Note for Note Book 5 (Scatter) sees the river finally reach the ocean, roughly one thousand years after the events of Book 1 (Plough). It is the modern era in which people move at increasing speed and with increasing sophistication and increasing brutality, but essentially make the same choices as their ancestors did, although the context is absolutely different. There is a global transfer of goods, of culture and of those displaced and seeking refuge, the extent of which has never been seen before, but to a large extent people have forgotten their connections with what has gone before, and this ignorance is a sometimes fatal disconnection. The lives of a would-be patron of the arts and his partner connect with the lives of another couple, a painter and a dancer, in a harbour city where the mountain range also descends towards the ocean. These four people are further connected by the events that affect a homeless woman, a shoeshine man and a marginalised street artist. All of them are affected, knowingly or not, by the nature of events in the past, the influence of which changes the way each persons present comes into being in a blend of imagination, fantasy and substance. One of them will float out to sea.
The future will belong to children with innovative minds. Which is why this team of education experts have drawn on their decades of applied research in creativity, individuality, play, and media to craft an engaging guide for parents who understand that creative thinking skills are no longer a luxury, but a necessity for success in the new, grown-up world of work. The book introduces the Sensory Alphabet, basic building blocks that are as powerful for building twenty-first-century literacies as the ABCs are for reading—and that are lacking in schools today. The Missing Alphabet also offers foundational knowledge, current research and a pragmatic path for parents to understand the individual strengths and creative potential that will help their own children learn productively in the future. To turn these ideas into action, there is a Field Guide full of resources and activities for parents and kids to explore together at home, in museums, and around the neighborhood. This tried-and-true approach engages children with the creative thinking process, the capacity to invent with many media, the ability to think across disciplines, and the reliance on (and joy in) the imagination. Over the past forty years, the authors have developed highly successful programs for both in and out-of-school settings based on these concepts. Now, they offer parents a comprehensive guide for building the confidence and creative thinking skills for their own children—and now urgently needed for our collective future.
From the antiquity of Homer to yesterday's Naked Lunch, writers have found inspiration, and readers have lost themselves, in a world of the imagination tinged and oftentimes transformed by drugs. The age-old association of literature and drugs receives its first comprehensive treatment in this far-reaching work. Drawing on history, science, biography, literary analysis, and ethnography, Marcus Boon shows that the concept of drugs is fundamentally interdisciplinary, and reveals how different sets of connections between disciplines configure each drug's unique history. In chapters on opiates, anesthetics, cannabis, stimulants, and psychedelics, Boon traces the history of the relationship between writers and specific drugs, and between these drugs and literary and philosophical traditions. With reference to the usual suspects from De Quincey to Freud to Irvine Welsh and with revelations about others such as Milton, Voltaire, Thoreau, and Sartre, The Road of Excess provides a novel and persuasive characterization of the "effects" of each class of drug--linking narcotic addiction to Gnostic spirituality, stimulant use to writing machines, anesthesia to transcendental philosophy, and psychedelics to the problem of the imaginary itself. Creating a vast network of texts, personalities, and chemicals, the book reveals the ways in which minute shifts among these elements have resulted in "drugs" and "literature" as we conceive of them today.
The legendary critic and author of Mystery Train “ingeniously retells the tale of rock and roll” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Unlike previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs and dramatizes how each embodies rock ’n’ roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out—a new language, something new under the sun. “Transmission” by Joy Division. “All I Could Do Was Cry” by Etta James and then Beyoncé. “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus’s hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism—and its most gifted and incisive practitioner—is destined to become an enduring classic. “One of the epic figures in rock writing.”—The New York Times Book Review “Marcus is our greatest cultural critic, not only because of what he says but also, as with rock-and-roll itself, how he says it.”—The Washington Post Winner of the Deems Taylor Virgil Thomson Award in Music Criticism, given by the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers
Award-winning author Tanner has journeyed throughout the Celtic world--from the wilds of Northwest Scotland to the Isle of Man, and from Boston to Cape Breton--seeking the Celtic past and what remains of authentic culture.
