The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Author: Junot Diaz
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2008-09-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0571246206

Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he's sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukú - the curse that has haunted his family for generations. With dazzling energy and insight Díaz immerses us in the tumultuous lives of Oscar; his runaway sister Lola; their beautiful mother Belicia; and in the family's uproarious journey from the Dominican Republic to the US and back. Rendered with uncommon warmth and humour, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is a literary triumph, that confirms Junot Díaz as one of the most exciting writers of our time.

Schooling Hip-Hop

Schooling Hip-Hop
Author: Marc Lamont Hill
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2015-04-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0807773565

This book brings together veteran and emerging scholars from a variety of fields to chart new territory for hip-hop based education. Looking beyond rap music and the English language arts classroom, innovative chapters unpack the theory and practice of hip-hop based education in science, social studies, college composition, teacher education, and other fields. Authors consider not only the curricular aspects of hip-hop but also how its deeper aesthetics such as improvisational freestyling and competitive battling can shape teaching and learning in both secondary and higher education classrooms. Schooling Hip-Hop will spark new and creative uses of hip-hop culture in a variety of educational settings. Contributors: Jacqueline Celemencki, Christopher Emdin, H. Bernard Hall, Decoteau J. Irby, Bronwen Low, Derek Pardue, James Braxton Peterson, David Stovall, Eloise Tan, and Joycelyn A. Wilson “Hip hop has come of age on the broader social and cultural scene. However, it is still in its infancy in the academy and school classrooms. Hill and Petchauer have assembled a powerful group of scholars who provide elegantly theoretical and practically significant ways to consider hip hop as an important pedagogical strategy. This volume is a wonderful reminder that ‘Stakes is high!’” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin–Madison “This book is a bold, ambitious attempt to chart new intellectual, theoretical, and pedagogical directions for Hip-Hop Based Education. Hill and Petchauer are to be commended for pushing the envelope and stepping up to the challenge of taking HHBE to the next level.” —Geneva Smitherman, University Distinguished Professor Emerita, English and African American and African Studies, Michigan State University

Willa Cather

Willa Cather
Author: James Woodress
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 654
Release: 1989-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780803297081

Drawing on letters, interviews, speeches, and reminiscences, looks at the life and career of the American novelist.

Exit Laughing

Exit Laughing
Author: Irvin S. Cobb
Publisher:
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2013-10
Genre:
ISBN: 9781494119294

This is a new release of the original 1941 edition.

Reading Eustathios of Thessalonike

Reading Eustathios of Thessalonike
Author: Filippomaria Pontani
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2017-02-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110523205

Despite the relevance of Eustathios to both Classical and Byzantine studies, no monograph and no collective volume in English has yet been devoted to his figure. This book attempts to fill in this gap by addressing the various facets of his output - above all his commentaries on Homer, Dionysius the Periegete, Pindar, and the Iambic Canon on the Pentecost; but also his historiographical work, his speeches and his theological production receive due attention. The book also tackles several aspects of Eustathios‘ style (proverbs, allusions, etc.), and the meaning of his work in the context of his historical moment. Addressed at specialists but also at graduate students with an interest in the reception of Classical antiquity and in Byzantine civilisation, the volume gathers papers by leading scholars from various countries, and it opens up new paths of research in several areas of philology and history, above all by interweaving and juxtaposing Eustathios‘ dimension as an Homerist and an immensely learned classical scholar with his capacities as an orator, a highly praised teacher, a rhetorically refined writer of Greek prose, an historian of his own turbulent times, and an archbishop who had to fulfil his everyday duties.

Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars

Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars
Author: Bernard F. Dick
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 344
Release:
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780813129075

"Few ships in American history have had as illustrious a history as the heavy cruiser USS Portland (CA-33), affectionately known by her crew as 'Sweet Pea.' With the destructionof most of the U.S. battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor, cruisers such as Sweet Pea carried the biggest guns the Navy possessed for nearly a year after the start of World War II. Sweet Pea at War describes in harrowing detail how Portland and her sisters protected the precious carriers and held the line against overwhelming Japanese naval strength. Portland was instrumental in the dramatic American victories at the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway, and the naval battle of Guadalcanal--conflicts that historians regard as turning points in the Pacific war. She rescued nearly three thousand sailors from sunken ships, some of them while she herself was badly damaged. Only a colossal hurricane ended her career, but she sailed home from that, too. Based on extensive research in official documents and interviews with members of the ship's crew, Sweet Pea at War recounts from launching to scrapping the history of USS Portland, demonstrating that she deserves to be remembered as one of the most important ships in U.S. naval history.

