Search results for ""Sublime""

The Mathematician's Brain poses a provocative question about the world's most brilliant yet eccentric mathematical minds: were they brilliant because of their eccentricities or in spite of them? In this thought-provoking and entertaining book, David Ruelle, the well-known mathematical physicist who helped create chaos theory, gives us a rare insider's account of the celebrated mathematicians he has known-their quirks, oddities, personal tragedies, bad behavior, descents into madness, tragic ends, and the sublime, inexpressible beauty of their most breathtaking mathematical discoveries. Consider the case of British mathematician Alan Turing. Credited with cracking the German Enigma code during World War II and conceiving of the modern computer, he was convicted of "gross indecency" for a homosexual affair and died in 1954 after eating a cyanide-laced apple--his death was ruled a suicide, though rumors of assassination still linger. Ruelle holds nothing back in his revealing and deeply personal reflections on Turing and other fellow mathematicians, including Alexander Grothendieck, Rene Thom, Bernhard Riemann, and Felix Klein. But this book is more than a mathematical tell-all. Each chapter examines an important mathematical idea and the visionary minds behind it. Ruelle meaningfully explores the philosophical issues raised by each, offering insights into the truly unique and creative ways mathematicians think and showing how the mathematical setting is most favorable for asking philosophical questions about meaning, beauty, and the nature of reality. The Mathematician's Brain takes you inside the world--and heads--of mathematicians. It's a journey you won't soon forget.

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The definitive biography of a legendary athlete.The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his body totally in sync with the ball -- hitting nothing but net.But for all his greatness, this scion of a complex family from North Carolina's Coastal Plain has a darker side: he's a ruthless competitor and a lover of high stakes. There's never been a biography that encompassed the dual nature of his character and looked so deeply at Jordan on and off the court -- until now.Basketball journalist Roland Lazenby spent almost thirty years covering Michael Jordan's career in college and the pros. He witnessed Jordan's growth from a skinny rookie to the instantly recognizable global ambassador for basketball whose business savvy and success have millions of kids still wanting to be just like Mike. Yet Lazenby also witnessed the Michael Jordan whose drive and appetite are more fearsome and more insatiable than any of his fans could begin to know.Michael Jordan: The Life explores both sides of his personality to reveal the fullest, most compelling story of the man who is Michael Jordan. Lazenby draws on his personal relationships with Jordan's coaches; countless interviews with Jordan's friends, teammates, and family members; and interviews with Jordan himself to provide the first truly definitive study of Michael Jordan: the player, the icon, and the man.

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'The writing is sublime, the research thorough, the eye for story superb' Sunday TelegraphWhen Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to find how the lives of the 19th century sailors and soldiers he wrote of were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean, but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those currents: opium. Most surprising at all, however, was the discovery that his own identity and family history was swept up in the story.Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, memoir and a history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China and redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the Empire's financial survival. Yet tracing the profits further, Ghosh finds opium at the origins of some of the world's biggest corporations, of America's most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.Moving deftly between horticultural histories, the mythologies of capitalism, and the social and cultural repercussions of colonialism, in Smoke and Ashes Amitav Ghosh reveals the role that one small plant had in making our world, now teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

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"It is the contemporary elixir from which all manner of being emerges, the metamorphic sublime, an alchemist's dream." So begins Palma Africana, the latest attempt by anthropologist Michael Taussig to make sense of the contemporary moment. But to what elixir does he refer? Palm oil. Saturating everything from potato chips to nail polish, palm oil has made its way into half of the packaged goods in our supermarkets. By 2020, world production will be double what it was in 2000. In Colombia, palm oil plantations are covering over onetime cornucopias of animal, bird, and plant life. Over time, they threaten indigenous livelihoods and give rise to abusive labor conditions and major human rights violations. The list of entwined horrors--climatic, biological, social--is long. But Taussig takes no comfort in our usual labels: "habitat loss," "human rights abuses," "climate change." The shock of these words has passed; nowadays it is all a blur. Hence, Taussig's keen attention to words and writing throughout this work. He takes cues from precursors' ruminations: Roland Barthes' suggestion that trees form an alphabet in which the palm tree is the loveliest; William Burroughs' retort to critics that for him words are like animals--cut them and the words are let free. Steeped in a lifetime of philosophical and ethnographic exploration, Palma Africana undercuts the banality of the destruction taking place all around us and offers a penetrating vision of the global condition. Richly illustrated and written with experimental verve, this book is Taussig's Tristes Tropiques for the twenty-first century.

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'The Bodhisattva ideal is a vast subject. It is the major distinctive emphasis of the phase of the development of Buddhism known as the Mahāyāna, which had its flowering for a period of around 500 years (0–500CE), but is still practised today in many different forms, from Tibetan Buddhism to Zen. To consider this topic is to place one’s hand on the very heart of Buddhism, and feel the beating of that heart.' Thus Sangharakshita introduces his theme. The first part of this volume describes the arising of the bodhicitta and the bodhisattva's path to Enlightenment in a weaving together of the sublime and the inspiringly practical, and the second part is a commentary on Śāntideva's classic 8th-century text, the Bodhicaryāvatara, based on a seminar given in 1973, in the very early days of Triratna, thus shaping the newly emerging Buddhist movement. The seminar was titled The Endlessly Fascinating Cry, echoing Śāntideva's fervent prayer: 'In order to grasp this jewel of the mind, I offer ... the endlessly fascinating cry of wild geese ...' The volume ends with 'The Bodhisattva Principle', a talk given in 1983 to a conference of scientists and mystics in which Sangharakshita presents a vision of the bodhisattva as an embodiment of the key to the evolution of consciousness, individual and collective. The subject of this book may be an ideal, but it offers many ways to take the first real steps on this most significant of all journeys, and much nourishment for the heart and mind of the would-be bodhisattva.

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Daniel O'Quinn investigates the complex interpersonal, political, and aesthetic relationships between Europeans and Ottomans in the long eighteenth century. Bookmarking his analysis with the conflict leading to the 1699 Treaty of Karlowitz on one end and the 1815 bid for Greek independence on the other, he follows the fortunes of notable British, Dutch, and French diplomats to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire as they lived and worked according to the capitulations surrendered to the Sultan. Closely reading a mixed archive of drawings, maps, letters, dispatches, memoirs, travel narratives, engraved books, paintings, poems, and architecture, O'Quinn demonstrates the extent to which the Ottoman state was not only the subject of historical curiosity in Europe but also a key foil against which Western theories of governance were articulated. Juxtaposing narrative accounts of diplomatic life in Constantinople, such as those contained in the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the English ambassador, with visual depictions such as those of the costumes of the Ottoman elite produced by the French-Flemish painter Jean Baptiste Vanmour, he traces the dissemination of European representations and interpretations of the Ottoman Empire throughout eighteenth-century material culture. In a series of eight interlocking chapters, O'Quinn presents sustained and detailed case studies of particular objects, personalities, and historical contexts, framing intercultural encounters between East and West through a set of key concerns: translation, mediation, sociability, and hospitality. Richly illustrated and provocatively argued, Engaging the Ottoman Empire demonstrates that study of the Ottoman world is vital to understanding European modernity.

