Lethal Dose of Salvation is about Oscar Ireland, a cathedral groundskeeper, who, while in church praying, is shot in the head. By the time his wife arrives at the hospital, she is horrified to discover that the love of her life is in a coma. Within his comatose state, Oscar awakens in a garden. Up ahead he sees one of the many mansions in heaven. Befuddled, confused, he enters the seven-story building. After mingling on the first floor with the regular dead, he meets Daniel, his guardian angel. Oscar decides to move onward and upward to the second floor that houses the Prayer Chamber. Soon he moves up to the third floor where the members of the Historical Committee conduct their business. Since he is not yet physically dead, those he encounters cannot see him, which adds to his frustration. On the fourth floor is the Artistic Committee; fifth floor, Biblical Committee. Thanks to his guardian angel and the information he acquires from visiting the various offices, he discovers he is in the building where the committee members must decide who among the living are worthy of receiving inspiration. The sixth floor contains the Administration Committee. They correlate all the information gathered from the floors below. Enclosed on the seventh floor are the sacred offices of the Holy Trinity. While his soul is pulling him upward to see God, his heart tries to keep him tethered to his grieving wife back on earth. Oscar's personal struggle is between the promise of wisdom and the power of love. It is a realistic look at an inconceivable concept: how inspiration is transmitted from God to man, and one man's quest to see God while still alive. Mystical and surreal, yet it never loses its human perspective. Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of salvation is the unbreakable bond between a man and a woman.
Framing his study with two cases of violence involving children in Chicago, he notes the degree to which violence in the novels is perpetrated by adults against children or, even more shockingly, by children against children.".
This book 'hunts and gathers' across different historical epochs and situations, juxtaposing biblical materials and hip-hop, Christian colonialism and vodou, personal experience and racial politics, poetics and high theory, in order to challenge the current crisis of sustainability from the perspective indigenous communities and deep ancestry.
Lethal Dose of Salvation is about Oscar Ireland, a cathedral groundskeeper, who, while in church praying, is shot in the head. By the time his wife arrives at the hospital, she is horrified to discover that the love of her life is in a coma. Within his comatose state, Oscar awakens in a garden. Up ahead he sees one of the many mansions in heaven. Befuddled, confused, he enters the seven-story building. After mingling on the first floor with the regular dead, he meets Daniel, his guardian angel. Oscar decides to move onward and upward to the second floor that houses the Prayer Chamber. Soon he moves up to the third floor where the members of the Historical Committee conduct their business. Since he is not yet physically dead, those he encounters cannot see him, which adds to his frustration. On the fourth floor is the Artistic Committee; fifth floor, Biblical Committee. Thanks to his guardian angel and the information he acquires from visiting the various offices, he discovers he is in the building where the committee members must decide who among the living are worthy of receiving inspiration. The sixth floor contains the Administration Committee. They correlate all the information gathered from the floors below. Enclosed on the seventh floor are the sacred offices of the Holy Trinity. While his soul is pulling him upward to see God, his heart tries to keep him tethered to his grieving wife back on earth. Oscar's personal struggle is between the promise of wisdom and the power of love. It is a realistic look at an inconceivable concept: how inspiration is transmitted from God to man, and one man's quest to see God while still alive. Mystical and surreal, yet it never loses its human perspective. Perhaps the most dramatic aspect of salvation is the unbreakable bond between a man and a woman.
Vast and diverse, Brooklyn is often portrayed in literature as a place of traditional community values and face-to-face relations, distinct from anonymous, capital-driven Manhattan. Brooklyn Fictions discovers what such representations of the New York borough can teach us about diversity and the individual, the local and the global. Combining analysis of popular texts such as Sister Souljah's The Coldest Winter Ever with more canonical novels such as Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude, this study draws on the work of a variety of theorists on community and globalization and uses Brooklyn as a case study for an exploration of the complex relationship between romantic ideals of community and global economic forces. With cites often depicted as sites of conflict and fear, this is a crucial contribution to our understanding of the contemporary urban community and the ethical issues involved in conceptualizing and portraying it in literature.
