Post Grad: Five Women and Their First Year Out of College


Caroline Kitchener - 2017
    And as Kitchener follows each member of the group, it becomes harder to reduce them to stereotypes, harder either to defend or to judge their choices. Kitchener navigates expertly between the very personal and the wider sociological perspectives as she outlines a chronological year in the lives of all five women, illuminating and clarifying each one of their choices, victories, and foibles.Both a broad and an intensely individual exploration, Post Grad is a portrait of the shifting environment of that important year after graduation, as well as an intimate look at how a select group of very different individuals handles its challenges—navigating family tensions, relationships, jobs, and that ever-elusive notion of independence.

OpTic Gaming: The True Story of the Making of eSports Greatest Team


H3CZ - 2016
    With over 14 million followers across social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, no other team of players in eSports can match OpTic's popularity or ability to bring fans into the game.Now, these remarkable players have collaborated to produce this one-of-a-kind book. In OpTic Gaming, they candidly share their story of becoming Call of Duty's global royalty—ESPN XGAMES, MLG, ESWC and GFINITY champions—laying bare their lives, exploring what it takes to make it in professional gaming, and speaking honestly about the consequences of their newfound fame. These best-of-the-best take you behind the controller, offering insights, knowledge, and strategies to help you improve your shot, master the most complex maps, and conquer the game with the ultimate weapons. Going beyond their number-one game, the team also discusses the rest of their lineups and how to become a champion in any arena. Revealing their go-to strategies, best missions, and favorite challenges, OpTic Gaming brings fans closer to these wildly popular professional gamers more than ever before.

Shadow People: How Meth-Driven Crime Is Eating at the Heart of Rural America


Scott Thomas Anderson - 2012
    He spent 18 months - between May of 2010 and October of 2011 - working as an embedded reporter with law enforcement agencies, partnering with officers on night patrols, accompanying detectives on warrant searches and probation sweeps, observing SWAT operations and spending hundreds of hours with attorneys and victims' advocates in small-town courtrooms. The result is "Shadow People," a stark and sometimes brutal exploration of America's modern methamphetamine crisis.

WHY I'M CRAZY ABOUT JAPAN: Heartwarming and Rib-tickling Stories from The Land of The Rising Sun


Ashutosh V. Rawal - 2021
    

Can You Hear Me Now?: The Inspiration, Wisdom, and Insight of Michael Eric Dyson


Michael Eric Dyson - 2009
    Whether in his sixteen books, or in countless newspapers, television and radio appearances, or on stages, podiums, and pulpits across the world, Dyson has spun an enchanting web of words that has caught the attention of the masses and elites alike. He has weighed in on a myriad array of topics - from faith to fatherhood, and from race to sex, as well as sports, manhood, gender, music, leadership, politics, language, love, justice, literature, suffering, death, hope, relationships and much, much more.Can You Hear Me Now?, offers a sampling of Dyson's sharp wit, profound thought, and edifying eloquence on the enduring problems of humanity, from love to justice, and the latest topics of the day, including race and the presidency. It is both revealing and relevant, and at once thoughtful provoking and uplifting. Whether he is writing about Jay-Z or Barack Obama, addressing racial catastrophes or opportunities, or speaking about religion or the felicities of King's rhetoric, Dyson's intellect shines with insight and inspiration.Can You Hear Me Now? captures Dyson's incredible facility with words, and his prodigious intelligence, at a time when he has gained greater fame as a public intellectual, university professor, best-selling author, and most recently, as one of the first prominent blacks to endorse President Barack Obama. The time is ripe for his wit, wisdom and worldview, and this book is Dyson's most accessible compendium of thinking on a broad range of topics that haunt and shape the nation.

Intercultural Communication in Contexts


Judith N. Martin - 1996
    The dialectical framework, integrated throughout the book, is used as a lens to examine the relationship of these research traditions. This text is unique in its emphasis on the importance of histories, popular culture, and identities.

Ayodhya: The Dark Night


Krishna Jha - 2012
    Before the adversaries could discover his presence, he dashed straight towards Abhiram Das, the vairagi who was holding the idol in his hands and leading the group of intruders. […] The sadhu quickly freed himself and, together with his friends, retaliated fiercely. Heavy blows began raining from all directions. Soon, the muezzin realized that he was no match for the men and that he alone would not be able to stop them.22 December 1949: A conspiracy that began with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi culminated in the execution of the Ayodhya strategy. Late that night, a little-known sadhu, Abhiram Das, and his followers entered the Babri Masjid and planted an idol of Rama inside it. While it is known that the Hindu Mahasabha had a role in placing the idol in the mosque, the larger plot and the chain of events that led to that act have never been subject to rigorous scrutiny. Through intrepid research and investigation, Krishna Jha and Dhirendra K. Jha bring together the disparate threads of the buried narrative for the first time.Through a series of first-hand interviews with eyewitnesses and the unearthing of archival material, the authors take us behind the scenes to examine the motivations and workings of the Mahasabha members who pulled the strings. They also examine the liaison between Mahasabhaites and Hindu traditionalists in the Congress – an association that Jawaharlal Nehru sought to break in his cautious battle with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the right-wing forces. Ayodhya: The Dark Night uncovers, in vivid detail, what really transpired on the fateful night that was to leave a permanent scar on the Indian polity.

Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography


Michael Grecco - 2006
    His beautiful, insightful work is all around us--on movie posters, in advertising, on magazine covers, everywhere. “I delight in inspiring people,” he writes. “I want them to stop, think, and feel.” Now Grecco shares the secrets of great portraits with photographers at every level, in Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait. Sections on cameras, illumination, film and digital, creativity and conceptualization, connecting with the subject, and having a point of view, plus intriguing case studies that show “how I got that picture,” make this book a resource photographers will use again and again through the years. Whether the subject is a star or a soccer mom, Grecco shows how to add artistry, drama, wit, humor, and personality to their portrait.