There’s a saying that if you come from my part of town, you're from around the way. Urban Books bestsellers Treasure Hernandez and Marcus Weber bring readers a fast-paced look at the lives of some street-smart women who think they know it all. Do they have what it takes to survive on the streets? Caught Between a Good Boy and Bad Boy by Treasure Hernandez: Kiesha Simmons is that girl. She graduated top of her high school class and was captain of her step team. She’s about to start college at Howard University and is presently doing an internship with the top realtor in her city. She's had a good life so far, but there's one thing she has to do before she takes off for college in the fall — and that's lose her virginity. She just has to decided who is going go to be the lucky guy: her boss’s son or the local thug rapper. Lost and Found by Marcus Weber: Maria Santiago is on her way from Albany, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, when her Greyhound bus stops over for a two-hour layover at the Port Authority in Manhattan. She takes a stroll through the city and accidentally witnesses a drug deal going bad. All the men are killed, and Maria scoops up the briefcase full of drugs and a gun, making her way back to the bus station and back on her bus. Arriving in Atlanta, she finds that her grandmother is about to lose her house, and Maria goes up on a mission selling the drugs to save her family. Along the way, she makes friends and enemies, and finds a love that will last her the rest of her short life.
Featuring essays from David Olusoga, Dawn Butler MP, Kit de Waal, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and many more.In response to the international outcry at George Floyd's death, Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder have commissioned this collection of essays to discuss how and why we need to fight for Black lives to matter - not just for Black people but for society as a whole.Recognising Black British experience within the Black Lives Matter movement, nineteen prominent Black figures explain why Black lives should be celebrated when too often they are undervalued. Drawing from personal experience, they stress how Black British people have unique perspectives and experiences that enrich British society and the world; how Black lives are far more interesting and important than the forces that try to limit it."We achieve everything not because we are superhuman. We achieve the things we achieve because we are human. Our strength does not come from not having any weaknesses, our strength comes from overcoming them" Doreen Lawrence."I always presumed racism would always be here, that it was a given. But the truth is, it was not always here, it was invented." David Olusoga"Our identity and experience will shape every story, bleed into every poem, inform every essay whether it's about Black 'issues' or not" Kit de Waal
A deep dive into how F. Scott Fitzgerald’s vision of the American Dream has been understood, portrayed, distorted, misused, and kept alive Renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald’s story has become a key to American culture and American life itself. Marcus follows the arc of The Great Gatsby from 1925 into the ways it has insinuated itself into works by writers such as Philip Roth and Raymond Chandler; found echoes in the work of performers from Jelly Roll Morton to Lana Del Rey; and continued to rewrite both its own story and that of the country at large in the hands of dramatists and filmmakers from the 1920s to John Collins’s 2006 Gatz and Baz Luhrmann’s critically reviled (here celebrated) 2013 movie version—the fourth, so far.
Approaching its 200th birthday in the rudest of health, the Spectator is known for the quality of its writing and the deep eccentricity of some of its writers. Given the freedom to say what they want, they take that freedom and more, and the result is original, provocative, often very funny, sometimes plain wrong. From Jeffrey Bernard's reports from the Soho frontline and Auberon Waugh fulminating about hamburger gases in the early 1990s, we encounter in turn the wild stream of consciousness of Deborah Ross's restaurant reviews, the pinpoint etiquette advice of Mary Killen, Rod Liddle's frothing but elegantly sculpted outrage and the magazine's secret weapon, low life adventurer Jeremy Clarke. This bumper selection, which also includes eminent diarists, mad letter-writers and Boris Johnson, amounts to a masterclass in comic writing, lovingly compiled and edited by Marcus Berkmann, who still can't believe he wrote a monthly pop column for the magazine for twenty-eight years without being fired.
Robert Wyatt started out as the drummer and singer for Soft Machine, who shared a residency at Middle Earth with Pink Floyd and toured America with the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He brought a jazz mindset to the 1960’s rock scene, having honed his drumming skills in a shed at the end of Robert Graves’ garden in Mallorica, Spain. Wyatt's life took an abrupt turn in 1973, when he fell from a fourth-floor window at a party and was paralyzed from the waist down. He reinvented himself as a singer and composer with the extraordinary album Rock Bottom, which he followed with an idiosyncratic string of records that uniquely combine the personal and political. Along the way, Robert has worked with the likes of Brian Eno, Bjork, Jerry Dammers, Charlie Haden, David Gilmour, Paul Weller and Hot Chip. Marcus O’Dair has talked to all of them—indeed anyone who has shaped, or been shaped by Wyatt over five decades. Different Every Time is the first biography of Robert Wyatt, and it was written with his full participation. It includes illustrations by Alfreda Benge and photographs from Robert’s personal archive.
