Mark Slouka's Books

God's Fool

By: Mark Slouka

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In 'God's Fool', Mark Slouka brilliantly captures the inner lives of Chang and Eng who were attached at birth at the chest. They were touted around the world as part of P.T. Barnum's famous touring show, eventually settling down as farmers and fathering large families.

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Page Count

271

Publisher

Macmillan

Published Date

ISBN 10

1405000333

ISBN 13

9781405000338

Brewster

A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

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Brewster

A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

Still reeling from the death of his older brother, a sixteen-year-old track star befriends a street-fighting rebel and together they search for redemption amidst the social changes of 1968.

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288

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393239756

ISBN 13

9780393239751

The Visible World

A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

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The Visible World

A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

“A vibrantly told love story” with tragic roots in WWII Czechoslovakia (The Washington Post). An American-born son of Czech immigrants grows up in postwar New York, part of a boisterous community of the displaced where he learns fragments of European history, Czech fairy tales, and family secrets gleaned from overheard conversations. Central in his young imagination is the heroic account of the seven Czech parachutists who, in 1942, assassinated a high-ranking Nazi. Yet one essential story has always evaded him: his mother’s. He suspects she had a great wartime love, the loss of which bred a sadness that slowly engulfed her. As an adult, he travels to Prague, hoping to piece together her hidden past—leading to the compelling story at the heart of The Visible World—an “almost unbearably poignant work . . . a penetrating, beautifully composed novel from a writer with a tangible sense of place and period,” the acclaimed author of Brewster and God’s Fool, named a Best Book of the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle (Booklist). “The sheer beauty of Mark Slouka’s prose will draw comparisons to The English Patient.” —Gary Shteyngart, New York Times–bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story “A book that will last.” —Colum McCann, National Book Award–winning author of Let the Great World Spin

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251

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HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547525214

ISBN 13

9780547525211

Nobody's Son: A Memoir

By: Mark Slouka

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Nobody's Son: A Memoir

By: Mark Slouka

I have never before read anything except Nabokov’s Speak, Memory that so relentlessly and shrewdly exhausted the kindness and cruelty of recollection’s shaping devices." —Geoffrey Wolff Born in Czechoslovakia, Mark Slouka’s parents survived the Nazis only to have to escape the Communist purges after the war. Smuggled out of their own country, the newlyweds joined a tide of refugees moving from Innsbruck to Sydney to New York, dragging with them a history of blood and betrayal that their son would be born into. From World War I to the present, Slouka pieces together a remarkable story of refugees and war, displacement and denial—admitting into evidence memories, dreams, stories, the lies we inherit, and the lies we tell—in an attempt to reach his mother, the enigmatic figure at the center of the labyrinth. Her story, the revelation of her life-long burden and the forty-year love affair that might have saved her, shows the way out of the maze.

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217

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393292312

ISBN 13

9780393292312

All That Is Left Is All That Matters: Stories

By: Mark Slouka

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All That Is Left Is All That Matters: Stories

By: Mark Slouka

A searing, poignantly rendered collection of stories chronicling the lives of ordinary people battling the forces of love and loss, from "one of the great unsung writers of our time" (Colum McCann). In fifteen beautifully wrought stories—ranging from occupied Czechoslovakia to California’s Central Valley to the rainforests of the Pacific Northwest—Mark Slouka explores moments in life when our back is to the wall. One of the most forceful American writers of his generation, Slouka captures the depth and emotional range of an array of characters—from a young boy attempting to shield his father from painful memories in "The Hare’s Mask" to a lonely man whose beloved dog inexplicably begins to sprout razor blades from her skin in "Dog." Whether battling the end of desire, the fact of injustice, or death itself, the men and women in these stories are doing everything possible to tighten their grip on life. In "Crossing," a father hoping to compensate for his failures finds himself facing his past while fording a river with his young son on his back; in "Conception," a young couple frozen by the possible end of their marriage is offered an unexpected way back; in "Half-Life," a proud, aging shut-in finds her resolve tested by an extraordinary visitor determined to shatter her solitude. Like its title, All That Is Left Is All That Matters consoles us with life’s tender humor and unexpected moments of redemption in the face of heartbreak, tragedy, and dislocation.

