Search results for ""brooklyn""

Tells the riveting narrative of the growth, disappearance, and eventual rediscovery of one of the largest free black communities of the nineteenth century In 1966 a group of students, Boy Scouts, and local citizens rediscovered all that remained of a then virtually unknown community called Weeksville: four frame houses on Hunterfly Road. The infrastructure and vibrant history of Weeksville, an African American community that had become one of the largest free black communities in nineteenth century United States, were virtually wiped out by Brooklyn’s exploding population and expanding urban grid. Weeksville was founded by African American entrepreneurs after slavery ended in New York State in 1827. Located in eastern Brooklyn, Weeksville provided a space of physical safety, economic prosperity, education, and even political power for its black population, who organized churches, a school, orphan asylum, home for the aged, newspapers, and the national African Civilization Society. Notable residents of Weeksville, such as journalist and educator Junius P. Morell, participated in every major national effort for African American rights, including the Civil War. Drawing on maps, newspapers, census records, photographs, and the material culture of buildings and artifacts, Wellman reconstructs the social history and national significance of this extraordinary place. Through the lens of this local community, Brooklyn’s Promised Land highlights themes still relevant to African Americans across the country.

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Anyone who has watched the film "Field of Dreams" can't help but be captivated by the lead character's vision. He gives his struggling farming community a magical place where the smell of roasted peanuts gently wafts over the crowded grandstand on a warm summer evening just as the star pitcher takes the mound. Baseball, America's game, has a dedicated following and a rich history. Fans obsess over comparative statistics and celebrate men who played for legendary teams during the "golden age" of the game. In "The Farmers' Game", David Vaught examines the history and character of baseball through a series of essay-vignettes. He presents the sport as essentially rural, reflecting the nature of farm and small-town life. Vaught does not deny or devalue the lively stickball games played in the streets of Brooklyn, but he sees the history of the game and the rural United States as related and mutually revealing. His subjects include nineteenth-century Cooperstown, the playing fields of Texas and Minnesota, the rural communities of California, the great farmer-pitcher Bob Feller, and the notorious Gaylord Perry. Although-contrary to legend-Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball in a cow pasture in upstate New York, many fans enjoy the game for its nostalgic qualities. Vaught's deeply researched exploration of baseball's rural roots helps explain its enduring popularity.

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From a talented young journalist on the rise, a deeply reported, timely new biography of the Notorious B.I.G., publishing for what would have been his 50th birthdayThe Notorious B.I.G. was one of the most charismatic and talented artists of the 1990s. Born Christopher Wallace and raised in Clinton Hill/Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, Biggie lived an almost archetypal rap life: young trouble, drug dealing, guns, prison, a giant hit record, the wealth and international superstardom that came with it, then an early violent death. Biggie released his first record, Ready to Die, in 1994, when he was only 22. Less than three years later, he was killed just days before the planned release of his second record Life After Death.Journalist Justin Tinsley’s It Was All a Dream is a fresh, insightful telling of the life beyond the legend. It is based on extensive interviews with those who knew and loved Biggie, including neighbors, friends, DJs, party promoters, and journalists. And it places Biggie’s life in context, both within the history of rap but also the wider cultural and political forces that shaped him, including Caribbean immigration, the Reagan era disinvestment in public education, street life, the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and the booming, creative, and influential 1990s music industry. This is the story of where Biggie came from, the forces that shaped him, and the legacy he has left behind.