The Knife Went In: Real-Life Murderers and Our Culture


Theodore Dalrymple - 2017
    Since the 1990s, Theodore Dalrymple has witnessed its modern variety in real life. For over a quarter of a century he has treated and examined many more murderers than most as a prison doctor, psychiatrist, and court expert in some of Britain's most deprived areas. Here, he delves deep into his life of personal encounters with the murderous underclass to determine what has changed overtime and what has not. Inimitably, his unique portrait of modern criminals is at the same time a parable of dysfunction in our own culture. Through his experiences, he exposes today's vicious cult of denial, blaming and psychobabble that hides behind a corrosive sentiment of caring. Illustrated with scores of eye-opening, true-life vignettes, The Knife Went In is in turn hilariously funny, chillingly horrifying, and always unexpectedly revealing. Taken together, this lifetime of experience is a clear and unsentimental mirror in which we view modern progress without its varnish.

In the Little World: A True Story of Dwarfs, Love, and Trouble


John H. Richardson - 2001
    Kopits takes me into an examining room and leans against the stainless steel bench and asks me what I'm writing about this time. When I tell him what I saw in Australia, he immediately starts to nod. "This is a great subject," he says. Then he stops, as if caught by the subject himself.I wait.After a moment, he continues. "What you are looking into is the abyss. This takes you to the very heart of a human being, to the deepest aspect of the soul.He gives me one of his solemn looks. "Because the thing is, you have to confront yourself."(from In the Little World) In 1997, almost by accident, John H. Richardson found himself sharing a hotel with more than a thousand dwarfs. Over the course of a single week, he witnessed love and anger, fear and bravery, arrogance and humility, even a bizarre romantic deception -- the entire spectrum of human emotion in one concentrated dose. But at the end of the week, he discovered that leaving the "Little World" wasn't as simple as checking out of a hotel. In fact, his journey would last a full two years.At a time when bigger often seems synonymous with better, and physical beauty serves as currency, the world of dwarfs usually passes beneath our notice. Now, in this groundbreaking work, awardwinning author John H. Richardson brings the Little World into focus.He introduces us to characters like a saintly but obsessed doctor and a mother who sacrifices her family to save her dwarf daughter. He follows two dwarf lovers from first meeting through the struggle to overcome their fear and shame and find the confidence to love each other. He becomes personally involved in a tangled and often confrontational friendship with a female dwarf. Through these stories and musings ranging from classic theories of beauty to the history of the disability movement to postmodern theories of difference, Richardson presents a world that is a skewed reflection of our own -- and offers us a glimpse into the essential human condition.

Why Manners Matter: The Case for Civilized Behavior in a Barbarous World


Lucinda Holdforth - 2008
    Her best friend paused before saying, “Well, you do say “f***” a lot.” Welcome to the interesting quagmire Lucinda Holdforth finds herself in. She believes that manners are essential to civilization. Yet according to the knife-and-fork snobs, or exclusive bores, her modern-day attitude might not scream manners. And in this age of global warming and warfare, aren’t manners frivolous? Do manners really matter? Yes! she passionately exclaims. Citing everyone from Tocqueville to Proust to Borat, Holdforth shows how manners, —which many of us might think are inconsequential, —are actually the cornerstone of civilization. Incredibly smart, the book illustrates how the philosophies of the greatest thinkers are relevant to our very modern lives.

Property Of Folsom Wolf


Don Lasseter - 1995
    Louis housewife who abandoned her family and became the sex-slave of ex-Folsom Prison convict Greg Marlow, known to his fellow inmates as "Folsom Wolf". Together, the pair went on a cross-country spree of sex, torture and murder that ended with their convictions and death sentences.

Kaiser: The Greatest Footballer Never To Play Football


Rob Smyth - 2018
    He’s the most loveable of rogues with the most common of dreams: to become a professional footballer. And he isn’t about to let trivial details like talent and achievement stand in his way. . . not when he has so many other ways to get what he wants.In one of the most remarkable football stories ever told, Kaiser graduates from abandoned slumdog to star striker, dressing-room fixer, superstar party host and inexhaustible lover. And all without kicking a ball. He’s not just the king… he’s the Kaiser.

The Griekwastad Murders: The Crime that Shook South Africa


Jacques Steenkamp - 2014
    It was shortly before 19h00 when Don Steenkamp jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the station’s charge office, covered in blood, to announce that his parents and sister had been brutally shot and killed on the family farm, Naauwhoek. Although the killings were initially thought to be just another farm attack, months later a sixteen-year-old youth was arrested for the murders, setting in motion a chain of events that would grip South Africa, and divide the people of Griekwastad.Based on interviews with all the role-players, including the investigating officers on the case, the forensic and ballistic experts, and family and friends of the deceased, this is the riveting account of what really happened on Naauwhoek farm on that fateful day, as told by the reporter who followed the case from day one…

Exit Ramp: A Short Case Study of the Profitability of Panhandling


David P. Spears II - 2013
    During the summer of his senior year at college, while earning a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, David P. Spears spent eighty hours undercover as a panhandler. Systematically recording every transaction at the exit ramp, Spears captured a rarely seen picture of how modern urban charity works.This book is the record of his adventures, part economic research, part investigative journalism. Both the numbers and the stories behind the numbers provide answers to the questions we’ve all been wondering: Who gives more to panhandlers—men or women? What percentage of drivers roll down their windows to donate? And most important of all, how much can a panhandler earn per hour?Get out your bi-weekly pay stub—by the end of this book you’ll know if you make more or less than the guy with the cardboard sign.