For many, Ernest Hemingway remains more a compilation of myths than a person: soldier, sportsman, lover, expat and, of course, writer. But the actual life beneath these various legends remains elusive; what did he look like as a laughing child or young soldier? What was his handwriting like and what did he say in his most personal letters? How did the train tickets he held on his way from France to Spain or across the American Midwest feel, and what kind of notes did he take on his journeys? This remarkable book answers these questions. Featuring a foreword by Hemingway's son Patrick and an afterword by his grandson Sean, the book has the intimate feel of being a member of the family. It tells the story of a major American icon through the objects he touched, the moments he saw, the thoughts he had every day. Beautifully designed, including over 400 dazzling images of him at every stage of his life along with the letters, notes and miscellany that made his life so rich, it is an intimate, illuminating portrait like no other. It is a one-of-a-kind, stunning tribute to one of the most titanic figures in literature.
New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates’ imaginative look at the last days of five giants of American literature, now available in a deluxe paperback edition in Ecco’s The Art of the Story Series. Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Clemens (“Mark Twain”), Henry James, Ernest Hemingway—Joyce Carol Oates evokes each of these American literary icons in this work of prose fiction, poignantly and audaciously reinventing the climactic events of their lives. In subtly nuanced language suggestive of each of these writers, Oates explores the mysterious regions of the unknowable self that is “genius.” Darkly hilarious, brilliant, and brazen, Wild Nights! is an original and haunting work of the imagination.
Dexter Hemingway: The Twenty-Two Toed Tabby was an idea I played with after taking a children's writing class at UCLA. My first attempt was to just write a story which I sent to a few magazines. I soon realized that merely hearing a short story wasn't enough and a children's book would be perfect. It became a rhyming story, but was also completely non-fiction. It all began when I took a trip to our family's orange ranch in Woodlake, California. It was a place I could go to in the country and just enjoy the scenery. I also hoped to find a silver and black Tabby kitten for my daughter. I went through all the ads in the paper, but the few I found would not be ready for adoption for two weeks and I would be gone by then. However, one woman told me about a place in another small town where a woman was suppose to have 800 cats. I didn't believe this, but got her name and talked to her on the phone. She wanted to be sure if I adopted a kitty that it would be taken care of properly. After our conversation she gave me directions and I went to a small town about 40 minutes away. She had a home on the Kings Canyon River and once I said hello and she let me in I no longer doubted that she truly did have 800 cats. Cats covered every counter and piece of furniture in her home. There was an infirmary for sick kittens and cats, two rooms with kittens ready for a home, an old house near the river where feral cats lived, and a few hundred more running all over. She gave me a tour and then I could go into each room and decide which kitten would go home with me. It was impossible to choose until one came flying from a cat tree right onto my lap. Of course, it was a silver and black Tabby. He had chosen me and as we left she told me he was a "good luck cat" because he was a polydactyl. His paws were perfect, but each had an extra toe. The kitten was quite sick and very nervous. He still takes medication at five years, but he is a wonderful big male cat. I hope a child will not only be entertained, but realize being different can be just as wonderful as not being a normal child. Perhaps even more special.
Oswald, a young osprey, files across the Gulf of Mexico from Belize to the southwest coast of Florida looking for his birthplace on Sanibel Island. There, he discovers romance and home-building. Alas, the nest he and his mate, Becky, build on a power pole explodes causing a power outage on the island. Oswald rises above disaster to start again, raise chicks, and provide for the family with his fishing skills. All the fishing birds -- herons and pelicans -- make way for Oswald as he fiercely defends his waters. Oswald and Becky face tragedy as a great horned owl invades their nest, but they triumph at last when two of the fledgling offspring can earn their own living, leave the nest, and fly independently above the waters of the bay and Gulf.
A superb collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries, winner of the Governor General's Award. Emerging from these twelve beautifully articulated stories are portraits of men and women whose affairs and recoveries in life take us into worlds that are both new and yet unnervingly familiar. A smile of recognition and a shock of surprise await readers of these finely crafted stories. From the magical orange fish itself--enigmatic and without age--to holiday reunions; from the passions and pains of lovers and friends to the moving uncertainty of a Parisian vacation, this exquisite collection is bound to delight and enchant Carol Shields's fans everywhere.
