Offering bold new ways of conceiving the present, Lauren Berlant describes the cruel optimism that has prevailed since the 1980s, as the social-democratic promise of the postwar period in the United States and Europe has retracted. People have remained attached to unachievable fantasies of the good life—with its promises of upward mobility, job security, political and social equality, and durable intimacy—despite evidence that liberal-capitalist societies can no longer be counted on to provide opportunities for individuals to make their lives “add up to something.”Arguing that the historical present is perceived affectively before it is understood in any other way, Berlant traces affective and aesthetic responses to the dramas of adjustment that unfold amid talk of precarity, contingency, and crisis. She suggests that our stretched-out present is characterized by new modes of temporality, and she explains why trauma theory—with its focus on reactions to the exceptional event that shatters the ordinary—is not useful for understanding the ways that people adjust over time, once crisis itself has become ordinary. Cruel Optimism is a remarkable affective history of the present.

    The topics may vary widely, from love to mental illness to the most recent "Florida Man" headline, but it's all in the same handwriting. Welcome to The Immortal Soul Salvage Yard.

    Using a layout style that was later copied by Wired, McLuhan and coauthor/designer Quentin Fiore combine word and image to illustrate and enact the ideas that were first put forward in the dense and poorly organized Understanding Media. McLuhan's ideas about the nature of media, the increasing speed of communication, and the technological basis for our understanding of who we are come to life in this slender volume. Although originally printed in 1967, the art and style in The Medium is the Massage seem as fresh today as in the summer of love, and the ideas are even more resonant now that computer interfaces are becoming gateways to the global village.

    Expensive things in shops. Jelly that is not ready to eat yet. Cigarette lighters. Necks. Dead Things. Dogs. Piercings. Toddlers' cheeks. Each other's knees. People also like to touch death.Jasper wants to get on in the world, but he's got a lot on his plate: A-levels, his mother pushing him to overachieve, weekly visits to his psychologist, comedowns, YouTube suicides and pregnant one-night-stands. Then there's his stepdad - the murderer.Hilarious and heartbreaking by turns, Grow Up is the ultimate twenty-first-century coming-of-age novel. It paints a vivid portrait of the pills and thrills and bellyaches of growing up today. Funny, smart and twisted, it is the story of one young man transformed.

    Anselmi covers the bands and musicians that have impacted those styles most―Black Sabbath, Candlemass, Melvins, Eyehategod, Godflesh, Neurosis, Saint Vitus, and many others―while diving into the cultural doom that has spawned such music, from the bombing of Birmingham and hurricane devastation of New Orleans to glaring economic inequality, industrial alienation, climate change, and widespread addiction. Along the way, Anselmi interweaves the musical experiences that have led him to proudly identify as one of the doomed.

    As avant-garde novelist Antony Lamont struggles to write a "new wave murder mystery," his frustrating emotional and sexual life wreaks havoc on his work-in-progress. As a result, his narrative (the very book we are reading) turns into a literary "stew": an uproariously funny melange of journal entries, erotic poetry, parodies of all kinds, love letters, interviews, and lists - as Hugh Kenner in Harper's wrote, "for another such virtuoso of the List you'd have to resurrect Joyce." Soon Lamont's characters (on loan from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flann O'Brien, James Joyce, and Dashiell Hammett) take on lives of their own, completely sabotaging his narrative.

    

    In this sordid and hilarious tale of whopping academic grants, sleeping on the job, sexual confusion and consenting adults, terrifying departmental secretaries, surprise impregnations and alcoholic lecturers we might conclude that most people are just not cut out for university life.

    Arnold Steinhardt, for forty years an international soloist and the first violinist of the Guarneri String Quartet, brings warmth, wit, and fascinating insider details to the story of his lifelong obsession with the violin, that most seductive and stunningly beautiful instrument. Steinhardt's story is rich with vivid scenes: the terror inflicted by his early violin teachers, the frankly sensual pleasure involved in the pursuit of the perfect violin, the zanily charged atmosphere of high-level competitions. Steinhardt describes Bach's Chaconne as the holy grail for the solo violin, and he illuminates, from the perspective of an ardent owner of a great Storioni violin, the history and mysteries of the renowned Italian violinmakers. Violin Dreams is studded with musical pilgrimages, one of them to the all but vanished Polish shtetl where his mother was born, and where, he shows movingly, his own love for the eerily evocative sound of the violin was born as well.With Violin Dreams comes a remarkable CD recording of Steinhardt performing Bach's Partita in D Minor as a young violinist forty years ago and playing the same piece especially for this book on his current Storioni violin. A lively conversation with Steinhardt and Alan Alda on the differences between the two performances is included in liner notes.

