wide variety of media and media issues, ranging from the commonly discussed topics – sex, violence, advertising – to lesser-studied topics, such as values, sports, and entertainment education. The fifth and fully updated edition offers: highly accessible and engaging writing contemporary references to all types of media familiar to students substantial discussion of theories and research, including interpretations of original research studies a balanced approach to covering the breadth and depth of the subject discussion of work from both psychology and media disciplines. The text is appropriate for Media Effects, Media & Society, and Psychology of Mass Media coursework, as it examines the effects of mass media on human cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors through empirical social science research; teaches students how to examine and evaluate mediated messages; and includes mass communication research, theory and analysis.