Uncensored: Views & (Re)views is Joyce Carol Oates's most candid gathering of prose pieces since (Woman) Writer: Occasions & Opportunities. Her ninth book of nonfiction, it brings together thirty-eight diverse and provocative pieces from the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Times Book Review. Oates states in her preface, "In the essay or review, the dynamic of storytelling is hidden but not absent," and indeed, the voice of these "conversations" echoes the voice of her fiction in its dramatic directness, ethical perspective, and willingness to engage the reader in making critical judgments. Under the heading "Not a Nice Person," such controversial figures as Sylvia Plath, Patricia Highsmith, and Muriel Spark are considered without sentimentality or hyperbole; under "Our Contemporaries, Ourselves," such diversely talented figures as William Trevor, E. L. Doctorow, Kazuo Ishiguro, Michael Connelly, Alice Sebold, Mary Karr, Anne Tyler, and Ann Patchett are examined. In sections of "homages" and "revisits," Oates writes with enthusiasm and clarity of such cultural icons as Emily Brontë, Ernest Hemingway, Carson McCullers, Robert Lowell, Balthus, and Muhammad Ali ("The Greatest"); after a lapse of decades, she (re)considers the first film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Americana, Don DeLillo's first novel, as well as the morality of selling private letters and the nostalgic significance of making a pilgrimage to Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond. Through these balanced and illuminating essays we see Oates at the top of her form, engaged with forebears and contemporaries, providing clues to her own creative process: "For prose is a kind of music: music creates 'mood.' What is argued on the surface may be but ripples rising from a deeper, subtextual urgency.
In Reading Appalachia from Left to Right, Carol Mason examines the legacies of a pivotal 1974 curriculum dispute in West Virginia that heralded the rightward shift in American culture and politics. At a time when black nationalists and white conservatives were both maligned as extremists for opposing education reform, the wife of a fundamentalist preacher who objected to new language-arts textbooks featuring multiracial literature sparked the yearlong conflict. It was the most violent textbook battle in America, inspiring mass marches, rallies by white supremacists, boycotts by parents, and strikes by coal miners. Schools were closed several times due to arson and dynamite while national and international news teams descended on Charleston.A native of Kanawha County, Mason infuses local insight into this study of historically left-leaning protesters ushering in cultural conservatism. Exploring how reports of the conflict as a hillbilly feud affected all involved, she draws on substantial archival research and interviews with Klansmen, evangelicals, miners, bombers, and businessmen, a who, like herself, were residents of Kanawha County during the dispute. Mason investigates vulgar accusations of racism that precluded a richer understanding of how ethnicity, race, class, and gender blended together as white protesters set out to protect "our children's souls."In the process, she demonstrates how the significance of the controversy goes well beyond resistance to social change on the part of Christian fundamentalists or a cultural clash between elite educators and working-class citizens. The alliances, tactics, and political discourses that emerged in the Kanawha Valley in 1974 crossed traditional lines, inspiring innovations in neo-Nazi organizing, propelling Christian conservatism into the limelight, and providing models for women of the New Right.
This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 8th Workshop of the Cross-Language Evaluation Forum, CLEF 2007, held in Budapest, Hungary, September 2007. The revised and extended papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. There are 115 contributions in total and an introduction. The seven distrinct evaluation tracks in CLEF 2007, are designed to test the performance of a wide range of multilingual information access systems or system components. The papers are organized in topical sections on Multilingual Textual Document Retrieval (Ad Hoc), Domain-Specific Information Retrieval (Domain-Specific), Multiple Language Question Answering (QA@CLEF), cross-language retrieval in image collections (Image CLEF), cross-language speech retrieval (CL-SR), multilingual Web retrieval (WebCLEF), cross-language geographical retrieval (GeoCLEF), and CLEF in other evaluations.
A guide for preparing for the Miller Analogies Test (MAT) that provides analogy strategies, review of 1,300 terms, eight full-length practice exams with explained answers, and a CD-ROM with practice tests.