    But when her husband dies in a tragic diving accident, that’s just where she finds herself. And now the Shell Shop is in danger, and along with it all of Julia’s precious family memories.Julia and her husband started the shell shop decades ago, before their now-grown children were born—he sold the rare shells he found on diving trips around the world and she got to raise their kids amongst the balmy breezes and waving palm trees. She left him to it—he had his own system and she knew nothing about shells. Her world was cooking, making sandcastles and snuggling with the kids. Their arrangement was perfect, until it wasn’t. Now that John’s gone, the bills are piling up and she can hardly bring herself to open the shop even though tourist season is fast approaching. Her eldest, Dillon, knows a bit about shells but doesn’t seem interested in stepping up to help. He prefers diving and surfing to having a proper job. Her daughter Aubrey is having an identity crisis and has her hands full with Julia’s beloved grandchildren. And the baby of the family, even in her mid-twenties, is struggling to make a go of it in a very difficult profession. With all of this on Julia’s mind, she has to dig deep to figure out a way to keep the shop—and her home—afloat. When a world-famous shell collector expects a rare shell that her husband promised to provide, can the Montgomery family rally and figure out the method to John’s madness and keep the shop in business? Escape into this feel-good beach series. You’ll fall in love with the Montgomery family while you visit the warm sunny beaches of the Florida Keys!

    Or how about when you got stood up on that tinder date and go home disappointed, only to realize it was all a trick so he'd know where you live? Then there's those letters your dead wife keeps writing you... There can be no light without darkness, pleasure without pain, or love without loss. 17 authors have teamed up to collect all our favorite supernatural and psychological horror stories about love.Jealous murders, monstrous doppelgangers, heart-rending romances, devils and angels, cannibals and virtual worlds - over 350 pages of your most desperate longings and worst nightmares all rolled into one. Shocking twists and absolute mind-fuckery will thrill and terrify you to the last page!

    Lang Leav presents a completely new collection of poetry with a celestial theme in The Universe of Us.Planets, stars, and constellations feature prominently in this beautiful, original poetry collection from Lang Leav.  Inspired by the wonders of the universe, the best-selling poetess writes about love and loss, hope and hurt, being lost and found.  Lang's poetry encompasses the breadth of emotions we all experience and evokes universal feelings with her skillfully crafted words.

    After being attacked by a 20-stone California biker in for stabbing a girlfriend, Shaun writes about the prisoners who befriend, protect and inspire him. They include T-Bone, a massive African American ex-Marine who risks his life saving vulnerable inmates from rape, and Two Tonys, an old-school Mafia murderer who left the corpses of his rivals from Tucson to Alaska. They teach Shaun how to turn incarceration to his advantage, and to learn from his mistakes.Resigned to living alongside violent, mentally-ill, and drug-addicted inmates, Shaun immerses himself in psychology and philosophy to try to make sense of his past behaviour, and begins applying what he learns as he adapts to prison life. Encouraged by Two Tonys to explore fiction as well, Shaun reads over a thousand books which, with support from brilliant psychotherapist Dr. O, speed along his personal development. As his ability to deflect daily threats improves, Shaun begins to look forward to his release with optimism and a new love waiting for him. Yet the words of Aristotle from one of Shaun’s books will prove prophetic: 'We cannot learn without pain'.

    Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer’s career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own world-renowned London house. It features his most iconic and radical designs, revealing how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savile Row tailoring, the specialized techniques of haute couture, and technological innovation to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. It also focuses on the highly sophisticated narrative structures underpinning his collections and extravagant runway presentations, with their echoes of avant-garde installation and performance art.Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen.Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty celebrates the astounding creativity and originality of a designer who relentlessly questioned and confronted the requisites of fashion.

    A producer for Britain’s most popular morning show working under a nightmare boss, Tash is well-versed in the trials and tribulations of twenty-first century dating. She and her three best friends certainly haven’t lived the fairy tale they thought they would: there’s Andy, who’s hooked on passion, but too much of a tomboy to have moved much beyond the beer-drinking contest stage; Mel, stuck in a steady but loveless relationship; and Emma, endlessly waiting for her other half to propose. Their love lives are only complicated by the sort of men who seem to drift in and out: Andrew—suave, good-looking and head over heels in love . . . with himself; Simon, who is allergic to commitment but has a bad-boy nature that’s impossible to resist; and Adam—perfectly attractive, but too sweet to be sexy. The bestselling first novel that launched Jane Green, one of the brightest stars in contemporary women’s fiction, Straight Talking sets the record straight regarding the real world of dating, and follows the adventures of Tash and her friends as they search for fulfillment and the right kind of love. Funny, flirty, and ultimately tender, Straight Talking gets at the heart of modern romance.