This book provides a review of the multitude of conservation concepts, both from a scientific, philosophical, and social science perspective, asking how we want to shape our relationships with nature as humans, and providing guidance on which conservation approaches can help us to do this. Nature conservation is a contested terrain and there is not only one idea about what constitutes conservation but many different ones, which sometimes are conflicting. Employing a conceptual and historical analysis, this book sorts and interprets the differing conservation concepts, with a special emphasis on narrative analysis as a means for describing human–nature relationships and for linking conservation science to practice and to society at large. Case studies illustrate the philosophical issues and help to analyse major controversies in conservation biology. While the main focus is on Western ideas of conservation, the book also touches upon non-Western, including indigenous, concepts. The approach taken in this book emphasises the often implicit strategic and societal dimensions of conservation concepts, including power relations. In finding a path through the multitude of concepts, the book showcases that it is necessary to maintain the plurality of approaches, in order to successfully address different situations and societal choices. Overall, this book highlights the very tension which conservation biology must withstand between science and society: between what is possible and what we want individually or as a society or even more what is desirable. Bringing some order into this multitude will support more efficient conservation and conservation biology. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars studying nature conservation from a variety of disciplines, including biology, ecology, anthropology, sociology, geography, and philosophy. It will also be of use to professionals wanting to gain an understanding of the broad spectrum of conservation concepts and approaches and when to apply them.
As concerns about humankind’s relationship with the environment move inexorably up the agenda, this volume tells the story of the history of the concept of ecology itself and adds much to the historical and philosophical debate over this multifaceted discipline. The text provides readers with an overview of the theoretical, institutional and historical formation of ecological knowledge. The varied local conditions of early ecology are considered in detail, while epistemological problems that lie on the borders of ecology, such as disunity and complexity, are discussed. The book traces the various phases of the history of the concept of ecology itself, from its 19th century origins and antecedents, through the emergence of the environmental movement in the later 20th century, to the future, and how ecology might be located in the environmental science framework of the 21st century. The study of ‘ecological’ phenomena has never been confined solely to the work of researchers who consider themselves ecologists. It is rather a field of knowledge in which a plurality of practices, concepts and theories are developed. Thus, there exist numerous disciplinary subdivisions and research programmes within the field, the boundaries of which remain blurred. As a consequence, the deliberation to adequately identify the ecological field of knowledge, its epistemic and institutional setting, is still going on. This will be of central importance not only in locating ecology in the frame of 21st century environmental sciences but also for a better understanding of how nature and culture are intertwined in debates about pressing problems, such as climate change, the protection of species diversity, or the management of renewable resources.
Rarely have two writers spoken so candidly about the intersection where the lives they live meet the art they practice. That these two writers happen to be Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer make this an historic and joyous occasion. A little book filled with human, profound and beautiful musings on life.
Set after the events of season three, Gemma and Tara must keep the peace on the homefront, as Jax, Clay and the others doing their time in prison, the town of Charming is more dangerous than ever with the SONS OF ANARCHY behind bars!
One of the great American iconoclasts holds forth on politics, war, books and writers, and his personal life in a series of conversations—including his last published interview. During his long career Kurt Vonnegut won international praise for his novels, plays, and essays. In this new anthology of conversations with Vonnegut—which collects interviews from throughout his career—we learn much about what drove Vonnegut to write and how he viewed his work at the end. From Kurt Vonnegut's Last Interview Is there another book in you, by chance? No. Look, I’m 84 years old. Writers of fiction have usually done their best work by the time they’re 45. Chess masters are through when they’re 35, and so are baseball players. There are plenty of other people writing. Let them do it. So what’s the old man’s game, then? My country is in ruins. So I’m a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I’m mostly just heartsick about this. There should have been hope. This should have been a great country. But we are despised all over the world now. I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That’s why I served in World War II, and that’s why I wrote books. When someone reads one of your books, what would you like them to take from the experience? Well, I’d like the guy—or the girl, of course—to put the book down and think, “This is the greatest man who ever lived.”
