Book picks similar to
Philosophy Beside Itself: On Deconstruction and Modernism by Stephen Melville
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Literature and Evil
Georges Bataille - 1957
“It is guilty and should admit itself so.” The word, the flesh, and the devil are explored by this extraordinary intellect in the work of eight outstanding authors: Emily Bronte, Baudelaire, Blake, Michelet, Kafka, Proust, Genet and De Sade.Born in France in 1897, Georges Bataille was a radical philosopher, novelist, and critic whose writings continue to exert a vital influence on today's literature and thought.
Obama's Last Stand: Playbook 2012 (POLITICO Inside Election 2012)
Glenn Thrush - 2012
The third edition, Obama’s Last Stand, follows the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama as it struggles to find the winning formula in a political landscape that has changed dramatically since his history-making victory in 2008. Though battered and bruised after nearly four years in office, Barack Obama remains the most competitive player on the field in American politics today. In Obama’s Last Stand, POLITICO White House correspondent Glenn Thrush chronicles the efforts of the president and his team to secure a second term in the face of a determined opposition, unfavorable economic headwinds, and a series of missteps by his own team. This is a revealing portrait of the president at the most precarious moment in his political life, with insights and anecdotes drawn straight from the notebook of one of the most perceptive reporters in America. The trash-talking schoolyard athlete in Obama is very much in evidence, especially when he speaks caustically about his Republican rivals, including the man he thinks is trying to steal his legacy, Mitt Romney. Yet apart from Romney and the uncertain economy, Obama’s greatest obstacle on the road to reelection may be Obama 2008. He and his team of talented advisers must try to reconcile their nostalgia for that once-in-a-lifetime campaign with the realities of an election fundamentally altered by the advent of super PACs and the evaporation of Obama’s superstar popularity. That challenge has led a campaign operation that once prided itself on flawless execution of strategy to commit several of the most dangerous unforced errors of Obama’s political career. Yet the game is far from over. If Obama is sometimes his own worst enemy, he also has the talent and drive to reclaim this race. Spurred on by the realistic prospect of losing, and growing ever more impatient with the foibles of his campaign staff, Obama the competitor is gearing up for the most critical fourth quarter of his career. This is the story of the last stand that will either cement his legacy forever—or consign him to a roster of once-promising one-term presidents.
Manifestoes of Surrealism
André Breton - 1924
Manifestoes of Surrealism is a book by André Breton, describing the aims, meaning, and political position of the Surrealist movement.The translators of this edition were finalists of the 1970 National Book Awards in the category of translation.
Bender: New and Selected Poems
Dean Young - 2012
That's as good a definition of contemporary poetry as any."—NPR"This book reads like a long, breathless thank you for life's seemingly random jumble of beauty, strangeness, tenderness, and joy."— Los Angeles Times"The reader's mind shoots through [Young's poems] like the steel ball in a pinball machine, dinging around, racking up points. Dean's poems are amazingly fun."— BOMB"After 10 books over 20-odd years, Young has become one of our most imitated poets: his jocular jumps from topic to topic, debts to Surrealist dream-logic, mixture of postmodern oddity, stand-up comedy and weighty pathos land his work somewhere between John Ashbery (to whom Young owes much) and Billy Collins (whose affability Young shares)." —Publishers Weekly"Young revitalizes the lyric by reminding us that Art must never be less explosive and majestic and joyous than Life, lest it not only be no temporary substitute for Life but also no fitting representation of (or challenge to) life's regularities and irregularities. Bender will make you laugh, reflect, and marvel at how the contrary impulses and instantiations of both Life and Art can so readily be distilled in the sensibilities of a single man, or—in the case of Bender—a single book." —The Huffington Post"Dean Young's Bender: New & Selected Poems provides a direct experience with all the stunning possibilities of language at its most sublime."— The JournalFrom "Even Funnnier Looking Now":If someone had asked me then,Do you suffer from the umbrage of dawn'sdark race horses, is your heart a prisonerof raindrops? Hell yes! I would have saidor No way! Never would I have said,What could you possibly be talking about?I had just gotten to the twentieth centurylike a leftover girder from the Eiffel Tower.My Indian name was Pressure-Per-Square-Inch.I knew I was made of glass but I didn'tyet know what glass was made of: hot sandinside me like pee going all the wrongdirections, probably into my heartwhich I knew was made of gold foilglued to dust . . .
Unabomber: How the FBI Broke Its Own Rules to Capture the Terrorist Ted Kaczynski
Jim Freeman - 2014
When a new team of hand- picked, investigators, devised a different strategy to crack the genetic code that protected the Unabomber’s anonymity, the first task was to begin blasting away the layers of bureaucratic constraints that had plagued the earlier efforts to retrace the trail of crimes. As the rules broke and the bureaucratic restraints crumbled, the puzzle pieces of earlier bombings that the terrorist left behind were found and the puzzle collapsed around the Unabomber like a deck of cards. This is the story, told in the narrative, by the three FBI Agents who led the chase, of how, they broke the Bureau’s own rules and finally captured the notorious Unabomber who had led the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the longest chase in its century- old history.