Loved and hated, visited and avoided, seemingly everywhere yet endlessly the same, malls occupy a special place in American life. What, then, is this invention that evokes such strong and contradictory emotions in Americans? In many ways malls represent the apotheosis of American consumerism, and this synthetic and wide-ranging investigation is an eye-popping tour of American culture's values and beliefs. Like your favorite mall, One Nation under Goods is a browser's paradise, and in order to understand America's culture of consumption you need to make a trip to the mall with Farrell. This lively, fast-paced history of the hidden secrets of the shopping mall explains how retail designers make shopping and goods “irresistible.” Architects, chain stores, and mall owners relax and beguile us into shopping through water fountains, ficus trees, mirrors, and covert security cameras. From food courts and fountains to Santa and security, Farrell explains how malls control their patrons and convince us that shopping is always an enjoyable activity. And most importantly, One Nation Under Goods shows why the mall's ultimate promise of happiness through consumption is largely an illusion. It's all here—for one low price, of course.
IBM was the world’s leading provider of information technologies for much of the twentieth century. What made it so successful for such a long time, and what lessons can this iconic corporation teach present-day enterprises? James W. Cortada—a business historian who worked at IBM for many years—pinpoints the crucial role of IBM’s corporate culture. He provides an inside look at how this culture emerged and evolved over the course of nearly a century, bringing together the perspectives of employees, executives, and customers around the world. Through a series of case studies, Inside IBM explores the practices that built and reinforced organizational culture, including training of managers, employee benefits, company rituals, and the role of humor. It also considers the importance of material culture, such as coffee mugs and lapel pins. Cortada argues that IBM’s corporate culture aligned with its business imperatives for most of its history, allowing it to operate with a variety of stakeholders in mind and not simply prioritize stockholders. He identifies key lessons that managers can learn from IBM’s experience and apply in their own organizations today. This engaging and deeply researched book holds many insights for business historians, executives and managers concerned with stakeholder relations, professionals interested in corporate culture, and IBMers.
Native to the New World, the potato was domesticated by Andean farmers, probably in the Lake Titicaca basin, almost as early as grain crops were cultivated in the Near East. Full of essential vitamins and energy-giving starch, the potato has proved a valuable world resource. Curious Spaniards took the potato back to Europe, from whence it spread worldwide. Today, the largest potato producer is China, with India not far behind. To tell the potato's story, Lang has done fieldwork in South America, Asia, and Africa."--Jacket.
An entertaining, interactive guidebook, this volume is designed to provide young adults with a simple model they can use to create a solid vision for their future, and ideally map out a life of their dreams. (Careers/Job Opportunities)
Los Angeles has always been as much a star in film noir as any actor, be it Humphrey Bogart, Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner or Jack Nicholson. In L.A. Noir: The City as Character renowned film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini explore the world of noir cinema in the context of Los Angeles. The book features dozens of noir and neo-noir landmark films from Double Indemnity, Criss Cross, Sunset Boulevard, Gun Crazy, The Big Heat, Kiss Me Deadly, and Touch of Evil in the classic period (1940-1960) to such neo-noir notables as Chinatown, L.A. Confidential, Mulholland Drive, and Pulp Fiction. L.A. Noir illustrates how these noir films use L.A.'s diverse cityscape and architecture to convey a unique vision of urban corruption and existential fatalism, not only in the ever-changing, chaotic downtown of Bunker Hill, Main Street, and Chinatown, but in its affluent coastal communities (Santa Monica, Malibu) as well as its deceptively sunny suburbs (South Bay, San Fernando Valley). The authors deftly analyze the key films of noir while integrating them into the geography and history of this "dark city" which became such an important icon of noir literature and film. L.A. Noir is profusely illustrated with approximately 150 photographs-many of them appearing in print for the very first time-including production stills from the movies discussed, archival photos of the locations from the films and new photographs of the locations today, chronicling the ever-changing cityscape of this noir character-Los Angeles.
Traces a day in the life of an American college student that challenges popular conceptions of ivy-accented campuses with images of culturally reflective t-shirts, keg parties and dormitory life to reveal how college represents opportunities for enabling a sustainable future.
Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.
