The Mormon Mirage: A Former Member Looks at the Mormon Church Today


Latayne C. Scott - 1979
    Scott shared her remarkable journey out of Mormonism as she uncovered shocking inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and contradictions in the faith she had loved and lived. Thirty years later, Mormonism and Mormon scholarship have evolved with the times. In this third, revised and updated edition of her well-known book, Scott keeps pace with changes and advances in Mormonism, and reveals formidable new challenges to its claims and teachings. The Mormon Mirage provides fascinating, carefully documented insights into *DNA research's withering implications for the Book of Mormon *the impact of new 'revelations' on Latter-day Saint (LDS) race relations *new findings about Mormon history *increasing publicity about LDS splinter groups, particularly polygamous ones *recent disavowals of long-held doctrines by church leadership *the rise of Mormon apologetics on the Internet More than a riveting, insider's scrutiny of the Mormon faith, this book is a testimony to the trustworthiness of Scripture and the grace of Jesus Christ.

Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Volume One


Michael Kupperman - 2009
    And now the first four issues of Michael Kupperman s revered series are finally collected into one deluxe hardcover. Even better, Kupperman has taken the original two-color printing and made the entire book full color These tales are more thrizzling than ever What are tales designed to thrizzle? Tales designed to thrizzle are about evil girls and their owls. They are about Jesus half-brother Pagus, the Mysterious Avenger, Dick Crazy, scary snakes, delicious bacon, Private Eye Johnny Silhouette, the Silver Knight, Murder She Didn t Write, the Mannister, the Space Patrol, portraits where the eyes move, Pablo Picasso, sex blimps (and their logical inverse, sex holes), the hot boy band Boybank, soccer joust, Underpants-On-His-Head Man, Hercules the Public Domain Superhero, Cousin Granpa, Mister Bossman, Mark Twain, the silent robot Citobor and, of course, the Thirties.The stories in Tales Designed to Thrizzle made their debut in 2009 on the Cartoon Network s Adult Swim program as Snake N Bacon. The show, a mix of live-action, puppetry and animation, stars David Rakoff (This American Life), Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live), Kristen Schaal (Flight of the Conchords), James Urbaniak (The Venture Brothers), and Dan Bakkedahl (The Daily Show), and is produced by Kupperman, Robert Smigel (SNL, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog), Scott Jacobson (The Daily Show) and Rich Bloomquist (The Daily Show).

Cabinets of Wonder


Christine Davenne - 2012
    A centuries-old tradition developed in Europe during the Renaissance, cabinets of wonder (also known as curiosity cabinets) are once again in fashion. Shops, restaurants, and private residences echo these cabinets in their interior design, by making use of the eclectic vintage objects commonly featured in such collections. "Cabinets of Wonder "showcases exceptional collections in homes and museums, with more than 180 photographs, while also explaining the history behind the tradition, the best-known collections, and the types of objects typically displayed. Offering both a historical overview and a look into contemporary interior design, this extravagantly illustrated book celebrates the wonderfully odd world of cabinets of wonder.

The Alex Studies: Cognitive and Communicative Abilities of Grey Parrots


Irene M. Pepperberg - 2000
    Birds were rarely used in similar studies on the grounds that they were merely talented mimics--that they were, after all, "birdbrains." Experiments performed primarily on pigeons in Skinner boxes demonstrated capacities inferior to those of mammals; these results were thought to reflect the capacities of all birds, despite evidence suggesting that species such as jays, crows, and parrots might be capable of more impressive cognitive feats.Twenty years ago Irene Pepperberg set out to discover whether the results of the pigeon studies necessarily meant that other birds--particularly the large-brained, highly social parrots--were incapable of mastering complex cognitive concepts and the rudiments of referential speech. Her investigation and the bird at its center--a male Grey parrot named Alex--have since become almost as well known as their primate equivalents and no less a subject of fierce debate in the field of animal cognition. This book represents the long-awaited synthesis of the studies constituting one of the landmark experiments in modern comparative psychology.

Cries of the Children


Clare McNally - 1992
    Three little children, found abandoned in different parts of the country. Three wonderfully sweet and startlingly gifted children who won the hearts of the grown-ups who adopted them.But now all three children were gone. Had they run away or been stolen? Their foster parents had to find them to find out. And on a rescue search that led them across America and into a world-within-a-world ruled by a psychically terrifying envoy of evil, little did they realize that the young ones they loved so briefly were now the unwitting possessors of a deadly power to harm.

