Book picks similar to
The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Expository Prose by John C. Brereton
fiction
manners
america-1-american
education
Philosophy Satanism
Anton Szandor LaVey - 2010
This is the translation into Russian of the famous books by Anton LaVey: The Satanic Bible The Devil's Notebook The Satanic Rituals
The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture
Holly George-Warren - 2000
Thompson, Joyce Johnson, Richard Hell, and others. It includes rare pieces from the Rolling Stone archives by William Burroughs, Lester Bangs, and Robert Palmer as well as intimate photographs by Robert Frank, Annie Leibovitz, and rarely seen photos taken by the Beats themselves. A rich tapestry of voices and a visual treat, this treasury of Beat lore and literature is a true collector's item whose entertainment value will go on...and on."A huge dim sum cart of a book...a first-rate companion." --Publishers Weekly"Compelling reading."--The Denver Post
Cold Mountain: The Journey from Book to Film
Anthony Minghella - 2003
Ripley. Coming from Miramax Films in December 2003, Cold Mountain stars Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Natalie Portman, Giovanni Ribisi and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Directed by Academy Award®-winner Anthony Minghella who also wrote the screenplay, Cold Mountain is based on Charles Frazier's best-selling Civil War novel of the same name and tells the story of Inman (Law), a wounded confederate soldier who is on a perilous journey home to his mountain community, hoping to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart, Ada (Kidman). In his absence, Ada struggles to survive, and revive her father's farm with the help of intrepid young drifter Ruby (Zellweger).The Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook is annotated with illustrations, movie stills, production design sketches keyed to the screenplay, costume designs, sidebars, and commentary from the cast and crew.
The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
J.R.R. Tolkien - 1983
Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien’s work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953.Also included in this volume is the lecture English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien’s approach to the whole genre.The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of The Hobbit, with a unique ‘academic’ lecture on his invention (calling it A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.
The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us
James W. Pennebaker - 2011
In the last fifty years, we've zoomed through radically different forms of communication, from typewriters to tablet computers, text messages to tweets. We generate more and more words with each passing day. Hiding in that deluge of language are amazing insights into who we are, how we think, and what we feel.In The Secret Life of Pronouns, social psychologist and language expert James W. Pennebaker uses his groundbreaking research in computational linguistics-in essence, counting the frequency of words we use-to show that our language carries secrets about our feelings, our self-concept, and our social intelligence. Our most forgettable words, such as pronouns and prepositions, can be the most revealing: their patterns are as distinctive as fingerprints.Using innovative analytic techniques, Pennebaker X-rays everything from Craigslist advertisements to the Federalist Papers-or your own writing, in quizzes you can take yourself-to yield unexpected insights. Who would have predicted that the high school student who uses too many verbs in her college admissions essay is likely to make lower grades in college? Or that a world leader's use of pronouns could reliably presage whether he led his country into war? You'll learn why it's bad when politicians use "we" instead of "I," what Lady Gaga and William Butler Yeats have in common, and how Ebenezer Scrooge's syntax hints at his self-deception and repressed emotion. Barack Obama, Sylvia Plath, and King Lear are among the figures who make cameo appearances in this sprightly, surprising tour of what our words are saying-whether we mean them to or not.
Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature
Viv Groskop - 2019
In The Anna Karenina Fix, Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question “How should you live your life?” or at least be less miserable. This is a charming and fiercely intelligent book, a love letter to Russian literature.
On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City
Alice Goffman - 2014
Arrest quotas and high-tech surveillance techniques criminalize entire blocks, and transform the very associations that should stabilize young lives—family, relationships, jobs—into liabilities, as the police use such relationships to track down suspects, demand information, and threaten consequences. Alice Goffman spent six years living in one such neighborhood in Philadelphia, and her close observations and often harrowing stories reveal the pernicious effects of this pervasive policing. Goffman introduces us to an unforgettable cast of young African American men who are caught up in this web of warrants and surveillance—some of them small-time drug dealers, others just ordinary guys dealing with limited choices. All find the web of presumed criminality, built as it is on the very associations and friendships that make up a life, nearly impossible to escape. We watch as the pleasures of summer-evening stoop-sitting are shattered by the arrival of a carful of cops looking to serve a warrant; we watch—and can’t help but be shocked—as teenagers teach their younger siblings and cousins how to run from the police (and, crucially, to keep away from friends and family so they can stay hidden); and we see, over and over, the relentless toll that the presumption of criminality takes on families—and futures. While not denying the problems of the drug trade, and the violence that often accompanies it, through her gripping accounts of daily life in the forgotten neighborhoods of America's cities, Goffman makes it impossible for us to ignore the very real human costs of our failed response—the blighting of entire neighborhoods, and the needless sacrifice of whole generations.
