Under a Sickle Moon

Under a Sickle Moon
Author: Peregrine Hodson
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2002-08-08
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780802139528

In 1984 journalist Peregrine Hodson crossed the Pakistan border into Afghanistan with rebel mujahedin smuggling arms and ammunition, beginning a thousand-mile journey through the war-torn nation. Fluent in Farsi, he was able to observe the war with stunning intimacy and eloquently capture the essence of the Afghan people and their culture. As the travelers survived bombings by Soviet aircraft, an ambush by a rival faction, and becoming swept up in a major offensive, Hodson would come to gain a unique perspective on their hopes for peace and religious devotion. Bringing together travel writing, war reportage, and history, this is a richly rendered portrait of a complex people. "Gripping and moving ... [a] powerful account of a war that has often been described as 'forgotten.'" -- Gail Pool, The Christian Science Monitor "Will long remain the most vivid account of a strange and horrible wrong." -- Ahmed Rashid, The Independent (London) "Vivid and intriguing." -- Jonathan Kirsch, -- Los Angeles Times Book Review

Beneath the Crescent Moon

Beneath the Crescent Moon
Author: Louis J. Cuccia
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 187
Release: 2020-12-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1663213860

It is April 2018 when Raymond Lester Morone is arrested and held at the New Orleans Parish Prison on suspicion of the murders of three single women. If convicted, he faces execution. Unfortunately, Raymond’s arrest reveals more questions than answers. According to the police report, he doesn’t exist. Justin Lancer, an investigator for a local tabloid, is Raymond’s only hope. After Justin is pressed by his boss to partner with hard-nosed detective, Dominic DeAngelis, the investigation reveals new information that forces the detective to reopen his file in search of missing tattoo artist Andre LeBlanc. As Justin struggles with Dominic, his boss, and his relationship with his college sweetheart, his investigation sends him to the dark side of New Orleans where his search for truth and moral justice is further complicated by reappearing astrological symbols and his realization that LeBlanc may hold a critical piece of the missing puzzle. But when Justin crosses paths with an unusual street preacher, a proclaimed ragpicker, and a lady from Morone’s past, his hope for a resolution is finally renewed. In this exciting mystery, a tabloid reporter must partner with a stubborn police detective in search of the secrets that lurk in the shadows after a New Orleans man is accused of three murders.

Afghanistan's Endless War

Afghanistan's Endless War
Author: Larry P. Goodson
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780295980508

Going beyond the stereotypes of Kalashnikov-wielding Afghan mujahideen and the black-turbaned fundamentalists, Larry Goodson combines Taliban interviews and fiedl research with concise analysis to explain what has been happening in Afghanistan in the last 20 years and why the future of Afghanistan matters.

A Journey Through Afghanistan

A Journey Through Afghanistan
Author: David Chaffetz
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2001
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226100642

Shortly before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, David Chaffetz and a fellow American student slipped from the protection of Western culture and immersed themselves in the customs, fears, and hopes of the Afghan people, setting out on horseback through the mountains and into a lonely, hermetic world of nomads and isolated villages. Chaffetz's vivid, honest, and often poignant account of their experience reveals a great deal about the people of Afghanistan-and Willard Wood, his traveling companion, contributes a foreword considering the experience of the Afghan people in the new light of autumn, 2001.

Tumble & Blue

Tumble & Blue
Author: Cassie Beasley
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2017-08-29
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0698189078

From the New York Times bestselling author of Circus Mirandus comes the magic-infused story of a golden gator, two cursed kids, and how they take their destinies into their own hands. When the red moon rises over the heart of the Okefenokee swamp, legend says that the mysterious golden gator Munch will grant good luck to the poor soul foolish enough to face him. But in 1817, when TWO fools reach him at the same time, the night’s fate is split. With disastrous consequences for both . . . and their descendants. Half of the descendants have great fates, and the other half have terrible ones. Now, Tumble Wilson and Blue Montgomery are determined to fix their ancestors’ mistakes and banish the bad luck that’s followed them around for all of their lives. They’re going to face Munch the gator themselves, and they’re going to reclaim their destinies. But what if the legend of Munch is nothing but a legend, after all? Full of friendship, family, and the everyday magic and adventure that readers of Savvy and A Snicker of Magic love, Cassie Beasley’s newest middle grade book is another crowd-pleasing heart-warmer—perfect for reading by yourself, or sharing with someone you love.

Nocturne

Nocturne
Author: James Attlee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2011-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226030962

“Nobody who has not taken one can imagine the beauty of a walk through Rome by full moon,” wrote Goethe in 1787. Sadly, the imagination is all we have today: in Rome, as in every other modern city, moonlight has been banished, replaced by the twenty-four-hour glow of streetlights in a world that never sleeps. Moonlight, for most of us, is no more. So James Attlee set out to find it. Nocturne is the record of that journey, a traveler’s tale that takes readers on a dazzling nighttime trek that ranges across continents, from prehistory to the present, and through both the physical world and the realms of art and literature. Attlee attends a Buddhist full-moon ceremony in Japan, meets a moon jellyfish on a beach in Northern France, takes a moonlit hike in the Arizona desert, and experiences a lunar eclipse on New Year’s Eve atop the snowbound Welsh hills. Each locale is illuminated not just by the moonlight he seeks, but by the culture and history that define it. We learn about Mussolini’s pathological fear of moonlight; trace the connections between Caspar David Friedrich, Rudolf Hess, and the Apollo space mission; and meet the inventors of the Moonlight Collector in the American desert, who aim to cure all kinds of ailments with concentrated lunar rays. Svevo and Blake, Whistler and Hokusai, Li Po and Marinetti are all enlisted, as foils, friends, or fellow travelers, on Attlee’s journey. Pulled by the moon like the tide, Attlee is firmly in a tradition of wandering pilgrims that stretches from Basho to Sebald; like them, he presents our familiar world anew.