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Uncovers the often overlooked stories of the women who shaped the black freedom struggle The story of the black freedom struggle in America has been overwhelmingly male-centric, starring leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Huey Newton. With few exceptions, black women have been perceived as supporting actresses; as behind-the-scenes or peripheral activists, or rank and file party members. But what about Vicki Garvin, a Brooklyn-born activist who became a leader of the National Negro Labor Council and guide to Malcolm X on his travels through Africa? What about Shirley Chisholm, the first black Congresswoman? From Rosa Parks and Esther Cooper Jackson, to Shirley Graham DuBois and Assata Shakur, a host of women demonstrated a lifelong commitment to radical change, embracing multiple roles to sustain the movement, founding numerous groups and mentoring younger activists. Helping to create the groundwork and continuity for the movement by operating as local organizers, international mobilizers, and charismatic leaders, the stories of the women profiled in Want to Start a Revolution? help shatter the pervasive and imbalanced image of women on the sidelines of the black freedom struggle. Contributors: Margo Natalie Crawford, Prudence Cumberbatch, Johanna Fernández, Diane C. Fujino, Dayo F. Gore, Joshua Guild, Gerald Horne, Ericka Huggins, Angela D. LeBlanc-Ernest, Joy James, Erik McDuffie, Premilla Nadasen, Sherie M. Randolph, James Smethurst, Margaret Stevens, and Jeanne Theoharis.

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 * LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 PEN AMERICA OPEN BOOK AWARD A Times Book of the Month One of Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Picks 'A feat of monumental thematic imagination' - The New York Times Coming of age as a free-born Black girl in Brooklyn after the Civil War, Libertie Sampson was all too aware that her purposeful mother, a practicing physician, had a vision for their future together: Libertie would go to medical school and practice alongside her. But Libertie, drawn more to music than science, feels stifled by her mother's choices and is hungry for something else - is there really only one way to have an autonomous life? And she is constantly reminded that, unlike her mother who can pass, Libertie has skin that is too dark. When a young man from Haiti proposes to Libertie and promises she will be his equal on the island, she accepts, only to discover that she is still subordinate to him and all men. As she tries to parse what freedom actually means for a Black woman, Libertie struggles with where she might find it - for herself and for generations to come. 'A soaring exploration of what "freedom" truly means ... an elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed' - Roxane Gay

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When the American art world turned toward abstract art and action painting, Francis Cunningham remained focused on figurative art and the human form. His interest never waned. This book chronicles his development over an astonishing seven decades. Presented in a nonlinear order, the arc of his work is there for the discerning eye to see. Landscapes, still life, and human forms are interrelated. Cunningham’s work reveals the connection between abstraction and representation. Their coexististence is the material and subject of this book, disclosing a new understanding of American painting by a living artist. Accompanying over 180 high quality reproductions, the artist's many facets are explored in essays by art historians and art critics, including Christopher Knight, Edward Lifson, John Walsh, and Valentina De Pasca, as well through the reminiscences of one of his life models, Regina Hawkins-Balducci. Cunningham attended the Art Students League of New York, where he studied drawing and anatomy with Robert Beverly Hale and painting with Edwin Dickinson. He became an influential master instructor, cofounding the New Brooklyn School of Life Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (1977-1983) and the New York Academy of Art in 1983. At his current age of 90, he continues to paint in his studio in Manhattan and in the rural western part of Massachusetts, known as the Berkshires. This is the first monograph devoted to his work.

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Escape into the most enchanting cities in the world with just a needle and thread. Charles and Elin's unique architecture-themed artwork has taken the growing embroidery community by storm, gathering over 200k followers from around the world. Their street scenes for quaint corners or famous landmarks in romantic cities foster mindfulness as you stitch the straight lines and dwell on thoughts of dreamy travels in the places you are embroidering. Capture the charm of Notre Dame or the idyllic canals of Amsterdam. Use your thread to bring color to red roofs of Lisbon and practice your line work by stitching structure into the Brooklyn Bridge. With only four types of stitches, this beginner friendly guide makes it easy to "threadpaint" an intricate streetscape for a one of a kind design. Each architecturally inspired pattern captures the most unique visual elements of beautiful cities so that you can immortalize a trip you've taken or travel there in your mind, one stitch at a time. For those who are looking for a new creative outlet to help you relax in your spare time or who are curious to try out the growing trend of embroidery artwork blowing up Etsy and Instagram, this book is the perfect place to start. This book contains 20 patterns and 100 photos.

