Search results for ""overlook""

Mark Helprin’s powerful, rapturous new novel is set in a present-day Paris caught between violent unrest and its well-known, inescapable glories. Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present. In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth. In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.

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Most people don’t expect wood to flavor their food beyond the barbecue, if at all, and gastronomists rarely discuss the significance that wood has on ultimate taste. But trees and wood have a far greater influence over our plate and palate than you might think. So what does wood taste of? And how has it been used in cooking, distilling, fermenting, and even perfume creation to produce a unique flavor and smell? To find out the answers to these questions, food communications expert Artur Cisar-Erlach embarked on a global journey to understand how trees infuse the world’s most delectable dishes with the flavor of their wood. His flavor hunt extended into a three-year exploration covering everything from pizza, whisky, cheese, tea, and perfume to quinine, wine, maple syrup, blue yogurt, and more. From wooden barrels used to age scotch in Austria to wood-burning pizza ovens of Naples to traditional Canadian maple syrup producers, The Flavor of Wood explores how wood infuses some of our best-loved foods through its smoke, sap, roots, and bark. As his quest spans continents and cultures, Cisar-Erlach introduces readers to a colorful cast of characters including Modenese balsamic vinegar producers, Piedmontese truffle hunters, South Tyrolean winemakers, and wild mountain pine chefs. Discovering that wood flavors beverages as well, the author encounters Austrian whisky distillers, Bavarian brewers, avant-garde central London tea merchants, and Indian tea exporters. A world trip brimming with fascinating encounters, unexpected turns, beautiful landscapes, scientific discoveries, and historic connections, The Flavor of Wood is the story of a passionate flavor hunter, and offers readers unparalleled access to some of the world’s highest quality cuisine and unknown tree flavors.

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A translation of a follow-up to The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebeard finds young writer Optimus Yarnspinner inheriting from his beloved godfather an unpublished anonymous short story, a bequest that takes him to the city of Bookholm in search of its writer. Reprint.

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The Academy Award–winning screenplay of “a drama of surpassing beauty” (Wall Street Journal) Kenneth Lonergan’s Academy Award and BAFTA–winning screenplay for the acclaimed film Manchester by the Sea is a staggering achievement and an emotionally devastating meditation on grief. Lee Chandler is a brooding, irritable loner who works as a handyman in Boston. One damp winter day he gets a call summoning him to his hometown, Manchester-by-the-Sea, the fishing village where his working-class family has lived for generations. His brother’s heart has given out suddenly, and he’s been named guardian to his riotous 16-year-old nephew. His return re-opens an unspeakable tragedy, as he is forced to confront a past that separated him from his wife, Randi, and the community where he was born and raised. A sweeping story of loss and new beginnings, Manchester by the Sea “illuminates with quiet, unyielding grace how you and I and our neighbors get by, and sometimes how we don’t” (Boston Globe). Rounding out the volume is a trenchant and incisive introduction by Kenneth Lonergan on writing for film.

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Since its first publication in 2008, The Secret History of the World has sold over 250,000 copies and established itself as the authoritative text on the subject of esoteric belief systems and secret societies. Now, with The Illustrated Secret History of the World, this landmark book achieves a new level of authority, adding to its thorough and revealing text more than 350 illustrations—many of them rare—of the symbols, drawings, engravings, paintings, and photographs that are a key part of the world’s secret history. This richly illustrated edition features exclusive new material to accompany the original text in a beautiful package and oversized format. The Illustrated Secret History of the World presents a radical re-interpretation of human existence and a view of the world previously hidden from us. Featuring: Alchemists & Freemasons The Illuminati The Garden of Eden The Knights Templar The Looking Glass Universe The Gods Who Loved Women The Green King The Prophets The Sphinx & the Timelock The Neolithic Alexander Zarathustra The Rise of the Magi Lucifer Gnostics & Shamans Mohammed and Gabriel Francis Bacon and the Green One The Rosicrucian Age The Seven Seals & The New Jerusalem And much more . . .

