Search results for ""author morris"
Profile Books Ltd Discipline Is Destiny: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
To master anything, we must first master ourselves: our emotions, thoughts and actions. This ancient virtue of self-control is more essential than ever. In this bestselling book, Ryan Holiday makes the case for this essential virtue, and shows how to cultivate willpower, self-respect and focus. From Marcus Aurelius to Toni Morrison, Queen Elizabeth II to Martin Luther King Jr, history's greats have all understood the power of directing your habits and setting your limits. History's cautionary tales prove the same point, from catastrophic military overreaches to career-destroying habits: without self-discipline, we are lost before we can even begin. Self-discipline is the key to our greatest ambitions and simplest joys: this book will show you how to find it, apply it and reap the rewards.
£10.99
Oneworld Publications Things They Lost: Longlisted for the 2023 Dylan Thomas Prize
'Magical, beguiling... Carries echoes of Toni Morrison's Beloved' Guardian A Vulture 'Book We Can't Wait to Read in 2022' They had not lost anyone that year, or the ones they had lost were not worth remembering... Set in the fictional Kenyan town of Mapeli, Things They Lost tells the story of four generations of women, each haunted by the mysterious curse that hangs over the Brown family. At the heart of the novel is Ayosa Ataraxis Brown, twelve years old and the loneliest girl in the world. Okwiri Oduor's stunningly original debut novel sings with Kenyan folklore and myth as it traces Ayosa's fragile, toxic relationship with Nabumbo Promise, her mysterious and beguiling mother who comes and goes like tumbleweed: lost, but not quite gone.
£9.99
Duke University Press None Like Us: Blackness, Belonging, Aesthetic Life
It passes for an unassailable truth that the slave past provides an explanatory prism for understanding the black political present. In None Like Us Stephen Best reappraises what he calls “melancholy historicism”—a kind of crime scene investigation in which the forensic imagination is directed toward the recovery of a “we” at the point of “our” violent origin. Best argues that there is and can be no “we” following from such a time and place, that black identity is constituted in and through negation, taking inspiration from David Walker’s prayer that “none like us may ever live again until time shall be no more.” Best draws out the connections between a sense of impossible black sociality and strains of negativity that have operated under the sign of queer. In None Like Us the art of El Anatsui and Mark Bradford, the literature of Toni Morrison and Gwendolyn Brooks, even rumors in the archive, evidence an apocalyptic aesthetics, or self-eclipse, which opens the circuits between past and present and thus charts a queer future for black study.
£21.99
Pan Macmillan The Biggar Picture
Dan Biggar was born in Morriston, Swansea, and his career began in the Welsh Premiership for his hometown team. He made his Ospreys debut as an eighteen-year-old and became the youngest player ever to play in one hundred games for the Ospreys. Since then he has played for the English Premiership giants Northampton and for French heavyweights Toulon.Dan has been at the heart of Welsh rugby's most iconic moments of the past decade, including a Grand Slam, two Six Nations Championships, a record victory over England, a World Cup semi-final, and a historic first victory on South African soil. He's toured twice with the British and Irish Lions, and started every test in the 2021 series.In 2015, Biggar won the BBC Cymru Sports Personality of the Year Award.The Biggar Picture is his first autobiography.Ross Harries is an experienced broadcaster and is regularly seen presenting rugby coverage on the BBC, BT Sport, Premier Sports, Channel
£19.80
Yale University Press Retroland: A Reader's Guide to the Dazzling Diversity of Modern Fiction
The essential companion for lovers of the contemporary novel Over the past fifty years, fiction in English has never looked more various. Books bulkier than Victorian three-deckers appear alongside works of minimalist brevity, and experiments with form have produced everything from verse novels to Twitter-thread narratives. This is truly a golden age. But what unites this kaleidoscopic array of genres and styles? Celebrated writer and critic Peter Kemp shows how modern writers are obsessed with the past. In a series of engaging and illuminating chapters, Retroland traces this novelistic preoccupation with history, from the imperial and the political to the personal and the literary. Featuring famous names from across the United Kingdom, United States, and the wider Anglophone world, ranging from Salman Rushdie to Sarah Waters, Toni Morrison to Hilary Mantel, this is a work of remarkable synthesis and clarity—a wonderfully readable and enjoyably opinionated guide to our current literary landscape.
£20.00
Sourcebooks, Inc Bold Badass and Bookish Women Writers Who Made History
A homage to feminist icons in the literary world.The perfect gift for any book lover, this innovative format features a collection of beautifully illustrated book-puns and literary quotes alongside 25 detachable bookmarks that are the ideal companion for the next great read.Quotes, bios, fun facts, and illustrations of bold, visionary female writers fill each page. An Audre Lorde quoteWhen I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraidsits on a spread with a bookmark that reminds readers to READ FEARLESSLY.A spread with the quote A well-read woman is a dangerous creature pairs with a bookmark that says, I read, therefore I'm dangerous. Motivation from Toni Morrison about writingIf there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write itlives next to an INSPIRATION IN PROGRESS! bookmark.Also Available: Book Buddies: Don
£9.04
Amber Books Ltd Graves of the Great and Famous: From Jane Austen to Elvis Presley
Karl Marx is buried in London, John Keats in Rome and Leon Trotsky in Mexico. Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is today known for the graves of Jim Morrison, Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde, but when it opened in the early 19th century the owners felt that they needed some star names to make it a desired burial site – and so they had Molière’s body transferred there. Arranged thematically into 75 entries, Graves of the Great and Famous tours the world exploring the resting places of leading artists, thinkers, scientists, sportspeople, revolutionaries, politicians and pioneers. Some, such as communist leaders Ho Chi Minh and Vladimir Lenin, are interred in great mausoleums, where they are visited by millions each year; others are buried in little-known country graveyards. From lives cut short through assassinations – Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln – to those who suffered terrible accidents (Princess Diana), from mobsters such as Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel and John Gotti to Napoleon and his mistress Marie Walewska, from Nelson Mandela to Eva Peron, Graceland to Highgate Cemetery, the book provides a guide to some of the most famous and unusual graves of the great and the good. Featuring 150 photographs of graves, cemeteries, graveyards and mausoleums, Graves of the Great and Famous is a compact guide to the final resting place of the famous – and infamous.
£17.99
John Blake Publishing Ltd The State of It: Stories from the Frontline of a Broken Care System
'The authentic inside track... Gripping' Lemn Sissay'An important and hugely powerful book... So inspiring, I loved The State of It' Neil Morrissey'Incredibly compelling' Denise WelchCAN WE FIX HOW WE LOOK AFTER CHILDREN IN CARE?Government cuts, unregulated care homes, inadequate staff training - campaigner and care home consultant Chris Wild has seen it all. The low standards and frequent abuse of children in care has long been a focal point of his loud message: we are failing our young people and something needs to change.Chris delves deep into the lives of care home kids, from experiences with county lines, drugs, trafficking, knife crime, gang violence to child exploitation and sexual abuse. He tells the stories of the voiceless, the children who have been left behind, compounded by his own experiences of growing up in care.How is the care system failing our young people and controlling just who and what they can become? What help do we really give children after their time in care is over, left to fend for themselves? Is it too late to fix the state of it?URGENT AND CRITICAL, THE STATE OF IT WILL BE THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK YOU READ THIS YEAR.In support of Become, the charity for children in care and young care leavers, a charity registered in England and Wales, charity number 1010518.