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Indonesian court dance, a purportedly pure and untouched tradition, is famed throughout the world for its sublime calm and stillness. Yet this unyieldingly peaceful surface conceals a time of political repression and mass killing. Between 1965 and 1966, some one million Indonesians—including a large percentage of the country’s musicians, artists, and dancers—were killed, arrested, or disappeared as Suharto established a virtual dictatorship that ruled for the next thirty years. In The Dance That Makes You Vanish, an examination of the relationship between female dancers and the Indonesian state since 1965, Rachmi Diyah Larasati elucidates the Suharto regime’s dual-edged strategy: persecuting and killing performers perceived as communist or left leaning while simultaneously producing and deploying “replicas”—new bodies trained to standardize and unify the “unruly” movements and voices of those vanished—as idealized representatives of Indonesia’s cultural elegance and composure in bowing to autocratic rule. Analyzing this history, Larasati shows how the Suharto regime’s obsessive attempts to control and harness Indonesian dance for its own political ends have functioned as both smoke screen and smoke signal, inadvertently drawing attention to the site of state violence and criminality by constantly pointing out the “perfection” of the mask that covers it.Reflecting on her own experiences as an Indonesian national troupe dancer from a family of persecuted female dancers and activists, Larasati brings to life a powerful, multifaceted investigation of the pervasive use of culture as a vehicle for state repression and the global mass-marketing of national identity.

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At his death in 1992, the eminent philosopher, critic, and theorist Louis Marin left, in addition to a dozen influential books (including Sublime Poussin, Stanford, 1999), a corpus of some three hundred articles and essays published in journals and anthologies. A collection of twenty-two essays that appeared between 1971 and 1992, this book interrogates the theory and practice of representation as it is carried out by both linguistic and graphic signs, and thus the complex relation between language and image, between perception and conception. The essays are grouped in four parts that reflect the continuity and coherence of Marin's interests in semiology, narrative, visuality, and painting. The interdisciplinary horizon of the book draws on multiple scholarly resources—the cultural history of the seventeenth century, the philosophy of language, the tools of discourse analysis, the history of art and aesthetics, the analysis of reception—to address a stunning diversity of subjects ranging from historical painting through cartography to the processes of deciphering texts, interpreting stories, and reading images. Throughout the essays, Marin's reflection on representation is supported and deepened by his brilliant exegesis of graphic art. His analysis of works by Caravaggio, Philippe de Champaigne, Le Brun, and Poussin, among others, provides the armature that allows him to describe both the structural logic of representation and the intricate processes of production and reception that make it dynamic and unstable. Marin demonstrates with consummate rigor why the pursuit of a general theory of representation is experienced by artists and critics alike as an inevitable, yet unattainable objective.

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"All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death."In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies herself, leading to a farewell doubleheader in a single weekend. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life.Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home.The story of the de La Cruzes is the quintessential American story. This indelible portrait of a complex family reminds us of what it means to be the first generation and to live two lives across one border. It takes us into a world we have not known, while reflecting back the hopes and dreams of our own families. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank.

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Our most revered critic returns to his signature theme "Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it," writes Harold Bloom in The Anatomy of Influence, "is in the first place literary, that is to say, personal and passionate."For more than half a century, Bloom has shared his profound knowledge of the written word with students and readers. In this, his most comprehensive and accessible study of influence, Bloom leads us through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years. The result is "a critical self-portrait," a sustained meditation on a life lived with and through the great works of the Western canon: Why has influence been my lifelong obsessive concern? Why have certain writers found me and not others? What is the end of a literary life?Featuring extended analyses of Bloom's most cherished poets—Shakespeare, Whitman, and Crane—as well as inspired appreciations of Emerson, Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Ashbery, and others, The Anatomy of Influence adapts Bloom's classic work The Anxiety of Influence to show us what great literature is, how it comes to be, and why it matters. Each chapter maps startling new literary connections that suddenly seem inevitable once Bloom has shown us how to listen and to read. A fierce and intimate appreciation of the art of literature on a scale that the author will not again attempt, TheAnatomy of Influence follows the sublime works it studies, inspiring the reader with a sense of something ever more about to be.

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In this groundbreaking comparative study, Matthew Bagger investigates the role of paradox in Western and Asian religious discourse. Drawing on both philosophy and social scientific theory, he offers a naturalistic explanation of religion's oft-noted propensity to sublime paradox and argues that religious thinkers employ intractable paradoxes as the basis for various techniques of self-transformation. Considering the writings of Kierkegaard, Pseudo-Dionysus, St. John of the Cross, N?g?rjuna, and Chuang-tzu, among others, Bagger identifies two religious uses of paradox: cognitive asceticism, which wields the psychological discomfort of paradox as an instrument of self-transformation, and mysticism, which seeks to transform the self through an alleged extraordinary cognition that ineffably comprehends paradox. Bagger contrasts these techniques of self-transformation with skepticism, which cultivates the appearance of contradiction in order to divest a person of beliefs altogether. Bagger further contends that a thinker's social attitudes determine his or her response to paradox. Attitudes concerning crossing the boundary of a social group prefigure attitudes concerning supposed truths that lie beyond the boundaries of understanding. Individuals who fear crossing the boundary of their social group and would prohibit them tend to use paradox ascetically, while individuals who find the controlled incorporation of outsiders enriching commonly find paradox revelatory. Although scholars have long noted that religious discourse seems to cultivate and perpetuate paradox, their scholarship tends to ratify religious attitudes toward paradox instead of explaining the unusual reaction paradox provokes. A vital contribution to discussions of mystical experience, The Uses of Paradox reveals how much this experience relies on social attitudes and cosmological speculation.

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“All this must be either surfed or painted”: This is the underlying sentiment behind Raymond Pettibon’s iconic paintings of surfers and waves in this quintessential volume dedicated to the motif. Pettibon is known for his characteristically youthful aesthetic and sharply satirical critique of American culture. Though drenched in cynicism, his work empathizes with the dizzying madness of our own humanity as it engages both so-called high and low culture. Perhaps most poetic of the many motifs present in Pettibon’s oeuvre is the surfer. In 1985 Pettibon began Surfers––a series he continues to work on to this day––popular for its depiction of the lone surfer silently carving “a line of beauty,” along an impossibly large wave. This publication traces a selection of one hundred surfers from the series, from smaller monochromatic works on paper to colorful large-scale paintings applied directly to the wall. For Pettibon’s protagonist in these works—his countercultural hero—surfing exists apart from all else. Momentarily he achieves sublimity on the wave, distant yet synced with turbulent reality. We are forced to confront our own scale: small and feeble in the face of so much sublime power. Pettibon’s lyrical writings on these painted surfaces—both his own and taken from literature—reference his own philosophies and the confusions of reality—he critiques the hypocrisies and vanities of the world he engages. To help navigate, the renowned New Yorker writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan, perfectly distills the transcendent nature and lack thereof in Pettibon’s work.

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Secrets! Magic! Enemies to . . . something more? Set in an alternative Edwardian England, A Power Unbound is the steamy, spellbinding conclusion to The Last Binding trilogy by Freya Marske.‘Sublime prose, top-notch world-building, delightfully queer’ – TJ Klune, bestselling author of Under the Whispering Door, on A Marvellous LightJack Alston – Lord Hawthorn – would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. He renounced magic after the death of his twin sister. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual risking every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world.Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping its owner Violet track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross. Cagey and argumentative, Alan is only in this for the money. He’s loud in his hatred of the aristocracy and their unearned power . . . and unfortunately, he happens to be everything that Jack wants in one gorgeous, infuriating package.When a plot to seize unimaginable magic power comes to a head on Jack’s own family estate, Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets and bloody sacrifice – and the foundations of magic in Britain might be torn up by the roots before the end.Filled with magic, murder and romance, A Power Unbound is the thrilling third book in The Last Binding trilogy by Freya Marske. Start the series with A Marvellous Light and A Restless Truth.