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In Legends of the Samurai, Hiroaki Sato confronts both the history and the legend of the samurai, untangling the two to present an authentic picture of these legendary warriors. Through his masterful translations of original samurai tales, laws, dicta, reports, and arguments accompanied by insightful commentary, Sato chronicles the changing ethos of the Japanese warrior from the samurai's historical origins to his rise to political power. A fascinating look at Japanese history as seen through the evolution of the samurai, Legends of the Samurai stands as the ultimate authority on its subject.

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Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality. In this novel/allegory the narrator/author sets sail in the yacht Impossible to search for Mount Analogue, the geographically located, albeit hidden, peak that reaches inexorably toward heaven. Daumal's symbolic mountain represents a way to truth that "cannot not exist," and his classic allegory of man's search for himself embraces the certainty that one can know and conquer one's own reality.

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Whiteshift: the turbulent journey from a world of racially homogeneous white majorities to one of racially hybrid majorities This is the century of whiteshift. As Western societies are becoming increasingly mixed-race, demographic change is transforming politics. Over half of American babies are non-white, and by the end of the century, minorities and those of mixed race are projected to form the majority in the UK and other countries. The early stages of this transformation have led to a populist disruption, tearing a path through the usual politics of left and right. Ethnic transformation will continue, but conservative whites are unlikely to exit quietly; their feelings of alienation are already redrawing political lines and convulsing societies across the West. One of the most crucial challenges of our time is to enable conservatives as well as cosmopolitans to view whiteshift as a positive development. In this groundbreaking book, political scientist Eric Kaufmann examines the evidence to explore ethnic change in North American and Western Europe. Tracing four ways of dealing with this transformation—fight, repress, flight, and join—he charts different scenarios and calls for us to move beyond empty talk about national identity. If we want to avoid more radical political divisions, he argues, we have to open up debate about the future of white majorities. Deeply thought provoking, enriched with illustrative stories, and drawing on detailed and extraordinary survey, demographic, and electoral data, Whiteshift will redefine the way we discuss race in the twenty-first century.

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Before acclaimed playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute became the creator and showrunner of Syfy's new hit series Van Helsing, he had already adapted Bram Stoker's Dracula for the stage—with a fierce female Van Helsing as the vampire hunter. In this masterful adaptation, Neil LaBute brings a rich theatricality and his powerful and provocative way with language and story to the world of Count Dracula, Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and his beloved Mina—this time, with a mind of her own—infusing the classic gothic tale of terror, obsession, and pathos with a modern edge. Chilling yet stylish in its atmosphere, dark yet deeply human in its emotional impact, Neil LaBute's Dracula: A Thriller in Two Acts is a tribute to both Neil LaBute's dramatic vision and the timelessness of Stoker's novel.

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Spring 1941 was a high point for the Axis war machine. Western Europe was conquered; southeastern Europe was falling, Great Britain on its heels; and Rommel’s Afrika Korps was freshly arrived to drive on the all-important Suez Canal. In Blood, Oil and the Axis, historian John Broich tells the story of Iraq and the Levant during this most pivotal time of the war. The browbeaten Allied forces had one last remaining hope for turning the war in their favor: the Axis running through its fuel supply. But when the Golden Square—four Iraqi generals allegiant to the Axis cause—staged a coup in Iraq, elevating a pro-German junta and prompting military cooperation between Vichy French–occupied Syria and Lebanon and the Axis, disaster loomed. Blood, Oil and the Axis follows those who participated in the Allies’ frantic, improvised, and unlikely response to this dire threat: Palestinian and Jordanian Arabs, Australians, American and British soldiers, Free French Foreign Legionnaires, and Jewish Palestinians, all who shared a desperate, bloody purpose in quashing the formation of an Axis state in the Middle East. Memorable figures of this makeshift alliance include Jack Hasey, a young American who ran off to fight with the Free French Foreign Legion before his own country entered the war; Freya Stark, a famous travel-writer-turned-government-agent; and even Roald Dahl, a twenty-three-year-old Royal Air Force recruit (and future author of beloved children’s books). Taking the reader on a tour of cities and landscapes grimly familiar to today’s reader—from a bombed-out Fallujah, to Baghdad, to Damascus—Blood, Oil and the Axis is poised to become the definitive chronicle of the Axis’s menacing play for Iraq and the Levant in 1941 and the extraordinary alliance that confronted it.