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Since its landmark publication in 1980, "A People's History Of The United States" has had six new editions, sold more than 1.7 million copies, become required classroom reading throughout the U.S.A., and been turned into an acclaimed play. More than a successful book, "A People's History" triggered a revolution in the way history is told, displacing the official versions with their emphasis on great men in high places to chronicle events as they were lived, from the bottom up.Now Howard Zinn, historian Paul Buhle, and cartoonist Mike Konopacki have collaborated to retell, in vibrant comics form, a most immediate and relevant chapter of "A People's History": the centuries-long story of America's actions in the world. Narrated by Zinn, this version opens with the events of 9/11 and then jumps back to explore the cycles of U.S. expansionism from Wounded Knee to Iraq, stopping along the way at World War I, Central America, Vietnam, and the Iranian revolution. The book also follows the story of Zinn, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, from his childhood in the Brooklyn slums to his role as one of America's leading historians.Shifting from world-shattering events to one family's small revolutions, "A People's History of American Empire" presents the classic ground-level history of America in a dazzling new form.

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How objects associated with the American, French, and Haitian revolutions drew diverse people throughout the Atlantic world into debates over revolutionary ideals “By excavating the power of material objects and visual images to express the fervor and fear of the revolutionary era, Ashli White brings us closer to more fully embodied, more fully human, figures.”—Richard Rabinowitz, author of Objects of Love and Regret: A Brooklyn Story “In this important, innovative book, Ashli White moves nimbly between North America, Europe, and the Caribbean to capture the richness and complexity of material culture in the Age of Revolutions.”—Michael Kwass, Johns Hopkins University Historian Ashli White explores the circulation of material culture during the American, French, and Haitian revolutions, arguing that in the late eighteenth century, radical ideals were contested through objects as well as in texts. She considers how revolutionary things, as they moved throughout the Atlantic, brought people into contact with these transformative political movements in visceral, multiple, and provocative ways. Focusing on a range of objects—ceramics and furniture, garments and accessories, prints, maps, and public amusements—White shows how material culture held political meaning for diverse populations. Enslaved and free, women and men, poor and elite—all turned to things as a means to realize their varied and sometimes competing visions of revolutionary change.

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When Urbanization Comes To Ground is a collaborative research project between the Brooklyn-based architecture studio, CAZA, and think tank, SURBA, an urban research collective spearheaded by Carlos Arnaiz and Peter Rowe. Drawing upon case studies including projects in China, Colombia, and the Philippines, this book works across place, time, and culture to offer an allegorical journey into urbanization at large. When Urbanization Comes To Ground is a loosely congregated collection of essays that reflect an aggregation of encounters with urban circumstances - physical and immaterial, and structural and affective. From Robots, Utilidors, and a Brave New World to A Third Way Towards Metropolitanism and Tagging Thingness and Scale, this publication questions the role of architecture and its related disciplines in the wake of the master plan. It searches for a field guide to everyday urban life by offering palpable views into the network of relations that characterize this evolving social ecosystem. Through their collective global research projects CAZA and SURBA frame, abstract, poeticize, and render the city as a historical process, a future destination, a production cycle, and a layered landscape of overlapping phenomena. When Urbanization Comes To Ground does not attempt to cast the city in any one particular ideology, nor does it aim to essentialize or distill urban experience. Instead, this book oscillates from one rendering of urbanization to another, alternating scales and media in order to present the topic of the city and its encapsulated processes through the same phenomena that inform it.

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Grantland Book of the Year Vol. 1 Brooklyn, A Year of Favorites, Jason Diamond Book Riot, 2014’s Must-Read Books from Indie Presses "Valeria Luiselli is a writer of formidable talent, destined to be an important voice in Latin American letters. Her vision and language are precise, and the power of her intellect is in evidence on every page."—Daniel Alarcón "I'm completely captivated by the beauty of the paragraphs, the elegance of the prose, the joy in the written word, and the literary sense of this author."—Enrique Vilas-Matas Valeria Luiselli is an evening cyclist; a literary tourist in Venice, searching for Joseph Brodsky's tomb; an excavator of her own artifacts, unpacking from a move. In essays that are as companionable as they are ambitious, she uses the city to exercise a roving, meandering intelligence, seeking out the questions embedded in our human landscapes. Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. Her novel and essays have been translated into many languages and her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney's. Some of her recent projects include a ballet performed by the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center; a pedestrian sound installation for the Serpentine Gallery in London; and a novella in installments for workers in a juice factory in Mexico. She lives in New York City.

