But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing.From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen.With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

    The Thumpin’ is the story of that historic victory and the man at the center on whom Democratic hopes hinged: Congressman Rahm Emanuel, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid had exclusive access to Emanuel and the DCCC in the year and a half leading up to the elections and ended up with the story of a lifetime, the thrilling blow-by-blow account of how Emanuel remade the campaign in his own ferocious image. Responsible for everything from handpicking Congressional candidates to raising money for attack ads, Emanuel, a talented ballet dancer better known in Washington for his extraordinary intensity and his inexhaustible torrents of profanity, threw out the playbook on the way Democrats run elections.Instead of rallying the base, Rahm sought moderate-to-conservative candidates who could attract more traditional voters. Instead of getting caught in the Democrats’ endless arguments about their positions, he went on the attack, personally vilifying Republicans from Tom DeLay to Christopher Shays. And instead of abiding by the gentlemen’s agreements of good-old-boy Washington, he broke them, attacking his counterpart in the Republican party and challenging Howard Dean, the chairman of his own party. In 2005, no one believed victory was within the Democrats’ grasp. But as the months passed, Republicans were caught in wave after wave of scandal, support for the war in Iraq steadily declined, and the president’s poll numbers plummeted. And in Emanuel, the Democrats finally had a killer, a ruthless closer like Karl Rove or Lee Atwater, poised to seize the advantage and deliver what President Bush would call “a thumpin.’”Taking its cues from classic political page-turners like Showdown at Gucci Gulch and documentaries like The War Room, The Thumpin’ takes us inside the key races and the national strategy-making that moved the Democrats from forecasted gains of three seats in 2005 to a sweeping gain of thirty seats when the votes were finally counted. Through this masterful account of Rahm’s rout, Bendavid shows how the lessons the Democrats learned in 2006—to fight for every vote, to abandon litmus tests, and to take no prisoners—will be crucial to the party’s future electoral success, and shape the political course the nation will take in the twenty-first century.From the Hardcover edition.

    Now take those events and transfer them to a volcanic rock with cruel winds, searing sun, rough seas and nosebleed-inducing hills, and you have Ironman Lanzarote. Why, then, would Andy Holgate – who admittedly has never swum in the sea, who can’t cope with the wind, sun or even stairs – take on such an extreme challenge? Simple: Because he can. Can’t Sleep, Can’t Train, Can’t Stop! continues Andy’s inspirational journey from where Can’t Swim, Can’t Ride, Can’t Run left off, chronicling his attempt to complete two Ironman triathlons six weeks apart. Already in his fortieth year, would Andy make it to his forty-first? Would Lanzarote prove one triathlon too far – or will Andy succeed against the odds and live to swim, ride and run another day?

    Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it. Wittgenstein defined humans as language-using creatures. The role of philosophy is to ask questions which reveal the limits and nature of language. Taking the expression, description and observation of pain as examples, Hacker explores the ingenuity with which Wittgenstein identified the rules and set the limits of language. (less)

    

    The attacks have come not only from traditional conservatives but increasingly from the postmodern left. In this essay, Stephen Hicks presents and dissects the philosophical arguments made by the postmoderns for speech restrictions and responds with a vigorous and updated liberal case for free speech.

    Nothing’s changing; you’re not getting stronger or leaner or feeling better, and, heck, maybe you’ll just take a layoff and see what happens.You know what happens. That two-week layoff lasts a year, that’s what happens!Now consider this: Traffic was light and you’re fifteen minutes early for your dental cleaning appointment. You flip open your tablet and bring up your new copy of Before We Go. By the time the dental tech calls you, you’ve read two article chapters and are amped to get to the gym. Your mind is racing through the appointment, and it’s all you can do to stay in that squeaky lounge chair.You get to the gym an hour later and sail through the best workout you’ve had in months, maybe years.That’s what this book can do for you.“I go through one chapter at a time, slowly, and let it percolate.” ~ TC Luoma, Editor-in-Chief, T NationDan John’s Before We Go will spur your training to that exciting level you love. Following the pattern set by his earlier book Never Let Go (230 reviews averaging five stars, still in the top 30 weight training books after five years on Kindle), Before We Go is the second compilation of Dan’s best articles previously published online.

