Dangerous Laughter

Dangerous Laughter
Author: Steven Millhauser
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2008-02-12
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 030726873X

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Martin Dressler—hailed by The New Yorker as “a virtuoso of waking dreams”—comes a dazzling collection of darkly comic stories united by their obsession with obsession. "Remarkable ... Not just brilliant but prescient." —The New York Times Book Review In Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser transports us to unknown universes that uncannily resemble our own. The collection is divided into three parts that fit seamlessly together as a whole. It opens with a bang, as “Cat ’n’ Mouse” reimagines the deadly ritual between cartoon rivals in a comedy of dynamite and anvils—a masterly prologue that sets the stage for the alluring, very grown-up twists that follow. Part one, “Vanishing Acts,” features stories of risk and escape: a lonely woman disappears without a trace; a high school boy becomes entangled with his best friend’s troubled sister; and a group of teenagers play a treacherous game that pushes them deep into “the kingdom of forbidden things.” Excess reigns in the vivid, haunting places of Part two’s “Impossible Architectures,” where domes enclose whole cities, and a king’s master miniaturist creates objects so tiny that soon his entire world is invisible. Finally, “Heretical Histories” presents startling alternatives to the remembered past. “A Precursor of the Cinema” proposes a new, enigmatic form of illusion. And in the astonishing “The Wizard of West Orange” a famous inventor sets out to simulate the sense of touch—but success brings disturbing consequences. Sensual, mysterious, Dangerous Laughter is a mesmerizing journey through brilliantly realized labyrinths of mortal pleasures that stretch the boundaries of the ordinary world to their limits—and occasionally beyond.

New York Times Book of the Civil War 1861-1865

New York Times Book of the Civil War 1861-1865
Author: Harold Holzer
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
Total Pages: 1723
Release: 2010-10-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1603763767

The Civil War as you've never experienced it before, through original, first-hand reportage of The New York Times, the country's newspaper of record. Available for the first time in a unique book/DVD package The New York Times, established in 1851, was one of the few newspapers with correspondents on the front lines throughout the Civil War. The Complete Civil War collects every article written about the war from 1861 to 1865, plus select pieces before and after the war and is filled with the action, politics, and personal stories of this monumental event. From the first shot fired at Fort Sumter to the surrender at Appomattox, and from the Battle of Antietam to the Battle of Atlanta, as well as articles on slavery, states rights, the role of women, and profiles of noted heroes such as Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, the era comes alive through these daily first-hand accounts. More than 600 of the most crucial and interesting articles in the book? Typeset and designed for easy reading Commentary by Editors and Civil War scholars Harold Holzer and Craig Symonds More than 104,000 additional articles on the DVD-ROM? every article the Times published during the war. A detailed chronology highlights articles and events of interest that can be found on the disk. Strikingly designed and illustrated with hundreds of maps, historical photographs, and engravings, this book is a treasure for Civil War and history buffs everywhere. "This is a fascinating and riveting look at the most important event in American history as seen through the eyes of an institution that was emerging as the most important newspaper in American history. In these pages, the Civil War seems new and fresh, unfolding day after anxious day, as the fate of the republic hangs in the balance." -- Ken Burns "Serious historians and casual readers alike will find this extraordinary collection of 600 articles and editorials about the Civil War published in The New York Times before and during the war of great value and interest . . . enough to keep the most assiduous student busy for the next four years of the war's sesquicentennial observations." -- James McPherson "This fascinating work catapults readers back in time, allowing us to live through the Civil War as daily readers of The New York Times, worrying about the outcome of battles, wondering about our generals, debating what to do about slavery, hearing the words that Lincoln spoke, feeling passionate about our politics. Symonds and Holzer have found an ingenious new way to experience the most dramatic event in our nation's history." -- Doris Kearns Goodwin "Harold Holzer and Craig Symonds have included not only every pertinent article from the pages of The Times, but enhanced and illuminated them with editorial commentary that adds context and perspective, making the articles more informative and useful here than they were in the original issues. Nowhere else can readers of today get such an understanding of how readers of 1861-1865 learned of and understood their war." -- William C Davis The DVD runs on Windows 2000/XP or Mac OS X 10.3 or later.