£8.99
Vintage Publishing Sugar: The addictive Richard and Judy book club pick
**A RICHARD AND JUDY AUTUMN BOOK CLUB PICK AND THE MOST POWERFUL BOOK YOU'LL READ THIS YEAR** 'Poignant and bittersweet, this novel is a joy' Richard & JudyYoung and confident, with a swagger in her step, Sugar arrives in the southern town of Bigelow hoping to start over. Soon Bigelow is alight with gossip and suspicion, and Sugar fears her past is catching up with her. Then she meets Pearl, a woman trying to forget her own traumas. As these next-door neighbours become unlikely friends, they wonder if their lives could finally be changing for the better. But small towns have long memories...Perfect for fans of The Vanishing Half and Where the Crawdads Sing, Sugar is a classic waiting to be rediscovered.Reviewers adore Sugar: 'A page-turning novel guaranteed to be looked back on as a timeless classic' INDEPENDENT 'This book is so engaging and beautiful and intriguing and satisfying that I could not put it down' ELLE 'Riveting... Searing and expertly imagined' TONI MORRISON on Bernice L. McFadden Readers are falling for Sugar 'Such an enjoyable read... beautifully written, raw and impactful' 'Riveting, heart-breaking' 'Very powerful, poignant' 'Beautifully written... brutal and moving... a must read book' 'Well-written with rich characters and many twists and turns' 'So descriptive yet easy to read, and it made me fall in love with all the characters'
£9.04
Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd Research Handbook on Corporate Bankruptcy Law
In this Research Handbook, today's leading experts on the law and economics of corporate bankruptcy address fundamental issues such as the efficiency of bankruptcy, the role and treatment of creditors - particularly secured creditors - in the bankruptcy process, the allocation of going-concern surplus among claimants, the desirability of liquidation in the absence of such surplus, the role of contract in bankruptcy resolution, the role of derivatives in the bankruptcy process, the costs of the bankruptcy system, and the special case of financial institutions, among other topics. Chapters trace the historical path of both law and policy analysis, with a focus on how the bankruptcy process serves underlying policy objectives. Proposals to reform corporate bankruptcy are presented. Research Handbook on Corporate Bankruptcy Law includes policy analysis by both lawyers and economists and is thus an invaluable resource to law scholars and students interested in the economic analysis of corporate bankruptcy law, as well as to economics and business scholars and students studying the law of corporate bankruptcy. These pages will prove equally valuable to lawmakers and judges who are interested in policy analysis of corporate bankruptcy. Contributors include: K. Ayotte, D.G. Baird, A.J. Casey, T.H. Jackson, M.B. Jacoby, E.J. Janger, S.J. Lubben, E.R. Morrison, J.A.E. Pottow, R.K. Rasmussen, M.J. Roe, A. Schwartz, M. Simkovic, D. Skeel, R. Squire, G. Triantis, M.J. White, T.J. Zywicki
£170.00
Batsford Ltd 100 20th-Century Shops
A showcase of Britain's most architecturally significant shops throughout the twentieth century and beyond.100 20th-Century Shops is a fascinating insight into the heritage of Britain’s changing high street and the diverse architectural styles of the 20th century. Entries in this book showcase 100 often instantly recognisable shops from across the country, from throughout the 20th century and stretching into the 21st, capturing the changing architectural styles of our beloved and rapidly disappearing retail environment.As the UK's retail landscape faces an existential crisis, now is an appropriate time to review and celebrate the architecture of our high streets. From Tudor-revival department stores and futuristic supermarkets to Art Deco shop fronts and post-war Festival style markets, the 100 shops featured here evoke a variety of design styles and traces the history and evolution of our cherished high street. The book also contains essays by respected writers Elain Harwood, Lynn Pearson, Matthew Whitfield, Kathryn A. Morrison and Bronwen Edwards on the design, development and decline of the high street over the last 100 years within a social and political context. This compelling book provides a glimpse into the wonderful shops that Britain has to offer and is a must-have for all fans of design history, architecture and retail.
£22.50
John Wiley & Sons Inc UAE and the Gulf: Architecture and Urbanism Now
At the end of the 20th century, Dubai attracted international media attention as the world sought to make sense of the city’s extraordinary growth. Exuberant projects such as the Burj Arab, the Burj Khalifa and the Palm Islands attracted investment in dreams to transform the region. While the global financial crisis kept dreams from becoming reality, this issue of AD seeks to present a view of architecture and urbanism in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other states in the wider Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) at a time when greater economic stability promises new beginnings. The issue presents examples of architecture that transcends preoccupation with fabricating images, and traces the process of making contemporary Gulf cities, from material tectonics to large-scale masterplans. By presenting the architecture of UAE and the Gulf within the context of broader regional developments and global trends, it highlights how projects in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have contributed to unprecedented urban growth, while emphasising the continuing environmental challenges of building in the region. In addition to highlighting various sustainable initiatives intended to counteract these challenges, the issue also explores how computational design and new technologies are being innovatively employed to mitigate the impact of arid climates. Contributors include: Ameena Ahmadi, Kelly Hutzell, Varkki Pallathucheril, Todd Reisz, Rami el Samahy, Terri Meyer Boake, Jeffrey Willis. International architects: Foster + Partners, Frank Gehry, HOK, IM Pei, Legoretta + Legoretta, Jean Nouvelle, Reiser + Umemoto, Allies and Morrison. Regional architects: AGi (Kuwait), DXB.lab (UAE), X Architects (UAE).