    But what if you want a delightfully quick, witty, and readable reference that, in one compact volume, places the document and its clauses into context? You're out of luck--until now. Written by Seth Lipsky, described in the Boston Globe as "a legendary figure in contemporary journalism," The Citizen's Constitution draws on the writings of the Founders, case law from our greatest judges, and current events in more than 300 illuminating annotations. Lipsky provides a no-nonsense, entertaining, and learned guide to the fundamental questions surrounding the document that governs how we govern our country. Every American should know the Constitution. Rarely has it glinted so brightly.

    (“Every single frame,” declared Cate Blanchett, “is burned into my retina.”) As Dyer guides us into the zone of Tarkovsky’s imagination, we realize that the film is only the entry point for a radically original investigation of the enduring questions of life, faith, and how to live. In a narrative that gives free rein to the brilliance of Dyer’s distinctive voice—acute observation, melancholy, comedy, lyricism, and occasional ill-temper—Zona takes us on a wonderfully unpredictable journey in which we try to fathom, and realize, our deepest wishes.Zona is one of the most unusual books ever written about film, and about how art—whether a film by a Russian director or a book by one of our most gifted contemporary writers—can shape the way we see the world and how we make our way through it.

    Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

    The core of his argument in this essay (and in those that follow) lies in the old opposition between theoria and aesthesis - terms that embody, on the one hand, a linguistic, specifically rhetorical approach to literature and, on the other, a phenomenological, aesthetic, or hermeneutic approach - and all the implications those two modes carry with them. The resistance to theory, says de Man, is a resistance to the use of language about language; it is a resistance to reading, and a resistance to the rhetorical or figurative dimensions of language. The six related essays in The Resistance to Theory were written by de Man in the few years that preceded his death in December 1983. Undertaken to find out why the theoretical enterprise is blind to, or "resists," the radical nature of reading, the essays share not only a theme but also the pedagogical intent that is central to most of his work. These concerns, implicit in the title essay, are openly argued in "The Return to Philology." Each of the remaining essays is devoted to a specific theorist: Michael Riffaterre, Hans Robert Jauss, Walter Benjamin, and Mikhail Bakhtin. The Resistance to Theory also includes a 1983 interview with de Man conducted for Italian radio, and a complete bibliography of his work. Wlad Godzich's foreword tells how de Man's late work was conceived and organized for publication, and discusses some of the basic terms in his discourse."Indispensable. . . . There is resistance to 'theory' and also confusion about its status with reference to both philosophy and criticism. De Man's defense of theory is subtle but uncompromising, and highly personal in its 'aporetic' conclusion."- Frank Kermode, Columbia UniversityPaul de Man was Sterling Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. His books include Blindness and Insight (1971; revised edition, Minnesota, 1983), Allegories of Reading ( 1980), and The Rhetoric of Romanticism (1984).

    Alexis de Tocqueville, a young French aristocrat, came to the young nation to investigate the functioning of American democracy & the social, political & economic life of its citizens, publishing his observations in 1835 & 1840. Brilliantly written, vividly illustrated with vignettes & portraits, Democracy in America is far more than a trenchant analysis of one society at a particular point in time. What will most intrigue modern readers is how many of the observations still hold true: on the mixed advantages of a free press, the strained relations among the races & the threats posed to democracies by consumerism & corruption. So uncanny is Tocqueville’s insight & so accurate are his predictions, that it seems as tho he were not merely describing the American identity but actually helping to create it.

    

    Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are. In a world in which capitalism has been shaken to its roots by some major crises, Why Marx Was Right is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia.

    The guide presents the major debates that surround these works as they develop, from Martin Esslin's early appropriation of the plays as examples of the Theatre of the Absurd, to recent poststructuralist and postcolonial readings by critics such as Steven Connor, Mary Bryden and Declan Kiberd. Throughout, Boxall clarifies and contextualizes critical responses to the plays, and considers the difficult relationship between Beckett and his critics.