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From the author of New York Times bestseller, A Flicker in the Dark, comes a gripping and atmospheric new thriller about one woman’s search for the truth From the author of New York Times bestseller, A Flicker in the Dark, comes a gripping and atmospheric new thriller about one woman’s search for the truth ‘Thriller fans will adore this read.’ Prima ‘Pacy and sinister.’ Karin Slaughter 'Brilliant! … I had to finish this marvelous thriller in one sitting!' Jeffery Deaver ‘A sensational thriller… Dark, engrossing and atmospheric… sublime tension. EXCELLENT’ Will Dean ‘Packed full of twists and turns … Stacy is a must-read author' Sarah Pearse Today is day 364. 364 days since my last night of sleep. 364 days since my son, Mason, was taken from his bed. The police have stopped looking. My husband wants me to move on. But I need to keep his story alive. Someone knows what happened to my son. And I’m going to find them. It’s been a year since Isabelle Drake’s son, Mason, disappeared from his bedroom. Since then, she hasn’t had a full night of sleep. Everyone else has moved on – the detectives, the press, her husband – but she can’t rest until she knows the truth. Teaming up with true crime podcaster Waylon Spencer, Isabelle investigates her son’s case. But Waylon has motives of his own and as long-forgotten memories of Isabelle’s past resurface, doubt begins to cloud her sleepless nights. What happened to Mason Drake? What if the past is better left buried?

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Perfect for fans of Naomi Novik, Robin Hobb and George R.R. MartinShe has no name and no history, but she has a power greater than the Empire has ever known. Thanks to her special gift Judah has enjoyed a privileged life, being raised alongside Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban's vast empire. But as they grow Judah comes to realise that while Gavin is being groomed for his future role, she has no true position, and no hope of ever travelling beyond the castle walls. Lord Elban has plans for Judah – for all of them – but to him, she's nothing but a pawn. And he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.But he's not the only one with plans. Outside the castle wall – in the starving, desperate city – is a healer with his own secret power and his own plans for the empire . . . and Judah.The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined. An epic tale of greed and ambition, cruelty and love, this deeply immersive novel is about bowing to traditions and burning them down. ___________What people are saying about The Unwilling: 'Fantasy at its most sublime' ERIN MORGENSTERN'An epic fantasy novel with ingenious, thrilling twists and turns' KELLY LINK'Brilliantly executed. The Unwilling is about sharing joy, and sensing fear and cruelty, and caring beyond ourselves' VANITY FAIR'Suspenseful: magical, wonderfully written and never predictable . . . An essential addition to the all epic fantasy collections' BOOKLIST

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'An electrifying, word-perfect tale… Gently devastating, devastatingly beautiful’ Daily Mail'Funny, piercing, and singular… I can’t fathom the reason why you wouldn’t rush straight out to buy it’ ObserverDetermined, rebellious Marianne Clifford is searching for love and freedom in 1960s LondonHow do you find the courage to make your own life?Marianne Clifford, teenage daughter of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, falls helplessly and absolutely for eighteen-year-old Simon Hurst, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, he leaves for Paris and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.It is Marianne who tells this piercing story of first love, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, whilst her smart, ironic narration tellingly reveals so much more. Finding her way in 1960s Chelsea, and supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella, she continues to seek the life she never stops craving. And in Paris, beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst continues to nurse the secret which will alter everything.‘Tremain has always surprised and delighted her readers’ Sunday Times, Best 23 Novels of 2023** A THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023**READERS LOVE ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER:'Heartrending, funny, unputdownable' 5*****'An undoubted modern classic' 5*****'Marianne will remain with me as a friend' 5*****'A masterclass in character and world building ... the writing is just sublime' 5*****

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This publication comprises the first monographic survey dedicated to artist Kevin Schmidt. Based in Vancouver, Schmidt is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, video, photography and installation who has exhibited widely across North America and Europe. He is perhaps best known for performance expeditions and interventions into the natural world, which are documented in photographs, installations and videos, such as his eleven-and-a-half-hour Epic Journey, which documents a marathon nighttime screening of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in a small boat as it drifted down the Fraser River, or his Aurora with Roman Candle, which shows him firing roman candles at the Aurora Borealis.At a time when we might consider cultural production as being democratised through the Internet, Schmidt combines notions of the heroic with the seemingly amateur by using visible reminders of construction and theatrical devices-smoke machines, stage lights and DIY photographic equipment. Through this he proposes a utopian assertion of "the commons", where both land and culture are publicly accessible to all.Presented in partnership with Kamloops Art Gallery and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, this publication features essays by Charo Neville, Kathleen Ritter and an artist interview with Nigel Prince. The book charts Schmidt's ongoing body of work addressing the tensions between man and nature, performance and document and indoors and outdoors. These propositions are tackled through references to landscape, the invocation of the sublime at the point of apprehending such wild beauty, and by juxtaposing seemingly disparate elements within these environments. Works are often situated in remote locations, where Schmidt stages remarkable events that transfer elements of urban culture into untouched natural contexts. In this way, he simultaneously examines both the seductive elements of contemporary cultural production and the constructions that surround the idea of nature.

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This interdisciplinary book honors Columbia professor and New York intellectual Carl Woodring. Chapters on Romantic and Victorian literary culture written by leading scholars in the field join in conversation with Woodring’s teachings on literature and visual art and his commentaries on American culture. A multiple-authored chapter of postscripts on the aesthetic range of Woodring’s intellectual interests across cultural disciplines, his contributions to English studies and his informing influence on several generations of scholars, and their areas of interest, follows. A chapter from Woodring’s unpublished autobiography, on his childhood in small-town America, then concludes the volume with an ironic retrospection on intercultural origins. Topics addressed among the chapters include portraiture and self-fashioning, landscape art, physiognomy and caricatures, radical print ephemera, illustrated picaresque verse, social and political satire, traditions of the sublime in art and literature, transatlantic influences and aesthetics, chaos theory and the laws of thermodynamics, the Caribbean slave trade, revolutionary history, Napoleonic wars, the politics of multicultural communities, gender and race, marginalia and textual revelations, Native America, historical interchanges in curating museum shows, and contemporary American sculpture and art. Cultural figures of the nineteenth century that are featured in the discussions include Henry Adams, Beethoven, Blake, Byron, Willa Cather, Thomas Cole, Coleridge, James Fenimore Cooper, George Cruikshank, Ugo Foscolo, Washington Irving, Keats, Willibrord Mähler, George Romney, Rowlandson, Shelley, and Wordsworth. Chapter essays, commentaries, and Carl Woodring’s unpublished writings function together in Nature, Politics, and the Arts: Essays on Romantic Culture for Carl Woodring—with a depth of original perspectives and a multi-voiced and intercultural coherence. The book as a whole testifies to Woodring’s living and intellectually potent legacy for future students of nineteenth-century transatlantic culture and twenty-first century scholarship on literature and art.