Annals of the World


James Ussher - 1650
    In its pages can be found the fascinating history of the ancient world from the Genesis creation through the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Find Out: * Why was Julius Caesar kidnapped in 75 B.C.? * Why did Alexander the Great burn his ships in 326 B.C.? * What really happened when the sun "went backward" as a sign to Hezekiah? * What does secular history say about the darkness at the Crucifixion?

'Pataphysics: A Useless Guide


Andrew Hugill - 2005
    Originating in the wild imagination of French poet and playwright Alfred Jarry and his schoolmates, resisting clear definition, purposefully useless, and almost impossible to understand, 'pataphysics nevertheless lies around the roots of Absurdism, Dada, futurism, surrealism, situationism, and other key cultural developments of the twentieth century. In this account of the evolution and influence of 'pataphysics, Andrew Hugill offers an informed exposition of a rich and difficult territory, staying aloft on a tightrope stretched between the twin dangers of oversimplifying a serious subject and taking a joke too seriously. Drawing on more than twenty-five years' research, Hugill maps the 'pataphysical presence (partly conscious and acknowledged but largely unconscious and unacknowledged) in literature, theater, music, the visual arts, and the culture at large, and even detects 'pataphysical influence in the social sciences and the sciences. He offers many substantial excerpts (in English translation) from primary sources, intercalated with a thorough explication of key themes and events of 'pataphysical history. In a Jarryesque touch, he provides these in reverse chronological order, beginning with a survey of 'pataphysics in the digital age and working backward to Jarry and beyond. He looks specifically at the work of Jean Baudrillard, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, J. G. Ballard, Asger Jorn, Gilles Deleuze, Roger Shattuck, Jacques Pr?vert, Antonin Artaud, Ren? Clair, the Marx Brothers, Joan Mir?, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Raymond Roussel, Jean-Pierre Brisset, and many others.

In the Sargasso Sea A Novel


Thomas A. Janvier - 2012
    Recently, Kessinger Publishing's rare reprints has re-issued the book. The protagonist, Roger Stetworth, unwillingly joins a slave ship called the -Golden Hind- captained by Luke Chilton. (When Chilton demanded that Roger -sign aboard- he refused and was clubbed on the head and thrown overboard.) He is rescued by the -Hurst Castle- and doctored by a painfully stereotyped Irishman. The -Hurst Castle- is abandoned but does not founder in a gale and the crew, unable to get to him, are forced to leave Stetworth marooned aboard. The ship drifts into the center of the Sargasso Sea where Stetworth finds himself in a ships' graveyard in which survivors of previous shipwrecks still inhabit the forgotten ships. Stetworth must rely on his own ingenuity to get free from the choking sargasso weeds........ Thomas Allibone Janvier (July 16, 1849 - June 18, 1913) was an American story-writer and historian, born in Philadelphia of Provencal descent. Early life and marriage: Janvier received a public school education, then worked in Philadelphia for newspapers from 1870-81. In 1878 he married Catherine Ann Drinker (May 1, 1841- July 19, 1922), an artist who was the first woman teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and first teacher to Cecilia Beaux. Later in life, she accompanied her husband on his travels while writing books and translating books from the Provencale language. Many of Janvier's published works would be dedicated -To C. A. J.- New York: Janvier went to New York in 1881. From 1884-94, he lived in the Washington Square district of New York. A few years after arriving, he published the Ivory Black Stories, tales of artist life, which were reprinted in book form in 1885 as Color Studies. In them he pictured the life and color of what was then considered the Latin quarter of the city, with the old-fashioned French restaurants, the artist colony to the north, and the studios in Tenth Street where Abbey, Millet, F. Hopkinson Smith, Laffan and others made the Tile Club famous. He published many stories and articles in Harper's Magazine.[2] Travels and death: Janvier spent several years in Colorado, New Mexico and Mexico, thereby gaining inspiration and material for much of his literary work. His travels in Mexico produced the Aztec Treasure House and his stories of Old New Spain. He and his wife also lived for three years in Avignon, Provence, France, where they became friends with Mistral and Felix Gras. Catherine A. Janvier's translations of the latter's work introduced him to English-speaking readers.His books from this period include An Embassy to Provence, Christmas Kalends of Provence and The South of France. He was made an honorary member of the Felibrige society in France, and of the Fol Lore Society of London, where he and his wife lived from 1897 to 1900, and the Century Club in New York. Janvier died in New York on June 18, 1913. He is interred in Moorestown, New Jersey. Literary family: Janvier's sister, Margaret Thomson Janvier (1844-1913), was born in New Orleans. Under the pen name Margaret Vandergrift she wrote many juveniles, among which are: The Absent-Minded Fairy, and Other Verses (1884); The Dead Doll, and Other Verses (1900); Under the Dog-Star (1900); and Umbrellas to Mend (1905). Janvier's niece, Emma P. Spicer, going by the stage name of Emma Janvier, was a well-known comedian on Broadway and elsewhere from the turn of the century until her death in the early 1920s. Janvier was also related to Philadelphia businessman and poet Francis De Haes Janvier.