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From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade adventure story about a rescue dog, Star, who befriends a shy boy as they hunt for lost treasure near Lake Michigan. Star is a dog that everyone passes by. She'd never been outside before ending up in a Michigan animal shelter, and finds it hard to fit in with other dogs as the only one with a hearing impairment. When twelve-year-old Julian meets Star while volunteering at the shelter, Julian recognises the feeling of being an outsider but wanting to make friends. Julian's sure that Star is a diamond in the rough, just like him. He thinks they can prove that to everyone else by finding lost treasure near Lake Michigan. Will Julian and Star's friendship be the key to solving the mystery of Lake Michigan? AGES: 10 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn

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Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing (1989) is one of the most popular and celebrated examples of the African-American new black film wave. Set during the hottest day of a hot summer in New York City, the film's ensemble cast, including Lee himself, brilliantly play out the edgy negotiations and dramas of a racially and culturally diverse working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. Contrary to Hollywood's markedly cautious treatment of 'race' and its confinement to the South and the past, Do The Right Thing offers a nuanced portrayal of black urban life.From hip-hop fashions, Afrocentric colors and rap music, to police brutality, gentrification, non-white immigration, de-industrialization and joblessness, Do The Right Thing depicts it all, from a contemporary, African-American point of view. In his insightful study of the film, Ed Guerrero discusses how it epitomizes Spike Lee's powerful impact on the representation of race and difference in America, the progress of black film-making and the rise of multicultural voices in the media. This new edition includes a foreword by the author reflecting on Lee's subsequent film-making career and on an America in which African-Americans still contend with racial discrimination and police brutality. Guerrero emphasizes Lee's especially timely understanding of black film-making as a complex act, mixing the skills of art, politics, and business in order to fashion a creative practice that confronts institutional discrimination and power relations head on.

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The decaying remnants of obselete industries and defunct commerce – whether coal mines, shipyards, factories, shopping centres, power plants, warehouses or mills – lie scattered in desolate locations throughout the world. These left-over structures still hold memories of the life that was once there. Transience was built in from the start. When a mine was worked out, it was abandoned; sometimes its machinery was removed to another mine, but often it was easier to equip the new place with more up-to-date equipment. Abandoned Industrial Places explores the discarded detritus of our modern mechanized age. Discover the grand Ore Dock in Marquette, USA, squatting isolated in the waters of Lake Superior; or the abandoned Caspian Sea oil rigs and drilling gear in Azerbaijan; or the enormous, gaping pit of the 1200m (3900ft) wide Mirny diamond mine in Sakha Republic, Russia; or the 700m (765yd) high wall of latticed steel towers of the Duga radar in Chernobyl, Ukraine; or the Domino Sugar Refinery, Brooklyn, New York – formerly the world’s largest sugar refinery when built in 1882; or the still contaminated Fisher Body Plant 21 in Detroit, USA, a place where General Motors created some of their great marques for almost a hundred years. Filled with more than 200 memorable photographs from every part of the planet, Abandoned Industrial Places provides a strange and often spooky insight into the life and workings of industries long since ceased.

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An immigrant weaves a new, surreal americana, complete with bubblegum fights and bomb queens. Rarely does a new talent arrive in the medium as unmistakably distinct as Rumi Hara. With immersive art and a clear-eyed storytelling rhythm, her uncategorizable debut, Nori, put her playful cartooning on display. Her new collection, The Peanutbutter Sisters and Other American Stories, delights with equal mischievousness. The Peanutbutter Sisters is a glorious balance of contradictions, at once escapism and realism; science fiction and slice of life. Two students explore the urban landscape while following Newton Creek, the polluted Queens-Brooklyn border. As they do, they plan a traditional Japanese play with contemporary pop culture. Another story features an intergalactic race of all living things set in the year 2099 and is a dazzling treatise on the environment and journalism. Yet, sometimes the fantastical collides with the quotidian in the same story. A man struggling with vertigo during quarantine encounters a world of sexual revelry whenever he has a dizzy spell. The Peanutbutter sisters ride a hurricane into NYC and yet aren t able to hitch a ride back with a whale due to a heavily polluted ocean. Hara s magical realist tendencies and diverse cast of characters all contort the tropes of the American comics canon. Yet above all else, her innate control of the comics language her ability to weave the absurd with the real on such a charming and commanding level is refreshingly unrivaled.

