City of Saints and Madmen

City of Saints and Madmen
Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: Picador
Total Pages: 674
Release: 2022-01-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0374721157

From Jeff VanderMeer, the author of Borne and Annihilation, comes the paperback reissue of his cult classic City of Saints and Madmen. In this reinvention of the literature of the fantastic, you hold in your hands an invitation to a place unlike any you’ve ever visited—an invitation delivered by one of our most audacious and astonishing literary magicians. City of elegance and squalor. Of religious fervor and wanton lusts. And everywhere, on the walls of courtyards and churches, an incandescent fungus of mysterious and ominous origin. In Ambergris, a would-be suitor discovers that a sunlit street can become a killing ground in the blink of an eye. An artist receives an invitation to a beheading—and finds himself enchanted. And a patient in a mental institution is convinced that he’s made up a city called Ambergris, imagined its every last detail, and that he’s really from a place called Chicago . . . By turns sensuous and terrifying, filled with exotica and eroticism, this interwoven collection of stories, histories, and “eyewitness” reports invokes a universe within a puzzle box where you can lose—and find—yourself again.

The Madness of the Saints

The Madness of the Saints
Author: June McDaniel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 347
Release: 1989-07-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0226557235

Although ecstasy has been explored in several Indian contexts, surprisingly little scholarship has been devoted to its central role in Bengali devotion. In The Madness of the Saints, June McDaniel undertakes the first comprehensive study of religious ecstasy in Bengal, examining the texts that describe it, the people who experience it, and the traditions that support it.

Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics

Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics
Author: Nancy Scheper-Hughes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2001-01-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0520224809

"Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, in its original form--now integrally reproduced in the new edition--is a most important seminal study of an Irish community."—Conor Cruise O'Brien

Finch

Finch
Author: Jeff VanderMeer
Publisher: Underland Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2009
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0980226015

In a world where mysterious underground dwellers rule the state of Ambergris and control its residents with addictive drugs, internment camps and random acts of terror, John Finch and his partner, Wyte, must solve a double murder for their oppressive masters, all while trying to make contact with the scattered rebel resistance.

Tears and Saints

Tears and Saints
Author: E. M. Cioran
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 155
Release: 1998-07-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0226106748

"(Cioran's) statements have the compression of poetry and the audacity of cosmic clowning".--WASHINGTON POST. In TEARS AND SAINTS, Cioran touches on nearly all the themes that would preoccupy the writer over the course of his career. Self-consciously perverse, this collection will fascinate anyone interested in saints, mysticism, philosophy, the history of Christianity, or the ultimate strangeness of the sacred.

Household Saints

Household Saints
Author: Francine Prose
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2013-09-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1480445061

This tale of a family in Little Italy is “a minor miracle . . . documenting the madness and the grace of God in everyday life” (Newsweek). On a 1950s September night so hot that the devout Catholics of Little Italy wonder if New York City has slipped into hell, the butcher Joseph Santangelo invites his friends to play pinochle. At the end of a long, sweaty, boozy evening, his friend Lino Falconetti, addled by wine and heat, bets the hand of his daughter, Catherine—and Santangelo wins. Santangelo’s modern new wife clashes immediately with his superstitious, fiercely protective mother. But years later, it is Catherine who is horrified when the daughter they raise turns out to have more in common with the old world than the new. From a New York Times–bestselling author, this story of two generations of an Italian-American family is imaginative, evocative, funny, and warm—and was made into an acclaimed film directed by Nancy Savoca, starring Tracey Ullman, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Lili Taylor.

The Wisdom of Psychopaths

The Wisdom of Psychopaths
Author: Kevin Dutton
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2012-10-16
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0385677197

Psychopath. The word conjurs up images of serial killers, rapists, suicide bombers, gangsters. But think again: you could probably benefit from being a little more psychopathic yourself. Psychologist Kevin Dutton has made a speciality of psychopathy, and is on first-name terms with many notorious killers. But unlike those incarcerated psychopaths, and all those depicted in movies and crime fiction, most are not violent, he explains. In fact, says Prof Dutton, they have a lot of good things going for them. Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic and focused--qualities tailor-made for success in today's society. The Wisdom of Psychopaths is an intellectual rollercoaster ride that combines lightning-hot science with unprecedented access to secret monasteries, Special Forces training camps, and high-security hospitals. In it, you will meet serial killers, war heroes, financiers, movie stars and attorneys--and discover that beneath the hype and popular characterization, psychopaths have something to teach us. Like the knobs on a mixing deck, psychopathy is graded. And finding the right combination of psychopathic traits, sampled and mixed at carefully calibrated volumes, can put us ahead of the game.

Saints and Madmen

Saints and Madmen
Author: Russell Shorto
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2000-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780805059014

Psychiatry, once famously opposed to religion, has done an about-face. Like the legendary explorers of a century ago, some psychiatrists have set off into what they see as the last frontier: the spiritual self. In this moving and impeccably researched narrative, Russell Shorto tells remarkable stories of people suffering from what once were deemed spiritual afflictions, then came to be seen as purely medical disorders, and now are being treated as both. In the process, Shorto brings to bear issues from the cutting edge of consciousness studies. He explores the shared territory of psychosis and mysticism; the changing meaning of "self," "soul," "mind," and "brain"; the theory that psychotropic drugs have a spiritual dimension; the meaning of religious terrorism; and the possibility that addiction and depression are spiritual conditions. In weaving his case studies into a single story, Shorto delivers a concise update on the science of the mind and the newest efforts to probe the deepest meaning of human existence.

From Mission to Madness

From Mission to Madness
Author: Valeen Tippetts Avery
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780252067013

Avery draws on a large body of correspondence for details of David's life and on his poetry to reveal his personality and emotional struggles. She tells of his mental deterioration, starting with a probable breakdown early in 1870 and ending with his death in 1904 in the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane in Elgin, where he had been confined for twenty-seven years.