£26.95
Inkandescent Autofellatio: A Memoir
Apart from herpes and Lulu - everything is eventually swept away Just one shimmering pearl of wisdom from popstar and polymath James Maker, whose worldly observations will (like herpes) once again be on everyone's lips thanks to his award-winning memoir, remastered with new chapters. If you hadn't heard of rock bands Raymonde or RPLA - fronted by James in the 80s and 90s - you might be forgiven for mistaking AutoFellatio for fiction. But here fact is more fantastical than any novel, as we follow our hero from Bermondsey enfant terrible to Valencian grande dame, a scenic journey that stops off variously at Morrissey confidant, dominatrix, singer, songwriter and occasional actor, and is literally littered with memorable bons mots and hilarious anecdotes that make you feel like you've hit the wedding-reception jackpot of being unexpectedly seated next to the groom's flamboyant uncle. According to Wikipedia, very few men can perform the act of autofellatio. We never discover whether James is one of them but certainly, as a storyteller, he is one in a million. WINNER OF THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE 2011 'Bloody Brilliant' JULIE BURCHILL 'Glitteringly epigrammatic, it's a glam-rock Naked Civil Servant in court shoes. But funnier. And tougher.' MARK SIMPSON 'Pistol sharp, loaded with witty one-liners and peppered with Maker's scatter gun observations on life, music and the meaning of good hair.' PAUL BURSTON
£9.99
Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd Research Handbook on Corporate Bankruptcy Law
In this Research Handbook, today's leading experts on the law and economics of corporate bankruptcy address fundamental issues such as the efficiency of bankruptcy, the role and treatment of creditors - particularly secured creditors - in the bankruptcy process, the allocation of going-concern surplus among claimants, the desirability of liquidation in the absence of such surplus, the role of contract in bankruptcy resolution, the role of derivatives in the bankruptcy process, the costs of the bankruptcy system, and the special case of financial institutions, among other topics. Chapters trace the historical path of both law and policy analysis, with a focus on how the bankruptcy process serves underlying policy objectives. Proposals to reform corporate bankruptcy are presented. Research Handbook on Corporate Bankruptcy Law includes policy analysis by both lawyers and economists and is thus an invaluable resource to law scholars and students interested in the economic analysis of corporate bankruptcy law, as well as to economics and business scholars and students studying the law of corporate bankruptcy. These pages will prove equally valuable to lawmakers and judges who are interested in policy analysis of corporate bankruptcy. Contributors include: K. Ayotte, D.G. Baird, A.J. Casey, T.H. Jackson, M.B. Jacoby, E.J. Janger, S.J. Lubben, E.R. Morrison, J.A.E. Pottow, R.K. Rasmussen, M.J. Roe, A. Schwartz, M. Simkovic, D. Skeel, R. Squire, G. Triantis, M.J. White, T.J. Zywicki
£49.95
Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Metamorphosis: Creative Imagination in Fine Arts Between Life-Projects and Human Aesthetic Aspirations
How do we perdure when we and everything around us are caught up in incessant change? But the course of this change does not seem to be haphazard and we may seek the modalities of its Logos in the transformations in which it occurs. The classic term "Metamorphosis" focuses upon the proportions between the transformed and the retained, the principles of sameness and otherness. Applied to life and its becoming, metamorphosis pinpoints the proportions between the vital and the aesthetic significance of life. Where could this metaphysical in-between territory come better to light than in the Fine Arts? In this collection are investigated the various proportions between the vital significance of the constructivism of life and a specifically human contribution made by the creative imagination to the transformatory search for beauty and aesthetic values. Papers by: Lawrence Kimmel, Mark L. Brack, Sheryl Tucker de Vazquez, William Roberts, Jadwiga Smith, Victor Gerald Rivas, Max Statkiewicz, Matti Itkonen, George R. Tibbetts, Linda Stratford, Jorella Andrews, Ingeborg M. Rocker, Stephen J. Goldberg, Leah Durner, Donnalee Dox, Catherine Schear, Samantha Henriette Krukowski, Gary Maciag, Kelly Dennis, Wanda Strukus, Magda Romanska, Patricia Trutty-Coohill, Ellen Burns, Tessa Morrison, Sabine Coelsch-Foisner, Gary Backhaus, Daniel M. Unger, Howard Pearce.
£116.99
Vintage Publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover: NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM
Now a major Netflix film starring Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell, Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of the most pivotal - and controversial - novels of the twentieth century.Clifford Chatterley returns from the First World War as an invalid. Constance nurses him and tries to be the dutiful wife. However, childless and listless she feels oppressed by their marriage and their isolated life. Partly encouraged by Clifford to seek a lover, she embarks on a passionate affair with the gamekeeper, Mellors. Through their liaison Lawrence explores the complications of sex, love and class.Written in 1928 and subsequently banned, Lady Chatterley's Lover is one of the most subversive novels in English Literature.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BLAKE MORRISON
£9.04
Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd International Criminal Justice: Legitimacy and Coherence
International criminal justice indeed is a crowded field. But this edited collection stands well above the crowd. And it does so with dignity. Through interdisciplinary analysis, the editors skillfully turn shibboleths into intrigues. Theirs is a kaleidoscopic project that scales a gamut of issues: from courtroom discipline, to gender, to the defense, to history. Through vivid deployment of unconventional methods, this edited collection unsettles conventional wisdom. It thereby pushes law and policy toward heartier horizons.'- Mark A. Drumbl, Washington and Lee University, School of Law, USInternational criminal justice as a discipline throws up numerous conceptual issues, engaging disciplines such as law, politics, history, sociology and psychology, to name but a few. This book addresses themes around international criminal justice from a mixture of traditional and more radical perspectives.While law, and in particular international law, is at the heart of much of the discussion around this topic, history, sociology and politics are invariably infused and, in some aspects of international criminal justice, are predominant elements. Fundamentally the exploration concerns questions of coherence and legitimacy, which are foundational to both the content and application of the discipline, and the book charts an illuminating path through these diverse perspectives. The contributions in this book come from some of the eminent scholars and practitioners in the area, and will provide some profound insight into and an enriched understanding of international criminal justice, helping to advance the field of study.This ambitious and necessary book will appeal to academics and students of international criminal law, international criminal justice, international law, transitional justice and comparative criminal law, as well as practitioners of international criminal law.Contributors include: G. Boas, I. Bonomy, R. Cryer, H. Durham, S. Garkawe, M. Ierace, P. Morrissey, J. Potter, B. Saul, M. Scharf, G. Simpson, G. Skillen
£121.00
University of Illinois Press "The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings
"The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings brings to English-language readers literary writings--several previously unknown--by Simone de Beauvoir. Culled from sources including various American university collections, the works span decades of Beauvoir's career. Ranging from dramatic works and literary theory to radio broadcasts, they collectively reveal fresh insights into Beauvoir's writing process, personal life, and the honing of her philosophy. The volume begins with a new translation of the 1945 play The Useless Mouths, written in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Other pieces were discovered after Beauvoir's death in 1986, such as the 1965 short novel "Misunderstanding in Moscow," involving an elderly French couple who confront their fears of aging. Two additional previously unknown texts include the fragmentary "Notes for a Novel," which contains the seed of what she later would call "the problem of the Other," and a lecture on postwar French theater titled Existentialist Theater. The collection notably includes the eagerly awaited translation of Beauvoir's contribution to a 1965 debate among Jean-Paul Sartre and other French writers and intellectuals, "What Can Literature Do?"Prefaces to well-known works such as Bluebeard and Other Fairy Tales,La Bâtarde, and James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years are also available in English for the first time, alongside essays and other short articles. A landmark contribution to Beauvoir studies and French literary studies, the volume includes informative and engaging introductory essays by prominent and rising scholars.Contributors are Meryl Altman, Elizabeth Fallaize, Alison S. Fell, Sarah Gendron, Dennis A. Gilbert, Laura Hengehold, Eleanore Holveck, Terry Keefe, J. Debbie Mann, Frederick M. Morrison, Catherine Naji, Justine Sarrot, Liz Stanley, Ursula Tidd, and Veronique Zaytzeff.