STATIONS OF THE SUPERCROSS

STATIONS OF THE SUPERCROSS
Author: John O'Loughlin
Publisher: John O'Loughlin
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2022-05-09
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1326176145

Those familiar with John O'Loughlin's work, particularly with his writings of the past few years, will know that he likes to combine philosophy, or a logically structured way of writing derived from years of abstract thought, with other approaches to text, including autobiographical, psychological, poetical (to a degree), historical, political, religious, and analytical, so that the results, sometimes confusing, are rarely predictable, but can take you by surprise, as when you pass from an autobiographical sketch or a political observation straight into an intensely analytical or philosophical section, though usually not without some forewarning or a lacuna of some sort in the layout of the text. So it is here, in this remarkable collection of structured aphorisms and maxims and what might appear to be essays but are, in fact, aphorisms of a more discursive nature within a title-shunning format that eschews paragraphs in keeping with its aphoristic bias – rather Nietzschean in a way – that he long ago identified with the concept of 'supernotes', or notes that have been copied from a notebook and reworked and refined and expanded upon until they resemble short essays, without, however, conceding much else to essayistic tradition. In such a mainly metaphysical fashion John O'Loughlin has consistently advanced the theoretical breadth and depth of his work, derived, naturally, from habitual thought processes, and the results should speak confidently and credibly enough for themselves without our having to say very much about them, other, of course, than that they continue in the vein to which we have become accustomed the struggle for truth, or philosophical credibility and metaphysical insight, and have continued the process to a new and hopefully final level or stage of completion which it would be difficult if not impossible for him or, for that matter, anyone else to reasonably surpass, bearing in mind the complexities that so exactingly comprehensive an approach to logic as he has fathered both here and in the past inevitably entail. So maybe the job, or task, which this author humbly and somewhat naively set himself over four decades ago, is now completed, and with such a degree of structural credibility that he has even been able to bend the rules and invent one or two new words and new ways of thinking about old words or subjects or categories that, frankly, should stand up to scrutiny and any amount of analytical attention. But, of course, a book of his is an adventure, never quite knowing where it is going or where, eventually, it will get to, and this one is no exception, since the sheer eclecticism of John O'Loughlin's writings makes it difficult to nail it down to a specific title, even if the subtitle he has chosen, viz. 'Attraction and Reaction in Gender Perspective', is certainly quite well-represented in the text, albeit by degrees and not at all at the beginning. Evidently a number of other specific titles came to mind, but none of them would have adequately represented anything but a fraction of the overall text, and so, in the end, he wisely and, we think, correctly opted for a title that would be both sufficiently abstract and sufficiently ambiguous (for it actually is, if you ponder it for a moment) as to do general justice to a style of writing that refuses to follow the usual linear patterns of composition of the 'straight press', including essayists, but gives you so many strands of thought to follow or think about that no single strand, be it philosophical or autobiographical or anything else, could possibly do justice to the entirety of the text, which, as intimated above, is of an intensely eclectic character. That is how he writes, how he prefers to write, and we make no apologies. You can take it or leave it. But those who persevere with his work – and not only here but in previous books – will, if they are sufficiently intelligent and of the right turn-of-mind, be rewarded to a degree that few other books, we venture to assert, would reward them, since few other authors could possibly claim to have achieved as much or to have brought their philosophy to such a conclusively logical pass, and you would have to be a fool or scoundrel not to see that or profit from it!

Selected Poems

Selected Poems
Author: Carl Sandburg
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 324
Release: 1996
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780156003964

"What Sandburg knew and said was what America knew from the beginning and said from the beginning and has not yet, no matter what is believed of her, forgotten how to say," wrote Archibald MacLeish about Carl Sandburg - that most American of poets - and his connection to the American psyche.

The Collected Works

The Collected Works
Author: Arthur Machen
Publisher: DigiCat
Total Pages: 4013
Release: 2022-11-13
Genre: Fiction
ISBN:

Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella The Great God Pan has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror (Stephen King has called it "Maybe the best [horror story] in the English language"). Historian of fantastic literature Brian Stableford has suggested that Machen "was the first writer of authentically modern horror stories, and his best works must still be reckoned among the finest products of the genre". This edition includes: Novels: The Three Impostors The Hill of Dreams The Terror: A Mystery The Secret Glory Short Stories and Novellas: A Fragment of Life The White People The Great God Pan The Inmost Light The Shining Pyramid The Red Hand The Bowmen The Soldiers' Rest The Monstrance The Dazzling Light The Bowmen And Other Noble Ghosts The Marriage of Panurge Psychology The Rose Garden The Ceremony The Happy Children The Great Return A New Christmas Carol Out of the Earth Essay: Hieroglyphics Translation: The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798 Autobiography: Far Off Things Criticism: Arthur Machen: A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin (With Two Uncollected Poems by Arthur Machen)