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128

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393292290

ISBN 13

9780393292299

All That Is Left Is All That Matters: Stories

By: Mark Slouka

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All That Is Left Is All That Matters: Stories

By: Mark Slouka

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128

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W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393292290

ISBN 13

9780393292299

Nobody's Son: A Memoir

By: Mark Slouka

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Nobody's Son: A Memoir

By: Mark Slouka

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217

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W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393292312

ISBN 13

9780393292312

Brewster: A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

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Brewster: A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

Intense and elegiac…devastatingly agile." —New York Times Book Review The year is 1968. The world is changing, and sixteen-year-old Jon Mosher is determined to change with it. Racked by guilt over his older brother’s childhood death and stuck in the dead-end town of Brewster, New York, he turns his rage into victories running track. Meanwhile, Ray Cappicciano, a rebel as gifted with his fists as Jon is with his feet, is trying to take care of his baby brother while staying out of the way of his abusive, ex-cop father. When Jon and Ray form a tight friendship, they find in each other everything they lack at home, but it’s not until Ray falls in love with beautiful, headstrong Karen Dorsey that the three friends begin to dream of breaking away from Brewster for good. Freedom, however, has its price. As forces beyond their control begin to bear down on them, Jon sets off on the race of his life—a race to redeem his past and save them all. Mark Slouka's work has been called "relentlessly observant, miraculously expressive" (New York Times Book Review). Reverberating with compassion, heartache, and grace, Brewster is an unforgettable coming-of-age story from one of our most compelling novelists. A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice A Washington Post Notable Book of 2013 A Barron’s Favorite Book of the Year, selected by Daniel Woodrell A Booklist Best Adult Books for Young Adults Editor’s Choice 2013

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Page Count

288

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393240517

ISBN 13

9780393240511

God's Fool

By: Mark Slouka

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God's Fool

By: Mark Slouka

Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng were considered a marvel, an omen, an act of God, evidence of His glory or proof of His wrath. Uniquely cursed, enslaved to one another for life, they were a joke of nature variously feared and abhorred, disturbing our most basic assumptions about the human condition. Mark Slouka’s dazzling achievement in God’s Fool is the ease and compassion with which he draws the story of one human being from this ghastly predicament. Looking beyond the twins’ physical connection, he imagines one man’s life of ordinary grace and suffering, longing and resistance, and the ties of love, as well as of blood, that bind and redeem us all. By any standard, theirs is a history of epic variety and drama. Their birth, to an illiterate fishmonger, sent midwives screaming from the room. Condemned to death, they survived to be brought, at the age of thirteen, to the Royal Palace in Bangkok for an audience with King Rama III. At seventeen, laboring as merchants on the Meklong River, they saw their world erased by a typhoon. Consigned for three hundred pounds to an opium trader by their mother, who was desperate to ensure their survival, they sailed for Europe. There they entertained kings and counselors in salons and drawing rooms from Brussels to Rome, and, in Paris, met the woman who would divide them as no surgeon ever could. When the culture that had lifted them up inevitably cast them down, they landed in the flophouses of London, where, penniless and starving, they were discovered by Phineas T. Barnum, who packed them off to America along with an assortment of bearded ladies and two-headed calves, albino beauties and dog boys, German midgets and twelve-fingered flute players. Leaving Barnum at the height of their fame to take a last stab at normal life, they settled in North Carolina, where, despite the tensions growing between them, they found, for a time, tranquillity as farmers and slave owners, marrying a pair of sisters and fathering, between them, twenty children. Their peace, however, would prove to be short-lived. As the Civil War drew closer, and their world began to tilt, they would first turn against each other and then, faced with a trial unlike any they had ever known, draw together once more. No longer young, they set off to find the war, and to save what could be saved. It would be there, on that very real battlefield, that Chang would enact his final, terrifying battle with fate. Sweeping and intimate, vibrant and austere, God’s Fool is a novel of soaring ambition and accomplishment from a fiercely gifted storyteller.

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323

Publisher

Vintage

Published Date

ISBN 10

0307789756

ISBN 13

9780307789754

God's Fool: A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

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God's Fool: A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

If you can read [God’s Fool] without being astonished and touched, then you’d better check to see if your heart is made of stone…simply brilliant. A book of the year." —Dallas Morning News Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng were considered a marvel, an act of God. By any standard, theirs is a history of epic variety and drama. Mark Slouka recounts their tumultuous story, from the docks of Vietnam to American fame, with intimacy and compassion. A Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Dallas Morning News Best Book of the Year.

