Paul Strand: Masters of Photography Series


Paul Strand - 1987
    Purity, elegance, and passion are the hallmarks of Strand's imagery. This inaugural volume of Aperture's "Masters of Photography" series presents 41 of Strand's greatest photographs, drawn from a career that spanned six decades. Included are his earliest experimental efforts, created from 1915 to 1917, which Alfred Stieglitz declared had begun to redefine the medium. Subsequent photographs reveal the artist's impeccable vision in locales as diverse as New England and the Outer Hebrides, France and Ghana. During Strand's last years, he concentrated on still lifes and the poignant beauty of his own garden at Orgeval, France.In an introductory essay, Mark Haworth-Booth, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, provides an overview of the artist's life and his enduring contribution to photography.

Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West


Susan Buck-Morss - 2000
    The dream of the twentieth century was the construction of mass utopia. As the century closes, this dream is being left behind; the belief that industrial modernization can bring about the good society by overcoming material scarcity for all has been challenged by the disintegration of European socialism, capitalist restructuring, and ecological constraints. The larger social vision has given way to private dreams of material happiness and to political cynicism.Developing the notion of dreamworld as both a poetic description of a collective mental state and an analytical concept, Susan Buck-Morss attempts to come to terms with mass dreamworlds at the moment of their passing. She shows how dreamworlds became dangerous when their energy was used by the structures of power as an instrument of force against the masses. Stressing the similarities between the East and West and using the end of the Cold War as her point of departure, she examines both extremes of mass utopia, dreamworld and catastrophe.The book is in four parts. Dreamworlds of Democracy asks whether collective sovereignty can ever be democratic. Dreamworlds of History calls for a rethinking of revolution by political and artistic avant-gardes. Dreamworlds of Mass Culture explores the affinities between mass culture's socialist and capitalist forms. An Afterward places the book in the historical context of the author's collaboration with a group of Moscow philosophers and artists over the past two tumultuous decades. The book is an experiment in visual culture, using images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past. Its pictorial narratives rescue historical data that with the end of the Cold War are threatened with oblivion and challenge common conceptions of what this century was all about.

Letters from Wishing Rock: a novel with recipes (Wishing Rock, #1)


Pam Stucky - 2011
    This engaging, fun read is written in the format of letters/e-mails amongst characters. It combines the easy readability of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and the sassy, irreverent tone of Bridget Jones' Diary, with the slice-of-life sensibilities of Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street or Ladies' Detective Agency series.What would happen if everyone in town lived in the same building? Ruby Parker is about to find out. Her fiancé has left her and she needs a fresh start, so she moves to Wishing Rock, Washington, a small town on Dogwinkle Island in the waters near Seattle, where she meets a quirky cast of characters who quickly become family. Letters between the neighbors and their friends chronicle the twists and turns of the characters’ daily lives. There’s Jake, a handsome and charming first-year medical student who catches Ruby’s eye from the start, despite his being over a decade younger. Millie, a Wishing Rock resident for forty years, runs the town’s library, post office, newsletter and grocery store, knows everyone and everything, and shares the history of the area with her playful wit. World traveler and psychic Alexandra bestows insight and wisdom with humor and compassion, and Ruby’s Gran heads to the United Kingdom, heeding her own advice to seize the day. And then there’s Ed; if something fun is going on, the grandson of the town’s founding father is likely at the center of it. Amidst all this action, Ruby manages to find passion and companionship, but will she be able to open her heart to love? Online dating, a group trip to Scotland, a discussion about dogwinkles, a fateful hoedown, and friendships old and new, all interspersed with recipes from some of the town’s best cooks, make Wishing Rock come alive in this delightful and insightful look at life, love, relationships, and community.

Imperfect Thirst


Galway Kinnell - 1994
    Imperfect Thirst includes beautiful love poems and approaches elemental subjects with a remarkable balance of good nature and holy dread: recollections of childhood, snapshots of impassive cruelty, reflections on art and nature. This energetic collection will prove once again why Galway Kinnell is one of America's masters of the art.

Home Before Night


Hugh Leonard - 1979
    Born in 1926 in Dublin, he was educated at Presentation College, Dun Laoghaire. He is an award winning playwrite and screenwriter, and was literary Editor at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin 1976-77. He now lives in Dalkey in County Dublin.

The Kestrel Waters


Randy Thornhorn - 2013
    “An extraordinary work...” ~ William Peter Blatty “Captures the tragedy of romantic and familial love better than any story I have ever read.” ~ Janeiro Bento Hear the twilight song of Kestrel. He has not always been this night-winged angel. He was once a star, a guitar star so righteous. He was once a lost boy in love.In The Beginning were two grassroots singers, The Brothers Brass. In The End there is no end to what one wounded girl's heart will give. And no end to what one brother will give for the other.Raised in Savannah by the sea, together, The Brothers Brass voices chime like heavenly bells. The oldest brother Kestrel falls in love with a girl named Bettilia, a wild child who hides in the treetops—hiding from her bad daddy on a ghostly mountain called Riddle Top.Soon all the Family Brass falls for Bettilia. She touches Kestrel, she touches everyone. And they touch sweet Bettilia, forever. Then comes that fateful day when Kestrel says "I do" to his dance with the devil—his devil within and without. The Kestrel Waters is an eerie, heroic, and beautiful Southern Gothic tale of human love, like none you’ve ever known. An epic fable of an epic family whose hearts are comic, profane, and profoundly true.“One of the South's wildest new voices.” ~ The Oxford American Magazine

