One Hundred Great Essays (Penguin Academics Series)
Robert DiYanni - 2001
The anthology combines classic essays of great instructional value together with the most frequently anthologized essays of recent note by today's most highly regarded writers. The selections exhibit a broad range of diversity in subject matter and authorship. All essays have been selected for their utility as both models for writing and for their usefulness as springboards for independent writing. An introductory section informs readers about the qualities of the essay form and offers instruction on how to read essays critically and use the writing process to develop their own essays. For those interested in learning about reading, writing and critical thinking by studying examples of great writing.
The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again
Brin-Jonathan Butler - 2018
But they weren’t there to protest. They were there to watch the World Chess Championship between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin—what by the time it was over would be front-page news and thought by many the greatest finish in chess history. The story lines were riveting. The championship hadn’t been hosted in New York City, the de facto world capital of the sport, in more than two decades. With both Carlsen and Karjakin just 25 years old, the tournament organizers were billing it as a battle of the millennials—the first time the championship had been waged among the generation that grew up playing chess primarily against computers. And perhaps most intriguing were all the geopolitical connections to the match. Originally from Crimea, Karjakin had recently repatriated to Russia under the direct assistance of Putin. Carlsen, meanwhile, had expressed admiration for Donald Trump, and his first move of the tournament he played with a smirk what's called a Trompowsky Attack. Then there was the Russian leader of the World Chess Federation being barred from attending due to US sanctions, and chess fanatic and Trump adviser Peter Thiel being called on to make the honorary first move in sudden death. That the tournament required sudden death was a shock. Oddsmakers had given Carlsen, the defending champion, an 80% chance of winning. It would take everything he had to retain his title. In doing so, he would firmly make his case to be considered the greatest player chess has ever seen. Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament and watched every move. In The Grandmaster, he aims to do for Magnus Carlsen what Norman Mailer did for Muhammed Ali in The Fight, John McPhee did for Arthur Ashe in Levels of the Game, and David Foster Wallace did for Roger Federer in his famous New York Times Magazine profile. Butler captures one of the world’s greatest sportsmen at the height of their powers, and attempts to decipher the secret to that greatness.
Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents
Tom McDonough - 2002
The first section of the issue contained previously unpublished critical texts, and the second section contained translations of primary texts that had previously been unavailable in English. The emphasis was on the SI's profound engagement with the art and cultural politics of their time (1957-1972), with a strong argument for their primarily political and activist stance by two former members of the group, T. J. Clark and Donald Nicholson-Smith.Guy Debord and the Situationist International supplements both sections. It reprints important, hard to find essays by Giorgio Agamben, Libero Andreotti, Jonathan Crary, Thomas Y. Levin, Greil Marcus, and Tom McDonough and doubles the number of translations of primary texts, which now encompass a broader and more representative range of the SI's writings on culture and language. In a field still dominated by hagiography, the critical texts were selected for their willingness to confront critically the history and legacy of the SI. They examine the group within the broader framework of the historical and neo-avant-gardes and, beyond that, the postwar world in general. The translations trace the SI's reflections on the legacy of the avant-garde in art and architecture, particularly on the linguistic and spatial significance of montage aesthetics. Many of the translated works are by Guy Debord (1932-1994), the impresario of the SI, especially known for his book The Society of the Spectacle.
Before the Pilgrims: the Untold History before Jamestown and Plymouth
Pippa Pralen - 2019
40 years before the Jamestown colony, the Spanish founded a "Jamestown-type" colony in Virginia. Early explorers met Indians who surprisingly spoke English. Long before 1619 the recognized arrival of slaves, in 1526, the first African slaves were brought to America by the Spanish. A fierce competition arose between France, Spain and England to win the New World. Colonies floundered, were abandoned or destroyed by the English. It wasn’t easy surviving in this “new world” in spite of the early glowing reports. Why did Jamestown and Plymouth colonies succeed when others failed? The 2nd half of this book explores the first successful English colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth and why they succeeded when others could not. Strange and curious facts: the first Indian contact in Plymouth was an Indian asking for a glass of beer! Enjoy a detailed look of what really took place in America’s beginnings. It’s more interesting than your school history books!
