Mystery, the marvellous, a city transmuted by love, Sanglot's pursuit of the siren Louise Lame, such are the essential ingredients of this the last masterpiece of early Surrealism to remain untranslated into English. It was originally published in 1924 to immediate and lasting acclaim - except from the public authorities who immediately censored whole sections (here restored). Impossible to describe a novel of such virtuosity and bravura, and one which consistently refuses to behave as one expects, characters appear and vanish according to whim or desire, they walk underwater, nonchalantly accept astounding coincidences. It's a hymn to the erotic, an adventure story darkly illumined by the shades of Sade, Lautreamont and Jack the Ripper, a dream both violent and tender, an obsession, in fact the perfect embodiment of the Surrealist spirit: at once joyful, despairing, and effortlessly scandalous.

    

    Thomas Nelson's perceptive and comprehensive study of Kubrick rescues him from the hostility of auteurist critics and discovers the roots of a Kubrickian aesthetic, which Nelson defines as the "aesthetics of contingency."After analyzing how this aesthetic develops and manifests itself in the early works, Nelson devotes individual chapters to Lolita, Dr. Stangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining.For this expanded edition, Nelson has added chapters on Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, and, in the wake of the director's death, reconsidered his body of work as a whole. By placing Kubrick in a historical and theoretical context, this study is a reliable guide into--and out of--Stanley Kubrick's cinematic maze.

    Rabbi Kushner suggests that the path to a truly successful life lives in friendship, family, acts of generosity and self-sacrifice, as well as God's forgiving nature.

    Preposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved. In The Cult of Smart, educator and outspoken leftist Fredrik deBoer exposes this omission as the central flaw of our entire society, which has created and perpetuated an unjust class structure based on intellectual ability.Since cognitive talent varies from person to person, our education system can never create equal opportunity for all. Instead, it teaches our children that heirarchy and competition are natural, and that human value should be based on intelligence. These ideas are counter to everything that the left believes, but until they acknowledge the existence of individual cognitive differences, progressives remain complicit in keeping the status quo in place.This passionate, voice-driven manifesto demands that we embrace a new goal for education: equality of outcomes. We must create a world that has a place for everyone, not just the academically talented. But we’ll never achieve this dream until the Cult of Smart is destroyed.A Macmillan Audio production from All Points Books

    Canfield and Hansen bring you wit and wisdom, hope and empowerment to buoy you through life's dark moments.

    Hadot's book demonstrates the extent to which philosophy has been, and still is, above all else a way of seeing and of being in the world.

    Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.

    The book chronicles a young writer’s conversations with his heroes, writers he's read for years who inspired him both to pack his bags to travel and to pick up a pen and write. Michael skillfully coaxes a collective portrait through his interviews, allowing the authors to speak intimately about the writer's life, and how place influences their work and perceptions.In each chapter Michael sets the scene by describing the writer's surroundings, placing the reader squarely in the locale, whether it be Simon Winchester's Massachusetts, Redmond O'Hanlon's London, or Frances Mayes's Tuscany. He then lets the writer speak about life and the world, and through quiet probing draws out fascinating commentary from these remarkable people. For Michael it’s a dream come true, to meet his mentors; for readers, it's an engaging window onto the twin landscapes of great travel writers and the world in which they live.

        In January 2014, Henning Mankell received a diagnosis of lung cancer. Quicksand is a response to this shattering news—but it is not a memoir of destruction. Instead, it is a testament to a life fully lived, a tribute to the extraordinary but fleeting human journey that delivers both boundless opportunity and crucial responsibility. In a series of intimate vignettes, Mankell ranges over rich and varied reflections: of growing up in a small Swedish town, where he experiences a startling revelation on a winter morning as a young boy; of living hand-to-mouth during a summer in Paris as an ambitious young writer; of his work at a theater in Mozambique, where Lysistrata is staged in the midst of civil war; of chance encounters with men and women who changed his understanding of the world. Along the way, Mankell ponders the meaning of a good life, and the critically important ways we can shape the future of humanity if we are fortunate enough to have the choice. Vivid, clear-eyed, and breathtakingly beautiful, Quicksand is an invaluable parting gift from a great man.

    Discusses the principles that break through writer's block and allows authors the freedom to effectively write with meaning and purpose.

    True happiness can feel far away for people trying to understand themselves, how others think, and life itself, but it doesn’t have to be this way. I was unsure of how I would reach success. I literally felt like a newborn when I moved to Thailand. I did not know how to speak or read Thai, and I did not know what my future would look like, but I persisted. I wrote this book to help others by sharing my journey of growth from obscurity to impacting millions. These are the stories and lessons of how I found my way, and these Weapons of the Wise will hopefully help you find yours. I divided this book into four sections: I Self - How to know yourself, be adaptable, build your legacy, and manage self-expectations. II Social - How to understand others and develop a likable, growth-focused personality. III Success - How to build the habits and virtues required to reach the top of your field. IV Spiritual - How to connect with your inner voice, intuition, and spiritual self for guidance. You can start at any section depending on where you feel you need to grow the most, or read them in sequence. In all, I’m sharing The 51 Rules for Life I personally live by. Each has served me in creating the life I have today and have all been involved in my success. When I first came to Thailand, I had no friends and my parents were in a different country. The only thing with me was my dreams and my shadow. I may not have known what my future would hold, but I knew I’d succeed. I write this for my children, I write this for the world, and I write this for you in hopes it can help you on your “hero’s journey”.

    How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newspapers) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001. In Regarding the Pain of Others Susan Sontag once again changes the way we think about the uses and meanings of images in our world, and offers an important reflection about how war itself is waged (and understood) in our time.Features an analysis of our numbed response to images of horror. This title alters our thinking about the uses and meanings of images, and about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, and the obligations of conscience.

    Published in 1923, it has been translated into more than twenty languages, and the American editions alone have sold more than nine million copies.The Prophet is a collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational. Gibran’s musings are divided into twenty-eight chapters covering such sprawling topics as love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, housing, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.

    Moving away from the Marxist/Freudian approaches that had concerned him earlier, Baudrillard developed in this book a theory of contemporary culture that relies on displacing economic notions of cultural production with notions of cultural expenditure.Baudrillard uses the concepts of the simulacra—the copy without an original—and simulation. These terms are crucial to an understanding of the postmodern, to the extent that they address the concept of mass reproduction and reproduceability that characterizes our electronic media culture.Baudrillard's book represents a unique and original effort to rethink cultural theory from the perspective of a new concept of cultural materialism, one that radically redefines postmodern formulations of the body.Sheila Glaser is an editor at Artforum magazine.