In this new story arc set after the events of season three, Gemma and Tara must keep the peace on the homefront as Jax, Clay, and the others serve their time in prison. The town of Charming is more dangerous than ever with the SONS OF ANARCHY behind bars!
A never-before-seen collection of deeply personal love letters from Kurt Vonnegut to his first wife, Jane, compiled and edited by their daughter “A glimpse into the mind of a writer finding his voice.”—The Washington Post “If ever I do write anything of length—good or bad—it will be written with you in mind.” Kurt Vonnegut’s eldest daughter, Edith, was cleaning out her mother’s attic when she stumbled upon a dusty, aged box. Inside, she discovered an unexpected treasure: more than two hundred love letters written by Kurt to Jane, spanning the early years of their relationship. The letters begin in 1941, after the former schoolmates reunited at age nineteen, sparked a passionate summer romance, and promised to keep in touch when they headed off to their respective colleges. And they did, through Jane’s conscientious studying and Kurt’s struggle to pass chemistry. The letters continue after Kurt dropped out and enlisted in the army in 1943, while Jane in turn graduated and worked for the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. They also detail Kurt’s deployment to Europe in 1944, where he was taken prisoner of war and declared missing in action, and his eventual safe return home and the couple’s marriage in 1945. Full of the humor and wit that we have come to associate with Kurt Vonnegut, the letters also reveal little-known private corners of his mind. Passionate and tender, they form an illuminating portrait of a young soldier’s life in World War II as he attempts to come to grips with love and mortality. And they bring to light the origins of Vonnegut the writer, when Jane was the only person who believed in and supported him supported him, the young couple having no idea how celebrated he would become. A beautiful full-color collection of handwritten letters, notes, sketches, and comics, interspersed with Edith’s insights and family memories, Love, Kurt is an intimate record of a young man growing into himself, a fascinating account of a writer finding his voice, and a moving testament to the life-altering experience of falling in love.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Newsweek/The Daily Beast • The Huffington Post • Kansas City Star • Time Out New York • Kirkus Reviews This extraordinary collection of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Kurt Vonnegut’s fiction. Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide. Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece Slaughterhouse-Five; wry dispatches from Vonnegut’s years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Günter Grass, and Bernard Malamud. Vonnegut’s unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels—from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing “atomic” bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. (“Knopf, for example, might give John Updike’s contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion’s contract in return.”) Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon. • On a job he had as a young man: “Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors.” • To a relative who calls him a “great literary figure”: “I am an American fad—of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop.” • To his daughter Nanny: “Most letters from a parent contain a parent’s own lost dreams disguised as good advice.” • To Norman Mailer: “I am cuter than you are.” Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote. Praise for Kurt Vonnegut: Letters “Splendidly assembled . . . familiar, funny, cranky . . . chronicling [Vonnegut’s] life in real time.”—Kurt Andersen, The New York Times Book Review “[This collection is] by turns hilarious, heartbreaking and mundane. . . . Vonnegut himself is a near-perfect example of the same flawed, wonderful humanity that he loved and despaired over his entire life.”—NPR “Congenial, whimsical and often insightful missives . . . one of [Vonnegut’s] very best.”—Newsday “These letters display all the hallmarks of Vonnegut’s fiction—smart, hilarious and heartbreaking.”—The New York Times Book Review
From Slapstick's "Turkey Farm" to Slaughterhouse-Five's eternity in a Tralfamadorean zoo cage with Montana Wildhack, the question of the afterlife never left Kurt Vonnegut's mind. In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut skips back and forth between life and the Afterlife as if the difference between them were rather slight. In thirty odd "interviews," Vonnegut trips down "the blue tunnel to the pearly gates" in the guise of a roving reporter for public radio, conducting interviews: with Salvatore Biagini, a retired construction worker who died of a heart attack while rescuing his schnauzer from a pit bull, with John Brown, still smoldering 140 years after his death by hanging, with William Shakespeare, who rubs Vonnegut the wrong way, and with socialist and labor leader Eugene Victor Debs, one of Vonnegut's personal heroes. What began as a series of ninety-second radio interludes for WNYC, New York City's public radio station, evolved into this provocative collection of musings about who and what we live for, and how much it all matters in the end. From the original portrait by his friend Jules Feiffer that graces the cover, to a final entry from Kilgore Trout, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian remains a joy.
