Book picks similar to
Understanding Tolstoy by Andrew D. Kaufman


non-fiction
aa-on-deck
dip-in-and-out
literary-criticism

Why Planes Crash: Case Files 2001


Sylvia Wrigley - 2013
    And yet, we stillremain obsessed with aviation disasters. What caused these accidents?Whose fault was it?  In her series of  books, Why Planes Crash, Sylvia Wrigley investigates the worst aviation disasters of the twenty first century.Why Planes Crash: 2001 is the first of the series. Wrigley has put together eleven of the most interesting incidents that the worldsaw in the year 2001. These include a detailed analysis of thedisastrous runway incursion at Linate, the passenger interferenceleading to the Avjet Aspen Crash and why an Airbus A300 disintegratedover Queens.From bad weather to the engineering faults in the aircraft, the author critically looks into each factor that might have lead to the crash.Her investigations and deep insight compiled thoughtfully in this bookmake it so interesting to read that you actually start feeling like awitness to the disaster and yet it is comprehensive enough for anyonewith no aviation knowledge to understand.

The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens


Paul Mariani - 2015
    His philosophical questioning, spiritual depth, and brilliantly inventive use of language would be profound influences on poets as diverse as William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ashbery. The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times, as well as the creator of a poetry which has had a profound and lasting impact on the modern imagination itself.Stevens established his career as an executive even as he wrote his poetry, becoming a vice president with an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. His first and most influential book, Harmonium, was not published until he was forty-four years old. In these poems, Stevens drew on his interest in and understanding of modernism. Over time he became acquainted with the most accomplished of his contemporaries, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams among them, but his personal style remained unique. He endured an increasingly unhappy marriage, losing himself by writing poetry in his study. Yet he had a witty, comic, and Dionysian side to his personality, including long fishing (and drinking) trips to Florida with his pals and a fascination with the sun-drenched tropics.People generally know two things about Wallace Stevens: that he is a “difficult” poet and that he was an insurance executive for most of his life. Stevens may be challenging to understand, but he is also greatly rewarding to read. Now, sixty years after Stevens’s death, biographer and poet Paul Mariani shows how over the course of his life, Stevens sought out the ineffable and spiritual in human existence in his search for the sublime.

Arise O God: The Gospel of Christ’s Defeat of Demons, Sin, and Death


Andrew Stephen Damick - 2021
    

What's My Motivation?


Michael Simkins - 2004
    While his friends were out getting laid and stoned, he was tucked up at home dreaming of his name in lights, of holding an audience rapt, of perhaps becoming a TV heart-throb, or having someone, anyone, ask for his autograph in the supermarket. This is the true story of an obsessive pursuit of acting fame. It is a life marked by occasional hard-fought successes and routine helpings of ritual humiliation: scout hut Gilbert and Sullivan, dodgy rock operas, sewage farm theatre workshop, Christmas panto hell, straight-to-video film flops, leading roles in Crimewatch reconstructions and dressing up as a chicken to advertise TV dinners. It is a hilarious tale of turgid theatre, tights, trusses and tonsil tennis with Timothy Spall.

I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me


Jimmy Breslin - 1996
    Two years ago, Breslin was having trouble getting his left eyelid to open and close. This was too peculiar to ignore, so Breslin decided to pay a rare visit to his doctor. As it turned out, the eyelid was a matter of nerves. But extensive testing revealed something unrelated and life-threatening: he had an aneurysm in his brain - a thin, ballooned artery wall that could burst and kill him at any moment unless he opted for a risky surgical procedure. Breslin agreed to the surgery and at age sixty-five, grateful for this miracle (what else could you call it?), began taking stock of his remarkable life.

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die


Peter Boxall - 2006
    Each work of literature featured here is a seminal work key to understanding and appreciating the written word.The featured works have been handpicked by a team of international critics and literary luminaries, including Derek Attridge (world expert on James Joyce), Cedric Watts (renowned authority on Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene), Laura Marcus (noted Virginia Woolf expert), and David Mariott (poet and expert on African-American literature), among some twenty others.Addictive, browsable, knowledgeable--1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die will be a boon companion for anyone who loves good writing and an inspiration for anyone who is just beginning to discover a love of books. Each entry is accompanied by an authoritative yet opinionated critical essay describing the importance and influence of the work in question. Also included are publishing history and career details about the authors, as well as reproductions of period dust jackets and book designs.

Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words


Jay Rubin - 2002
    He loves music of all kinds - jazz, classical, folk, rock - and has more than six thousand records at home. And when he writes, his words have a music all their own, much of it learned from jazz. Jay Rubin, a self-confessed fan, has written a book for other fans who want to know more about this reclusive writer. He reveals the autobiographical elements in Murakami's fiction, and explains how he developed a distinctive new style in Japanese writing. In tracing Murakami's career, he uses interviews he conducted with the author between 1993 and 2001, and draws on insights and observations gathered from over ten years of collaborating with Murakami on translations of his works.

A Twaddle-Free Education: An Introduction to Charlotte Mason's Timeless Educational Ideas


Deborah Taylor-Hough - 2015
    ABOUT THE AUTHOR: In the mid-1990's, Deborah Taylor-Hough set up one of the first Charlotte Mason homeschooling websites and edited The Charlotte Mason Monthly ezine. Debi currently edits The Charlotte Mason eMagazine and blogs at CharlotteMasonHome.com

Gore Vidal: A Biography


Fred Kaplan - 1999
    50 illustrations throughout.

