C for Dummies


Dan Gookin - 1997
    Actually, it's computer sense--C programming. After digesting C For Dummies, 2nd Edition, you'll understand it. C programs are fast, concise and versatile. They let you boss your computer around for a change. So turn on your computer, get a free compiler and editor (the book tells you where), pull up a chair, and get going. You won't have to go far (page 13) to find your first program example. You'll do short, totally manageable, hands-on exercises to help you make sense of:All 32 keywords in the C language (that's right--just 32 words) The functions--several dozen of them Terms like printf(), scanf(), gets (), and puts () String variables, numeric variables, and constants Looping and implementation Floating-point values In case those terms are almost as intimidating as the idea of programming, be reassured that C For Dummies was written by Dan Gookin, bestselling author of DOS For Dummies, the book that started the whole library. So instead of using expletives and getting headaches, you'll be using newly acquired skills and getting occasional chuckles as you discover how to:Design and develop programs Add comments (like post-it-notes to yourself) as you go Link code to create executable programs Debug and deploy your programs Use lint, a common tool to examine and optimize your code A helpful, tear-out cheat sheet is a quick reference for comparison symbols, conversion characters, mathematical doodads, C numeric data types, and more. C For Dummies takes the mystery out of programming and gets you into it quickly and painlessly.

The Essential Zohar: The Source of Kabbalistic Wisdom


Philip S. Berg - 2002
    The central text of Kabbalah, the Zohar is a commentary on the Bible’s narratives, laws, and genealogies and a map of the spiritual landscape. In The Essential Zohar, the eminent kabbalist Rav P. S. Berg decodes its teachings on evil, redemption, human relationships, wealth and poverty, and other fundamental concerns from a practical, contemporary perspective. The Zohar and Kabbalah have traditionally been known as the world’s most esoteric sources of spiritual knowledge, but Rav Berg has dedicated his life to making this concentrated distillation of infinite wisdom available to people of all faiths so that we may use its principles to live each day in harmony with the divine.

The Zelmenyaners: A Family Saga


Moyshe Kulbak - 1931
    The Zelmenyaners describes the travails of a Jewish family in Minsk that is torn asunder by the new Soviet reality. Four generations are depicted in riveting and often uproarious detail as they face the profound changes brought on by the demands of the Soviet regime and its collectivist, radical secularism. The resultant intergenerational showdowns—including disputes over the introduction of electricity, radio, or electric trolley—are rendered with humor, pathos, and a finely controlled satiric pen. Moyshe Kulbak, a contemporary of the Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, picks up where Sholem Aleichem left off a generation before, exploring in this book the transformation of Jewish life.

Inclusion and Democracy


Iris Marion Young - 2000
    Processes of debate and decision making often marginalize individuals and groups because the norms of political discussion are biased against some forms of expression. Inclusion and Democracy broadens our understanding of democratic communication by reflecting on the positive political functions of narrative, rhetorically situated appeals, and public protest. It reconstructs concepts of civil society and public sphere as enacting such plural forms of communication among debating citizens in large-scale societies. Iris Marion Young thoroughly discusses class, race, and gender bias in democratic processes, and argues that the scope of a polity should extend as wide as the scope of social and economic interactions that raise issues of justice. Today this implies the need for global democratic institutions. Young also contends that due to processes of residential segregation and the design of municipal jurisdictions, metropolitan governments which preserve significant local autonomy may be necessary to promote political equality. This latest work from one of the world's leading political philosophers will appeal to audiences from a variety of fields, including philosophy, political science, women's studies, ethnic studies, sociology, and communications studies.

Lovesong: Becoming a Jew


Julius Lester - 1988
    His book Lovesong is a beautifully written account of his spiritual journey away from the conventions of his Southern heritage and Methodist upbringing, culminating in his personal self-discovery through a conversion to Judaism.Growing up in the turbulent civil rights era South, Lester was often discouraged by the disconnectedness between the promises of religion and the realities of his life. He used the outlets available to him to try to come to grips with this split and somehow reconcile the injustices he was witnessing with the purity of religion. He became a controversial writer and commentator, siding with neither blacks nor whites in his unconventional viewpoints. He became a luminal figure of the times, outside of the conventional labels of race, religion, politics, or philosophy.Lester’s spiritual quest would take him through the existential landscape of his Southern, Christian upbringing, into his ancestry, winding through some of the holiest places on the planet and into the spiritual depths of the world’s major religious cultures. His odyssey of faith would unexpectedly lead him to discovering Judaism as his true spiritual calling.

The Literary Guide to the Bible


Robert Alter - 1987
    An international team of renowned scholars, assembled by two leading literary critics, offers a book-by-book guide through the Old and New Testaments as well as general essays on the Bible as a whole, providing an enticing reintroduction to a work that has shaped our language and thought for thousands of years.

The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread


Maria Balinska - 2008
    But few people are aware of the bagel’s provenance, let alone its adventuresome history. This charming book tells the remarkable story of the bagel’s journey from the tables of seventeenth-century Poland to the freezers of middle America today, a story of often surprising connections between a cheap market-day snack and centuries of Polish, Jewish, and American history. Research in international archives and numerous personal interviews uncover the bagel’s links with the defeat of the Turks by Polish King Jan Sobieski in 1683, the Yiddish cultural revival of the late nineteenth century, and Jewish migration across the Atlantic to America. There the story moves from the bakeries of New York’s Lower East Side to the Bagel Bakers’ Local 388 Union of the 1960s, and the attentions of the mob. For all its modest size, the bagel has managed to bridge cultural gaps, rescue kings from obscurity, charge the emotions, and challenge received wisdom. Maria Balinska weaves together a rich, quirky, and evocative history of East European Jewry and the unassuming ring-shaped roll the world has taken to its heart.

