Ryan Boudinot's Books

Blueprints of the Afterlife

By: Ryan Boudinot

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In a future world that has been decimated by a sentient glacier and corrupt nanotechnology, a film archivist, a former mercenary and a virtuoso dishwasher are manipulated by a man who is overseeing the construction of a Manhattan replica in Puget Sound.

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Page Count

450

Publisher

Black Cat

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802170919

ISBN 13

9780802170910

The Octopus Rises

By: Ryan Boudinot

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The Octopus Rises

By: Ryan Boudinot

This is a collection of literary prose short fiction―stories about the end of Bert and Ernie’s relationship, about robot love, a town who shares a heart, and much more―from an up-and-coming Seattle author. Man, I had so many stab wounds, it was crazy. There I was at the conference center, and I hadn’t even adequately prepared my presentation. And so begins “Bleeding Man and Wounded Deer,” one of the stories in this collection of literary short fiction from the pen of acclaimed Seattle novelist Ryan Boudinot. Bouncing between experimental fiction, absurdist farce, paranoid futurism, and stinging satire, Boudinot’s funny, inventive prose lays bare the hopes and anxieties of our age. From a heartbreaking and pitch-perfect account of the end of Bert and Ernie’s relationship, to a story about lovelorn robots looking for a “chop-shop owner who’s willing to look the other way” in a world where robot sex is illegal, to a Miyazaki-esque story about an entire town that shares the same heart, Boudinot’s prose crackles an acerbic wit. Also featuring: “Chopsticks” (the protaganist’s cat who develops a hard drug problem); “An Essay and a Story about Mötley Crüe” (wish-fulfillment disguised as memoir); “I Used to Be a Plastic Bottle!”; and “The Guy Who Kept Meeting Himself.”

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Page Count

209

Publisher

Fantagraphics Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1606998471

ISBN 13

9781606998472

The Grammar of Good Intentions

Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence

By: Susan M. Ryan

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The Grammar of Good Intentions

Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence

By: Susan M. Ryan

Susan M. Ryan explores antebellum Americans' preoccupation with the language and practice of benevolence. Drawing on a variety of cultural and literary texts, she traces how people working and writing within social reform movements—and their outspoken opponents—helped solidify racial and class ideologies that ultimately marginalized even the most "deserving" poor. "The links between race and the relations of benevolence occasioned much soul-searching among antebellum Americans," Ryan explains. "In a period of heated public debate over issues such as slavery, Indian removal, and non-Protestant immigration, the categories of blackness, Indianness, and a generic 'foreignness' came to signify, for many whites, need itself." Ryan puts familiar literary works such as Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man, Frederick Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom, and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin back into dialogue with a broad range of print materials: the reports of charity societies, African American and Native American newspapers, juvenile fiction, travel writing, cartoons, sermons, and tract literature. In the process, she dispels the myth that authors usually classified as literary were responding to a simple and unquestioned cult of benevolence. Rather, she contends, they were participating in the complex and often rancorous debates occurring within the broader culture over how good intentions should be expressed and enacted.Ryan's inquiry into the antebellum culture of benevolence has implications for contemporary U.S. society, resonating especially with recent debates over welfare reform, the politics of compassionate conservatism, and representations of "welfare queens" and violent urban youth. As Ryan writes, "The conversations that this book reconstructs remind us of our ongoing participation in the national ritual of laying claim to good intentions.

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Page Count

253

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501718568

ISBN 13

9781501718564

Samson Occom

Radical Hospitality in the Native Northeast

By: Ryan Carr

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Samson Occom

Radical Hospitality in the Native Northeast

By: Ryan Carr

The Mohegan-Brothertown minister Samson Occom (1723–1792) was a prominent political and religious leader of the Indigenous peoples of present-day New York and New England, among whom he is still revered today. An international celebrity in his day, Occom rose to fame as the first Native person to be ordained a minister in the New England colonies. In the 1770s, he helped found the nation of Brothertown, where Coastal Algonquian families seeking respite from colonialism built a new life on land given to them by the Oneida Nation. Occom was a highly productive author, probably the most prolific Native American writer prior to the late nineteenth century. Most of Occom’s writings, however, have been overlooked, partly because many of them are about Christian themes that seem unrelated to Native life. In this groundbreaking book, Ryan Carr argues that Occom’s writings were deeply rooted in Indigenous traditions of hospitality, diplomacy, and openness to strangers. From Occom’s point of view, evangelical Christianity was not a foreign culture; it was a new opportunity to practice his people’s ancestral customs. Carr demonstrates Occom’s originality as a religious thinker, showing how his commitment to Native sovereignty shaped his reading of the Bible. By emphasizing the Native sources of Occom’s evangelicalism, this book offers new ways to understand the relations of Northeast Native traditions to Christianity, colonialism, and Indigenous self-determination.