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When morning-after gossip about privileged Davis and ambitious Leigh turns ugly, self-interest collides with the truth and the resulting storm of ambiguity makes it hard to discern just who’s a victim, who’s a predator, and who’s a Future Leader of America. All that’s certain is when the veneer of loyalty and friendship is stripped back, what’s revealed is a vicious jungle of sexual politics, raw ambition, and class warfare where only the strong could possibly survive.

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Titus is expected to rule this extraordinary kingdom and his eccentric and wayward subjects. But with the arrival of an ambitious kitchen boy, Steerpike, the established order is thrown into disarray. Over the course of these three novels—Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone— Titus must contend with a kingdom about to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, manipulation, and murder.Intoxicating, rich, and unique, The Gormenghast Trilogy is a tour de force that ranks as one of the twentieth century's most remarkable feats of imaginative writing. This special edition, published for the centenary of Mervyn Peake's birth, is accompanied by over one hundred of Peake's dazzling drawings.

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The remarkable play of a young girl’s personal and emotional Holocaust journey Sala Garncarz, daughter of a rabbi and the youngest of 11 children, was 16 in 1940 when she volunteered to take her sister’s place in a Nazi work camp. Over the next ?ve years, she endured seven camps and collected, at great risk to herself, a cache of more than 350 letters, postcards, photographs, and other documents sent to her and others during that time. Sala survived the war and moved to America, where, more than 50 years later, she and her family donated her remarkable collection of letters and documents to the New York Public Library, where it went on to earn wide attention. Through these letters that Sala managed to hide and keep safe, Letters to Sala tells the story of her experiences and those of others in the web of Nazi labor camps in occupied Europe, a less-documented and less-familiar aspect of the Holocaust. Adapted by award-winning playwright Arlene Hutton from the book Sala’s Gift by Ann Kirschner, Letters to Sala has been produced off-Broadway at The Barrow Group and with more than 100 productions.

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Available again, the enduring, iconic volume showcasing the key early-career work and process of the godfather of modern graphic design Milton Glaser: Graphic Design, perhaps the most famous book of its kind, explores the early decades of America’s pre-eminent graphic artist. Glaser’s work ranges from the psychedelic Bob Dylan poster to book and record covers; from store and restaurant design to toy creations; and magazine formats including New York magazine and logotypes, all of which define the look of our time. Here Glaser undertakes not only a remarkably wide-ranging representation of his oeuvre from the incredibly fertile early years, but, in a new introduction, speaks of the influences on his work, the responsibilities of the artist, the hierarchies of the traditional art world, and the role of graphic design in the area of his creative growth. First published in 1973, Milton Glaser: Graphic Design is an extraordinary achievement and indisputably a classic in the field.

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In the Soviet Union, and later in Maoist China, theories of mass artistic appeal were used to promote the Revolution both at home and abroad. In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy they asserted the putative grandeur of the epoch. All too often, art that served the Revolution became "total realism," and always it became a slave to the state and the cult of personality, and ultimately one more weapon in the arsenal of oppression. Igor Golomstock gives a detailed appraisal of the forms that define totalitarian art and illustrates his text with more than two hundred examples of its paintings, posters, sculpture, and architecture, and includes a powerful comparative visual essay which demonstrates the eerie similarity of the official art of these very different regimes.