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The engrossing, insightful, and personal musical odyssey of Peter Shapiro, perhaps the most notable independent concert promoter since Bill GrahamPeter Shapiro is the best known and most influential concert promoter of his generation. He owned the legendary Wetlands in Tribeca and has gone on to much bigger things, including Brooklyn Bowl (NYC, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Nashville), the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, producing U2 3D, and promoting the Grateful Dead's fiftieth-anniversary tour ("Fare Thee Well") featuring the Core Four and Trey Anastasio . . . and so much more.In The Music Never Stops, Shapiro shares the inside story of how he became a power-house in the music industry-an island in an increasingly consolidated landscape of venues, ticketing, and touring-through the lens of fifty iconic concerts. Along the way, readers gain insight into what it was like to work with some of the most celebrated bands in modern music, including not just the Grateful Dead and U2, but also Bob Dylan, Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Al Green, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Jason Isbell, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, The Roots, Robert Plant, Leonard Cohen, and many more.Featuring never-before-published back-stage anecdotes, insights, and photographs of the biggest bands in the business and the concerts that later became legendary, The Music Never Stops is a perfect guide for any-one who wants to understand the modern live music industry.

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One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan’s Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves “The Sisterhood,” the group—which also came to include Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Margo Jefferson, and others—would get together once a month over the next two years, creating a vital space for Black women to discuss literature and liberation.The Sisterhood tells the story of how this remarkable community transformed American writing and cultural institutions. Drawing on original interviews with Sisterhood members as well as correspondence, meeting minutes, and readings of their works, Courtney Thorsson explores the group’s everyday collaboration and profound legacy. The Sisterhood advocated for Black women writers at trade publishers and magazines such as Random House, Ms., and Essence, and eventually in academic departments as well—often in the face of sexist, racist, and homophobic backlash. Thorsson traces the personal, professional, and political ties that brought the group together as well as the reasons for its dissolution. She considers the popular and critical success of Sisterhood members in the 1980s, the uneasy absorption of Black feminism into the academy, and how younger writers built on the foundations the group laid. Highlighting the organizing, networking, and community building that nurtured Black women’s writing, this book demonstrates that The Sisterhood offers an enduring model for Black feminist collaboration.

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The glorious Connecticut property of Heide Hendricks and Rafe Churchill (of the architecture and interior design firm Hendricks Churchill) illustrates how a late nineteenth-century farmhouse can be adapted for stylish and comfortable twenty-first-century living. Rafe and Heide discovered their true home in a late 1800s New England farmhouse after a decade of living in Brooklyn, New York. The historic property, Ellsworth, is a showplace for their shared aesthetic and sensibility of designing for real life, and not for formality. At the core is a house of pared-down traditionalism with references to Shaker tranquility, Arts & Crafts practicality, and bohemian chic. Whimsical wallcoverings, striking colors, a mix of contemporary furniture and antiques, exciting works of art, and comfort abound turning a workaday house from the nineteenth century into a creative laboratory of the twenty-first. The house and its surroundings a constant work in progress with evolving interiors, landscaping objectives, a reconfigured sunroom, a barn restoration, and planned hiking trails have become an endless source of inspiration for the couple s many projects, which include residences in New England, New York s Hudson Valley, New York City, Oyster Bay, Boulder, and Austin. The narrative of the book addresses the couple s design process in terms of architecture, decoration, and final installation. As many Americans are deciding to leave cities for calmer, more connected lives in the country, Heide and Rafe illustrate how this transition can be one of beauty and logic.