Propaganda and the Public Mind
Noam Chomsky - 1998
Whether discussing the recent U.S. military escalation in Colombia, the bipartisan rollback of Social Security, the rise of for-profit HMOs, or growing inequality worldwide, Chomsky shows how ordinary citizens, if they work together, have the power to make meaningful change.Renowned interviewer David Barsamian showcases his unique access to Chomsky's thinking on a number of topics of contemporary and historical import. In an interview conducted after the important November 1999 "Battle in Seattle", Chomsky discusses prospects for building a movement to challenge corporate domination of the media, the environment, and even our private lives. Chomsky also engages in a discussion of his ideas on language and mind, making his important linguistic insights accessible to the lay reader.
This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women
Jay Allison - 2006
Each piece compels readers to rethink not only how they have arrived at their own personal beliefs but also the extent to which they share them with others. Featuring a well-known list of contributors--including Isabel Allende, Colin Powell, Gloria Steinem, William F. Buckley Jr., Penn Jillette, Bill Gates, and John Updike--the collection also contains essays by a Brooklyn lawyer; a part-time hospital clerk from Rehoboth, Massachusetts; a woman who sells Yellow Pages advertising in Fort Worth, Texas; and a man who serves on the state of Rhode Island's parole board. The result is a stirring and provocative trip inside the minds and hearts of a diverse group of people whose beliefs--and the incredibly varied ways in which they choose to express them--reveal the American spirit at its best.
News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness
Robert Bly - 1980
The book’s 150 poems come from around the world and many eras: from the ecstatic Sufi poet Rumi to contemporary voices like Kenneth Rexroth, Denise Levertov, Charles Simic, and Mary Oliver. Brilliant introductory essays trace our shifting attitudes toward the natural world, from the “old position” of dominating or denigrating nature, to the growing sympathy expressed by the Romantics and American poets like Whitman and Dickinson. Bly’s translations of Neruda, Rilke, and others, along with superb examples of non-Western verse such as Eskimo and Zuni songs, complete this important, provocative anthology.
The Call of Sedona: Journey of the Heart
Ilchi Lee - 2011
They are also enticed by a hidden quality-the uplifting healing energy and sacred vibrations of Sedona's spiritual vortexes. Here Ilchi Lee shares his Sedona experiences in an intimate, heart-expanding exploration of natural and spiritual mysteries. Through the profound meditations the author was guided to create in Sedona, anyone anywhere can experience the deep peace, joy, and messages of hope, healing, and guidance that Sedona offers. This is a guidebook like no other.
Acclaimed Stories from the World's Bestselling Author: Different Seasons; Skeleton Crew; Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Stephen King - 1988
Guaranteed to give you a winter's chill, this set includes Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew and Nightmares & Dreamscapes.
The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University
Kevin Roose - 2009
Raised in a secular home by staunchly liberal parents, he fit right in with Brown's sweatshop-protesting, fair-trade coffee-drinking, God-ambivalent student body. So when he had a chance encounter with a group of students from Liberty University, a conservative Baptist university in Lynchburg, Virginia, he found himself staring across a massive culture gap. But rather than brush the Liberty students off, Roose decided to do something much bolder: he became one of them.Liberty University is the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's proudest accomplishment - a 10,000-student conservative Christian training ground. At Liberty, students (who call themselves "Champions for Christ") take classes like Introduction to Youth Ministry and Evangelism 101. They hear from guest speakers like Mike Huckabee and Karl Rove, they pray before every class, and they follow a 46-page code of conduct called "The Liberty Way" that prohibits drinking, smoking, R-rated movies, contact with the opposite sex, and witchcraft. Armed with an open mind and a reporter's notebook, Roose dives into life at Bible Boot Camp with the goal of connecting with his evangelical peers by experiencing their world first-hand.Roose's semester at Liberty takes him to church, class, and choir practice at Rev. Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church. He visits a support group for recovering masturbation addicts, goes to an evangelical hip-hop concert, and participates in a spring break mission trip to Daytona Beach, where he learns how to convert bar-hopping co-eds to Christianity. Roose struggles with his own faith throughout, and in a twist that could only have been engineered by a higher power, he conducts what would turn out to be the last in-depth interview of Rev. Falwell's life. Hilarious and heartwarming, respectful and thought-provoking, Roose's embedded report from the front lines of the culture war will inspire and entertain believers and non-believers alike.
Spike Lee's Gotta Have It: Inside Guerilla Filmmaking
Spike Lee - 1987
Shot on a shoe-string budget of $175,000 in black-and-white 16mm, the film was made with Spike Lee's persistence and talent plus the help of family and friends. It grossed $8 million at the box office and proved to be a major hit with both critics and audiences. Now Spike Lee reveals how he did it, mapping out the entire creative and production processes-from early notebook jottings to film festival awards. Spike Lee's Gotta Have It is a unique document in film literature - it's funny, absorbing, and fresh as the hit film itself.