£100.80
University of Illinois Press "The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings
"The Useless Mouths" and Other Literary Writings brings to English-language readers literary writings--several previously unknown--by Simone de Beauvoir. Culled from sources including various American university collections, the works span decades of Beauvoir's career. Ranging from dramatic works and literary theory to radio broadcasts, they collectively reveal fresh insights into Beauvoir's writing process, personal life, and the honing of her philosophy. The volume begins with a new translation of the 1945 play The Useless Mouths, written in Paris during the Nazi occupation. Other pieces were discovered after Beauvoir's death in 1986, such as the 1965 short novel "Misunderstanding in Moscow," involving an elderly French couple who confront their fears of aging. Two additional previously unknown texts include the fragmentary "Notes for a Novel," which contains the seed of what she later would call "the problem of the Other," and a lecture on postwar French theater titled Existentialist Theater. The collection notably includes the eagerly awaited translation of Beauvoir's contribution to a 1965 debate among Jean-Paul Sartre and other French writers and intellectuals, "What Can Literature Do?"Prefaces to well-known works such as Bluebeard and Other Fairy Tales,La Bâtarde, and James Joyce in Paris: His Final Years are also available in English for the first time, alongside essays and other short articles. A landmark contribution to Beauvoir studies and French literary studies, the volume includes informative and engaging introductory essays by prominent and rising scholars.Contributors are Meryl Altman, Elizabeth Fallaize, Alison S. Fell, Sarah Gendron, Dennis A. Gilbert, Laura Hengehold, Eleanore Holveck, Terry Keefe, J. Debbie Mann, Frederick M. Morrison, Catherine Naji, Justine Sarrot, Liz Stanley, Ursula Tidd, and Veronique Zaytzeff.
£21.99
Peepal Tree Press Ltd Kwame Dawes' Prophets: A Reader's Guide
This guide is written from the conviction that Prophets is a major work of Caribbean poetry, and that whilst it can be read with enjoyment without the aid of a book of this kind, it is a work so rich in local reference and allusion that a little help can enhance the reader's understanding and pleasure. The introduction discusses Prophets in its social and political setting of 1980s Jamaica and the significance of the poem's social geography. It discusses Prophets' relationship to the key texts that influenced it, or against which it was written, including Derek Walcott's Omeros, Sylvia Wynter's The Hills of Hebron and the early novels of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. The second section of summaries and annotations provides a line by line guide to the poem. This includes notes to its very specific references to the social and cultural manifestations of 1980s Jamaica, identification of places identified in the poem, and notes to the poems' many allusions: to the Bible, but also to other works of literature and to the reggae lyrics that form a bridge between the Bible, the prophetic and Jamaican popular culture.
£14.99
Thames & Hudson Ltd Kenneth Grange
The definitive celebration of the work, life and times of Sir Kenneth Grange (born 1929), one of the most revered, innovative and influential industrial designers of the modern age. 'You may not know the name Kenneth Grange, but you'll almost certainly know his work. He has designed just about everything' The Guardian The work of renowned design pioneer Sir Kenneth Grange (born 1929) has touched the lives of almost every consumer worldwide and has had a lasting influence on today's younger designers, from Sir Jonathan Ive, Jasper Morrison and Marc Newson to Thomas Heatherwick and the founding brothers of Joseph Joseph. For decades, Grange's iconic products including the InterCity 125 train for British Rail, the TX1 London black taxi, domestic appliances for Kenwood, lighting for Anglepoise, cameras for Kodak, pens for Parker and post boxes for Royal Mail, among many others have been at the centre of tastemaking and key to the establishment of Britain's worldwide post-war reput
£45.00
University of Illinois Press From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture
Koritha Mitchell analyzes canonical texts by and about African American women to lay bare the hostility these women face as they invest in traditional domesticity. Instead of the respectability and safety granted white homemakers, black women endure pejorative labels, racist governmental policies, attacks on their citizenship, and aggression meant to keep them in "their place."Tracing how African Americans define and redefine success in a nation determined to deprive them of it, Mitchell plumbs the works of Frances Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry, Toni Morrison, Michelle Obama, and others. These artists honor black homes from slavery and post-emancipation through the Civil Rights era to "post-racial" America. Mitchell follows black families asserting their citizenship in domestic settings while the larger society and culture marginalize and attack them, not because they are deviants or failures but because they meet American standards.Powerful and provocative, From Slave Cabins to the White House illuminates the links between African American women's homemaking and citizenship in history and across literature.
£21.99
Hodder & Stoughton Fervour
''Intriguing, propulsive and profoundly disturbing, this is a fearless look into the dark heart of family politics from a naturally gifted storyteller''JONATHAN COE''Magnificent, indelible . . . That a young British novelist, on his first try, should have so effectively taken up a gauntlet laid down by the greatest American novelist of an era [Toni Morrison] might seem surprising. But maybe not . . . Enriching his story with detail and above all heart, Lloyd has crafted a lasting allegory of our dark historical time''NEW YORK TIMES''Stylish, puzzling, mystical . . . Fervour marks the arrival of an intriguing and intelligent new voice''FINANCIAL TIMES''A suspenseful debut novel that propels the reader deep into the heart of an idiosyncratic family''OBSERVER''A rich and dark stew that mixes ingredients from the Bible and the headlines, with a biting send-up of the vampiric nature of
£15.29
University of Minnesota Press Reading Writing Interfaces: From the Digital to the Bookbound
Lori Emerson examines how interfaces—from today’s multitouch devices to yesterday’s desktops, from typewriters to Emily Dickinson’s self-bound fascicle volumes—mediate between writer and text as well as between writer and reader. Following the threads of experimental writing from the present into the past, she shows how writers have long tested and transgressed technological boundaries. Reading the means of production as well as the creative works they produce, Emerson demonstrates that technologies are more than mere tools and that the interface is not a neutral border between writer and machine but is in fact a collaborative creative space. Reading Writing Interfaces begins with digital literature’s defiance of the alleged invisibility of ubiquitous computing and multitouch in the early twenty-first century and then looks back at the ideology of the user-friendly graphical user interface that emerged along with the Apple Macintosh computer of the 1980s. She considers poetic experiments with and against the strictures of the typewriter in the 1960s and 1970s and takes a fresh look at Emily Dickinson’s self-printing projects as a challenge to the coherence of the book. Through archival research, Emerson offers examples of how literary engagements with screen-based and print-based technologies have transformed reading and writing. She reveals the ways in which writers—from Emily Dickinson to Jason Nelson and Judd Morrissey—work with and against media interfaces to undermine the assumed transparency of conventional literary practice.
