This is the acclaimed study and interpretation of Banaras, the holy place of the Hindus.

    This collection confirms how indispensible she has become as a guide through the maelstrom of our times.This is vintage Heimel-the caustic wit, the chronic truth telling, the wicked insights into the age-old dance between the sexes are all here and sharper than ever. In "She Asked For It?" the spectacle of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill affair calls for a stern warning to all men that feminism is back with a vengeance. Turning her attention to the Men's Movement, she is sympathetic up to a point, after which she demolishes their ranks with a few motherly touches. She confides to us taht some days she thinks it would simply be easier to be a lesbian, and explains why. Proving that she's not always a pessimist, she discerns a silver lining in the dark clouds of smoke billowing off the L.A. riots-with all the rich guys stuck at home because of the curfew, perhaps they'll begin to wonder why it all finally hit the fan. And of course there is ample attention paid to the truly serious stuff--the observations and advice on love, sex, dating and outfits, without which no Heimel book would be complete. Where else can a women find such expert dating advice as: "My new rule is to never believe a person is interested until you feel his tongue down your throat." Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Goodbye shows Heimel at her wicked best. She is our downtown Dorothy Parker, and an antidote to this absurd world for smart, sane women.Cynthia Heimel is finally becoming recognized for who she is-an Erma Bombeck for a new generation.

    Indeed, few artistic or social movements can boast as many women forebears, founders, and participants-perhaps only feminism itself. Yet outside the movement, women's contributions to surrealism have been largely ignored or simply unknown. This anthology, the first of its kind in any language, displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism. Letting surrealist women speak for themselves, Penelope Rosemont has assembled nearly three hundred texts by ninety-six women from twenty-eight countries. She opens the book with a succinct summary of surrealism's basic aims and principles, followed by a discussion of the place of gender in the movement's origins. She then organizes the book into historical periods ranging from the 1920s to the present, with introductions that describe trends in the movement during each period. Rosemont also prefaces each surrealist's work with a brief biographical statement.

    But there is pressure. The people of Munson, her small Florida town, make their needs known: Ray, her boyfriend who is "overfocused on world history"; Mal, the horsey, earnest fry cook at Mal's Pico diner, who offers her his cabin; Palmer, the town doctor who can find no cure for the mysterious scar Frances bears; her mother, speaking to her through "the mechanical screeching" of Munson's patched telephone lines. Nearby, a volcano the townspeople call "Sharla" spews lava and stones, lighting the night sky with its portentous burning. At once measured and suspenseful, Frances Johnson is a comedy of manners in the tradition of Jane Bowles.

    Sound art’s roots can be found in the experimental work of Italian Futurism, Dada, and later the Fluxus group and the pioneering efforts of the American composer and artist John Cage. In the wake of this groundbreaking work, sound art began to mature into a movement, and artists explored the interactive possibilities of sound and in turn created entirely new modes of experiencing and engaging with art. In this volume, the complete story of sound art is told by one of the country’s leading critics and scholars. The author traces the history of this form of art–highlighting the convergence of the indie world bands such as Sonic Youth with the art world–looking at the critical cross-pollination that has led to some of the most important and challenging art being produced today, including work by Christian Marclay, LaMonte Young, Janet Cardiff, Rodney Graham, and Laurie Anderson, among many others.

    In Keepin' It Real: School Success beyond Black and White, Prudence Carter turns the conventional wisdom on its head arguing that what is needed is a broader recognition of the unique cultural styles and practices that non-white students bring to the classroom. Based on extensive interviews and surveys of students in New York, she demonstrates that the most successful negotiators of our school systems are the multicultural navigators, culturally savvy teens who draw from multiple traditions, whether it be knowledge of hip hop or of classical music, to achieve their high ambitions. Keepin' it Real refutes the common wisdom about teenage behavior and racial difference, and shows how intercultural communication, rather than assimilation, can help close the black-white gap.

    There's a wicked witch, a magic castle (really an apartment), and a dreadful curse. And Beauty still has to be very careful about pricking her finger. But don't count out the ingenuity of today's fairy tale heroine--especially when she has the help of a handsome rockstar. Full color.