The Void


Frank Close - 2007
    Readers will find an enlightening history of the vacuum: how the efforts to make a better vacuum led to the discovery of the electron; the understanding that the vacuum is filled with fields; the ideas of Newton, Mach, and Einstein on the nature of space and time; the mysterious aether and how Einstein did away with it; and the latest ideas that the vacuum is filled with the Higgs field. The story ranges from the absolute zero of temperature and the seething vacuum of virtual particles and anti-particles that fills space, to the extreme heat and energy of the early universe. It compares the ways that substances change from gas to liquid and solid with the way that the vacuum of our universe has changed as the temperature dropped following the Big Bang. It covers modern ideas that there may be more dimensions to the void than those that we currently are aware of and even that our universe is but one in a multiverse. The Void takes us inside a field of science that may ultimately provide answers to some of cosmology's most fundamental questions: what lies outside the universe, and, if there was once nothing, then how did the universe begin?

The Fly in the Cathedral: How a Group of Cambridge Scientists Won the International Race to Split the Atom


Brian Cathcart - 2004
    Re-creating the frustrations, excitements, and obsessions of 1932, the miracle year of British physics, Cathcart reveals in rich detail the astonishing story behind the splitting of the atom in a riveting and erudite narrative.

Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge


Paul Zakrzewski - 2003
    Lost Tribe features stories and commentary from a brilliant mixture of critically acclaimed and emerging writers.Steve AlmondAimee BenderGabriel BrownsteinJudy BudnitzNathan EnglanderJonathan Safran FoerMyla GoldbergEhud HavazeletDara HornRachel KadishGloria DeVidas KirchheimerBinnie KirshenbaumJoan LeegantMichael LowenthalEllen MillerTova MirvisPeter OrnerJon PapernickNelly ReiflerBen SchrankSuzan ShermanGary ShteyngartAryeh Lev StollmanEllen UmanskySimone Zelitch

Vagrant Viking: My Life and Adventures


Peter Freuchen - 1953
    He was the first man to cross the central glacier alone--eskimos didn't feel the need--yet the kindliness of his style makes you feel that you could have attempted the feat yourself. Maybe you could, now, with the help of his insights... and a few years in Thule with an eskimo wife. But his insights would be no less necessary after such experience. Humans learn best from stories told by their loved ones, these stories will be useful to those who brave the arctic and you will love Peter Freuchen like a grandfather after reading this book.

Ruth Rendell Omnibus


Ruth Rendell - 1984
    An omnibus edition of three Ruth Rendell crime novels - A Demon in My View, A Judgement in Stone and The Face of Trespass.

Zagreb, Exit South


Edo Popović - 2003
    But Popovic's characters have no patience with the lies of this world. They have no patience because they have neither homes nor a homeland: they have lost all their illusions. Popovic is simply the epitome of the urban writer. . . . The best narrator of his generation has achieved literary maturity and that is great news.'-Slobodan Novak "Zagreb, Exit South" masterfully illuminates the lives of diverse, colorful characters adrift in postwar Croatia. Through bleary, middle-aged eyes, stymied writer Baba takes readers on an amusing, thought-provoking ride as he circles the streets of Zagreb bemoaning the dying out of domestic beer, Kancheli's ridiculous musical lighter, and the fear of going home. His wife Vera, facing wrinkles and an alcoholic spouse, discovers that e-mail is cheaper than therapy as she reshapes her life. Reflective insight, biting humor, and life-changing experiences combine to revive hope in the shadows of Zagreb's city buildings.

Chanson Dada: Selected Poems


Tristan Tzara - 1975
    Translated as a labor of love over a ten year period the poems encompass the full range of Tzara's works, the results of which have brought Tzara's poetry to life for English language readers for over 25 years. Completely revised, updated edition of this classic survey.

The Big Book of Spy Stuff


Bart King - 2011
    Aspiring spies can get a head start into the world of becoming a private-eye or investigator. From chaos to counter-intelligence, secret messages to gadgets and every other spy thing in between, the Big Book of Spy Stuff opens the "top secret" file on the world of sabotage and espionage with humor and amazement.

Black Friday and Selected Stories


David Goodis - 1954
    January cold coming in off two rivers. Hart is broke, freezing, looking for a place to lay low from the cops. If he can't find somewhere soon he might do something rash - like steal an overcoat and accept a wallet containing $11,000 from a man dying from gunshot wounds in the street. Whoever killed him might have a bed, though, even if that means hanging out with a bunch of thieves and drifters while the heat blows over. Lucky for Hart he's handy with his fists. And if he can use his looks and smarts to get in with the gang, maybe he can ride this out and score big on his own. Originally published in 1954, Black Friday is one of David Goodis's leanest, meanest melancholy thrillers. In the character of Hart, it features one of his classic, tortured romantic heroes, a man who becomes mired in circumstances from which there is no escape. In this edition, Black Friday is combined with short stories, unpublished since they were first written for pulp magazines in America over 50 years ago.