Sasha and Emma

Sasha and Emma
Author: Paul Avrich
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 527
Release: 2012-11-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0674067673

In 1889 two Russian immigrants, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, met in a coffee shop on the Lower East Side. Over the next fifty years Emma and Sasha would be fast friends, fleeting lovers, and loyal comrades. This dual biography offers an unprecedented glimpse into their intertwined lives, the lasting influence of the anarchist movement they shaped, and their unyielding commitment to equality and justice. Berkman shocked the country in 1892 with "the first terrorist act in America," the failed assassination of the industrialist Henry Clay Frick for his crimes against workers. Passionate and pitiless, gloomy yet gentle, Berkman remained Goldman's closest confidant though the two were often separated-by his fourteen-year imprisonment and by Emma's growing fame as the champion of a multitude of causes, from sexual liberation to freedom of speech. The blazing sun to Sasha's morose moon, Emma became known as "the most dangerous woman in America." Through an attempted prison breakout, multiple bombing plots, and a dramatic deportation from America, these two unrelenting activists insisted on the improbable ideal of a socially just, self-governing utopia, a vision that has shaped movements across the past century, most recently Occupy Wall Street. Sasha and Emma is the culminating work of acclaimed historian of anarchism Paul Avrich. Before his death, Avrich asked his daughter to complete his magnum opus. The resulting collaboration, epic in scope, intimate in detail, examines the possibilities and perils of political faith and protest, through a pair who both terrified and dazzled the world.

A Puritan in Babylon

A Puritan in Babylon
Author: William Allen White
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 863
Release: 2018-12-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1789127114

This book, which was first published in 1938, began as a biography of Calvin Coolidge, but author William Allen White found early in his task that he was writing the story of the growth and rise of economic America from the seventies until the crash of the Coolidge bull market in the autumn of 1929. In this story of an era in American life, the figure of Calvin Coolidge, a curious reversion to an old type, stands out in contrast to the vivid color of a gorgeous epoch. The history of the Coolidge bull market in detail from 1921, when Coolidge came to Washington as Vice President, until 1929, when he left Washington and public life, had not been written before. As that market boomed, Calvin Coolidge as President, having all the virtues needed for another day, moved through the turmoil of the times earnestly, honestly, courageously trying to understand his country’s economic development and to act upon his understanding of a movement that baffled him and left him futile. Mr. White talked to hundreds of people who knew and were associated with President Coolidge in those days. Cabinet members, friends, White House associates, reporters, business men, big and little; and his story throws a new light upon the inside of the White House, and upon the President through the years.

Carlo Tresca

Carlo Tresca
Author: Nunzio Pernicone
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2011-04-25
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1459618904

Arriving in America in 1904, Carlo Tresca began a nearly forty-year stretch as an active revolutionary. Nunzio Pernicone's definitive biography chronicles Tresca's larger-than-life personality, his revolutionary apprenticeship in Sulmona, Italy, and his subsequent career as fighter for liberty until his untimely death in 1943. The story of his life - as newspaper editor, labor agitator, anarchist, anti-communist, street fighter, and opponent of fascism - illuminates the lost world of Italian-American radicalism. Among friends and comrades Tresca counted revolutionary luminaries such as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Big Bill Haywood, Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and countless sovversivi. From his work on behalf of the IWW, to his editorship of numerous papers, including Il Proletario and Il Martello, and his assassination on the streets of New York City, Tresca's passion left a permanent mark on the American map.

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange
Author: Linda Gordon
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2010-09-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 039333905X

Introduction : "A camera is a tool for learning how to see ...".