Masters of Cinema: David Lynch


Thierry Jousse - 2010
    1946) is perhaps the best known of all cult directors, whose Mulholland Drive marks cinema's arrival to the 21st century. His career began more than 30 years ago, with the groundbreaking, mystifying "Eraserhead" (1977). With "Blue Velvet" (1986), "Wild at Heart" (1990) and "Lost Highway" (1997) Lynch breathed new life into the sensory experiences of film audiences and disrupted narrative logic to mysterious and mystifying effect. In the early 1990s, he invented a new TV series genre with "Twin Peaks". Although he is a Hollywood director, Lynch works at the edges of the studio system, exploring the many facets of his artistic talent, whose creations, including photography, painting and music, are now making their way into museums and galleries.

Film History: An Introduction


Kristin Thompson - 1994
    As in the authors' bestselling "Film Art", concepts and events are illustrated with actual frame enlargements, giving students more realistic points of reference than competing books that use publicity stills.

The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies


Vito Russo - 1981
    Praised by the Chicago Tribune as "an impressive study" and written with incisive wit and searing perception--the definitive, highly acclaimed landmark work on the portrayal of homosexuality in film.

Blade Runner: A Movie


William S. Burroughs - 1979
    These heroic healers, in turn, are aided by 'blade runners,' teenagers who smuggle banned surgical instruments past the watchful eyes of fascistic police. The novel-cum-screenplay follows one of these runners during the course of a race riot and the transfer of instruments between embattled doctors. Above the drama in the streets of New York is a world 'taken over by hang-glider and autogyro gangs, mountaineers and steeplejacks. A sky boy steps off his penthouse into a parachute on guide wires that drop him to a street-level landing... Meanwhile, released animals and reptiles from the zoo and freed fish from the aquarium have control of the rovers and subways. The prose flashes with Burrough's own brand of outrageousness and fantasy." —L.A. Herald Examiner, July 29. 1979

Stars


Richard Dyer - 1979
    On its first publication in 1980, this book set new standards for critical and theoretical rigor in the field of star studies. Through the intensive examination of films, magazines, and advertising--as well as critical texts--Richard Dyer analyzes the historical, ideological, and aesthetic significance of stars, changing the way we understand screen icons. Paying particular attention to Marlon Brando, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Jane Fonda, Greta Garbo, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Redford, and John Wayne, Stars is an indispensable textbook. This new edition features a supplementary chapter by Paul McDonald that traces developments in star studies since the first appearance of Richard Dyer's classic study.

Number Our Days


Barbara Myerhoff - 1979
    The story of the rituals and lives of these remarkable old people is, as Bel Kaufman said, "one of those rare books that leave the reader somehow changed." Here Dr. Myerhoff records the stories of a culture that seems to give people the strength to face enormous daily problems -- poverty, neglect, loneliness, poor health, inadequate housing and physical danger. The tale is a poignant one, funny and often wise, with implications for all of us about the importance of ritual, the agonies of aging, and the indomitable human spirit.

Godard: A Portrait of the Artist at Seventy


Colin MacCabe - 2003
    Hugely prolific in his first decade--Breathless, Contempt, Pierrot le Fou, Alphaville, and Made in USA are just a handful of the seminal works he directed--Godard introduced filmgoers to the generation of stars associated with the trumpeted sexuality of postwar movies and culture: Brigitte Bardot, Jean Seberg, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Anna Karina.As the sixties wore on, however, Godard's life was transformed. The Hollywood he had idolized began to disgust him, and in the midst of the socialist ferment in France his second wife introduced him to the activist student left. From 1968 to 1972, Europe's greatest director worked in the service of Maoist politics, and continued thereafter to experiment on the far peripheries of the medium he had transformed. His extraordinary later works are little seen or appreciated, yet he remains one of Europe's most influential artists.Drawing on his own working experience with Godard and his coterie, Colin MacCabe, in this first biography of the director, has written a thrilling account of the French cinema's transformation in the hands of Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette, and Chabrol--critics who toppled the old aesthetics by becoming, legendarily, directors themselves--and Godard's determination to make cinema the greatest of the arts.

Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess


Hannah Arendt - 1958
    Arendt discovered her writings some time in the mid-1920s, and soon began to reimagine Rahel's inner life and write her biography. Long unavailable and never before published as Arendt intended, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess returns to print in an extraordinary new edition.Arendt draws a lively and complex portrait of a woman during the period of the Napoleonic wars and the early emancipation of the Jews, a figure who met and corresponded with some of the most celebrated authors, artists, and politicians of her time. She documents Rahel's attempts to earn legitimacy as a writer and gain access to the highest aristocratic circles, to assert for herself a position in German culture in spite of her gender and religion.Arendt had almost completed a first draft of her book on Rahel by 1933 when she was forced into exile by the National Socialists. She continued her work on the manuscript in Paris and New York, but would not publish the book until 1958. Rahel Varnhagen became not just a study of a historical Jewish figure, but a poignant reflection on Arendt's own life and times, her first exploration of German-Jewish identity and the possibility of Jewish life in the face of unimaginable adversity.For this first complete critical edition of the book in any language, Liliane Weissberg reconstructs the notes Arendt planned for Rahel Varnhagen but never fully executed. She reveals the extent to which Arendt wove the biography largely from the words of Rahel and her contemporaries. In her extended introduction, Weissberg reflects on Rahel's writings and on the importance of this text in the development of Arendt's political theory. Weissberg also reveals the hidden story of how Arendt manipulated documents relating to Rahel Varnhagen to claim for herself a university position and reparation payments from the postwar German state.