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 FINALIST FOR THE BARNES & NOBLE DISCOVER PRIZE 2022 FINALIST FOR THE URSULA LE GUIN PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022 WATERSTONES AND ESQUIRE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 ‘Haunting and luminous … An astonishing debut’ – Alan Moore, creator of Watchmen and V for Vendetta 'A powerfully moving and thought provoking read. At times sublime, strange and deeply human' Adrian Tchaikovsky, bestselling author of the Children of Time series Siberia, 2031. After a virus, unearthed from melting permafrost, unleashes a deadly plague upon humanity, those left alive are forced to adapt to a new world, and do so in myriad moving and inventive ways. Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects — a pig — develops human speech; and a widowed painter and her teenage granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet. A story of unshakeable hope that seamlessly crosses literary lines, How High We Go in the Dark follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humankind endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world. Wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible. [How High We Go in the Dark] reaches far beyond our stars while its heart remains rooted to Earth, and reminds us that our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of our world - Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

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'Everything you would expect of a James Naughtie book - droll, absorbing and wonderfully perceptive.' Bill Bryson'A revealing and at times spellbinding tapestry of a nation...It is thought-provoking, constantly surprising and hugely entertaining. Sublime stuff.’ Michael Simkins, Mail on Sunday'An insightful account of living through momentous times...much to enjoy in Naughtie's astute memoir.' Martin Chilton, Independent James Naughtie, the acclaimed author and BBC broadcaster, now brings his unique and inquisitive eye to the country that has fascinated him and drawn him across the Atlantic for half a century. In looking at America, from Presidents Nixon through to Biden, he tells the story of a country that is grappling with a dream. What has it come to mean in the new century, and who do Americans now think they are? Drawing on his travels and encounters over forty years in the ‘Land of the Free’, On The Road is filled with anecdotes, memories, tears and laughter reflecting Naughtie’s characteristic warmth and enthusiasm in encountering the America of Washington, of Broadway, of the small town and the plains. As a student, Naughtie watched the fall of President Richard Nixon in 1974, and subsequently as a journalist followed the story of the country – its politicians, artists, wheeler-dealers and the people who make it what it is, in the New York melting pot or the western deserts. This is a story filled with encounters, for example with the people he has watched on every presidential campaign from the late 1970s to the victory of Joe Biden in 2020. This edition is fully updated to include Naughtie's fascinating insights on the controversial presidential election battle in 2020 between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

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Luther and Calvin applied the term fanatic to those who sought to destroy civil society in order to establish the Kingdom of God, the "false prophets" and their followers who, early on in the Reformation, began smashing images in churches and rebelling against princes. Civil Society and Fanaticism is organized around this seminal moment of religious and political iconoclasm, an outburst of hatred against mediations and representation. The author shows that civil society and fanaticism have been consistently present as conjoined notions in Western political thought since the sixteenth century, underlining the link between two principles that are constitutive of that thought: dualism—between the City of God and the earthly city, between civil society and the state—and the validity of representation. In what is both a study of the evolution of the two interrelated concepts and a critique of critiques of representation, the author draws upon an impressive range of works, including texts by Aristotle and Baudelaire, the medieval theology of Giles of Rome and the humanist thought of the Reformer Philipp Melanchthon, the political philosophies of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Rousseau, Kant's reflections on the sublime, and Marx's critique of Hegel. At the same time, he discusses a varied group of fanatics or people stigmatized as such: the first Anabaptists, the Shiite sect of the Assassins, the French Protestant Camisards, the Bolsheviks. An original analysis of Lenin's political theory and practice sheds new light on the antagonism between totalitarianism and the law-governed state identified with civil society. The author's approach is multidisciplinary, proceeding at different moments from lexicographical, sociological, psychoanalytic, and philosophical methods and analysis. The book also makes vivid use of iconology by reproducing and interpreting a series of works by Albrecht Dürer, whose art and theory of representation, it is argued, were opposed to the destruction not only of images but of civil society.

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From the architectural spectacle of the medieval cathedral and the romantic sublime of the nineteenth-century panorama to the techno-fetishism of today's London Science Museum, humans have gained a deeper understanding of the natural world through highly illusionistic representations that engender new modes of seeing, listening, and thinking. What unites and defines many of these wondrous spaces is an immersive view-an invitation to step inside the virtual world of the image and become a part of its universe, if only for a short time. Since their inception, museums of science and natural history have mixed education and entertainment, often to incredible, eye-opening effect. Immersive spaces of visual display and modes of exhibition send "shivers" down our spines, engaging the distinct cognitive and embodied mapping skills we bring to spectacular architecture and illusionistic media. They also force us to reconsider traditional models of film spectatorship in the context of a mobile and interactive spectator. Through a series of detailed historical case studies, Alison Griffiths masterfully explores the uncanny and unforgettable visceral power of the medieval cathedral, the panorama, the planetarium, the IMAX theater, and the science museum. Examining these structures as exemplary spaces of immersion and interactivity, Griffiths reveals the sometimes surprising antecedents of modern media forms, suggesting the spectator's deep-seated desire to become immersed in a virtual world. Shivers Down Your Spine demonstrates how immersive and interactive museum display techniques such as large video displays, reconstructed environments, and touch-screen computer interactives have redefined the museum space, fueling the opposition between public and private, science and spectacle, civic and corporate interests, voice and text, and life and death. In her remarkable study of sensual spaces, Griffiths explains why, for centuries, we keep coming back for more.

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Our breath catches and we jump in fear at the sight of a snake. We pause and marvel at the sublime beauty of a sunrise. These reactions are no accident; in fact, many of our human responses to nature are steeped in our deep evolutionary past - we fear snakes because of the danger of venom or constriction, and we welcome the assurances of the sunrise as the predatory dangers of the dark night disappear. Many of our aesthetic preferences - from the kinds of gardens we build to the foods we enjoy and the entertainment we seek - are the lingering result of natural selection. In this ambitious and unusual work, evolutionary biologist Gordon H. Orians explores the role of evolution in human responses to the environment, beginning with why we have emotions and ending with evolutionary approaches to aesthetics. Orians reveals how our emotional lives today are shaped by decisions our ancestors made centuries ago on African savannas. During this time our likes and dislikes became wired in our brains, as the appropriate responses to the environment meant the difference between survival or death. His rich analysis explains why we mimic the tropical savannas of our ancestors in our parks and gardens, why we are simultaneously attracted to danger and approach it cautiously, and how paying close attention to nature's sounds has resulted in us being an unusually musical species. We also learn why we have developed discriminating palates for wine, why we have strong reactions to some odors, and why we enjoy classifying almost everything. By applying biological perspectives ranging from Darwin to current neuroscience to analyses of our aesthetic preferences for landscapes, sounds, smells, plants, and animals, Snakes, Sunrises, and Shakespeare transforms how we view our experience of the natural world and how we relate to each other.

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'A magical, fairy-filled read with a twisty plot and main character you'll adore' A.F. Steadman, author of the internationally bestselling Skandar and the Unicorn ThiefFairies are real, but their power is waning . . . Embark on the adventure of a lifetime and discover the magic of Goblyn Wood, with the first book in a major new fantasy series for fans of Nevermoor and Podkin One-Ear! Are you ready to enter Goblyn Wood . . . ?Hazel has always known she was different, but she doesn’t know where she came from. When her best friend Pete is kidnapped by strange creatures, she must gather her courage and enter Goblyn Wood, a forest inhabited by fairies. But their magic is being drained away, and Hazel soon realises that her own power is the key to saving both Pete and her new friends. Embarking on an epic journey of discovery, can Hazel restore the balance of the fairy realm?From Waterstones prize-shortlisted Anna Kemp – enter this rich and immersive new fantasy world and meet a powerful new hero.Praise for Into Goblyn Wood: 'A fabulously rich adventure into a magical landscape, with that most important theme of all: believing in ourselves and the potential we hold.' Sarah Lean, author of the bestselling The Last Bear 'An absolutely sparkling adventure. The perfect book to curl up with as we're stepping into autumn' Alex Foulkes, author of Rules for Vampires 'A beautiful story, beautifully told. Into Goblyn Wood gives readers a wonderful world to lose themselves inside, and to keep daydreaming about for a long time afterwards!' Sylvia Bishop, author of The Bookshop Girl 'Anna Kemp’s world building is sublime . . . It’s unpredictable, perfectly paced and totally gripping... This is a truly brilliant book - fantasy at its finest. I could not put it down and cannot wait to read the next book in the series' Netgalley reviewer