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Pianist Mike Garson was David Bowie's most frequent musician on record and onstage throughout Bowie's life. They played over a thousand shows together between 1972 and 2004 and Garson is featured on over 20 of Bowie's albums. ÊBowie's Piano ManÊ is the first-ever biography of Mike Garson written by Clifford Slapper a fellow pianist who also played for Bowie working closely with him on his last-ever television appearance. The book explores the special relationship between Garson and Bowie beginning with the extraordinary story of how Garson went overnight from playing in tiny jazz clubs to touring the world on arena rock tours with Bowie after one short phone call and audition.ÞA noted master of jazz classical and other genres Garson has composed thousands of original works and has taught countless students acting as mentor to many. ÊBowie's Piano ManÊ explores his roots and childhood in Brooklyn his ongoing strong presence in the jazz world and his collaborations with a huge range of other artists in addition to Bowie. Touring and recording with the Smashing Pumpkins and Nine Inch Nails are given in-depth attention as is his approach to teaching and creating music. Explored in detail in particular is his commitment to improvisation as a form of composition a manifestation of his more general dedication to living in the moment and always moving forward ä a trait he shared with Bowie.

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In this Newbery Honor novel, New York Times bestselling author Rita Williams-Garcia tells the story of three sisters who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 to meet the mother who abandoned them. Eleven-year-old Delphine is like a mother to her two younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern. She's had to be, ever since their mother, Cecile, left them seven years ago for a radical new life in California. But when the sisters arrive from Brooklyn to spend the summer with their mother, Cecile is nothing like they imagined. While the girls hope to go to Disneyland and meet Tinker Bell, their mother sends them to a day camp run by the Black Panthers. Unexpectedly, Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern learn much about their family, their country, and themselves during one truly crazy summer. This moving, funny novel won the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and the Coretta Scott King Award and was a National Book Award Finalist. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern's story continues in P.S. Be Eleven and Gone Crazy in Alabama. Readers who enjoy Christopher Paul Curtis's The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Jacqueline Woodson's Brown Girl Dreaming will find much to love in One Crazy Summer. This novel was the first featured title for Marley D's Reading Party, launched after the success of #1000BlackGirlBooks. Maria Russo, in a New York Times list of "great kids' books with diverse characters," called it "witty and original."

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Discover this remarkable account of twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons from the New York Times bestselling author of Behave.'One of the best scientist-writers of our time' Oliver SacksBrooklyn-born Robert Sapolsky grew up wishing he could live in the primate diorama in the Museum of Natural History. At school he wrote fan letters to primatologists and even taught himself Swahili, all with the hope of one day joining his primate brethren in Africa. But when, at the age of twenty-one, Sapolky's dream finally comes true he discovers that the African bush bears little resemblance to the tranquillity of a museum. This is the story of the next twenty-one years as Sapolsky slowly infiltrates and befriends a troop of Savannah baboons. Alone in the middle of the Serengeti with no electricity, running water or telephone, and surviving countless scams, culinary atrocities and a surreal kidnapping, Sapolsky becomes ever more enamoured with his adopted baboon troop - unique and compelling characters in their own right - and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevails. 'A Primate's Memoir is the closest the baboon is likely to come - and it's plenty close enough - to having its own Iliad' New York Times Review of BooksExhilarating, hilarious and poignant, A Primate's Memoir is a uniquely honest window into the coming-of-age of one of our greatest scientific minds.