The Future of Democracy in America and the World: A Few Possibilities makes the vast fields of modern American political philosophy and politics more accessible to both those engaged and those not engaged in these professions. Based in part on an exhaustive reading of American political philosophy and writers who have influenced American political philosophy, James Schacht explores what democracy has been in the past, what it is now, and what it can be in the future. Going as far back as the Englishman John Locke, whose writings strongly influenced Thomas Jefferson in his writing of the Declaration of Independence, he provides a comprehensive view of American political philosophy and its origins up to today, describes the institution of democracy, describes the culture associated with this institution, makes some predictions, and describes a framework for pursuing our best hope for the future. See also TheFutureofDemocracy.org
This book presents a concise account of our current approach to the climate crisis, and provides a clear view of the current situation, and the history of the protocols and promises that have failed. It offers substantial international solutions, exploring the urgent need for an international ethical and progressive alliance that has authority beyond economic self-interests, and arguing in favour of shifting our focus to reducing the manufacture of greenhouse gases rather than concentrating on the reduction of carbon emissions. The book goes on to explore why solutions can only emerge by changing the very international structure of governance, a structure that is now conditioned by out-dated modes created before the collective understanding of the Earth as one whole. It proposes that these solutions can only happen if they are based on an international unity emerging from our collective expertise, ethics, and intelligence among humanity today.
This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature and the arts. Such prizes and the competitions they crown are almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and power--and their consequences for society and culture at large--have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. In a wide-ranging overview of this phenomenon, James F. English documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex role within what he describes as an economy of cultural prestige. Observing that cultural prizes in their modern form originate at the turn of the twentieth century with the institutional convergence of art and competitive spectator sports, English argues that they have in recent decades undergone an important shift--a more genuine and far-reaching globalization than what has occurred in the economy of material goods. Focusing on the cultural prize in its contemporary form, his book addresses itself broadly to the economic dimensions of culture, to the rules or logic of exchange in the market for what has come to be called "cultural capital." In the wild proliferation of prizes, English finds a key to transformations in the cultural field as a whole. And in the specific workings of prizes, their elaborate mechanics of nomination and election, presentation and acceptance, sponsorship, publicity, and scandal, he uncovers evidence of the new arrangements and relationships that have refigured that field.
Children of God: Children of Earth is a book for anyone who has ever questioned his own existence or dared to wish for a better world. Written in a clear, easily read and understood prose, the text draws the reader in with interesting, sometimes poignant vignettes which, like the parables of the New Testament, bespeak a deeper meaning. Poetry, personal anecdotes, and amusing cartoons complement the next.
The Least Among Us: The Lives of Homeless Women in Springfield, Illinois By: James Traveler In The Least Among Us, James Traveler shares the stories of six homeless women in order "to inject compassion into the numb consciences of those who would write them off." The featured stories are based on interviews with homeless women living on the streets of Springfield, Illinois. The author provides a platform for these women to tell their personal stories while offering a look into "a day in the life of a homeless woman." While this work will appeal to those in sociology or social work, there are vital lessons in empathy to be learned by everyone. The book contains an introduction by Dr. Kay Young McChesney, an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Springfield. From the Book: After her coffee arrived, I asked Alicia my last question. "You've told me more than once that what you'd really like is for someone to offer you a job. But what about your deepest desires. If you were an architect and could design the life of your dreams, what would it be like?" "I'm still in a time of life where I'm seeking out a man," she said. "I'm still in the game. I still try to be enticing. I want to let my special guy know that I'm still a lady. Right now, I might not look it, but underneath, that's what I am. "I may not have anything material to offer a guy, but I do have ideas, information, and know-how. I can run a household and hold a job to help with the bills. I'd like to have a garden and grow things for our table. And I know how to love. "If I had a guy, I'd make him happy. I'd listen to him, pay attention, understand him, and I'd be patient. If he respected me, I'd respect him and help him prosper." I asked Alicia what she meant by "prosper." "If I loved a guy," she said, "everything he did, everything we did together, would work out and bear fruit.
Weaving together stories from elite science, cutting-edge technology, and popular culture, Fleming examines issues of health and navigation in the 1830s, drought in the 1890s, aircraft safety in the 1930s, and world conflict since the 1940s.