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Page Count

221

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231558368

ISBN 13

9780231558365

Robert Morris's Folly

The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder

By: Ryan K. Smith

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Robert Morris's Folly

The Architectural and Financial Failures of an American Founder

By: Ryan K. Smith

In 1798 Robert Morris—“financier of the American Revolution,” confidant of George Washington, former U.S. senator—plunged from the peaks of wealth and prestige into debtors' prison and public contempt. How could one of the richest men in the United States, one of only two founders who signed the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution, suffer such a downfall? This book examines for the first time the extravagant Philadelphia town house Robert Morris built and its role in bringing about his ruin. Part biography, part architectural history, the book recounts Morris’s wild successes as a merchant, his recklessness as a land speculator, and his unrestrained passion in building his palatial, doomed mansion, once hailed as the most expensive private building in the United States but later known as “Morris’s Folly.” Setting Morris’s tale in the context of the nation’s founding, this volume refocuses attention on an essential yet nearly forgotten American figure while also illuminating the origins of America’s ongoing, ambivalent attitudes toward the superwealthy and their sensational excesses.

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Page Count

359

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0300196040

ISBN 13

9780300196047

In Disguise!

Undercover with Real Women Spies

By: Ryan Ann Hunter

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In Disguise!

Undercover with Real Women Spies

By: Ryan Ann Hunter

Looks at the history's most daring women, including profiles of such figures as Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman, CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, and Chinese Revolution-era spy Eva Wu.

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Page Count

176

Publisher

Simon and Schuster

Published Date

ISBN 10

1582703833

ISBN 13

9781582703831

Blueprints of the Afterlife

A Novel

By: Ryan Boudinot

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Blueprints of the Afterlife

A Novel

By: Ryan Boudinot

A tour de force novel from the “wickedly talented” (The Boston Globe) and “darkly funny” author of Misconception (The New York Times Book Review). Finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award It is the afterlife. The end of the world is a distant, distorted memory called “the Age of Fucked Up Shit.” A sentient glacier has wiped out most of North America. Medical care is supplied by open-source nanotechnology, and human nervous systems can be hacked. Abby Fogg is a film archivist with a niggling feeling that her life is not really her own. She may be right. Al Skinner is a former mercenary for the Boeing Army, who’s been dragging his war baggage behind him for nearly a century. Woo-jin Kan is a virtuoso dishwasher with the Restaurant and Hotel Management Olympic medals to prove it. Over them all hovers a mysterious man named Dirk Bickle, who sends all these characters to a full-scale replica of Manhattan under construction in Puget Sound. An ambitious novel that writes large the hopes and anxieties of our time—climate change, social strife, the depersonalization of the digital age—Blueprints of the Afterlife will establish Ryan Boudinot as an exceptional novelist of great daring. “Duct-tape yourself to the front of this roller coaster and enjoy the ride.” —The New York Times “Challenging, messy and funny fiction for readers looking for something way beyond space operas and swordplay.” —Kirkus Reviews “The absurdities are cleverly crafted and highly entertaining. Imaginative [and] heartfelt.” —Hannah Calkins, Shelf Awareness “Ingenious . . . Frenzied, hilarious, and paranoid . . . A bracing dystopian romp through contemporary dread.” —Publishers Weekly “Probably the strangest post-apocalyptic novel in ages.” —io9 “What an inspired mindfuck of a book!” —City Paper (Baltimore)

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Page Count

350

Publisher

Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published Date

ISBN 10

0802194745

ISBN 13

9780802194749

Misconception

A Memoir Novel

By: Ryan Boudinot

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Misconception

A Memoir Novel

By: Ryan Boudinot

Cedar Rivers has come to upstate New York, to help Kat Daniels, by vetting her memoir, an account of the summer they were sweethearts.

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Page Count

215

Publisher

Grove Press, Black Cat

Published Date

ISBN 10

080217065X

ISBN 13

9780802170651

Book's by Ryan Boudinot

Blueprints of the Afterlife

Blueprints of the Afterlife

The Octopus Rises

The Octopus Rises

The Grammar of Good Intentions

The Grammar of Good Intentions

Samson Occom

Samson Occom

Robert Morris's Folly

Robert Morris's Folly

In Disguise!

In Disguise!

Blueprints of the Afterlife

Blueprints of the Afterlife

Misconception

Misconception

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