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Page Count

222

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

039335265X

ISBN 13

9780393352658

Customary International Law and Treaties

A Study of Their Interactions and Interrelations, with Special Consideration of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties

By: Mark Eugen Villiger

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Customary International Law and Treaties

A Study of Their Interactions and Interrelations, with Special Consideration of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties

By: Mark Eugen Villiger

A study of their interactions and interrelations, with special consideration of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties."--T.p.

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482

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9024729807

ISBN 13

9789024729807

Contemporary Issues in Leadership

By: William E. Rosenbach,Robert L. Taylor,Mark A. Youndt

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Contemporary Issues in Leadership

By: William E. Rosenbach,Robert L. Taylor,Mark A. Youndt

This book describes concepts of leadership that range from self-leadership and transactional and transformational leadership to transcendental leadership and the intersection of self, group, and organizational leadership. It discusses the paradox of the dual role of leader and follower.

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317

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

042996255X

ISBN 13

9780429962554

Customary International Law and Treaties

A Manual on the Theory and Practice of the Interrelation of Sources

By: Mark Eugen Villiger

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Customary International Law and Treaties

A Manual on the Theory and Practice of the Interrelation of Sources

By: Mark Eugen Villiger

States often regard themselves bound by treaty rules which have developed under customary international law, even though many of the treaties themselves have not been ratified. The Law of the Sea Convention, for instance, has generated new customary rules which modified the 1958 Geneva Conventions. These & many other issues are dealt with clearly & systematically in this informative handbook on the relations between written & unwritten international law. The conclusions of the first edition of Customary International Law & Treaties were largely confirmed by the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua Case. This fully revised second edition, while basing itself on the original version, brings the subject up to date.

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Page Count

374

Publisher

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

9041104585

ISBN 13

9789041104588

Pollution, Politics, and International Law

Tankers at Sea

By: R. Michael M’Gonigle,Mark W. Zacher

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Pollution, Politics, and International Law

Tankers at Sea

By: R. Michael M’Gonigle,Mark W. Zacher

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1979.

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414

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520339185

ISBN 13

9780520339187

Why Football Matters

My Education in the Game

By: Mark Edmundson

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Why Football Matters

My Education in the Game

By: Mark Edmundson

Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority. The athlete is a noble figure with a proud lineage. The jock is America at its worst. When Mark Edmundson’s son began to play organized football, and proved to be very good at it, Edmundson had to come to terms with just what he thought about the game. Doing so took him back to his own childhood, when as a shy, soft boy growing up in a blue-collar Boston suburb in the sixties, he went out for the high school football team. Why Football Matters is the story of what happened to Edmundson when he tried to make himself into a football player. What does it mean to be a football player? At first Edmundson was hapless on the field. He was an inept player and a bad teammate. But over time, he got over his fears and he got tougher. He learned to be a better player and came to feel a part of the team, during games but also on all sorts of escapades, not all of them savory. By playing football, Edmundson became what he and his father hoped he’d be, a tougher, stronger young man, better prepared for life. But is football-instilled toughness always a good thing? Do the character, courage, and loyalty football instills have a dark side? Football, Edmundson found, can be full of bounties. But it can also lead you into brutality and thoughtlessness. So how do you get what’s best from the game and leave the worst behind? Why Football Matters is moving, funny, vivid, and filled with the authentic anxiety and exhilaration of youth. Edmundson doesn’t regret playing football for a minute, and cherishes the experience. His triumph is to be able to see it in full, as something to celebrate, but also something to handle with care. For anyone who has ever played on a football team, is the parent of a player, or simply is reflective about its outsized influence on America, Why Football Matters is both a mirror and a lamp.

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Page Count

242

Publisher

Penguin

Published Date

ISBN 10

0143127640

ISBN 13

9780143127642

Lost Lake: Stories

By: Mark Slouka

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Lost Lake: Stories

By: Mark Slouka

“Relentlessly observant, miraculously expressive, these [stories] see through the mirrored surface into a hidden yet strangely intimate world.” —New York Times Book Review Set in a tiny Czech community on the shores of Lost Lake, these stories chronicle three generations of men and women under the spell of a landscape with a powerful history. Mark Slouka explores both the quiet glory of the natural world and the mysterious motions of the human spirit. A New York Times Notable Book A California Book Award Silver Medalist for Fiction

