Suspended for a few seconds, they float in their own space and time with their own hidden prospects. For want of a better term, we call these moments “magical” and when we remember them they are cloaked in a halo of special meaning.’For 14-year-old Johnny Clegg, hearing Zulu street music as plucked on the strings of a guitar by Charlie Mzila one evening outside a corner café in Bellevue, Johannesburg, was one such ‘magical’ moment. The success story of Juluka and later Savuka, and the cross-cultural celebration of music, language, story, dance and song that stirred the hearts of millions across the world, is well documented. Their music was the soundtrack to many South Africans’ lives during the turbulent 70s and 80s as the country moved from legislated oppression to democratic freedom. It crossed borders, boundaries and generations, resonating around the world and back again. Less known is the story of how it all began and developed. Scatterling of Africa is that origin story, as Johnny Clegg wrote it and wanted it told. It is the story of how the son of an unconventional mother, grandson of Jewish immigrants, came to realise that identity can be a choice, and home is a place you leave and return to as surely as the seasons change.

    Yet for all their metaphorical suggestiveness, Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poems about the natural world neither preclude nor erase nature’s relevance as an actual living environment. In their respective poetic projects, the earth matters both figuratively, as a realm of the imagination, and also as the physical ground that is profoundly affected by human action. This double perspective, and the ways in which it intersects with their formal innovations, points beyond their traditional status as curiously disparate icons of American nature poetry. That both of them not only approach nature as an important subject in its own right, but also address human-nature relationships in ethical terms, invests their work with important environmental overtones. Dickinson and Whitman developed their environmentally suggestive poetics at roughly the same historical moment, at a time when a major shift was occurring in American culture’s view and understanding of the natural world. Just as they were achieving poetic maturity, the dominant view of wilderness was beginning to shift from obstacle or exploitable resource to an endangered treasure in need of conservation and preservation.A Place for Humility examines Dickinson’s and Whitman’s poetry in conjunction with this important change in American environmental perception, exploring the links between their poetic projects within the context of developing nineteenth-century environmental thought. Christine Gerhardt argues that each author's poetry participates in this shift in different but related ways, and that their involvement with their culture’s growing environmental sensibilities constitutes an important connection between their disparate poetic projects. There may be few direct links between Dickinson’s “letter to the World” and Whitman’s “language experiment,” but via a web of environmentally-oriented discourses, their poetry engages in a cultural conversation about the natural world and the possibilities and limitations of writing about it—a conversation in which their thematic and formal choices meet on a surprising number of levels.

    Now, in her own words, Twyla Tharp offers a rare and provocative glimpse into the mind and heart behind her famously deadpan face.Much more than a dance book, Push Comes to Shove is the story of a woman coming to terms with herself as daughter, wife and lover, mother, artist. A child of Indiana Quaker country, Twyla Tharp was traumatically uprooted to California when her stage-ambitious mother built a drive-in movie theater. Soon Twyla was studying piano, violin, flamenco, drums, French, baton twirling, tap, classical ballet...But it was in adolescence - tangling with a rattlesnake in the California desert and observing overheated couples in the backs of cars - that she began to learn the powers of the body and the erotic mysteries of dance. In New York her raw talent came under the influence of such giants as Martha Graham, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, and George Balanchine. But Tharp fought to find her own vision as an artist. In the process she created a new vocabulary of movement: quirky rebellious, sexy, comic - a daring and defiant marriage of Jelly Roll Morton, Bach, the modern dance, and classical ballet. Her collaborations with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Jerome Robbins, director Milos Forman, and David Byrne of Talking Heads built bridges between ballet audiences and fans of popular culture. Now with a stunning accompaniment of photographs by Richard Avedon and others, she reveals the development of the Tharp style - the rendering of order out of chaos, and chaos out of conventional order - that won critical acclaim in such works as Deuce Coupe, The Fugue, Push Comes to Shove, In the Upper Room, and the movies Hair and Amadeus. But her spectacular success did not come without personal anguish.

    And sell it, too. The top three reasons people never finish a novel or a film are all bullshit, and here's the reasons why.

    Imagine a setting in which a man wearing a dress might be as habitual as a woman in trousers. Where a woman exposing herself in public isn't sexy, but as creepy as a male flasher. Where professional status and success presents the same prospects for both sexes. In this first in a new series for TASCHEN, leading graphic designer Yang Liu tackles one of the hottest and one of the oldest topics of all: he and she. Drawing on the experiences, challenges, and many perspectives of men and women she's encountered in her own life, Yang Liu presents the vast, swirling question of gender in vivid, binary pictogram form. Dealing with a whole host of situations, from the bedroom to the boardroom, Yang Liu's designs are as simple and accessible in their presentation as they are infinite in the associations, evocations, and responses they elicit. Combining stereotypes with topical discrepancies, this fresh approach to the roles and relationships of men and women is above all an effort to synthesize a notoriously thorny issue into a fun, refreshing graphic form to lighten and enlighten and encourage mutual understanding and tolerance.

    Many of these new finds are included among the hundreds of reproductions.

    In this, her most personal book to date, she provides a heartbreakingly honest and insightful depiction of her struggle to reconnect to her faith and her realization that having faith, of necessity, means relinquishing will. A wise and passionate book, "Faith and Will" gently guides readers through the process of learning to let go and, in turn, learning to live.