In the wake of his wife's brutal murder, Opie returns to Oswald Lumber in the hope of leaving the club -- and criminal activity -- behind. Unfortunately, nothing in Charming stays clean for long, and corruption at the mill threatens to push him over the edge entirely. Meanwhile, as Jax and Clay wrestle for control of the club, one of Chibs's old IRA foes returns for revenge...and the Sons will have to decide how deep loyalty really runs. Written by fan-favorite Ryan Ferrier (Curb Stomp, Secret Wars: Battleworld) and illustrated by the incredible Matías Bergara (American Vampire, Sleepy Hollow: Origins), Sons of Anarchy Volume 6 links seasons 1 and 2 of Kurt Sutter's critically acclaimed television series. Also featuring a cover gallery by Toni Infante (Sons of the Devil).
The subject of this play—as we are told at the outset—is love, pure and complicated. Set on the stage of The North Crawford Mask & Wig Club ("the finest community theatre in central Connecticut!"), three early comic masterpieces by Kurt Vonnegut (Long Walk to Forever, Who am I This Time? and Go Back to Your Precious Wife and Son) are sewn together into a seamless evening of hilarity and humanity. With a single set, wonderful roles for seven versatile actors, and Vonnegut's singular wit and insight into human foibles, this is a smart, delightful comedy for the whole family.
Those who know Kurt Vonnegut as one of America's most beloved and influential writers will be surprised and delighted to discover that he was also a gifted graphic artist. This book brings together the finest examples of his funny, strange, and moving drawings in an inexpensive, beautifully produced gift volume for every Vonnegut fan. Kurt Vonnegut's daughter Nanette introduces this volume of his never before published drawings with an intimate remembrance of her father. Vonnegut always drew, and many of his novels contain sketches. Breakfast of Champions (1973) included many felt-tip pen drawings, and he had a show in 1983 of his drawings at New York's Margo Feiden Gallery, but really got going in the early 1990s when he became acquainted with the screenprinter Joe Petro III, who became his partner in making his colorful drawings available as silkscreens. With a touch of cubism, mixed with a Paul Klee gift for caricature, a Calder-like ability to balance color and line, and more than a touch of sixties psychedelic sensibility, Vonnegut's aesthetic is as idiosyncratic and defiant of tradition as his books. While writing came to be more onerous in his later years, making art became his joyful primary activity, and he made drawings up until his death in 2007. This volume, and a planned touring exhibition of the drawings, will introduce Vonnegut's legion of fans to an entirely new side of his irrepressible creative personality.
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post–World War II America—a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. A linoleum salesman's plans for a quiet anniversary celebration with his wife get put on hold when he makes an unusual discovery: that knife he picked up on the way home isn't quite what it appears to be—and neither is his marriage. The Nice Little People and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever—and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
“[Kurt Vonnegut] is either the funniest serious writer around or the most serious funny writer.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In this self-portrait by an American genius, Kurt Vonnegut writes with beguiling wit and poignant wisdom about his favorite comedians, country music, a dead friend, a dead marriage, and various cockamamie aspects of his all-too-human journey through life. This is a work that resonates with Vonnegut’s singular voice: the magic sound of a born storyteller mesmerizing us with truth. “Vonnegut is at the top of his form, and it is wonderful.”—Newsday
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post–World War II America—a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. In a poignant tale set in the depths of the Great Depression, two children of privilege get a lesson in empathy from a down-and-outer with an unusual plan to prove himself a success in the eyes of his dying mother. King and Queen of the Universe and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever—and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
The Sons are happy to fortify their numbers with the addition of Bobby's estranged nephew, Dillon, but when his violent and cocky attitude leads to a lost business opportunity and trouble with the Mayans, the Sons are sent home in shame.