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W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393352676

ISBN 13

9780393352672

The Visible World

A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

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The Visible World

A Novel

By: Mark Slouka

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251

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HMH

Published Date

ISBN 10

0547525214

ISBN 13

9780547525211

The Visible World

By: Mark Slouka

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The Visible World

By: Mark Slouka

The Visible World is an evocative, powerfully romantic novel about a son's attempt to understand his mother's past, a search that leads him to a tragic love affair and the heroic story of the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi by the Czech resistance. The narrator is the American-born son of Czech immigrants living in New York, growing up in an atmosphere haunted by fragments of a past he cannot understand. At the heart of that past is his mother, Ivana, a spontaneous, passionate woman drifting ever closer to despair.

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280

Published Date

ISBN 10

1405649550

ISBN 13

9781405649551

Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires, Volume Two: Mark 8:30–16:8 and Implications

Mark's Jesus from the Perspective of Power and Expectations

By: Mark J. Keown

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Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires, Volume Two: Mark 8:30–16:8 and Implications

Mark's Jesus from the Perspective of Power and Expectations

By: Mark J. Keown

At the time of Christ, world politics was an ebb and flow of colliding empires and forces. The world knew only dynastic succession and rule by force. Israel was swept up in this world. Her expectations of deliverance, while diverse, had in common the anticipation of violent liberation by an alliance of God, the expected one (Theo), and Israel's forces. Her vision included the subjugation of the world to Yahweh. Any messianic claimant would be expected to fulfill this hope. Mark's story of Jesus must be read against such expectations of military power. Mark knows that Jesus' plan of salvation differed radically from this. Rather than liberation through revolution, it involved deliverance through humble, loving service and cross-bearing. However, the disciples follow Jesus but do not understand Jesus' purpose. They constantly expect war. So, the Gospel is then read from Mark's full understanding and the disciples' flawed perspective. In this first volume of Jesus in a World of Colliding Empires, Keown backgrounds Mark and the political situations of the world at the time. He then unpacks Mark 1:1--8:29 as Jesus seeks to show the disciples he is Messiah while drawing out the deep irony of their incomprehension.

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Page Count

367

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1532643861

ISBN 13

9781532643866

Luke the Chronicler

The Narrative Arc of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles in Luke-Acts

By: Mark Giacobbe

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Luke the Chronicler

The Narrative Arc of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles in Luke-Acts

By: Mark Giacobbe

This book proposes a fresh understanding of the literary composition of Luke-Acts. Picking up on the ancient practice of literary mimesis, the author argues that Luke’s two-part narrative is subtly but significantly modeled on the two-part narrative found in the books of Samuel-Kings and Chronicles. Specifically, Luke’s gospel presents Jesus as the promised, ultimate Davidide, while the Book of Acts presents the disciples of Jesus as the heirs of the kingdom of David. In addition to the proposal concerning the composition of Luke-Acts, the book offers compelling insights on the genre of Luke-Acts and the purpose of Acts.

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Page Count

303

Publisher

BRILL

Published Date

ISBN 10

9004540288

ISBN 13

9789004540286

Memoirs of How It All Began

A Performance Interpretation of the Gospel of Luke

By: Mark F. Whitters

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Memoirs of How It All Began

A Performance Interpretation of the Gospel of Luke

By: Mark F. Whitters

This is a prequel to Memoirs of an Unfinished Tale, a summary of what the followers of Jesus did after Jesus was no longer present. Luke steps out of the text once more to communicate directly with Theophilus his companion—and with us—as if we all are meeting Jesus for the first time. What was it that drew everyone to Jesus in the first place? Luke arranges a revised script that brings the characters to life as actors and then calls us into performance alongside them. In such an imaginative world, there is no predetermined outcome of the story. Instead we find ourselves in a “what-if” restaging of Jesus’ life and the responses of his followers. This is a fresh way of presenting the Bible, a method based on a rapidly growing movement in college and university classrooms called “reacting.” Nonetheless, it is in line with more traditional ways of understanding Scripture as performed in the context of liturgy. Within Memoirs of How It All Began, there are six different gaming applications intended to bring our generation into Luke’s world—or Luke into our world. At the same time, this book challenges the individual reader with creative poems and illustrations and a built-in system of interpretative questions for daily readings.

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Page Count

279

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1532660480

ISBN 13

9781532660481

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