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After a ferocious early springtime storm, young Norwegian sailor Hans Lyngstrand is shipwrecked in the English Channel near the coastal Kent town of Dengate; he is one of few survivors. Soon after, aspiring journalist Martin Bridges takes a job as the reporter at the local newspaper. A loner by nature, he’s a curiosity to the nosy townspeople, the gregarious editor of the paper, and his melodramatic landlady, whose own private life is fraught by the unexplained absence of her son and suspicious disappearance of her husband.But when Hans moves into the “Mercy Room” of Martin’s boardinghouse to convalesce and Martin’s editor assigns him the task of interviewing the young sailor, it upends his otherwise uneventful world. Hans tells him of his travels at sea, how he survived the shipwreck—and of his encounter with a ferocious sailor vowing to seek revenge, who Hans believes may still be alive. So begins a complex friendship between the two young men that will cause Martin to reexamine his past and future ambitions and his relationships with everyone around him. In The Stranger from the Sea, the backstories Paul Binding creates for Ibsen’s classic Lady from the Sea characters unfold in tandem with the secret romances, rivalries, and heartaches of a seemingly unremarkable town. The result is a transporting, lyrical, and quietly captivating period piece that will mesmerize readers from its opening pages.

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Boston, 1870. Photographer Edward Moody runs a booming business capturing the images of the spirits of the departed in his portraits. He lures grieving widows and mourning mothers into his studio with promises of catching the ghosts of their deceased loved ones with his camera. Despite the whispers around town that Moody is a fraud of the basest kind, no one has been able to expose him, and word of his gift has spread, earning him money, fame, and a growing list of illustrious clients. One day, while developing the negative from a sitting to capture the spirit of the young son of an abolitionist senator, Moody is shocked to see a different spectral figure develop before his eyes. Instead of the staged image of the boy he was expecting, the camera has seemingly captured the spirit of a beautiful young woman. Is it possible that the spirit photographer caught a real ghost? When Moody recognizes the woman in the photograph as the daughter of an escaped slave he knew long ago, he is compelled to travel from Boston to the Louisiana bayous to resolve their unfinished business—and perhaps save his soul. But more than one person is out to stop him . . . With dramatic twists and redolent of the mood of the Southern Gothic, The Spirit Photographer conjures the Reconstruction era South, replete with fugitive hunters, voodoo healers, and other dangers lurking in the swamp. Jon Michael Varese’s deftly plotted first novel is an intense tale of death and betrayal that shows us how undeniably the ghosts of the past remain with us, and how resolutely they refuse to be quieted.

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In his illuminating new book, Douglas McWilliams argues that inequality is largely driven not by a conspiracy of the rich, as Thomas Piketty suggests, but by technology and globalization that have led to the paradox of rising inequality even as worldwide poverty drops. But what are the implications of this seeming contradiction, and what ultimately drives the global distribution of wealth? What can societies do to reshape capitalism for the 21st century? Drawing on the latest research, McWilliams investigates how wealth is concentrated and why it persistently remains in the hands of very few. In accessible and thought-provoking prose, McWilliams poses a comprehensive theory on why capitalism has not met its match in the form of increasingly disparate income distribution, but warns of the coming wave of technological development—the fourth industrial revolution—that threatens to create a scarcity of unskilled jobs that will lead to even greater inequality and explains what governments can do to prepare for this. From the inquisitive layperson to the professional economist or policymaker, The Inequality Paradox is essential reading for understanding the global economy in its present state. McWilliams is a fresh, authoritative voice entering the global discussion, making this book indispensable in preparing for the imminent economic challenges of our changing world.