A call to action to address people's psychological and social motives for a belief in God, rather than debate the existence of God With every argument for theism long since discredited, the result is that atheism has become little more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs. Thus, engaging in interminable debate with religious believers about the existence of God has become exactly the wrong way for nonbelievers to try to deal with misguided—and often dangerous—belief in a higher power. The key, author James Lindsay argues, is to stop that particular conversation. He demonstrates that whenever people say they believe in "God," they are really telling us that they have certain psychological and social needs that they do not know how to meet. Lindsay then provides more productive avenues of discussion and action. Once nonbelievers understand this simple point, and drop the very label of atheist, will they be able to change the way we all think about, talk about, and act upon the troublesome notion called "God.
James is down on his luck and he's only twenty-something. To set his life on a better course, he travels to Scotland where he was born and spent the first six years of his life. If he can find his roots, he reckons on making a new beginning. From the moment he encounters his cousin, whose existence is unknown to almost everyone, James realizes adventures beyond even his imagination. He travels back to the United States and on to outer space and the land of spirits. Along the way, strangers met apparently by chance metamorphose into teachers who initiate James into the worldy mysteries of sex, career, marriage, parenthood, and death of a loved one. James, who narrates this fictional autobiography, divulges intimate material. His subjective and personal account of his journey includes much psychological material, such as dreams, fantasy, poetry, and visions. This is a modern account of a young man's coming-of-age, told with the inside knowledge of a psychologist.
A surprising and enlightening investigation of how modern society is making nature sacred once again For more than two centuries, Western cultures, as they became ever more industrialized, increasingly regarded the natural world as little more than a collection of useful raw resources. The folklore of powerful forest spirits and mountain demons was displaced by the practicalities of logging and strip-mining; the traditional rituals of hunting ceremonies gave way to the indiscriminate butchering of animals for meat markets. In the famous lament of Max Weber, our surroundings became "disenchanted," with nature's magic swept away by secularization and rationalization. But now, as acclaimed sociologist James William Gibson reveals in this insightful study, the culture of enchantment is making an astonishing comeback. From Greenpeace eco-warriors to evangelical Christians preaching "creation care" and geneticists who speak of human-animal kinship, Gibson finds a remarkably broad yearning for a spiritual reconnection to nature. As we grapple with increasingly dire environmental disasters, he points to this cultural shift as the last utopian dream—the final hope for protecting the world that all of us must live in.
Language is integral to our social being. But what is the status of those who stand outside of language? The mentally disabled, “wild” children, people with autism and other neurological disorders, as well as animals, infants, angels, and artificial intelligences, have all engaged with language from a position at its borders. In the intricate verbal constructions of modern literature, the ‘disarticulate’—those at the edges of language—have, paradoxically, played essential, defining roles. Drawing on the disarticulate figures in modern fictional works such as Billy Budd, The Sound and the Fury, Nightwood, White Noise, and The Echo Maker, among others, James Berger shows in this intellectually bracing study how these characters mark sites at which aesthetic, philosophical, ethical, political, medical, and scientific discourses converge. It is also the place of the greatest ethical tension, as society confronts the needs and desires of “the least of its brothers.” Berger argues that the disarticulate is that which is unaccountable in the discourses of modernity and thus stands as an alternative to the prevailing social order. Using literary history and theory, as well as disability and trauma theory, he examines how these disarticulate figures reveal modernity’s anxieties in terms of how it constructs its others.
Interior designer Holly Carrington worked hard for her success. Then tragedy struck, leaving Holly the sole guardian of her infant niece. Now she's swapped her designer purse for a diaper bag, and is going ahead with plans to renovate—and sell—her childhood home in Red River. But facing her past also means coming face-to-face with Quinn Manning all over again... Quinn was the object of her girlhood crush—and heartbreak— and is more gorgeous than ever. He's also the only person qualified to oversee the renovation. Now they're butting heads every step of the way... and their attraction is even more electrifying! But once the house is sold, Holly needs to return to her real life. And falling for Quinn all over again is one risk she can't take... Each book in the Red River series is a standalone story that can be enjoyed out of order. Series Order: Book #1 A Risk Worth Taking Book #2 The Best Man's Baby Book #3 The Doctor's Fake Fiancee Book #4 The Rebel's Return
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