Good people - caught in a bad place ... When Tom and Anna Reed find $370,000 in their house one night it seems as if all their problems are solved. But what they can't quite wrap their minds around is that nothing in this life is free. Before the week is over they'll know exactly where that $370,000 came from-and come face to face with the brutal truth that in order to save your own life, sometimes you have to destroy your dreams... Praise for the novels of Marcus Sakey "Truly excellent. Like vintage Elmore Leonard crossed with classic Dennis Lehane.”—Lee Child, author of A Wanted Man and Never Go Back “An authentic, original new voice.”—George Pelecanos, author of The Double and What it Was "The reigning prince of crime fiction."--Chicago Tribune “Crime drama for the 21st century.”—National Public Radio “One of the hottest young crime writers in the country.”—The Oregonian “Snappy writing…hair-raising.”—Entertainment Weekly Marcus Sakey is the author of Brilliance, The Amateurs, Good People, The Two Deaths of Daniel Hayes, and other novels and stories.
For nearly thirty years, Greil Marcus has written a remarkable column called “Real Life Rock Top Ten.” It has been a laboratory where he has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements. Taken together, his musings, reflections, and sallies amount to a subtle and implicit theory of how cultural objects fall through time and circumstance and often deliver unintended consequences, both in the present and in the future. Real Life Rock reveals the critic in full: direct, erudite, funny, fierce, vivid, uninhibited, and possessing an unerring instinct for art and fraud. The result is an indispensable volume packed with startling arguments and casual brilliance.
From a celebrated critic, a heartfelt and adventurous reflection on the art of writing about art “Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Writers write. They can’t help it. They can’t not.” In this spirited book, the revered cultural critic Greil Marcus explains his compulsion as a yearning for fun, for play, and, most of all, to discover—to feel the moment when a creation speaks in its own voice. Marcus reflects on over half a century spent honing the art of attention—from his California childhood, overshadowed by mystery and silence surrounding his father’s death, to his discovery of the critic Pauline Kael, to a confrontation with a sixteenth-century painting in Venice. Through it all, he invites readers to join him in exploring the revolutionary power of art: what it is, why it captures us, and how it forces us to confront what we think we know and who we think we are. Art challenges us to see the world differently, Marcus argues, and the role of the critic is to enact this perspective. Funny and poignant, What Nails It is a tribute to the indispensable art of criticism by one of its greatest practitioners.
This classic book contains the personal musings and reflections of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. Written for himself with no intention of publishing his writing, Meditations of Marcus Aurelius documents the emperor’s attempts to attain a better understanding of himself and the world around him, detailing his struggle with his emotions, ideas of virtue, the gods, reason, and all things in between. Despite being for his own benefit, his work was to become one of the most important works of philosophy, inspiring intellectuals, statesmen, and teachers for thousands of years. Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. The last of the Five Good Emperors, he is hailed as one of the greatest Stoic philosophers. This fascinating philosophical work is published now with a new introductory biography of the author.