At his new school, Jerry Flack is determined to stop being a dork and start being a cool guy—but does this science nerd really have what it takes to be popular? Jerry Flack is starting middle school in a new town where no one knows him and he can be anybody he wants. Jerry has a plan: He is finally going to be cool. But that turns out to be easier said than done. As his lies begin to pile up, Jerry knows he’s going to slip up soon, and everyone will see him for who he really is. Can Jerry keep the act going? Or is it possible that a dork can actually be . . . well, cool?
The decorating pride of Atchison, Kansas, Garrity has compiled her favorite tips, tricks and techniques from her stores Nell Hill's and G. Diebolt in this illustrated volume.
Offers a wide-ranging overview of the issues and research approaches in the diverse field of applied linguistics Applied linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that identifies, examines, and seeks solutions to real-life language-related issues. Such issues often occur in situations of language contact and technological innovation, where language problems can range from explaining misunderstandings in face-to-face oral conversation to designing automated speech recognition systems for business. The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics includes entries on the fundamentals of the discipline, introducing readers to the concepts, research, and methods used by applied linguists working in the field. This succinct, reader-friendly volume offers a collection of entries on a range of language problems and the analytic approaches used to address them. This abridged reference work has been compiled from the most-accessed entries from The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics (www.encyclopediaofappliedlinguistics.com), the more extensive volume which is available in print and digital format in 1000 libraries spanning 50 countries worldwide. Alphabetically-organized and updated entries help readers gain an understanding of the essentials of the field with entries on topics such as multilingualism, language policy and planning, language assessment and testing, translation and interpreting, and many others. Accessible for readers who are new to applied linguistics, The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics: Includes entries written by experts in a broad range of areas within applied linguistics Explains the theory and research approaches used in the field for analysis of language, language use, and contexts of language use Demonstrates the connections among theory, research, and practice in the study of language issues Provides a perfect starting point for pursuing essential topics in applied linguistics Designed to offer readers an introduction to the range of topics and approaches within the field, The Concise Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics is ideal for new students of applied linguistics and for researchers in the field.
A superb collection of short stories from the author of The Stone Diaries, winner of the Governor General's Award. Emerging from these twelve beautifully articulated stories are portraits of men and women whose affairs and recoveries in life take us into worlds that are both new and yet unnervingly familiar. A smile of recognition and a shock of surprise await readers of these finely crafted stories. From the magical orange fish itself--enigmatic and without age--to holiday reunions; from the passions and pains of lovers and friends to the moving uncertainty of a Parisian vacation, this exquisite collection is bound to delight and enchant Carol Shields's fans everywhere.
This rich compilation of Joyce Carol Oates's letters across four decades displays her warmth and generosity, her droll and sometimes wicked sense of humor, her phenomenal energy, and most of all, her mastery of the lost art of letter writing. "It's hard to think of another writer with as fecund and protean an imagination as the eighty-five-year-old Joyce Carol Oates, who is surely on any short list of America's greatest living writers." —New York Times Magazine In this generous selection of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters to her biographer and friend Greg Johnson, readers will discover a never-before-seen dimension of her phenomenal talent. In 1975, when Johnson was a graduate student, he first wrote to Oates, already a world-famous author, and drew an appreciative, empathetic response. Soon the two began a fairly intense, largely epistolary friendship that would last until the present day. As time passed, letters became faxes, and faxes became emails, but the energy and vividness of Oates’s writing never abated. Her letters were often sprinkled with the names of well-known public figures, from John Updike and Toni Morrison to Steve Martin and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. There are also descriptions of far-flung travels she undertook with her first husband, the scholar and editor Raymond Smith, and with her second, the distinguished Princeton neuroscientist Charlie Gross. But much of Oates’s prose centered on the pleasures of her home life, including her pet cats and the wildlife outside her study window. Whereas her academic essays and book reviews are eloquent in a formal manner, in these letters she is wholly relaxed, even when she is serious in her concerns. Like Johnson, she was always engaged in work, whether a long novel or a brief essay, and the letters give a fascinating glimpse into Oates’s writing practice.