The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity
Jeffrey J. Bütz - 2005
Evidence that Jesus had siblings contradicts Church dogma on the virgin birth, and James is also a symbol of Christian teachings that have been obscured. While Peter is traditionally thought of as the leader of the apostles and the “rock” on which Jesus built his church, Jeffrey Bütz shows that it was James who led the disciples after the crucifixion. It was James, not Peter, who guided them through the Church's first major theological crisis--Paul's interpretation of the teachings of Jesus. Using the canonical Gospels, writings of the Church Fathers, and apocryphal texts, Bütz argues that James is the most overlooked figure in the history of the Church. He shows how the core teachings of Jesus are firmly rooted in Hebraic tradition; reveals the bitter battles between James and Paul for ideological supremacy in the early Church; and explains how Paul's interpretations, which became the foundation of the Church, are in many ways its betrayal. Bütz reveals a picture of Christianity and the true meaning of Christ's message that are sometimes at odds with established Christian doctrine and concludes that James can serve as a desperately needed missing link between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam to heal the wounds of centuries of enmity.
Summer Solstice: An Essay
Nina MacLaughlin - 2020
Fat red tomatoes sliced thin and salted. Lemonade and long dreamy days. The treasures of the season are gone much too soon -- but they're captured here, in loving sensuous prose that's both personal and universal, for you to find any time of year.Experience the most evocative tribute to the meaning of the season, a season whose magical feeling stays with us even in winter. Where does that feeling come from? What is summer made of? The smell of cut grass behind the gasoline of a lawnmower. A crown you've made of flowers. Blackberry bush prickers. First hot dog off the grill. Stargazing and sleeping with the windows open. This essay brims with a searching honesty and insight about what this season has meant in our pasts and what it might mean in our lives ahead.Release yourself into the sky and feel, Nina MacLaughlin writes, for a moment: there's time.If summer is the season of your life, if the months between Memorial Day and Labor Day hold your favorite memories, you'll love
Summer Solstice
.
The Wit and Wisdom of Jane Austen
Jane Austen - 2002
She also muses on romantic innocence, self-delusion, gullibility, greed, snobbery, rudeness, arrogance, obsequiousness, and other subjects. Above all her comments center on the antics of those seeking well-connected and well-appointed husbands, and their efforts to elbow out their less "suitable" rivals.Perfect for browsing and highly quotable, this beautifully decorated volume will delight Austen devotees, as well as readers less familiar with her life and work.
Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love
Kara Walker - 2007
Over the past decade, she has gained international recognition for her room-sized tableaux, which depict historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence and subjugation and are made using the paradoxically genteel eighteenth-century art of cut-paper silhouettes. Set in the antebellum American South, Walker's compositions play off of stereotypes to portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters, mistresses and slave men, women and children enact a subverted version of the past in an attempt to reconfigure their status and representation. Over the years, the artist has used drawing, painting, colored-light projections, writing, shadow puppetry, and, most recently, film animation to narrate her tales of romance, sadism, oppression and liberation. Her scenarios thwart conventional readings of a cohesive national history and expose the collective, and ongoing, psychological injury caused by the tragic legacy of slavery. Deploying an acidic sense of humor, Walker examines the dialectics of pleasure and danger, guilt and fulfillment, desire and fear, race and class. This landmark publication, which is sure to win international design awards, accompanies Walker's first major American museum survey. It features critical essays by Philippe Vergne, Sander L. Gilman, Thomas McEvilley, Robert Storr and Kevin Young, as well as an illustrated lexicon of recurring themes and motifs in the artist's most influential installations by Yasmil Raymond, more than 200 full-color images, an extensive exhibition history and bibliography, and a 36-page insert by the artist.