The Sons of Anarchy are more than a club, more than a gang, more than an organization: they are a brotherhood. But who are the Sons on their own? In these four stand alone stories, Jax confronts an ex-member of the club who opens old wounds ; Juice's side business, Clear Passages, faces a blackmail plot which is more complex than it first appears ; Bobby's trip to Vegas takes a wild, hungover turn for the worse ; And Happy, long before he became a Son, gets his very first tattoo.
A posthumous double volume of the influential author's first and last written works, published to coincide with the 90th anniversary of his birth, includes the bitter satire "Basic training" and the unfinished final novel "If God were alive today".
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post—World War II America–a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. In “Ed Luby’s Key Club,” a man on a dinner date with his wife finds himself plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare after he’s wrongly accused of murder in Ilium, a small town run by one of Al Capone’s former bodyguards–and rotten to the core with official corruption. “Ed Luby’s Key Club” and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut’s unique voice had been stilled forever–and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
A New York Times Notable Book from the acclaimed author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, and Cat's Cradle. At 2:27pm on February 13th of the year 2001, the Universe suffered a crisis in self-confidence. Should it go on expanding indefinitely? What was the point? There's been a timequake. And everyone—even you—must live the decade between February 17, 1991 and February 17, 2001 over again. The trick is that we all have to do exactly the same things as we did the first time—minute by minute, hour by hour, year by year, betting on the wrong horse again, marrying the wrong person again. Why? You'll have to ask the old science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout. This was all his idea.
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post–World War II America—a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Determined to trip up a murder suspect, a small-town police chief relies on the good word of a scrupulous newspaper delivery boy whose dedication to his craft—and to his cowardly father—may hold the key to cracking the case. The Honor of a Newsboy and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever—and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
Look at the Birdie is a collection of fourteen previously unpublished short stories from one of the most original writers in all of American fiction. In this series of perfectly rendered vignettes, written just as he was starting to find his comic voice, Kurt Vonnegut paints a warm, wise, and often funny portrait of life in post–World War II America—a world where squabbling couples, high school geniuses, misfit office workers, and small-town lotharios struggle to adapt to changing technology, moral ambiguity, and unprecedented affluence. Vonnegut offers a pitch-perfect portrait of a singing instructor cum lothario whose perfectly ordered bachelor lifestyle is thrown into chaos by a jilted chanteuse who won't take "Go away" for an answer—and knows how to turn the force of habit against him. Little Drops of Water and the thirteen other never-before-published pieces that comprise Look at the Birdie serve as an unexpected gift for devoted readers who thought that Kurt Vonnegut's unique voice had been stilled forever—and provide a terrific introduction to his short fiction for anyone who has yet to experience his genius.
Through the progress of science, human lifespans have been extended indefinitely, leading the government to enact strict rules to keep the earth’s population under control. So when Edward K. Wehling, Jr. finds out that he and his wife are expecting triplets, he has to find a way to meet the nearly impossible birth requirements for each of his three unborn children. “2 B R 0 2 B,” pronounced “to be or not to be,” is an intentional reference to the famous line in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The short story was originally published in the Worlds of IF Science Fiction magazine and is referenced by author Kurt Vonnegut in his later novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
From the New York Times bestselling author of Slaughterhouse-Five comes an irresistible novel that combines “clever wit with keen social observation...[and] re-establishes Mr. Vonnegut’s place as the Mark Twain of our times” (Atlanta Journal & Constitution). Here is the adventure of Eugene Debs Hartke. He’s a Vietnam veteran, a jazz pianist, a college professor, and a prognosticator of the apocalypse (and other things Earth-shattering). But that’s neither here nor there. Because at Tarkington College—where he teaches—the excrement is about to hit the air-conditioning. And it’s all Eugene’s fault.
“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all. “A great artist.”—Cincinnati Enquirer “A shaking up in the kaleidoscope of laughter . . . Reading Vonnegut is addictive!”—Commonweal
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.