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A definitive new edition of one of the greatest philosophical poems in the English languageVoltaire called it "the most sublime didactic poem ever written in any language." Rousseau rhapsodized about its intellectual consolations. Kant recited long passages of it from memory during his lectures. And Adam Smith and David Hume drew inspiration from it in their writings. This was Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733–34), a masterpiece of philosophical poetry, one of the most important and controversial works of the Enlightenment, and one of the most widely read, imitated, and discussed poems of eighteenth-century Europe and America. This volume, which presents the first major new edition of the poem in more than fifty years, introduces this essential work to a new generation of readers, recapturing the excitement and illuminating the debates it provoked from the moment of its publication.Echoing Milton's purpose in Paradise Lost, Pope says his aim in An Essay on Man is to "vindicate the ways of God to man"—to explain the existence of evil and explore man's place in the universe. In a comprehensive introduction, Tom Jones describes the poem as an investigation of the fundamental question of how people should behave in a world they experience as chaotic, but which they suspect to be orderly from some higher point of view. The introduction provides a thorough discussion of the poem's attitudes, themes, composition, context, and reception, and reassesses the work's place in history. Extensive annotations to the text explain references and allusions.The result is the most accessible, informative, and reader-friendly edition of the poem in decades and an invaluable book for students and scholars of eighteenth-century literature and thought.

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Set your taste-buds on fire as you embark on a thrilling gastronomic rollercoaster ride that takes you from the pulsating dark heart of Dark Mofos spectacular Winter Feast, to the midnight banquets, seductive supper clubs and dark dinners unearthed in the Dark Fringe, created in honour of Tasmanias iconic festival of darkness. Learn how to master the flames with Monas Heavy Metal Kitchen and appease your inner glutton with a smorgasbord of sublime fire cooked dishes, before descending into Dantes Inferno to resurrect your corpses with a cornucopia of cocktails created by some of Tasmanias most celebrated distilleries and bars. Brimming full of stunning dark and moody images, this spectacular 596-page ode to the Southern Hemisphere Winter and Winter Solstice, contains more than 180 delicious recipes, most of which have been especially recreated for this cookbook including from Monas Heavy Metal Kitchen, inspired chef collaborations from the Dark Mofo Winter Feast and other feasts of darkness. Sinners can also find tips on how to make the perfect cocktail, what to forage for, and when and what to grow for their Winter Table, as well as some suggestions of how to use their Winter produce. Winter Wild also celebrates some of the worlds most ancient Winter Solstice sites, ceremonies and rituals, as well as exploring what different cultures eat at this auspicious time. Divinely, Winter Wild also contains two deliciously dark tales shared by professional storyteller Martin Maudsley from Dorset, who at the Huon Valley + Willie Smiths Mid-Winter Fest in Tasmania, held the enraptured audiences in the palm of his hands. Are you ready? Snuggle up by a roaring fire and pour yourself a hot whisky toddy - Winter has never been cooler!

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From the author of the BBC 2 Between the Covers hit, The Fine Art of Invisible Detection'The world's greatest storyteller' Guardian'One of the finest crime writers of any generation' Daily Mail'Our finest practitioner of the double-cross plotting' Mick Herron______________________________________Umiko Wada never set out to be a private detective, let alone become the one-woman operation behind the Kodaka Detective Agency. But so it has turned out, thanks to the death of her former boss, Kazuto Kodaka, in mysterious circumstances.Keen to avoid a similar fate, Wada chooses the cases she takes very carefully. A businessman who wants her to track down his estranged son offers what appears to be a straightforward assignment. Soon she finds herself pulled into a labyrinthine conspiracy with links to a twenty-seven-year-old investigation by her late employer and to the chaos and trauma of the dying days of the Second World War.As Wada uncovers a dizzying web of connections between then and now, it becomes clear that someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep the past buried. Soon those she loves most will be sucked into the orbit of one of the most powerful men in Tokyo. And he will do whatever it takes to hold on to his power...The Fine Art of Uncanny Prediction is another tour de force from the cunning mind of master storyteller Robert Goddard. Spanning seventy years, it takes the reader on a head-spinning journey of twist and counter-twist which keep you guessing until the final pages.__________________________________Readers love the Umiko Wada series:***** 'Guaranteed and satisfying escapism'***** 'Twists and turns right up to the last page'***** 'Edge-of-the-seat stuff'***** 'Fresh and inventive'***** 'The master of twists and suspense ... sublime'***** 'Scintillating and wickedly twisty'

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What if your work rival was the ex that you’d never actually broken up with? ‘Sizzling’ SOPHIE IRWIN‘Witty’ BETH REEKLES‘Excellent’ JANE CASEY‘Pitch-perfect’ EMMA HUGHES How do you get rid of an ex . . . When you’ve never actually broken up? When arrogant new colleague Benjamin swans into Fia’s small office at her New York law firm, it’s no secret they dislike – no, hate – each other. But there is one secret no one knows. The last time Fia and Benjamin saw each other was one summer night nearly ten years ago, at a little chapel – in Vegas. Benjamin isn’t just Fia’s co-worker, he’s also her long-lost husband. They made a promise – they even signed a pact – that they’d divorce after one year. But they never did. Now, if anyone discovers they’re husband and wife, both their jobs are on the line. And as their marriage starts to finally heat up, it’s a secret that’s getting harder to keep . . . EVERYONE LOVES THE BREAK-UP CLAUSE ‘I REALLY loved . . . so clever, so good, really excellent characters’ JANE CASEY ‘Electric right from the off…a witty, wonderful book with such a wholesome take on friendships and a sizzling romance’ BETH REEKLES ’Hargan has a light touch and a winning sense of humour’ THE TIMES ‘Reminds me of Katherine Heiny . . . her crisp scene-setting wit, her pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and her wonderful, wry eye . . . make every page a pleasure to read’ EMMA HUGHES ‘An absolute first class rom-com: smart, funny and sizzling with chemistry’ SOPHIE IRWIN ‘Joyous, funny and very sweet, this is one to savour’ STYLIST ‘One of the very best romcom writers around. It is sublime . . . chemistry/sizzle/snark is off the charts’ CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLIN

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Using our hands, we interact with the environment in ways that are more sophisticated, more varied, and more productive than any other part of our body. The delicate instrument that is the hand makes it possible for us to knead dough and perform a heart transplant; make contact with strangers, friends, and lovers; throw a baseball; and create a scale model of a skyscraper and build that skyscraper. From the most mundane activity to our most sublime achievement, the hand has helped us shape the world and given us a deeper understanding of our place in it. In The Wonder of the Human Hand, surgeons and hand specialists from the world-renowned Curtis National Hand Center describe how the hand is used in work, sports, and music, and trace the human fascination with hands in religion and art. They relate awe-inspiring stories of people throughout history - including major league pitcher Jim Abbott, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Liebe Diamond, and pianist Leon Fleisher - who accomplished great things with one hand, or with impaired or injured hands, and they tell of marvelous surgeries that create fingers where none exist. Recounting how the hand interprets the environment and returns tactile information to the brain, the book underscores the importance of the hand to people who cannot see or hear. Throughout, the authors explore how medical science restores bones, tendons, nerves, muscles, and blood vessels in hands injured through disease, accident, and combat - ever aware of how the form and function of the human hand combine harmoniously in everyday activities and Herculean efforts alike.