The Book of Baseball Literacy
David H. Martinez - 1996
Easy-to-find answers to the most common (and obscure but fascinating) baseball questions." - USA Today"A great starting point for newbies of the game." - Ron Kaplan, "501 Baseball Books Fans Must Read Before They Die""Surprisingly, there is no other book so comprehensive, concise or readable." - St. Paul Pioneer-Press"Instructive and fun." - Chicago Sun-Times**Selected for the Baseball Hall of Fame Bookstore in Cooperstown**Lose yourself in all the marvelous memories and hallowed history of America’s national pastime with "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition." From the gloveless pioneers of the 1840s to the strife-ridden headlines of the 2000s, this comprehensive reference offers nearly 700 important baseball yarns, stats, and stories—cross-referenced and hyperlinked—in a style as lively as the game itself. Incredibly thorough, never dull, the book answers these and countless other questions:- Who was Ray Chapman, and why is he important?- Did Abner Doubleday really invent baseball?- What is sabermetrics?- Who set off the Pine Tar Incident?- Where was the first organized baseball game?- Were the Cubs cursed by a billy goat?- What are waivers and options?Written by SABR member and former college baseball broadcaster David H. Martinez and even selected as required reading for a college course on baseball history, "The Book of Baseball Literacy: 3rd Edition" puts over a century and a half of legends and lore, right in your mitt. It will settle arguments and provoke them, answer questions and ask them. It’s a must for veteran baseball fans—and a perfect way to get up to speed on baseball history for newcomers.
Bhais of Bengaluru
Jyoti Shelar - 2017
Kodigehalli Mune Gowda was crowned the city's first 'don' back in the 1960s, but it was in the '80s and the '90s that powerhouses like Muthappa Rai, Sreedhar, 'Boot House' Kumar aka Oil Kumar, Bekkina Kannu Rajendra and Srirampura Kitty emerged. In Bhais of Bengaluru, Jyoti Shelar, a print journalist with ten years of work experience as a field reporter, explores this mysterious and fascinating underbelly of India's Garden City.
Happiness: Ten Years of n+1
n+1 - 2014
n+1 appeared in the fall of 2004, the brainchild of a group of writers working out of a small apartment. Intended to revive the leftist social criticism and innovative literary analysis that was the hallmark of the Partisan Review and other midcentury magazines, n+1 was a rejoinder to the consumerism and complacency of the Bush years. It hasn't slowed down since. n+1 has given us the most clear-eyed reporting on the 2008 crash and the Occupy movement, the best criticism of publishing culture, and the first sociological report on the hipster. No media, new or old, has escaped its ire as n+1's outspoken contributors have taken on reality TV, Twitter, credentialism, drone strikes, and Internet porn.Happiness, released on the occasion of n+1's tenth anniversary, collects the best of the magazine as selected by its editors. These essays are fiercely contentious, disconcertingly astute, and screamingly funny. They explore our modern pursuits of happiness and take a searching moral inventory of the strange times we live in. Founding lights Chad Harbach, Keith Gessen, Benjamin Kunkel, Marco Roth, and Mark Greif are featured alongside Elif Batuman, Rebecca Curtis, Emily Witt, and other young talents launched by n+1. This n+1 anthology is the definitive work of the definitive twenty-first century intellectual magazine.
Getting Personal: Selected Essays
Phillip Lopate - 2003
Organized in six parts (Childhood; Youth; Early Marriage and Bachelorhood; Teaching and Work; Fiction; Politics, Religion, Movies, Books, Cities; The Style of Middle Age) Getting Personal tells two stories: the development of Lopate's career as a writer and the story of his life.
The Anatomy of a Golf Course: The Art of Golf Architecture
Tom Doak - 1992
A core book for any golfer--how to read a golf course, through the eyes of a course architect.
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.
Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19
Jennifer Haupt - 2020
All contributing authors and business partners are donating their share to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, a nonprofit organization that coordinates charitable programs to strengthen the bookselling community. The roster of diverse voices includes Faith Adiele, Kwame Alexander, Jenna Blum, Andre Dubus III, Jamie Ford, Nikki Giovanni, Pam Houston, Jean Kwok, Major Jackson, Devi S. Laskar, Caroline Leavitt, Ada Limón, Dani Shapiro, David Sheff, Garth Stein, Luis Alberto Urrea, Steve Yarbrough, and Lidia Yuknavitch. ALONE TOGETHER is divided into five sections: What Now?, Grieve, Comfort, Connect, And Don't Stop. The overarching theme is how this age of isolation and uncertainty is changing us as individuals and a society.