£23.99
Columbia University Press Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon
Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary. Midcentury writers tended to set their works in their own moment, but for the last several decades critical acclaim and attention have fixated on historical fiction. This shift is particularly dramatic for writers of color. Even as the literary canon has become more diverse, cultural institutions have celebrated Black, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous novelists almost exclusively for their historical fiction.Writing Backwards explores what the dominance of historical fiction in the contemporary canon reveals about American literary culture. Alexander Manshel investigates the most celebrated historical genres—contemporary narratives of slavery, the World War II novel, the multigenerational family saga, immigrant fiction, and the novel of recent history—alongside the literary and academic institutions that have elevated them. He examines novels by writers including Toni Morrison, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Colson Whitehead, Julia Alvarez, Leslie Marmon Silko, Michael Chabon, Julie Otsuka, Yaa Gyasi, Ben Lerner, and Tommy Orange in the context of MFA programs, literary prizes, university syllabi, book clubs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Manshel studies how historical fiction has evolved over the last half century, documenting the formation of the newly inclusive literary canon as well as who and what it still excludes. Offering new insight into how institutions shape literature and the limits of historical memory, Writing Backwards also considers recent challenges to the historical turn in American fiction.
£105.30
The Library of America The Mark Twain Anthology (LOA #199): Great Writers on His Life and Work
"Mark Twain," William Faulkner once observed, "was the first truly American writer, and all of us since are his heirs." In this unique collection scores of these literary legatees from the U.S. and around the world take the measure of Twain and his genius, among them: José Martí, Rudyard Kipling, Theodor Herzl, George Bernard Shaw, H. L. Mencken, Helen Keller, Jorge Luis Borges, Sterling Brown, George Orwell, T. S. Eliot, Richard Wright, W. H. Auden, Ralph Ellison, Kenzaburo Oe, Robert Penn Warren, Ursula Le Guin, Norman Mailer, Erica Jong, Gore Vidal, David Bradley, Kurt Vonnegut, Toni Morrison, Min Jin Lee, Roy Blount, Jr., and many others (including actor Hal Holbrook, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, stand-up comedians Dick Gregory and Will Rogers, and presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Barack Obama). Included are essays originally published in Chinese, Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, and Yiddish that have not previously been available in English, as well as the work of several visual artists, such as James Montgomery Flagg (creator of the "Uncle Sam Wants You" poster), French playwright and artist Jean Cocteau, and Chuck Jones (of Bugs Bunny fame). Published to mark the centennial of Twain's death, this collection testifies to the enduring and continuing legacy of the man William Dean Howells called "the Lincoln of our literature."
£26.04
University of California Press The Feminine Sublime: Gender and Excess in Women's Fiction
"The Feminine Sublime" provides a new and startling insight into the modes and devices employed in the creation of women's fiction since the eighteenth century. Barbara Claire Freeman argues that traditional theorizations of the sublime depend upon unexamined assumptions about femininity and sexual difference, and that the sublime could not exist without misogynistic constructions of 'the feminine.' Taking this as her starting point, Freeman suggests that the 'other sublime' that comes into view from this new perspective not only offers a crucial way to approach representations of excess in women's fiction, but allows us to envision other modes of writing the sublime. Freeman reconsiders Longinus, Burke, Kant, Weiskel, Hertz, and Derrida while also engaging a wide range of women's fiction, including novels by Chopin, Morrison, Rhys, Shelley, and Wharton. Addressing the coincident rise of the novel and concept of the sublime in eighteenth-century European culture, Freeman allies the articulation of sublime experience with questions of agency and passion in modern and contemporary women's fiction. Arguments that have seemed merely to explain the sublime also functioned to evaluate, domesticate, and ultimately exclude an otherness that is almost always gendered as feminine. Freeman explores the ways in which fiction by American and British women, mainly of the twentieth century, responds to and redefines what the tradition has called 'the sublime.'
£22.50
University of Minnesota Press Black Bourgeois: Class and Sex in the Flesh
Exploring the forces that keep black people vulnerable even amid economically privileged lives At a moment in U.S. history with repeated reminders of the vulnerability of African Americans to state and extralegal violence, Black Bourgeois is the first book to consider the contradiction of privileged, presumably protected black bodies that nonetheless remain racially vulnerable. Examining disruptions around race and class status in literary texts, Candice M. Jenkins reminds us that the conflicted relation of the black subject to privilege is not, solely, a recent phenomenon.Focusing on works by Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, Danzy Senna, Rebecca Walker, Reginald McKnight, Percival Everett, Colson Whitehead, and Michael Thomas, Jenkins shows that the seemingly abrupt discursive shift from post–Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, from an emphasis on privilege and progress to an emphasis on vulnerability and precariousness, suggests a pendulum swing between two interrelated positions still in tension. By analyzing how these narratives stage the fraught interaction between the black and the bourgeois, Jenkins offers renewed attention to class as a framework for the study of black life—a necessary shift in an age of rapidly increasing income inequality and societal stratification.Black Bourgeois thus challenges the assumed link between blackness and poverty that has become so ingrained in the United States, reminding us that privileged subjects, too, are “classed.” This book offers, finally, a rigorous and nuanced grasp of how African Americans live within complex, intersecting identities.
£87.30
The University of Chicago Press When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making
Simone C. Drake spent the first several decades of her life learning how to love and protect herself, a black woman, from the systems designed to facilitate her harm and marginalization. But when she gave birth to the first of her three sons, she quickly learned that black boys would need protection from these very same systems systems dead set on the static, homogenous representations of black masculinity perpetuated in the media and our cultural discourse. In When We Imagine Grace, Drake borrows from Toni Morrison's Beloved to bring imagination to the center of black masculinity studies allowing individual black men to exempt themselves and their fates from a hateful, ignorant society and open themselves up as active agents at the center of their own stories. Against a backdrop of crisis, Drake brings forth the narratives of black men who have imagined grace for themselves. We meet African American cowboy, Nat Love, and Drake's own grandfather, who served in the first black military unit to fight in World War II. Synthesizing black feminist and black masculinity studies, Drake analyzes black fathers and daughters, the valorization of black criminals, the denigration and celebration of gay men, Cornelius Eady, Antoine Dodson, and Kehinde Wiley. With a powerful command of its subjects and a passionate dedication to hope, When We Imagine Grace gives us a new way of seeing and knowing black masculinity sophisticated in concept and bracingly vivid in telling.
£91.00
Not Stated The Black Box
A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with each other, over the course of the country’s history.Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, THE BLACK BOX: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison—these writers used words to create a livable world—a home —for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society.It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a community formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal sub-hu
£28.80
Saraband As the Women Lay Dreaming
In the small hours of January 1st, 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed at a stroke the lives of an entire community. Tormod Morrison was there that terrible night. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. For Tormod – a man unlike others, with artistry in his fingertips – the disaster would mark him indelibly. Two decades later, Alasdair and Rachel are sent to the windswept Isle of Lewis to live with Tormod in his traditional blackhouse home, a world away from the Glasgow of their earliest years. Their grandfather is kind, compassionate, but still deeply affected by the remarkable true story of the Iolaire shipwreck – by the selfless heroism and desperate tragedy he witnessed. A deeply moving novel about passion constrained, coping with loss and a changing world, As the Women Lay Dreaming explores how a single event can so dramatically impact communities, individuals and, indeed, our very souls.
