A writer documents the wry and zany moments he's experienced growing up, traveling, and living with his lawyer husband in this memoir. Kyle Smith had tried his hand at writing the Great American Novel several times, including during stints in Europe and New York City, but the attempts fizzled out. Undeterred, the native Chicagoan moved to New York again and settled into a comfortable marriage with a securities attorney named Julius. The couple's house in Brooklyn was invaded by a squirrel that appeared in the cockloft, a protrusion on the roof that houses electrical wires and insulation, and it started trashing the kitchen at night. Smith's sense of foreboding and drama was quite well-cultivated, and before he had a full-fledged nervous breakdown, the squirrel was driven from the house by a Texan neighbor named Nicola. Julius, who "dexterously negotiates his own double life as a hard-nosed businessman and bon vivant whose tastes are better suited to Honor de Balzac's time than Justin Bieber's," left the banking world, and the two began a new life in San Francisco.
On a subzero Chicago morning on January 23, 1989, fifteen-year-old punk rocker Seamus O'Grady braves the bitter cold at the 85A bus stop, railing against his repressive environment in anticipation of his move to London when he turns eighteen.
Software engineer Smith discovers the reappearance of a colleague, E.R. Richman, who disappeared two years earlier. Richman was found in the Interdict Zone and hospitalized. Smith visits him but Richman is uncommunicative. Shortly afterwards, Richman is removed from the hospital. Curious about his colleague's disappearance but unable to contact him, Smith decides to investigate. Having learned that Richman first visited the Interdict Zone via a VR video game based on a battle that occurred during the Tribal Wars, Smith does the same. As a result of his experience in the game, he visits the Interdict Zone in person. Thus begins an adventure that will change his life. The novel will appeal to readers interested in technology, video games, artificial intelligence, and the technological society. It will also appeal to critics of technology who are suspicious of technology and all things artificial. The story contains robots and artificial people (genetics) but is otherwise very much down to earth-an earth destroyed by war. The excursion is from the walled-in high-tech society of Aristos to the wild lands of the Interdict Zone. Aristos is in many ways the ideal, a society where the job of citizens is to consume products and be entertained. Work is optional. The society is managed by a humane AI known as MasterTele. The Interdict Zone is a once suburban society destroyed by warfare, spacious, and covered with ruins being taken over by vegetation and occupied by tribals.
While it lasted only sixteen months, King Philip’s War (1675-1676) was arguably one of the most significant of the colonial wars that wracked early America. As the first major military crisis to directly strike one of the Empire’s most important possessions: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, King Philip’s War marked the first time that Massachusetts had to mobilize mass numbers of ordinary, local men to fight. In this exhaustive social history and community study of Essex County, Massachusetts’s militia, Kyle F. Zelner boldly challenges traditional interpretations of who was called to serve during this period. Drawing on muster and pay lists as well as countless historical records, Zelner demonstrates that Essex County’s more upstanding citizens were often spared from impressments, while the “rabble” — criminals, drunkards, the poor— were forced to join active fighting units, with town militia committees selecting soldiers who would be least missed should they die in action. Enhanced by illustrations and maps, A Rabble in Arms shows that, despite heroic illusions of a universal military obligation, town fathers, to damaging effects, often placed local and personal interests above colonial military concerns.
On a subzero Chicago morning on January 23, 1989, fifteen-year-old punk rocker Seamus O'Grady braves the bitter cold at the 85A bus stop, railing against his repressive environment in anticipation of his move to London when he turns eighteen.
Nearing fifty, author Kyle Thomas Smith looks back on the days when he was a struggling young writer and hapless office temp. At the end of yet another workday when all he wanted was to go back to his little apartment, turn into a cockroach, and expire in a puddle of Raid, Kyle instead went out on the town and met a highly accomplished, globetrotting filmmaker named François. A romance ensued, but François flew out the next morning, leaving Kyle with nothing but a napkin on which he'd written his address in Paris. Kyle wondered if this napkin could hold the key to his future, and what would his life be worth if he were to lose the napkin? In this slice-of-life memoir, Kyle Thomas Smith meditates on how tightly we cling to our prospects when the real gold is buried deep inside the life we already have. Book Review: "François is like a French film, a lost treasure--made with a light touch, filled with unexpected layers of soul." -- Jill Dearman, LAMBDA-Award-winning author of "The Great Bravura" and "Jazzed
This book chronicles the expansion and creation of new public spheres in and around Parliament in the early Stuart period. It focuses on two closely interconnected narratives: the changing nature of communication and discourse within parliamentary chambers and the interaction of Parliament with the wider world of political dialogue and the dissemination of information. Concentrating on the rapidly changing practices of Parliament in print culture, rhetorical strategy, and lobbying during the 1620s, this book demonstrates that Parliament not only moved toward the center stage of politics but also became the center of the post-Reformation public sphere. Theater of State begins by examining the noise of politics inside Parliament, arguing that the House of Commons increasingly became a place of noisy, hotly contested speech. It then turns to the material conditions of note-taking in Parliament and how and the public became aware of parliamentary debates. The book concludes by examining practices of lobbying, intersections of the public with Parliament within Westminster Palace, and Parliament's expanding print culture. The author argues overall that the Crown dispensed with Parliament because it was too powerful and too popular.
Jonathan Edwards is considered by many to be America’s greatest theologian. Many have lauded him as one of the great theologians in church history. This book brings together major Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theologians to assess Edwards’s theological acumen. Each chapter places Edwards in conversation with a thinker or a tradition over a specific theological issue.
The Science of Attitudes is the first book to integrate classic and modern research in the field of attitudes at a scholarly level. Designed primarily for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, the presentation of research will also be useful for current scholars in all disciplines who are interested in how attitudes are formed and changed. The treatment of attitudes is both thorough and unique, taking a historical approach while simultaneously highlighting contemporary views and controversies. The book traces attitudes research from the inception of scientific study following World War II to the issues and methods of research that are prominent features of today’s research. Researchers in the field of attitudes will be particularly interested in classic and modern research on the organization, structure, strength and function of attitudes. Researchers in the field of persuasion will be particularly interested in work on attitude change focusing on propositional and associative learning, metacognition and dynamic theories of dissonance, balance and reactance. The book is designed to present the integration of the properties of the attitude with the dynamic considerations of attitude change. The Science of Attitudes is also the first book on attitudes to devote entire chapters to work on implicit measurements, resistance to persuasion, and social neuroscience.
The Earth and Its Peoples Brief Edition is a compact presentation of world history with a comparative approach and a global, balanced perspective. The themes of "Environment and Technology" and "Diversity and Dominance" unite the regions of the world. The Earth and Its Peoples Brief Edition offers a high level of scholarship with a supportive, student-friendly format.
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