The Butterfly


James M. Cain - 1947
    Cain uses his favorite form of narration, the first-person confessional, in relating this unusual tale of deceit, incest, and murder.Jess Tyler is a church-going mountain man. One day out of the blue, his estranged daughter, Kady, shows up at his cabin and starts throwing herself at him in a most undaughterly way. At least that's the way Jess tells it. Cain leaves a few hints that Jess may not be 100% accurate as a narrator. For example, he claims to be a God fearing teetotaler. Yet he quickly shows himself to be a seasoned expert when it comes to constructing and operating a commercial still.

The Seeding


David Shobin - 1982
    Sandra Fischer relaxes in bed. Moments later, when her husband enters the room — she is dead. One by one, the women are dying. The leading medical experts are baffled. There is only one clue: the rich, sweet scent of the tropics — the scent of life, seconds after each woman's shocking death.One dedicated doctor. One beautiful woman. Together they will enter an awesome new realm of medical knowledge beyond both life and death. For he will discover a terrifying secret. And she has been chosen for … THE SEEDING.

The Gas


Charles Platt - 1970
    Not for the faint-hearted. Adults only.

Right of Retribution: Book 3


William D. Arand - 2021
    

Georges Perec: A Life in Words


David Bellos - 1993
    Ever in search of new verbal challenges, he wrote one novel entirely without the letter e; and in 1978 he published the monumental, structurally complex Life A User's Manual, which many critics have placed (in the words of The Boston Globe) "on the level of Joyce, Proust, Mann, Kafka, and Nabokov."In Georges Perec: A Life in Words, David Bellos, Perec's award-winning English translator, introduces the enigmatic figure behind these remarkable works, showing how Perec's experiences led to such masterpieces as Life, the celebrated Things, and the harrowing W or The Memory of Childhood the latter inspired by his parents' deaths during World War II (one of them at Aucshwitz) and by his own sense of guilt as a survivor.Using unpublished documents and firsthand interviews, Bellos details Perec's tragic childhood, his difficult apprenticeship, his emergence into literary renown, and finally his death from cancer at age 46. He traces the influences of Perec's Polish-Jewish background, and of the friendships with such figures as Calvino, Raymond Queneau, Harry Mathews, and others that helped shape this extraordinary life. He offers privileged insights, born of many years' reflection and study, into Perec's vertiginous works. He situates Perec as a primary figure of French intellectual life in the 1960s and 1970s, due in part to his collaborations with the radically inventive OuLiPo group (whose name condenses the emblematic phrase "Workshop of Potential Literature"). And he shows the painstaking process by which a phenomenally gifted writer, suffering from a sheltered past crippling emotional burden, reconstructed his life in the only way he knew how: in words.

Hammer Glamour


Marcus Hearn - 2009
    Bursting at the seams with rare and previously unpublished photographs from Hammer’s archive and private collections worldwide, and featuring many new interviews, Hammer Glamour is a lavish, full colour celebration of Hammer’s female stars, including Ingrid Pitt, Martine Beswick, Caroline Munro, Barbara Shelley, Joanna Lumley, Nastassja Kinski, and of course Raquel Welch (who can forget her fur bikini in One Million Years B. C.?)

High Society: The Central Role of Mind-Altering Drugs in History, Science, and Culture


Mike Jay - 2010
    Every day people drink coffee on European terraces and kava in Pacific villages; chew betel nut in Indonesian markets and coca leaf on Andean mountainsides; swallow ecstasy tablets in the clubs of Amsterdam and opium pills in the deserts of Rajastan; smoke hashish in Himalayan temples and tobacco and marijuana in every nation on earth. Exploring the spectrum of drug use throughout history--from its roots in animal intoxication to its future in designer neurochemicals--High Society paints vivid portraits of the roles drugs play in different cultures as medicines, religious sacraments, status symbols, and coveted trade goods. From the botanicals of the classical world through the mind-bending self-experiments of 18th- and 19th-century scientists to the synthetic molecules that have transformed our understanding of the brain, Mike Jay reveals how drugs such as tobacco, tea, and opium drove the global trade and cultural exchange that created the modern world and examines the forces that led to the prohibition of opium and cocaine a century ago and the “war on drugs” that rages today.