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A major new study and celebration of the career and legacy of the modernist sculptor, painter, collagist and educator Luise Clayborn Kaish (1925-2013). This is a major new study and celebration of the career and legacy of the modernist sculptor, painter, collagist and educator Luise Clayborn Kaish (1925 – 2013). Kaish was a key figure in the New York art scene of the late 20th century, whose multidisciplinary and process-oriented practice contributed to various artistic discourses at the time. The strength and breadth of her work, her influential role in education, and the prestigious awards she received in recognition of her practice set her apart as an early female leader in the arts. She will be remembered for her immense talent, highly individual point of view, pursuit of the sublime, keen execution, and passion for life, which, despite the tides of changing tastes, will remain forever significant. This volume brings together nearly of her works. Essays covering Kaish's life and career, her artistic practices, her lifelong interest in the spiritual and metaphysical, and her work as an educator are followed by a main plate section, Illustrated Chronology and Exhibition History. AUTHOR: Maura Reilly is a curator and arts writer, based in New York. Gail Levin is an American art historian, biographer, artist, and a Distinguished Professor of Art History, American Studies, Women's Studies, and Liberal Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Daniel Belasco is executive director of the Al Held Foundation, New York. 185 colour illustrations

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Hot Comb offers a poignant glimpse into black women s lives and coming-of-age stories as seen across a crowded, ammonia-scented hair salon while ladies gossip and bond over the burn. The titular Hot Comb is about a young girl s first perm a doomed ploy to look cool and stop seeming too white in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved into. In Virgin Hair, taunts of tender-headed sting as much as the perm itself. My Lil Sister Lena shows the stress of being the only black player on a white softball team. Lena s hair is the team curio, an object to be touched, a subject to be discussed and debated at the will of her teammates, leading Lena to develop an anxiety disorder of pulling her own hair out. Throughout Hot Comb, Ebony Flowers re-creates classic magazine ads idealizing women s need for hair relaxers and products. Change your hair form to fit your life form and Kinks and Koils Forever call customers from the page. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through these stories and ads, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking. Flowers began drawing comics while earning her Ph.D., and her early mastery of sequential storytelling is nothing short of sublime. From her black-and-white drawings to her color construction-paper collages, Hot Comb is a propitious display of talent from a new cartoonist who has already made her mark.

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Emphasizing the role of and portrayal of emotion, this study argues for the inclusion of six late-eighteenth-century German-language novels by and about women in a revised canon. Literature written by women in German during the "Age of Goethe" was largely considered unworthy Trivialliteratur. Using insights from Gender Studies yet acknowledging the need for a literary canon, Great Books by German Women offers a critical interpretation of six canon-worthy German novels written by women in the period, which it calls the "Age of Emotion." The novels are chosen because they depict women's ordinary yet interesting lives and because each contains prose particularly expressive of emotion. Sophie von La Roche's Die Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim draws on the tradition of the epistolary novel while finding new ways to depict empathetic emotions. Friederike Unger's Julchen Grünthal brings to the Frauenroman or women's novel the use of irony to portray a heroine's emotions during her coming of age. Sophie Mereau's Blütenalter der Empfindung imagines women's affinity for the philosophical sublime, while Caroline Wolzogen depicts female desire in her Agnes von Lilien: both add lyricism to their prose, capturing sensual emotions. Karoline Fischer's Die Honigmonathe explores the agony that extreme emotions cause - not only for women but for men. And Caroline Pichler's Frauenwürde expands the focus from a young heroine to multiple mature characters. This study concludes that the influence of these six works was in no way trivial, either in portraying women's lives and emotions or in the history of German literature.

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An influential thinker’s fascinating reflections and meditations on reacclimating to his native Senegal as a young academic after years of study abroad The call to morning prayer. A group run at daybreak along the Corniche in Dakar. A young woman shedding tears on a beach as her friends take a boat to Europe. In African Meditations, paths to enlightenment collide with tales of loss and ruminations, musical gatherings, and the everyday sights and sounds of life in West Africa as a young philosopher and creative writer seeks to establish himself as a teacher upon his return to Senegal, his homeland, after years of study abroad. A unique contemporary portrait of an influential, multicultural thinker on a spiritual quest across continents—reflecting on his multiple literary influences along with French, African Francophone, and Senegalese tribal cultural roots in a homeland with a predominantly Muslim culture—African Meditations is a seamless blend of autobiography, journal entries, and fiction; aphorisms and brief narrative sketches; humor and Zen reflections. Taking us from Saint-Louis to Dakar, Felwine Sarr encounters the rhythms of everyday life as well as its disruptions such as teachers’ strikes and power outages while traversing a semi-surrealistic landscape. As he reacclimates to his native country after a life in France, we get candid glimpses, both vibrant and hopeful, sublime and mundane, into his Zen journey to resecure a foothold in his roots and to navigate academia, even while gleaning something of the good life, of joy, amid the struggles of life in Senegal.

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We are living in an open sea, caught up in a continuous wave, with no fixed point and no instrument to measure distance and the direction of travel. Nothing appears to be in its place any more, and a great deal appears to have no place at all. The principles that have given substance to the democratic ethos, the system of rules that has guided the relationships of authority and the ways in which they are legitimized, the shared values and their hierarchy, our behaviour and our life styles, must be radically revised because they no longer seem suited to our experience and understanding of a world in flux, a world that has become both increasingly interconnected and prone to severe and persistent crises. We are living in the interregnum between what is no longer and what is not yet. None of the political movements that helped undermine the old world are ready to inherit it, and there is no new ideology, no consistent vision, promising to give shape to new institutions for the new world. It is like the Babylon referred to by Borges, the country of randomness and uncertainty in which ‘no decision is final; all branch into others’. Out of the world that had promised us modernity, what Jean Paul Sartre had summarized with sublime formula ‘le choix que je suis’ (‘the choice that I am’), we inhabit that flattened, mobile and dematerialized space, where as never before the principle of the heterogenesis of purposes is sovereign. This is Babel.

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We are living in an open sea, caught up in a continuous wave, with no fixed point and no instrument to measure distance and the direction of travel. Nothing appears to be in its place any more, and a great deal appears to have no place at all. The principles that have given substance to the democratic ethos, the system of rules that has guided the relationships of authority and the ways in which they are legitimized, the shared values and their hierarchy, our behaviour and our life styles, must be radically revised because they no longer seem suited to our experience and understanding of a world in flux, a world that has become both increasingly interconnected and prone to severe and persistent crises. We are living in the interregnum between what is no longer and what is not yet. None of the political movements that helped undermine the old world are ready to inherit it, and there is no new ideology, no consistent vision, promising to give shape to new institutions for the new world. It is like the Babylon referred to by Borges, the country of randomness and uncertainty in which ‘no decision is final; all branch into others’. Out of the world that had promised us modernity, what Jean Paul Sartre had summarized with sublime formula ‘le choix que je suis’ (‘the choice that I am’), we inhabit that flattened, mobile and dematerialized space, where as never before the principle of the heterogenesis of purposes is sovereign. This is Babel.

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There emerged, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, a reflexive relationship between shifting codes of legal evidence in British courtrooms and the growing fascination throughout Europe with the "primitive" Scottish Highlands. New methods for determining evidential truth, linked with the growing prominence of lawyers and a formalized division of labor between witnesses and jurors, combined to devalue the authority of witness testimony, magnifying the rupture between experience and knowledge. Juries now pronounced verdicts based not upon the certainty of direct experience but rather upon abstractions of probability or reasonable likelihood. Yet even as these changes were occurring, the Scottish Highlands and Hebridean Islands were attracting increased attention as a region where witness experience in sublime and communal forms had managed to trump enlightened progress and the probabilistic, abstract, and mediated mentality on which the Enlightenment was predicated. There, in a remote corner of Britain, natives and tourists beheld things that surpassed enlightened understanding; experience was becoming all the more alluring to the extent that it signified something other than knowledge. Matthew Wickman examines this uncanny return of experiential authority at the very moment of its supposed decline and traces the alluring improbability of experience into our own time. Thematic in its focus and cross-disciplinary in its approach, The Ruins of Experience situates the literary next to the nonliterary, the old beside the new. Wickman looks to poems, novels, philosophical texts, travel narratives, contemporary theory, and evidential treatises and trial narratives to suggest an alternative historical view of the paradoxical tensions of the Enlightenment and Romantic eras.