An updated, repackaged edition of the bestselling divination tool and party favorite - ask a yes or no question, open the book, and discover your answer in the form of quotations from the world's most compelling books. Are you certain of your future? Your job? Relationships? Money? If the answer is "no," then this follow-up to the bestselling The Book of Answers will help you find the solutions from famous works of literature--and what a wealth of advice it provides... If you're curious about whether you'll get that promotion or land that account, whether you should buy a new car or tell your mother-in-law what you really think of her cooking, you can expect superb guidance from the likes of William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Henry James, and Charles Dickens. Featuring such pearls of wisdom as "To thine own self be true," "Keep up appearances whatever you do," and "Tread lightly," this entertaining and provocative book will provide hours of fun and fortune-telling, while helping readers brush up on their literary knowledge. The perfect gift for questioners of all types and stripes, The Literary Book of Answers is for anyone who's got a burning question.
Whether you're marveling at Gaudi masterpieces or cheering with locals at a fútbol match, soak up the best of Catalonia's sun, sea, and delicious flavors with Moon Barcelona & Beyond. Explore In and Around the City: Get to know Barcelona's most interesting neighborhoods, like the Gothic Quarter, El Born, the Ciutat Vella, and Gràcia, and nearby regions, including Girona, Sitges, and more Go at Your Own Pace: Choose from tons of itinerary options designed for foodies, beach-goers, history buffs, art lovers, and more See the Sights: Marvel at the Sagrada Familia's fantastical architecture, hike through the colorful Parc Güell, see Picasso's earliest-known drawings, and stroll the narrow streets of the Barri Gòtic Get Outside the City: Savor cava in the Penedès wine region, swim in the sparkling water on the Costa Brava, explore the medieval village of Besalú, or climb to the Sant Jeroni peak in Montserrat Savor the Flavors: Feast on a seafood paella, sample your way through a bustling market, and find the best spots for authentic tapas Experience the Nightlife: Sip sangria on the beach, discover a local favorite cocktail bar, people-watch from a bustling terrace, and enjoy regional Catalan wines Get to Know the Real Barcelona: Follow suggestions from Barcelona transplant Carol Moran for supporting indie businesses and avoiding crowds Full-Color Photos and Detailed Maps Handy Tools: Background information on Catalan and Basque history and culture, plus tips on ethical travel, what to pack, where to stay, and how to get around Day trip itineraries, favorite local spots, and strategies to skip the crowds: Take your time with Moon Barcelona & Beyond. Exploring more of Europe? Check out Moon Venice & Beyond or Moon Lisbon & Beyond.
“Unless you’re lucky, unless you’re healthy, fertile, unless you’re loved and fed, unless you’re offered what others are offered, you go down in the darkness, down to despair.” Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy: Her three almost grown daughters. Her twenty-year relationship with their father. Her work translating the larger-than-life French intellectual and feminist Danielle Westerman. Her modest success with a novel of her own, and the clamour of her American publisher for a sequel. Then in the spring of her forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and begging on a Toronto street corner, with a hand-lettered sign reading GOODNESS around her neck. GOODNESS. With the inconceivable loss of her daughter like a lump in her throat, Reta tackles the mystery of this message. What in this world has broken Norah, and what could bring her back to the provisional safety of home? Reta’s wit is the weapon she most often brandishes as she kicks against the pricks that have brought her daughter down: Carol Shields brings us Reta’s voice in all its poignancy, outrage and droll humour. Piercing and sad, astute and evocative, full of tenderness and laughter, Unless will stand with The Stone Diaries in the canon of Carol Shields’s fiction.
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. A cylinder of baked graphite and clay in a wood case, the pencil creates as it is being destroyed. To love a pencil is to use it, to sharpen it, and to essentially destroy it. Pencils were used to sketch civilization's greatest works of art. Pencils were there marking the choices in the earliest democratic elections. Even when used haphazardly to mark out where a saw's blade should make a cut, a pencil is creating. Pencil offers a deep look at this common, almost ubiquitous, object. Pencils are a simple device that are deceptively difficult to manufacture. At a time when many use cellphones as banking branches and instructors reach students online throughout the world, pencil use has not waned, with tens of millions being made and used annually. Carol Beggy sketches out how the lowly pencil is still a mighty useful tool. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
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