£9.99
New York University Press Debt Disaster?: Banks, Government and Multilaterals Confront the Crisis
Written for the nontechnical reader and intended to intervene in the policy debate, Debt Disaster? offers informative analysis, controversial assessments, and concrete solutions to bring a close the bleakest period for the Third World since the end of World War II. Out of this volume comes a clear message: the indebted countries cannot grow if they seek to pay their debts, no matter what policies they follow. The contributors include: Barry Herman, Rolph van der Hoeven, Karin Lissakers, Paul M. Sacks, Chris Canavan, Robert Liebenthal, Peter Nicholas, Robin A. King, Michael. D. Robinson, Richard D. Fletcher, JOse D. Epstein, William L. Canak, Danilo Levi, Louellen Stedman, Peter Hakim, Vali Jamal, Bruce Morrison, Rudiger Dornbusch, Osvaldo Sunkel, William Darity, Jr., and MIchael Pl. Claudon.
£80.00
Tilbury House,U.S. Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter
Black lives matter. That message would be self-evident in a just world, but in this world and this America, all children need to hear it again and again, and not just to hear it but to feel and know it. This book affirms the message repeatedly, tenderly, with cumulative power and shared pride. Celebrating Black accomplishments in music, art, literature, journalism, politics, law, science, medicine, entertainment and sports, Shani King summons a magnificent historical and contemporary context for honouring the fortitude of Black role models, women and men, who have achieved greatness despite the grinding political and social constraints on Black life. Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, Sojourner Truth, John Lewis, Langston Hughes, Louis Armstrong, Maya Angelou, Aretha Franklin and many more pass through these pages. An America without their struggles, aspirations and contributions would be a shadow of the country we know. A hundred life sketches augment the narrative, opening a hundred doors to lives and thinking that aren’t included in many history books. James Baldwin’s challenge is here: “We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it". Actress Viola Davis’s words are here too: “When I was younger, I did not exert my voice because I did not feel worthy of having a voice. I was taught so many things that didn’t include me. Where was I? What were people like me doing?” This book tells children what people like Viola were and are doing, and it assures Black children that they are, indisputably, worthy of having a voice. Have I Ever Told You Black Lives Matter? is a book for this time and always. It is time for all children to live and breathe the certainty that Black lives matter.
£13.99
Rowman & Littlefield Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience: Literature and Metaphysics
Simone de Beauvoir developed her philosophy of lived experience as she actually wrote fiction. Hence Beauvoir should be placed among major philosophical novelists of the twentieth-century like Toni Morrison and Nadine Gordimer, and Beauvoir's theory of the metaphysical novel acknowledges multicultural traditions of story-telling and song which are not locked into the theoretical abstractions of the Greek philosophical tradition. In Simone de Beauvoir's Philosophy of Lived Experience, Eleanore Holveck presents Simone de Beauvoir's theory of literature and metaphysics, including its relationship to the philosophers Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Immanuel Kant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, with references to the literary tradition of Goethe, Maurice Barrès, Arthur Rimbaud, André Breton, and Paul Nizan. The book provides a detailed philosophical analysis of Beauvoir's early short stories and several major novels, including The Mandarins and L'invitée, from the point of view of "other" women who appear on the fringes of Beauvoir's fiction: shop girls, seamstresses, and prostitutes. Holveck applies Beauvoir's philosophy to her own lived experience as a working-class teenager who grew up in jazz clubs similar to those Beauvoir herself visited in New York and Chicago.
£42.00
Boom! Studios The Complete Irredeemable by Mark Waid
The iconic team of writer Mark Waid and artist Peter Krause exploring the good, the bad...and the irredeemable inside all of us.When the Plutonian, the world's greatest superhero, snaps and turns into the world's greatest villain, only his former teammates have a chance at stopping his rampage. But while on the run from the world's most powerful and angry being, will these former teammates discover his secrets in time? How did he come to this? And what happens to a world when its savior betrays it? The iconic team of writer Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, The Avengers) and artist Peter Krause (We Only Kill Each Other), along with some of the most acclaimed creators in comics, challenge everything you think you know about superheroes by exploring the good, the bad...and the irredeemable inside all of us. This comprehensive volume collects Irredeemable #1-37, Irredeemable Special #1, and Incorruptible #25-26, alongside a new foreword by Academy Award nominee Kemp Powers (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and an afterword by comics icon Grant Morrison (All-Star Superman, Klaus).
£45.00
Simon & Schuster Ltd Unknown Pleasures: Inside Joy Division
'Genuinely funny; indeed, the story will keep you entertained for a very long time' Sunday Times Joy Division changed the face of music. Godfathers of the enduring alternative scene, they reinvented rock in the post-punk era, creating a sound – dark, hypnotic, intense – that would influence U2, Morrissey, R.E.M., Radiohead and many others. This is the rollercoaster story of Joy Division – the friendships, fights, fall-outs; the rehearsals and recording sessions; the larger than life characters – told by the band’s legendary bassist, Peter Hook. 'Hook has restored a flesh-and-blood rawness to what was becoming a standard tale. Few pop music books manage that' Guardian 'An honest, enthusiastic account . . . it’s a window like no other into the reality of life in this most aloof of bands' Metro 'An immense account of Joy Division’s rise . . . having read Hook’s book, you’ll feel like you were the fifth member of the band' GQ 'A bittersweet, profanity-filled recollection . . . if you like Joy Division, you really have to read it' Q Magazine 'Hook lifts the lid on the real Ian Curtis' NME 'He's frank, incredibly funny, and it isn’t shy' Artrocker
£10.99
Atlantic Books A Game of Two Halves: Famous Football Fans Meet Their Heroes
Ever wondered which goal Frank Lampard is proudest of, who Jürgen Klopp thinks will manage Liverpool in the future, what Rio Ferdinand thinks of Man United in the post-Ferguson years or exactly how many grey cashmere jumpers Pep Guardiola owns? In this collection of frank and funny conversations between footballers and their biggest fans, these vital questions (and many more) are finally addressed. A Game of Two Halves shows a different side to some of the biggest names in football, reminding us of the common ground we all share. This project is published in partnership with UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with the goal of raising both funds for and awareness of their work with child refugees.Featuring forewords by Raheem Sterling and Gary Lineker and interviews betweenJürgen Klopp & John BishopPep Guardiola & Johnny MarrLucy Bronze & Clare BaldingFrank Lampard & Omid Djalili Rio Ferdinand & Rachel Riley Ian Wright & Wretch 32Héctor Bellerin & Romesh RanganathanSteven Gerrard & David MorrisseyGary Lineker & Fahd SalehEric Dier & David LammyJohn McGlynn & Val McDermid Vivianne Miedema & Amy Raphael
£14.99
Pan Macmillan On Agoraphobia
‘One of my favourite living writers: intelligent, lucid and, most impressive of all, funny’ - Jonathan CoeIf we’re talking agoraphobia, we’re talking books. I slip between their covers, lose myself in the turn of one page, re-discover myself on the next. Reading is a game of hide-and-seek. Narrative and neurosis, uneasy bedfellows sleeping top to toe.On Agoraphobia is a fascinating, entertaining and sometimes painfully acute look at what it means to go through life with an anxiety disorder that evades easy definition.When Graham Caveney was in his early twenties he began to suffer from what was eventually diagnosed as agoraphobia. What followed were decades of managing his condition and learning to live within the narrow limits it imposed on his life: no motorways, no dual carriageways, no shopping centres, limited time outdoors.Graham’s quest to understand his illness brought him back to his first love: books. From Harper Lee’s Boo Radley, Ford Madox Ford, Emily Dickinson, and Shirley Jackson: the literary world is replete with examples of agoraphobics – once you go looking for them.‘Intellectually curious, emotionally bracing and immensely erudite’ - Blake Morrison, The Guardian‘Captivating’ Richard Beard
£10.99
Dialogue Cygnet
WINNER OF THE WRITERS' GUILD FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2020ELLE ONES TO WATCH 2019'Not since Holden Caulfield have I been so captivated by a first-person voice as the one Season Butler creates in Cygnet' Blake Morrison'A bright new voice in literature' Bernardine Evaristo'Terribly moving' China Miéville'A beautiful book, a meander through the fluid anxiety of youth' Uzodinma Iweala'[A] potent debut . . . A strange, promising beginning' Observer The Kid doesn't know where her parents are. They left with a promise to come back months ago, and now their seventeen-year-old daughter is stranded on Swan Island. Swan isn't just any island; it's home to an eccentric old age separatist community who have shunned life on the mainland for a haven which is rapidly sinking into the ocean. The Kid's arrival threatens to burst the idyllic bubble that the elderly residents have so carefully constructed - an unwelcome reminder of the life they left behind, and one they want rid of.Cygnet is the story of a young woman battling against the thrashing waves of loneliness and depression, and how she learns to find hope, laughter and her own voice in a world that's crumbling around her.