The Vatican Connection: The True Story of a Billion-Dollar Conspiracy Between the Catholic Church and the Mafia
Richard Hammer - 1982
With a round, open face and a penchant for tall tales, Matteo de Lorenzo resembled everyone’s kindly uncle. But Uncle Marty, as he was known throughout the Genovese crime family, was one of the New York mob’s top earners throughout the 1960s and ’70s, the mastermind of a billion-dollar trade in stolen and counterfeit securities. In the spring of 1972, de Lorenzo and his shrewd and ruthless business partner, Vincent Rizzo, traveled to Europe to discuss a plan to launder millions of dollars worth of phony securities. Shockingly, the plot involved Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the scandal-plagued president of the Vatican Bank. Unbeknownst to de Lorenzo and Rizzo, however, the NYPD was already on the case—thanks to the crusading work of Det. Joseph Coffey. Coffey, the legendary New York policeman who investigated the Lufthansa heist and took the Son of Sam’s confession, first learned of the scheme in a wiretap related to the attempted mob takeover of the Playboy Club in Manhattan. From those unlikely beginnings, Detective Coffey worked tirelessly to trace the fraudulent stocks and bonds around the world and deep into the corridors of power in Washington, DC, and Rome. Meticulously researched and relentlessly gripping, The Vatican Connection is a true story of corruption and deceit, packed with “all the ingredients of a thriller” (San Francisco Chronicle).
The Behaviour Guru: Behaviour Management Solutions for Teachers
Tom Bennett - 2010
Controlling a class isn't something that comes naturally to everyone - but it can be learned.This no-nonsense guide tells teachers what the teacher training didn't, and offers instant strategies for dealing with the most common, and extreme, classroom scenarios.Using his experiences of teaching in inner-city schools, as Behaviour Guru on the TES advice forum and working as a nightclub bouncer, Tom Bennett helps teachers, old and new, to assert their authority in the classroom.
The Meaning and End of Religion
Wilfred Cantwell Smith - 1959
He shows the inadequacy of religion to capture the living, endlessly variable ways and traditions in which religious faith presents itself in the world.
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
Greil Marcus - 1989
Lipstick Traces tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself. Hip, metaphorical and allusive...--Gail Caldwell, Boston Sunday Globe. Full-color illustrations and halftones.
Nature Knows No Color-Line: Research Into the Negro Ancestry in the White Race
J.A. Rogers - 1952
A. Rogers the Author of Nature Knows No Colour Line has engaged continuously in research on the Afrikan Race since 1915. Published himself his first book From Superman in 1917 after it was refused by establish Publishers He has since published 7 others good books about Afrikan People and their contribution to world civilization J.A. Rogers has left us a rich legacy Nature Knows No Colour Line is one of the legacies.
24 Hours Inside the President's Bunker: 9-11-01: The White House
Robert J. Darling - 2010
Robert J. Darling organizes President Bush's trip to Florida on Sept. 10, 2001, he believes the next couple of days will be quiet. He has no idea that a war is about to begin. The next day, after terrorists crash airliners into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, Maj. Darling rushes to the president's underground chamber at the White House. There, he takes on the task of liaison between the vice president, national security advisor and the Pentagon. He works directly with the National Command Authority, and he's in the room when Vice President Cheney orders two fighter jets to get airborne in order to shoot down United Flight 93. Throughout the attacks, Maj. Darling witnesses the unprecedented actions that leaders are taking to defend America. As Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others make decisions at a lightning pace with little or no deliberation, he's there to lend his support. Follow Darling's story as he becomes a Marine Corps aviator and rises through the ranks to play an incredible role in responding to a crisis that changed the world in 9-11-01: The White House: Twenty-Four Hours inside the President's Bunker.
Illustrated True Crime: A Photographic Record
Colin Wilson - 2002
Packed with more than 400 photographs arranged in chronological order, this book covers everything from arson to connibalism, con men, mass murderers, sabotage, victims and vital clues.
The Hegel Variations: On the Phenomenology of Spirit
Fredric Jameson - 2010
Hegel's mind is revealed to be a less systematic mechanism than normally thought, one whose ideas never solidify into pure abstractions. The conclusion of the Phenomenology, on the aftermath of the French Revolution, is examined as a provisional stalemate between the political and the social—a situation from which Jameson draws important lessons for our own age.
Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace
D.T. Max - 2012
In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace’s tormented, anguished and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest. Since his untimely death by suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008, Wallace has become more than the quintessential writer for his time—he has become a symbol of sincerity and honesty in an inauthentic age. In the end, as Max shows us, what is most interesting about Wallace is not just what he wrote but how he taught us all to live. Written with the cooperation of Wallace’s family and friends and with access to hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, and audio tapes, this portrait of an extraordinarily gifted writer is as fresh as news, as intimate as a love note, as painful as a goodbye.
Sitting Ducks
Steve Anderson - 2011
In December 1944, during the bloody Battle of the Bulge, teams of German commandos disguised as American soldiers slipped behind the US front lines. Riding in captured US jeeps, they committed sabotage, sowed confusion and caused paranoia among American troops. Word quickly spread that the undercover commandos were out to kill US General Eisenhower. Popular legend has made the false flag operation out to be a skilled and menacing ploy with cunning German spies speaking American English. Their commander, propaganda hero SS Lt. Col. Otto Skorzeny, seemed a mastermind. But the reality was much different, and all the more deadly. The planning and training were slapdash, the mission desperate, its chances slim to none. Sitting Ducks is a fast read equaling about 49 print pages.