Red Blanket: An uncensored memoir that reveals the underbelly of surgical training


John Harch - 2020
    

Tales from the Fast Trains: Around Europe at 186mph


Tom Chesshyre - 2011
    From shiny London St. Pancras, Tom travels to places that wouldn't be featured on a standard holiday wish-list, and discovers the hidden delights of mysterious Luxembourg, super-trendy Rotterdam, and much-maligned Frankfurt. It's 186 mph all the way—well, apart from a power cut in the Channel Tunnel on the way to Antwerp.

Take Courage: Anne Bronte and the Art of Life


Samantha Ellis - 2017
    Tragic, virginal, sweet, stoic, selfless, Anne. The less talented Brontë, the other Brontë.Or that's what Samantha Ellis, a life-long Emily and Wuthering Heights devotee, had always thought. Until, that is, she started questioning that devotion and, in looking more closely at Emily and Charlotte, found herself confronted by Anne instead.Take Courage is Samantha's personal, poignant and surprising journey into the life and work of a woman sidelined by history. A brave, strongly feminist writer well ahead of her time -- and her more celebrated siblings -- and who has much to teach us today about how to find our way in the world.

250+ Best Kindle Fire HD Apps for the New Kindle Fire Owner (Over 200 FREE APPS)


Tom Edwards - 2012
    Forget wasting hours on research, we've done it for you. Forget confusion, we've tried and tested every app. And forget about getting left behind, with our free lifetime updates we'll keep you up to speed with the best paid and free Kindle Fire apps on the Amazon Appstore. <b>UPDATED Novenber 2013 - Kindle Fire FREE APPS and paid apps now clearly marked</b>.<b>Perfect for the New Kindle Fire HDX & HD Owner</b>Whether you've just bought your Kindle Fire, are discovering Kindle Fire apps for the first time, looking for free apps for the Kindle Fire or simply want to discover great apps that you might have missed the first time round, then this Amazon e-book is for you. <b>Free Lifetime Updates to Keep you Current</b>The best apps today might not be the best apps tomorrow. What's hip and what's not in the Amazon Appstore can change in the blink of an eye. That's why we're releasing updates of this book on a regular basis and you can receive them absolutely free even after you've purchased this book.<b>Something for Everyone in the Most Comprehensive Guide Available</b>How many app reviews and recommendations do you need to create the most comprehensive guide available? 100 apps reviewed? 200 apps reviewed? We didn't set ourselves a number, we just kept searching for great paid and free apps until we'd found something for everyone. And when we'd finished we had more than 250 apps covering 20 different categories and over 200 free apps reviewed; a truly comprehensive resource.<b>Unbiased Reviews and Recommendations</b>We only care about one thing, bringing you honest and helpful reviews of the best Kindle apps available. We don't develop apps, we don't sell apps and we don't get paid to write app reviews. We just love apps and use them all the time.<b>Intuitive Navigation and Easy One Click Selection</b>With our clear and easy to use table of contents you can navigate seamlessly to the categories that matter to you and your family. In each category discover our favorite "Must Have" app. Read reviews of all the top Kindle Fire apps and our recommendations for the best of the rest. Find an app you like and with one click redirect immediately to the relevant product page in Amazon's Appstore for the full app description and download options.<b>Bonus Material</b>If you're just getting to know your Kindle Fire for the first time then take a look at our bonus material where you will learn how to purchase and download apps, understand permissions and set parental controls.<b>Over 250 Apps in these 20 Categories</b>Books, Comics & ReadingEducation & ReferenceEntertainmentFinanceFood, Drink & CookingGamesHealth & FitnessKidsLifestyle & HobbiesMusicNews & MagazinesNoveltyPhotography, Art & CreativityProductivityShoppingSocial Networking & CommunicationsSportsTravel, Navigation & City InfoUtilitiesWeather

The Hatred of Poetry


Ben Lerner - 2016
    It's even bemoaned by poets: "I, too, dislike it," wrote Marianne Moore. "Many more people agree they hate poetry," Ben Lerner writes, "than can agree what poetry is. I, too, dislike it and have largely organized my life around it and do not experience that as a contradiction because poetry and the hatred of poetry are inextricable in ways it is my purpose to explore."In this inventive and lucid essay, Lerner takes the hatred of poetry as the starting point of his defense of the art. He examines poetry's greatest haters (beginning with Plato's famous claim that an ideal city had no place for poets, who would only corrupt and mislead the young) and both its greatest and worst practitioners, providing inspired close readings of Keats, Dickinson, McGonagall, Whitman, and others. Throughout, he attempts to explain the noble failure at the heart of every truly great and truly horrible poem: the impulse to launch the experience of an individual into a timeless communal existence. In The Hatred of Poetry, Lerner has crafted an entertaining, personal, and entirely original examination of a vocation no less essential for being impossible.

Harold Pinter


Michael Billington - 1996
    During the past ten years Harold Pinter has written a new play, three film scripts, sheaves of poems, several sketches and created, with composer James Clarke, a pioneering work for radio, Voices. He has acted on stage, screen and radio, he has appeared on countless political platforms, and his work has been extensively celebrated in festivals at Dublin's Gate Theatre and New York's Lincoln Center. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and in 2006, the European Theatre Prize. As if this were not enough, he has in the last five years twice come close to death. But he has faced hospitalisation with stoic resilience and his spirit remains as fiercely combative as ever. As he wrote in 2005 to Professor Avraham Oz, one of Israel's leading internal opponents of authoritarianism: "Let's keep fighting."