    But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.“THE BOOK OF WILL…unequivocally announces Gunderson as a playwright with whom to be reckoned. It is, quite frankly, one of the best plays I have ever seen. It will bring tears of both laughter and sorrow to all but the most jaded audience member’s eyes. It is, in a word, a triumph.” —Boulder Weekly (CO). “[Gunderson] has peopled the stage with lively, historically based characters…She paints a vivid portrait of the times in language sometimes formal, sometimes poetic and often…contemporary…She also gives a real feel for theater life and what it means to be an actor; you sense this is a work of both scholarship and love. …[THE BOOK OF WILL] serves as homage to those who sacrificed to make the first folio happen and to Shakespeare’s magnificent words.” —Westword (Denver, CO).

    Her awards include first prize in the 1983 National Poetry Competition; three Scottish Arts Council Book Awards; Eric Gregory, Somerset Maugham and Dylan Thomas Awards in Britain and a 1995 Lannan Literary Award in the USA. In 1993 she received the Forward Poetry Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award for her acclaimed fourth collection Mean Time. On May 1, 2009 she was named the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

     Full of drama, sadness, grief, joy and gritty story lines, this series takes a close look at what life was like in the post-war, East End of London. Poverty, squalid living conditions and hard times all jostle for space, but the overriding feeling is one of strong women, facing their hardships head on. Find out more about this intriguing time, in our look behind the scenes, and also discover how the East End had been shaped over the centuries.

    Many kids don't understand the big words written in the Bible. Having a book that is Bible based but puts words on their levels would be great. Children can watch the pages of the Bible come to life through illustrations and words they can understand. There's no reason why ever child wouldn't want a book about a man being eaten by a fish or a little boy killing a giant.

    But Connie harbors a deep secret she has never told anyone. Ben and Julie are hardly settled when people begin dying, and they find themselves swept into the midst of another mystery. The twists and turns in this complex plot will keep readers guessing to the very end! Praise for Susan Slater and the Ben Pecos series: “Solid, suspenseful narrative and colorful glimpses of Native American life ... strongly recommend.” —Library Journal “A series to watch.” —Booklist “… Ben Pecos—raised far from New Mexico’s Tewa Pueblo—could become as lasting a fictional presence as Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.” – Chicago Tribune “… a gripping, interesting tale.” –5 stars, online review

    Still, few of us could identify all of our daily and festal ritual behaviors, much less explain them to an outsider. Similarly, because of the variety of activities that qualify as ritual and their many contradictory yet, in many ways, equally legitimate interpretations, ritual seems to elude any systematic historical and comparative scrutiny. In this book, Catherine Bell offers a practical introduction to ritual practice and its study; she surveys the most influential theories of religion and ritual, the major categories of ritual activity, and the key debates that have shaped our understanding of ritualism. Bell refuses to nail down ritual with any one definition or understanding. Instead, her purpose is to reveal how definitions emerge and evolve and to help us become more familiar with the interplay of tradition, exigency, and self-expression that goes into constructing this complex social medium.

    Until now, however, there has been no anthology of Shelley's work. The Mary Shelley Reader is a unique new collection that fills this gap. In addition to the original and complete 1818 version of her masterpiece Frankenstein, the book offers a new text of the novella Mathilda--an extraordinary tale of incest, guilt, and atonement that was not published until 1959 and has been out of print since then. Also included are seven short stories that range from gentle satire to fantastic tales of reanimation, diabolical transformation, and immortality. Eight essays and reviews are reprinted here for the first time since their original publication, and eleven representative letters help bring to life a remarkable literary and historical figure--author, daughter of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley. An illuminating introduction, a chronology, explanatory notes, and a bibliography make The Mary Shelley Reader indispensable for readers of English Romantic literature.

    She books a trip to India, hoping that there she will be able to put her grief into perspective. Though this is her first visit, India has always tantalized her: her English mother, Rose, was raised in Calcutta during the twilight of the British Raj, but seldom spoke of her childhood. Then, as Anna departs, Rose gives her a manuscript in which she has recorded her Indian memories, torn between two cultures and belonging completely to neither.