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Since the turn of the new millennium English-language verse has entered a new historical phase, but explanations vary as to what has actually happened and why. What might constitute a viable avant-garde poetics in the aftermath of such momentous developments as 9/11, globalization, and the financial crisis? Much of this discussion has taken place in ephemeral venues such as blogs, e-zines, public lectures, and conferences. Nobody’s Business is the first book to treat the emergence of Flarf and Conceptual Poetry in a serious way. In his engaging account, Brian M. Reed argues that these movements must be understood in relation to the proliferation of digital communications technologies and their integration into the corporate workplace. Writers such as Andrea Brady, Craig Dworkin, Kenneth Goldsmith, Danny Snelson, and Rachel Zolf specifically target for criticism the institutions, skill sets, and values that make possible the smooth functioning of a postindustrial, globalized economy. Authorship comes in for particular scrutiny: how does writing a poem differ in any meaningful way from other forms of "content providing"? While often adept at using new technologies, these writers nonetheless choose to explore anachronism, ineptitude, and error as aesthetic and political strategies. The results can appear derivative, tedious, or vulgar; they can also be stirring, compelling, and even sublime. As Reed sees it, this new generation of writers is carrying on the Duchampian practice of generating antiart that both challenges prevalent definitions or art and calls into question the legitimacy of the institutions that define it.

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A unique look at how classical notions of ascent and flight preoccupied early modern British writers and artistsBetween the late sixteenth century and early nineteenth century, the British imagination—poetic, political, intellectual, spiritual and religious—displayed a pronounced fascination with images of ascent and flight to the heavens. Celestial Aspirations explores how British literature and art during that period exploited classical representations of these soaring themes—through philosophical, scientific and poetic flights of the mind; the ascension of the disembodied soul; and the celestial glorification of the ruler.From textual reachings for the heavens in Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Donne and Cowley, to the ceiling paintings of Rubens, Verrio and Thornhill, Philip Hardie focuses on the ways that the history, ideologies and aesthetics of the postclassical world received and transformed the ideas of antiquity. In England, narratives of ascent appear on the grandest scale in Milton’s Paradise Lost, an epic built around a Christian plot of falling and rising, and one of the most intensely classicizing works of English poetry. Examining the reception of flight up to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and Tennyson, Hardie considers the Whig sublime, as well as the works of Alexander Pope and Edward Young. Throughout, he looks at motivations both public and private for aspiring to the heavens—as a reward for political and military achievement on the one hand, and as a goal of individual intellectual and spiritual exertion on the other.Celestial Aspirations offers an intriguing look at how creative minds reworked ancient visions of time and space in the early modern era.

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In the late ’90s, third-wave ska broke across the American alternative music scene like a tsunami. In sweaty clubs across the nation, kids danced themselves dehydrated to the peppy rhythms and punchy horns of bands like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones and Reel Big Fish. As ska caught fire, a swing revival brought even more sharp-dressed, brass-packing bands to national attention. Hell of a Hat dives deep into this unique musical moment. Prior to invading the Billboard charts and MTV, ska thrived from Orange County, California, to NYC, where Moon Ska Records had eager rude girls and boys snapping up every release. On the swing tip, retro pioneers like Royal Crown Revue had fans doing the jump, jive, and wail long before The Brian Setzer Orchestra resurrected the Louis Prima joint. Drawing on interviews with heavyweights like the Bosstones, Sublime, Less Than Jake, and Cherry Poppin' Daddies—as well as underground heroes like Mustard Plug, The Slackers, Hepcat, and The New Morty Show—Kenneth Partridge argues that the relative economic prosperity and general optimism of the late ’90s created the perfect environment for fast, danceable music that—with some notable exceptions—tended to avoid political commentary.An homage to a time when plaids and skankin’ were king and doing the jitterbug in your best suit was so money, Hell of a Hat is an inside look at ’90s ska, swing, and the loud noises of an era when America was dreaming and didn’t even know it.

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“One of the first honest, moving and funny portrayals of a solid marriage I have ever read.” —Jessica Grose, The New York TimesA Best Book of 2022 from The New Yorker and Chicago TribuneAn illuminating, poignant, and savagely funny examination of modern marriage from Ask Polly advice columnist Heather HavrileskyIf falling in love is the peak of human experience, then marriage is the slow descent down that mountain, on a trail built from conflict, compromise, and nagging doubts. Considering the limited economic advantages to marriage, the deluge of other mate options a swipe away, and the fact that almost half of all marriages in the United States end in divorce anyway, why do so many of us still chain ourselves to one human being for life?In Foreverland, Heather Havrilesky illustrates the delights, aggravations, and sublime calamities of her marriage over the span of fifteen years, charting an unpredictable course from meeting her one true love to slowly learning just how much energy is required to keep that love aflame. This refreshingly honest portrait of a marriage reveals that our relationships are not simply “happy” or “unhappy,” but something much murkier—at once unsavory, taxing, and deeply satisfying. With tales of fumbled proposals, harrowing suburban migrations, external temptations, and the bewildering insults of growing older, Foreverland is a work of rare candor and insight. Havrilesky traces a path from daydreaming about forever for the first time to understanding what a tedious, glorious drag forever can be.

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Collecting Daniel Alexander Jones's plays and performance texts Bel Canto, Black Light, Blood:Shock:Boogie, clayangels, Duat, Phoenix Fabrik, and The Book of Daniel, this volume offers a panoramic view of Jones's shifting, glimmering, transformational body of work. Each play a provocation to the possibility of a more just world with love as civic practice at its center, Jones's writing moves with lithe and associative grace through histories personal, political, cosmological, and sublime. A reunion not only of Jones's revolutionary work in the course of twenty-five years in the avant-gardes of New York, Austin, and Minneapolis, among others, Love Like Light is also a reunion of collaborators and friends, featuring essays by Vicky Boone, Jacques Colimon, Eisa Davis, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, korde arrington tuttle, Aaron Landsman, Deborah Paredez, and Shay Youngblood and an interview with Faye Price. Awarded the 2021 PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award for his expansive, multidisciplinary, radical body of work, Jones has, in the words of judges Jeremy O. Harris, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, and Leigh Silverman, “continued perfecting a dramaturgy all his own based in the traditions of Africana studies, performance studies, queer theory, and mysticism, challenging established traditions while creating space for audiences to ponder what theater is and who it is for.” A companion volume, Particle and Wave, features a book-length conversation between Daniel Alexander Jones and poet, scholar, and activist Alexis Pauline Gumbs about Love Like Light and the way that love, like light, suffuses everything and is the condition and power of change in the world.