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In the sphere of future global politics, no region will be as hotly contested as the Asia-Pacific, where great power interests collide amid the mistrust of unresolved conflicts and disputed territory. This is where authoritarian China is trying to rewrite international law and challenge the democratic values of the United States and its allies. The lightning rods of conflict are remote reefs and islands from which China has created military bases in the 1.5-million-square-mile expanse of the South China Sea, a crucial world trading route that this rising world power now claims as its own. No other Asian country can take on China alone. They look for protection from the United States, although it, too, may be ill-equipped for the job at hand. If China does get away with seizing and militarizing waters here, what will it do elsewhere in the world, and who will be able to stop it? In Asian Waters, award-winning foreign correspondent Humphrey Hawksley breaks down the politics—and tensions—that he has followed through this region for years. Reporting on decades of political developments, he has witnessed China's rise to become one of the world's most wealthy and militarized countries, and delivers in Asian Waters the compelling narrative of this most volatile region. Can the United States and China handle the changing balance of power peacefully? Do Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan share enough common purpose to create a NATO-esque multilateral alliance? Does China think it can even become a superpower while making an enemy of America? If so, how does it plan to achieve it? Asian Waters delves into these topics and more as Hawksley presents the most comprehensive and accessible analysis ever of this region.

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The summer of 1958 was a nerve-racking time. Ever since the Soviet Union proved that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Tensions escalated between the United States and the Soviet Union over their respective nuclear weapons reserves, both sides desperate for a solution to the threat of the massive, instant destruction the one could cause on the other. In the midst of this rising tension, Nicholas Christofilos, an eccentric Greek-American physicist, brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: launching atomic bombs from the South Atlantic Ocean, about 1,100 miles from Cape Town, to detonate in outer space to fry incoming Soviet ICBMs with an artificial radiation belt. Known as Project Argus, this plan is the biggest, most secret, and riskiest scientific experiment in history, and classified details of this operation have been long obscured. In Burning the Sky, Mark Wolverton tells the unknown and controversial story of this scheme to reveal a fascinating narrative almost completely forgotten by history—one that still has powerful resonances today. Drawing from recently declassified sources, Burning the Sky chronicles Christofilos’s unconventional idea from its inception to execution—when the so-called mad scientist persuaded the military to carry out the most grandiose scientific experiment ever conceived, using the entire Earth’s atmosphere as a laboratory. With over a decade of experience researching and writing about the sociological and political impacts of the scie nce of the Cold War, Wolverton is the ideal authority on this risky experiment. Meticulously researched, with the pacing of a thriller and the language of science fiction, Burning the Sky will intrigue any lover of scientific or military history and will remind readers why Project Argus remains frighteningly relevant nearly sixty years later.

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The Obie-winning play by the Tony-nominated playwright of A Doll’s House, Part 2 Ray’s swum his way to the eve of the Olympic trials. If he makes the team, he’ll get a deal with Speedo. If he gets a deal with Speedo, he’ll never need a real job. So, when someone’s stash of performance-enhancing drugs is found in the locker-room fridge, threatening the entire team’s Olympic fate, Ray has to crush the rumors or risk losing everything. Red Speedo is a sharp and stylish play about swimming, survival of the fittest, and the American dream of a level playing field—or of leveling the field yourself.

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In Nikolai and the Others Richard Nelson imagines the relationships between Balanchine and Stravinsky, their friends, lovers, wives and ex-wives, supporters, and dancers (including Maria Tallchief and Nicholas Magallanes), at the time of their historic collaboration on the ballet Orpheus. Later that year, Orpheus would be the spectacular inaugural production of the newly formed New York City Ballet. The play also explores the controversial ways American art and artistic institutions were funded at the outset of the Cold War—including the subtle hand of the State Department in the post-war cultural scene.

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The Cardinal tells a story that captured the world's attention: a young American's rise to become a cardinal of the Catholic Church. The daily trials and triumphs of Stephen Fermoyle, from the working-class suburbs of Boston, drive him to become first a parish priest, then secretary to a cardinal, later a bishop and finally a wearer of the Red Hat. An essential work of American fiction that is newly relevant with the ordination of New York's Timothy Dolan as cardinal, Henry Morton Robinson's novel is back in print by popular demand.

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