£8.09
Europa Editions (UK) Ltd Sleeping Among Sheep Under a Starry Sky: Essays 1985-2021
“Lovely, hilarious, and seriously thought-provoking.” TONI MORRISON "Endlessly curious, playful, and subtle." PANKAJ MISHRA SLEEPING AMONG SHEEP UNDER A STARRY SKY is a collection of essays written over the course of the last thirty-five years. Shawn seems to start from the premise that the world ought to be a place where all of us can lie around on cushions writing letters and love poems to each other on multi-coloured paper, as perhaps the women and men of the eleventh-century Heian court in Japan were able to do. Why do we not inhabit a world in which beauty, sensuality, and the adoration of other people, other beings, and the natural world are our principal preoccupations? Why, instead, are we obsessed with a joyless struggle for supremacy over each other? Why have we invented races and nations? Is what we call “civilization” the precipitating cause of our destructiveness and viciousness, our sadism, our love of murder? Shawn himself grew up as a child of privilege and has devoted his life to aesthetic pursuits and hedonism. Has the life he’s led provided him with any sort of valuable vantage point from which to view the world, or has he simply been a parasite? As he himself feels that the answer isn’t clear, a certain self-questioning underlies these essays, along with a nagging doubt about whether we’re right to insist that all of our different qualities and aspects cohere into a single “self.” If the self is simply an illusion, how can we understand “ourselves”? And if we don’t understand ourselves, what conclusions should we draw from that?
£16.99
University of Minnesota Press Wild Child: Intensive Parenting and Posthumanist Ethics
Exploring how the figure of the “wild child” in contemporary fiction grapples with contemporary cultural anxieties about reproductive ethics and the future of humanity In the eighteenth century, Western philosophy positioned the figure of “the child” at the border between untamed nature and rational adulthood. Contemporary cultural anxieties about the ethics and politics of reproductive choice and the crisis of parental responsibility have freighted this liminal figure with new meaning in twenty-first-century narratives.In Wild Child, Naomi Morgenstern explores depictions of children and their adult caregivers in extreme situations—ranging from the violence of slavery and sexual captivity to accidental death, mass murder, torture, and global apocalypse—in such works as Toni Morrison’s A Mercy, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, Emma Donoghue’s Room, and Denis Villeneuve’s film Prisoners. Morgenstern shows how, in such narratives, “wild” children function as symptoms of new ethical crises and existential fears raised by transformations in the technology and politics of reproduction and by increased ethical questions about the very decision to reproduce. In the face of an uncertain future that no longer confirms the confidence of patriarchal humanism, such narratives displace or project present-day apprehensions about maternal sacrifice and paternal protection onto the wildness of children in a series of hyperbolically violent scenes.Urgent and engaging, Wild Child offers the only extended consideration of how twenty-first-century fiction has begun to imagine the decision to reproduce and the ethical challenges of posthumanist parenting.
£81.00
Hodder & Stoughton Amy, 27
The death of Amy Winehouse at the age of 27 was a tragedy.She was one of the brightest music stars in years -a brilliant, original song writer with a mighty voice and great personal charm. Amy was loveable, but troubled. She was as notorious for her messy personal life, drug addiction and alcoholism, as she was celebrated for her songs, and her death in 2011, while shocking, was not unexpected.Amy was also the latest in a series of iconic music stars who died at the same young age; starting with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones whose death in 1969 was followed by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in 1970, Jim Morrison in 1971, and Kurt Cobain in 1994. All were gifted. All were dissipated. All were 27.The 27 Club was first used as a collective term for these lost souls after a comment by Kurt Cobain's mother. 'He's gone and joined that stupid club,' she said after Kurt shot himself. 'I told him not to ...'In this ground-breaking book, Howard Sounes delivers a detailed and insightful study of Amy Winehouse's life, and sets that life in the context of the 27 Club. That six big music stars died at 27 -- along with 44 less well-known names -- is on one level a coincidence. But behind this coincidence Sounes reveals is a disturbing common narrative that explains how these artists met their fate, and casts new light on Amy's death in particular.
£10.99
Columbia University Press Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon
Contemporary fiction has never been less contemporary. Midcentury writers tended to set their works in their own moment, but for the last several decades critical acclaim and attention have fixated on historical fiction. This shift is particularly dramatic for writers of color. Even as the literary canon has become more diverse, cultural institutions have celebrated Black, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous novelists almost exclusively for their historical fiction.Writing Backwards explores what the dominance of historical fiction in the contemporary canon reveals about American literary culture. Alexander Manshel investigates the most celebrated historical genres—contemporary narratives of slavery, the World War II novel, the multigenerational family saga, immigrant fiction, and the novel of recent history—alongside the literary and academic institutions that have elevated them. He examines novels by writers including Toni Morrison, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Colson Whitehead, Julia Alvarez, Leslie Marmon Silko, Michael Chabon, Julie Otsuka, Yaa Gyasi, Ben Lerner, and Tommy Orange in the context of MFA programs, literary prizes, university syllabi, book clubs, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Manshel studies how historical fiction has evolved over the last half century, documenting the formation of the newly inclusive literary canon as well as who and what it still excludes. Offering new insight into how institutions shape literature and the limits of historical memory, Writing Backwards also considers recent challenges to the historical turn in American fiction.