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Marihuana, Motherhood & Madness features the complete shooting scripts of three Depression-era films directed by independent filmmaker Dwain Esper. A topic of growing interest among cinema aficionados and scholars, the lowbrow exploitation genre was the means by which small-scale entrepreneurs could compete with the major studios. Exploitation films addressed such controversial topics as drug use, prostitution, abortion, child marriage, and even bestiality—topics the major studios were forbidden to address by the Production Code Administration—salaciously exploiting the profitability of such taboo issues, while justifying their prurience by posing as educational tracts. Dwain Esper (1894-1982) was the exploitation industry's most audacious figure. Without any formal training in filmmaking, he operated his own film lab and studio (which he acquired when a debtor defaulted on a loan) and in 1932 began tapping into Depression America's appetites for iniquity. As technically crude as his films are, they possess a savage beauty and are highlighted by moments of sublime tenderness and startling horror, proving that Esper had a natural gift for the medium, even if he was only involved for the money. The screenplays included are: Modern Motherhood (1934), a social commentary on liberal marriages, abortion, and face-lifts; Maniac (1934), a treatise on mental illness delivered in the low-budget horror-movie format; and Marihuana: Weed with Roots in Hell (1936), a "drug scare" film in which a few puffs set an innocent high-school girl on a downward spiral to become a heroin-addicted, drug-pushing kidnapper.

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‘An intricate story, full of tension’ The Sun From the author of Little White Lies 'Masterful, clever, surprising at ever turn; a proper page-turner and a one-sitting read. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. Sublime’ Andrea Mara ‘A truly gripping thriller filled with teenage nostalgia and vividly rendered toxic friendships. It had me turning pages late into the night’ Heather Darwent 2003: Carrie and her friends spend their days studying at boarding school, and their nights sneaking out to the woods. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. 2019: When Finn receives a shocking call from his estranged wife, Mhairi, informing him of their friend Kate’s death, neither is prepared for the secrets they will uncover. The trail leads them to the events at a boarding school many years before. They are on the verge of unearthing the whole story – but someone will do anything to keep it buried. ‘Packed with dangerously charismatic characters you can’t get out of your head’ Laura Vaughan 'A psychologist and therapist herself, Philippa East, the author of Little White Lies, gently unspools her tale with great skill' Choice Magazine ‘A skilful, layered and ultimately emotional read. East is at the top of her game!’ Louise Swanson 'An engaging and unsettling novel that explores the spectrum of human connections, painful and tender' Lincolnshire Life ‘An addictive page-turner and a nuanced exploration of consequences and guilt. Complex and clever in the best ways’ Laurie Elizabeth Flynn 'Loved this claustrophobic and gorgeously written thriller' Fiona Cummins

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A follow-up to the successful 'The ScandiKitchen' (published September 2015), this new book from Brontë Aurell features over 60 recipes for cakes, bakes and treats from all over Scandinavia. From indulgent cream confections to homely and comforting fruit cakes and traditional breads, sweet buns and pastries. FIKA is a Swedish word meaning to meet up for a cup of coffee or tea over something delicious. It is also the word for the delicious treats themselves. Swedes traditionally stop twice a day for fika: taking a much-needed break from the daily grind. People fika with family, colleagues, friends, children and even go on fika dates. HYGGE (pronounced hue-guh) is a word that originated in Norway but is now mainly used in Denmark. It means ’a sublime state of cosiness you feel when you are with loved ones and nothing else matters’. Hygge can be enhanced by the addition of a log fire, a good film, a cup of something warm and a sweet treat…hence the ideal combination of the two terms. Chapters are divided into Biscuits and Cookies, Tray and No bakes, Everyday Fika, Little Fancy Cakes, Celebration Cakes and Bread and Batters. This beautifully illustrated, authentic guide is a celebration of Scandinavian baking in all its glory. It is evocative of cosy days shared with friends, slowing down and taking the time to enjoy simple, homemade, wholesome pleasures - encouraging a lifestyle to aspire to. With features on special Scandi winter celebrations, their baking traditions and how to bring fika and hygge into your life.

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The zany, the cute, and the interesting saturate postmodern culture. They dominate the look of its art and commodities as well as our discourse about the ambivalent feelings these objects often inspire. In this radiant study, Sianne Ngai offers a theory of the aesthetic categories that most people use to process the hypercommodified, mass-mediated, performance-driven world of late capitalism, treating them with the same seriousness philosophers have reserved for analysis of the beautiful and the sublime.Ngai explores how each of these aesthetic categories expresses conflicting feelings that connect to the ways in which postmodern subjects work, exchange, and consume. As a style of performing that takes the form of affective labor, the zany is bound up with production and engages our playfulness and our sense of desperation. The interesting is tied to the circulation of discourse and inspires interest but also boredom. The cute's involvement with consumption brings out feelings of tenderness and aggression simultaneously. At the deepest level, Ngai argues, these equivocal categories are about our complex relationship to performing, information, and commodities.Through readings of Adorno, Schlegel, and Nietzsche alongside cultural artifacts ranging from Bob Perelman's poetry to Ed Ruscha's photography books to the situation comedy of Lucille Ball, Ngai shows how these everyday aesthetic categories also provide traction to classic problems in aesthetic theory. The zany, cute, and interesting are not postmodernity's only meaningful aesthetic categories, Ngai argues, but the ones best suited for grasping the radical transformation of aesthetic experience and discourse under its conditions.

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'I raced through this murder mystery' Good Housekeeping, 10 Books to Read Right Now!'Smiley is a masterful writer' Sunday Times'Outstanding. Her sentences are sublime' Roxane GayFrom a brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls.Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can't resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean, and inspired by her reading, especially by Edgar Allan Poe's detective Dupin, Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious.Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive, but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West - a bewitching combination of beauty and danger - as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon.As Mrs. Parks says, 'Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise . . .'

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Perfect for fans of Naomi Novik, Robin Hobb and George R.R. MartinShe has no name and no history, but she has a power greater than the Empire has ever known. Thanks to her special gift Judah has enjoyed a privileged life, being raised alongside Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban's vast empire. But as they grow Judah comes to realise that while Gavin is being groomed for his future role, she has no true position, and no hope of ever travelling beyond the castle walls. Lord Elban has plans for Judah – for all of them – but to him, she's nothing but a pawn. And he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.But he's not the only one with plans. Outside the castle wall – in the starving, desperate city – is a healer with his own secret power and his own plans for the empire . . . and Judah.The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined. An epic tale of greed and ambition, cruelty and love, this deeply immersive novel is about bowing to traditions and burning them down. ___________What people are saying about The Unwilling: 'Fantasy at its most sublime' ERIN MORGENSTERN'An epic fantasy novel with ingenious, thrilling twists and turns' KELLY LINK'Brilliantly executed. The Unwilling is about sharing joy, and sensing fear and cruelty, and caring beyond ourselves' VANITY FAIR'Suspenseful: magical, wonderfully written and never predictable . . . An essential addition to the all epic fantasy collections' BOOKLIST

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More than a century after the Norman Conquest, England remains a colony of foreign warlords. The dissolute Prince John plots to seize his brother's crown, his barons terrorize the country, and the mysterious outlaw Robin Hood haunts the ancient greenwood. The secret return of King Richard and the disinherited Saxon knight, Ivanhoe, heralds the start of a splendid and tumultuous romance, featuring the tournament at Ashby-de-la-Zouche, the siege of Torquilstone, and the clash of wills between the wicked Templar Bois-Guilbert and the sublime Jewess Rebecca. In Ivanhoe Scott fashioned an imperial myth of national cultural identity that has shaped the popular imagination ever since its first appearance at the end of 1819. The most famous of Scottish novelists drew on the conventions of Gothic fiction, including its risky sexual and racial themes, to explore the violent origins and limits of English nationality. This edition uses the 1830 Magnum Opus text, corrected against the Interleaved Set, and incorporates readings from Scott's manuscript. The introduction examines the originality and cultural importance of Ivanhoe, and draws on current work by historians and cultural critics. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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