She’s a survivor of the front lines of politics. He’s a wounded soldier returning home from the battlefield. Can they place their trust in the power of love? Nobody plays the role of perfect politician’s daughter better than quiet, respectable math teacher Brooke Ellstein. But she won’t be caught swimming with the sharks again, not after the son of a wealthy donor sinks his teeth into her and gets away with it. Still, political connections have their perks, such as heading up the governor’s “Support Our Troops” pen-pal initiative—and getting first dibs on the smoking-hot sergeant whose picture shakes her right down to her goody-two-shoes. When corresponding with sweet, classy Brooke, Shane Develen instinctively hides his commando tattoos and blue-collar roots—and he can tell that she’s hiding something, too. But Shane knows he’s gained her trust when Brooke gives him a blisteringly sexy photo. Then he’s injured in an ambush and a fellow soldier posts the snapshot online. Overnight, Brooke’s reputation turns to ashes. Even though he’s totally wrong for her, Shane shows up on Brooke’s doorstep, determined to set things right—and discovers that right or wrong has nothing on the chemistry they share. Praise for Loving You Is Easy “A fresh story, memorable characters, and breathtaking romance . . . You must read this book!”—New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Probst “Wendy S. Marcus writes believable characters and tons of emotion.”—USA Today bestselling author Sarah Morgan “Loving You Is Easy is a pleasing blend of sexiness and emotionally charged conflict that kept me turning the pages. Wendy S. Marcus doesn’t shy away from tough subject matter; she embraces it in a real, visceral way that tugs on the reader’s emotions and has you rooting for the characters not just to succeed but to heal, physically and emotionally. The story is unique, the characters flawed but wonderful. Fantastic!”—New York Times bestselling author Donna Alward “A unique story with emotional twists and turns on the road to happily ever after.”—New York Times bestselling author Carly Phillips “Loving You Is Easy is a super sexy yet incredibly tender love story that’ll leave you wishing for just a few more pages . . . and then a few more after that.”—Laura Drewry, USA Today bestselling author of Prima Donna “Loving You Is Easy drew me in on the first page and held me until the last. A great read.”—Claudia Connor, author of Worth the Fall “This is a fabulous read I know I will reread in the future. Wendy S. Marcus is a total treat!”—Rakes of Romance “I highly recommend this read for all fans of romance. . . . [Loving You Is Easy has] drama, passion, intrigue and one of the most beautifully written endings I have read in a long time.”—Contemporary Romance Reviews “Incredible . . . Loving You Is Easy is a truly unique story with complex characters, unexpected emotional twists, and a burst of realism that convincingly illustrates just how completely opposites can attract and grow together.”—Fic Central “With a bit of grouch and a whole lot of classy, Wendy’s newest release gives a good read!”—Maldivian Book Reviewer’s Realm of Romance Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.
Malibu offers the best in Southern California living. This small town is situated close to Los Angeles and Hollywood, but far enough away from the traffic and stress of big-city life. All the clichés of Southern California come true in Malibu: the swimming pools, movie stars, paparazzi, and fancy cars. It's the land of champagne wishes and caviar dreams. But Malibu is also a beautiful, quiet, and surprisingly rural beachfront community. In a desirable location going back to the time of the Chumash Indians, the peace and environment of Malibu have been protected by city fathers with a vision. This is the California Riviera, a thin slice of la dolce vita located between the Santa Monica Mountains and the deep blue sea.
For much of the twentieth century, Ireland has been synonymous with conflict, the painful struggle for its national soul part of the regular fabric of life. And because the Irish have emigrated to all parts of the world--while always remaining Irish--"the troubles" have become part of a common heritage, well beyond their own borders. In most accounts of Irish history, the focus is on the political rivalry between Unionism and Republicanism. But the roots of the Irish conflict are profoundly and inescapably religious. As Marcus Tanner shows in this vivid, warm, and perceptive book, only by understanding the consequences over five centuries of the failed attempt by the English to make Ireland into a Protestant state can the pervasive tribal hatreds of today be seen in context. Tanner traces the creation of a modern Irish national identity through the popular resistance to imposed Protestantism and the common defense of Catholicism by the Gaelic Irish and the Old English of the Pale, who settled in Ireland after its twelfth-century conquest. The book is based on detailed research into the Irish past and a personal encounter with today's Ireland, from Belfast to Cork. Tanner has walked with the Apprentice Boys of Derry and explored the so-called Bandit Country of South Armagh. He has visited churches and religious organizations across the thirty-two counties of Ireland, spoken with priests, pastors, and their congregations, and crossed and re-crossed the lines that for centuries have isolated the faiths of Ireland and their history.
It may be the most sophisticated political thriller ever made in Hollywood," film critic Pauline Kael wrote of John Frankenheimer's terrifying 1962 political thriller about an American serviceman brainwashed in Korea and made into an assassin. Sophisticated to be sure, it's also a headlong fall through the looking-glass of American politics and the most deeply prophetic film of the second half of the American century. As Greil Marcus reconstructs the drama, The Manchurian Candidate is a movie in which the director and actors, including Laurence Harvey, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury in an Academy Award-nominated performance, were suddenly capable of anything, beyond any expectations. This edition includes a new foreword highlighting the movie's terrifying contemporary relevance in the age of Trump and Russian interference in the US Presidential election.
A New York University psychologist argues that the mind is a "kluge"-a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption-as he ponders the accidents of evolution that caused this structure and what we can do about it.
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