Law Notes

Law Notes
Author: Albert Gibson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 442
Release: 1894
Genre: Law
ISBN:

Food Safety and Quality

Food Safety and Quality
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Subcommittee on Agricultural Research and General Legislation
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1977
Genre: Chemicals
ISBN:

Parliamentary Debates (Hansard).

Parliamentary Debates (Hansard).
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons
Publisher:
Total Pages: 972
Release: 1916
Genre: Great Britain
ISBN:

Contains the 4th session of the 28th Parliament through the session of the Parliament.

The Parliamentary Debates (official Report).

The Parliamentary Debates (official Report).
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons
Publisher:
Total Pages: 976
Release: 1916
Genre: Great Britain
ISBN:

Contains the 4th session of the 28th Parliament through the 1st session of the 48th Parliament.

Understanding Steven Millhauser

Understanding Steven Millhauser
Author: Earl G. Ingersoll
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2014-02-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1611173094

An exploration of the thematic interests and narrative strategies of a contemporary American master of fiction Earl Ingersoll introduces the fiction of Steven Millhauser, whose distinguished career of more than four decades includes eight books of short fiction and four novels, the latest being the Pulitzer Prize-winning Martin Dressler (1996). In Understanding Steven Millhauser, Ingersoll explores Millhauser's twelve books chronologically, revealing the development of a major contemporary American writer and a master of fiction who cares as deeply about his craft as the modernists did earlier in the past century. While most examinations of an author's work begin with at least a biographical sketch, Ingersoll has faced distinct challenges because Millhauser has resisted efforts to read his fiction through the lens of his biography. Responding to an interviewer's request for a brief biography, Millhauser provided the succinct "1943-." Part of such resistance, Ingersoll argues, arises from Millhauser's belief that if readers have too many questions about an author's work, the author has failed, and no amount of response can redress that failure. Millhauser's central characters, such as August Eschenburg and J. Franklin Payne, are often themselves artists or technicians who are "overreachers," and Ingersoll shows that Millhauser's early expressions of literary realism have given way to interest in departures from the "real." For Millhauser, "stories, like conjuring tricks, are invented because history is inadequate to our dreams." Millhauser's strength is the ability to sustain obsessions because works of fiction succeed insofar as they are able to supplant reality. As a master fabulist, Ingersoll argues, Millhauser is preoccupied with extravagance both in the subject matter of his fiction and in his style. Whether it involves Martin Dressler doing himself in by designing and constructing increasingly complex hotels or the miniaturists in the short story "Cathay" pushing their impulse to extremes, past the eye's ability to see their art objects, Millhauser's fiction is full of such an impulse, which can produce prolific artists as well as compulsive lunatics. The triumph of Millhauser's craft, Ingersoll shows, is that it merges a fascination with the relationship between imagination and experience with a precise and allusive prose to produce works seamlessly joining the everyday with the radical and fantastic, in forms ranging from travelogues of the imagination to works merging the waking world with the world of dreams.

The Wizard of West Orange

The Wizard of West Orange
Author: Steven Millhauser
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 47
Release: 2015-05-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101970065

A Vintage Shorts “Short Story Month” Selection The Wizard, the greatest inventor in history, can make anything. His machines capture light, motion, and sound. So what’s going on in The Box, the most secret, most mysterious room in the Wizard’s bustling labs? When the staff librarian decides to find out, he stumbles upon a new realm of invention and sensation that will leave the world irreparably changed. “The Wizard of West Orange” is Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Millhauser’s incantatory reimagining of Thomas Edison’s work, from the dazzling collection Dangerous Laughter. An eBook short.