£27.00
Princeton University Press The Song of Songs: A Biography
An essential history of the greatest love poem ever writtenThe Song of Songs has been embraced for centuries as the ultimate song of love. But the kind of love readers have found in this ancient poem is strikingly varied. Ilana Pardes invites us to explore the dramatic shift from readings of the Song as a poem on divine love to celebrations of its exuberant account of human love. With a refreshingly nuanced approach, she reveals how allegorical and literal interpretations are inextricably intertwined in the Song's tumultuous life. The body in all its aspects—pleasure and pain, even erotic fervor—is key to many allegorical commentaries. And although the literal, sensual Song thrives in modernity, allegory has not disappeared. New modes of allegory have emerged in modern settings, from the literary and the scholarly to the communal.Offering rare insights into the story of this remarkable poem, Pardes traces a diverse line of passionate readers. She looks at Jewish and Christian interpreters of late antiquity who were engaged in disputes over the Song's allegorical meaning, at medieval Hebrew poets who introduced it into the opulent world of courtly banquets, and at kabbalists who used it as a springboard to the celestial spheres. She shows how feminist critics have marveled at the Song's egalitarian representation of courtship, and how it became a song of America for Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, and Toni Morrison. Throughout these explorations of the Song's reception, Pardes highlights the unparalleled beauty of its audacious language of love.
£20.00
University of Texas Press Comin' Right at Ya: How a Jewish Yankee Hippie Went Country, or, the Often Outrageous History of Asleep at the Wheel
A who’s who of American popular music fills this lively memoir, in which Ray Benson recalls how a Philadelphia Jewish hippie and his bandmates in Asleep at the Wheel turned on generations of rock and country fans to Bob Wills–style Western swing. A six-foot-seven-inch Jewish hippie from Philadelphia starts a Western swing band in 1970, when country fans hate hippies and Western swing. It sounds like a joke but—more than forty years, twenty-five albums, and ten Grammy Awards later—Asleep at the Wheel is still drawing crowds around the world. The roster of musicians who’ve shared a stage with the Wheel is a who’s who of American popular music—Van Morrison, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, George Strait, Vince Gill, Lyle Lovett, and so many more. And the bandleader who’s brought them all together is the hippie that claimed Bob Wills’s boots: Ray Benson. In this hugely entertaining memoir, Benson looks back over his life and wild ride with Asleep at the Wheel from the band’s beginning in Paw Paw, West Virginia, through its many years as a Texas institution. He vividly recalls spending decades in a touring band, with all the inevitable ups and downs and changes in personnel, and describes the making of classic albums such as Willie and the Wheel and Tribute to the Music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. The ultimate music industry insider, Benson explains better than anyone else how the Wheel got rock hipsters and die-hard country fans to love groovy new-old Western swing. Decades later, they still do.
£16.99
BBC Audio, A Division Of Random House John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme: Series 9: The BBC Radio 4 comedy sketch show
The complete ninth series of BBC Radio 4's award-winning sketch show'One of our best sketch writers' ObserverJohn Finnemore returns with his multi-award-winning sketch show, but this series is very different to the previous eight. There are still sketches and songs, and it's still written and performed by him and his usual fantastic ensemble cast - but with no live studio audience, John has taken the opportunity to try something new.Each episode in this series of Souvenir Programme consists of scenes from one person's life, played in reverse order. There's no narrative as such - it's still a sketch show - but as we follow the characters back in time, from lockdown Zoom calls to childhood birthdays and funerals, the individual sketches link up to form an overall picture, portraying the sprawling history of an entire multi-generational family.And, as if that wasn't enough, there are also some terrific tall tales, a paean of praise, and a truly unforgettable earworm...Clever, complex, hilarious and poignant, these Souvenir Programmes with a twist star Lawry Lewin as Russ, Margaret Cabourn-Smith as Deborah, Simon Kane as Jerry, Carrie Quinlan as Vanessa and John Finnemore as Newt.Cast and creditsWritten and performed by John FinnemoreEnsemble cast: Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Simon Kane, Lawry Lewin, Carrie QuinlanOriginal music composed by Susannah Pearse and Sally Stares, and arranged by Susannah Pearse and Tim SuttonRecorded and edited by Rich Evans at Syncbox PostProduction coordinator: Beverly TaggProducer: Ed MorrishA BBC Studios production© 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd(p) 2021 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd
£16.50
Getty Trust Publications In Focus: Hill and Adamson – Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum
Shortly after the dawn of photography, the unlikely partnership between the respected painter David Octavius Hill and the young engineer Robert Adamson produced some of the most important photographs in the history of the medium. Their alliance began when Hill, while working on his large commemorative painting of the people involved in forming the Free Chruch of Scotland in 1843, began using photography as a tool to document the church elders. What followed was a four-and-a-half-year partnership - cut short by Adamson's untimely death in 1848 - that produced a large body of work. During their association Hill and Adamson experimented with some of the earliest calotype processes creating hundreds of portraits, staged dramatic photographs, and architectural and landscape images. The Getty Museum holds more than 400 works by Hill and Adamson, 47 of which are featured in this volume. The plates are accompanied by commentary from Anne M. Lyden, curatorial assistant in the Department of Photographs at the Museum. A colour foldout of Hill's above-referenced painting "The Signing of the Deed of Demission (The Disruption Picture)" appears in the back of the book. The book includes a chronology of the key events of the artists' partnership and an edited transcript of a colloquium on the artists, with participants: Lyden; Weston Naef, curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum; Sara Stevenson, curator of photographs at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery; Alison Morrison-Low, curator, History of Science Section, National Museums of Scotland; Jonathon Reff, photographer, Los Angeles; Michael Wilson, private collector, Los Angeles and London; and David Featherstone, independent editor and curator, San Francisco.
£16.99
Drago Arts & Communication The Serra Effect: 36 Chambers
Conceived by Ivory Serra for Drago's 36 Chambers series, The Serra Effect is an immersive tracking shot of the characters and idols of neo-pop culture portrayed in their most natural environment: the spectacle society. In the words of Peter Beard, the images presented in this book are "absolutely classic and strangely unique." The icons immortalised by Serra include Umberto Eco, Elisabeth Hurley, Tony Alva, Andy Warhol, Tommy Guerrero, Tony Hawk, Aaron Rose, Mark Gonzales, Harold Hunter, James Taylor, Richard Serra, Jonas Mekas, Colin McKay, Phil Frost, Alanis Morrissette, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, Moby, Stacey Peralta, Rodney Torres, Barry McGee, Tom Sachs, Robert Plants, Philip Glass, Wu Tang, Moorcheeba, Avril Lavigne and Lenny Kravitz. The artist chooses to present each of these lively, iconic portraits adjacent to images of arbitrary and still objects in a stunning display of Serra's inimitable style.
£18.73