    This shift was triggered by the release of the Sugarhill Gang's single, Rapper's Delight. Not only did it usher rap music into the mainstream's consciousness, it brought us the word "hip-hop." And It Don't Stop, edited by the award winning journalist Raquel Cepeda, with a foreword from Nelson George is a collection of the best articles the hip-hop generation has produced. It captures the indelible moments in hip-hop's history since 1979 and will be the centerpiece of the twenty-fifth-anniversary celebration. This book epitomizes the media's response by taking the reader on an engaging and critical journey, including the very first pieces written about hip-hop for publications like The Village Voice--controversial articles that created rifts between church and state, the artist and journalist, and articles that recorded the rise and tragic fall of the art form's appointed heroes, such as Tupac Shakur, Eazy-E, and the Notorious B.I.G. The list of contributors includes Toure, Kevin Powell, dream hampton, Harry Allen, Cheo Hodari Coker, Greg Tate, Bill Adler, Hilton Als, Danyel Smith, and Joan Morgan.

    S. Lowry’s studio after his death, and peering into the illicit worlds of the Victorian Mutoscope, these poems document what is caught, and what is lost, when houses and cityscapes, servants and saboteurs are arrested in time by photography. Assured and unsettling, Sinéad Morrissey’s poems explore the paradoxes in what is seen, read, and misread in the surfaces of the presented world.Winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry 2013

    Times critic, 27 year-old, Aubrey Johnson's work is finally gaining traction. But as she weaves through what should be a celebration of her art, a single nagging echo of her doctor’s words refuses to stay silent—there is no cure. In less than eight weeks Aubrey is going blind. Traveling on a one-way ticket around the world with childhood friend Jeff Anderson, Aubrey is in complete denial. But a blindfolded game of tasting foreign foods in China jolts her into confronting the reality of her situation. So begins her quest. In this adult coming of age story, Aubrey starts out at odds with her crippling disability and has a hard time accepting help. But on her journey she finds a deeper understanding of herself and her life—sometimes fragmented and complex, but always with relentless truth. "A touching exploration of identity and reinvention painted with gentle yet precise brush strokes." --Kirkus Reviews "Blue Sun, Yellow Sky delivers a glimpse into the artistic process, a stunning globe-trotting journey, and the intimate portrait of mending a heart broken by life itself.” -- Indigo Wilmann, Visual Yarn

    It focuses on critical analysis of the subject through a workbook section and self-quizzes along with prompts to explore the chapter's images and topics through the ArtStudy 2.0 CD-ROM, Web Site, and WebTutor? supplements.

    president's daughter?Brimming with answers to popular questions like these, The Best Bar Trivia Book Ever arms you with the knowledge your team needs to annihilate your bar trivia competition. This must-have guide features hundreds of facts, covering everything from sports and pop culture to history and science, so that you're always ready to deliver the ultimate trivia smackdown. You'll also get all the ins and outs of your favorite event with information on important bar trivia rules, assembling a team, and claiming victories week after week.Whether you're new to the scene or want to dominate at your local bar, this book will help your team outsmart the competition every single week!

    But that’s before she sees the perfect child. There he sits in his stroller, angelic and beautiful, magnetic and serene– and he makes Jane question everything she has and everything she thought she wanted. Suddenly all she can see are babies and pregnant woman everywhere. Were there always so many of them? And while there was once a man in her life–her one true love, Sam, gone from this world too soon–there is no man now. Jane must make a choice: possibly become a bitter and childless old lady, letting her biological clock tick on ’till menopause, or tend the ache in her heart now, by becoming a single mother. As Jane struggles to make the most important decision of her life, friends and family offer no shortage of opinions. There’s Ray, her “hubstitute” and gay best friend who would be jealous of any kid who got Jane as a mom; Sheila, her sister, who went from zero to sixty when she eloped with Raoul–who had two young twin sons– and has mixed feelings about being a new mommy; her strict, Catholic father who can’ t imagine what level of hell Jane would banish herself to if she becomes a single mother; and the women of Families with Children from China who are preparing to adopt orphan daughters–without a man in sight. Just as she thinks she’s made up her mind, Jane discovers one small wrench in her plans: handsome, charming, funny Peter, who just happens to be (unhappily) married. . . . And Baby Makes Two is a heartbreakingly honest, wonderfully addictive, and funny novel about love and loss, family and friendship. Judy Sheehan, co-creator of the smash hit Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, has perfectly captured the delights and dilemmas of the scariest job in the world: motherhood.From the Hardcover edition.

    Heaven Lake is about many things: China, God, passion, friendship, travel, even the reckless smuggling of hashish. But above all, this extraordinary debut is about the mysteries of love. Vincent Saunders has graduated from college, left his small hometown in Illinois, and arrived in Taiwan as a Christian volunteer. After opening a ministry house, he meets a wealthy Taiwanese businessman, Mr. Gwa, who tells Vincent that on his far travels to western China he has discovered a beautiful young woman living near the famous landmark Heaven Lake. Elegant, regal, clever, she works as a lowly clerk in the local railway station. Gwa wishes to marry her, but is thwarted by the political conflict between China and Taiwan. In exchange for a sum of money, will Vincent travel to China on Gwa's behalf, take part in a counterfeit marriage, and bring her back to Taiwan for Gwa to marry legitimately? Vincent, largely innocent about the ways of the world, and believing that marriage is a sacrament, says no. Gwa is furious. Soon though, everything Vincent understands about himself and his vocation in Taiwan changes. Supplementing his income from his sparsely attended Bible study classes, he teaches English to a group of enthusiastic schoolgirls—and it is his tender, complicated friendship with a student that forces him to abandon the ministry house and sends Vincent on a path toward spiritual reckoning. It also causes him to reconsider Gwa’s extraordinary proposition.What follows is not just an exhilarating –sometimes harrowing-- journey to a remote city in China, but an exploration of love, passion, loneliness, and the nature of faith. John Dalton’s exquisite narrative arcs across China as gracefully as it plumbs the human heart, announcing a major new talent.