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A gripping, eerie, and hilarious novel-in-verse from poet Matthew Rohrer. In a Russian-doll of fictional episodes, we follow a midlevel publishing assistant over the course of a day as he encounters ghost stories, science fiction adventures, Victorian hashish eating, and robot bigfoots. Rohrer mesmerizes with wildly imaginative tales and resonant verse in this compelling love letter to storytelling.this nightthey all seemed asleepfor a while the stark shadowsheld meonly my mind movedwildly behind my eyesuntil I heard a tinysong coming from the driversong of a bandit’s brokenheart, song of his betrayalI slept and dreamed I was awakeMatthew Rohrer is the author of Surrounded by Friends (Wave Books, 2015), Destroyer and Preserver (Wave Books, 2011), A Plate of Chicken (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2009), Rise Up (Wave Books, 2007) and A Green Light (Verse Press, 2004), which was shortlisted for the 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is also the author of Satellite (Verse Press, 2001), and co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks. (Verse Press, 2002), and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He has appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered and The Next Big Thing. His first book, A Hummock in the Malookas was selected for the National Poetry Series by Mary Oliver in 1994. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at NYU.

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City Schools brings together a distinguished group of researchers and educators for an in-depth look at the nation's largest school system. Topics covered include the changing demographics of city schools, the impending teacher shortage, reading instruction, special education, bilingual education, school governance, charter schools, choice, school finance reform, and the role of teacher unions. The book also provides fresh and fascinating perspectives on Catholic schools, Jewish day schools, and historically black independent schools. Diane Ravitch, Joseph P. Viteritti, and their coauthors explore pedagogical, institutional, and policy issues in an urban school system whose challenges are those of American urban education writ large. The authors conclude that we know a lot more about how to provide effective educational services for a diverse population of urban school children than performance data would suggest. Contributors: Dale Ballou, University of Massachusetts, Amherst * Stephan F. Brumberg, Brooklyn College * Mary Beth Celio, University of Washington * Gail Foster, Toussaint Institute * Michael Heise, Case Western University * Clara Hemphill, Public Education Association * Paul T. Hill, University of Washington * William G. Howell, Harvard University * Pearl Rock Kane, Columbia University * Frank J. Macchiarola, Saint Francis College * Melissa Marschall, University of South Carolina * Thomas Nechyba, Duke University * Paul E. Peterson, Harvard University * Christine Roch, Georgia State University * Christine H. Rossell, Boston University * Marvin Schick, Avi Chai Foundation * Mark Schneider, SUNY, Stony Brook * Lee Stuart, South Bronx Churches * Paul Teske, SUNY, Stony Brook * Emanuel Tobier, New York University * Joanna P. Williams, Columbia University

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From the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Max comes a heartwarming, middle grade adventure story about a rescue dog, Chestnut, who befriends a girl trying to save her family's Christmas tree farm in North Carolina. Chestnut is a dog searching for a purpose. After being abandoned in the North Carolina woods, Chestnut wishes he could use his great tracking skills to find a home. When twelve-year-old Meg discovers Chestnut injured in the back woods near her family's Christmas farm, she's feeling just as lonely herself. Meg can't help thinking that they'd make a great team. But with a missing Christmas tree taking up her family's attention, Meg knows she'll have to work hard to prove that Chestnut isn't just another problem that can't be solved. Can Meg and Chestnut crack the case of the missing tree before it's too late? AGES: 10 to 12 AUTHOR: Jennifer Li Shotz is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Max: Best Friend. Hero. Marine., about the coolest war dog ever. She is also the author of the Hero and Scout series. Among other things, Jen has written about sugar addiction, stinky shoes, and sports-related concussions. A Los Angeles native, she graduated from Vassar and has an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia. A senior editor for Scholastic Action Magazine, she lives with her family and Puerto Rican rescue dog, Vida, in Brooklyn

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'Clear-eyed and charming ... John von Sothen offers a guide to French love, slang, food, conversation, schools and much more. Hilarious and thoroughly entertaining' - John Walsh, Mail on Sunday In Brooklyn, John von Sothen fell in love with Anaïs, a French waitress. And then, one night in Paris, on the Pont Neuf, she agreed to marry him ("Bah, we can always get divorced!"). A couple of decades in, the two have become quatre, living in their beloved 10th arondissement with teenage kids who chat to their African neighbours in fluent Parisian slang, and John has even become kind of French himself. Well, he likes to think he has. The family still see him as an American innocent abroad. Paris Match is one of those rare books that makes you laugh out loud, as von Sothen attempts to understand what makes the French tick. Why do they take such long holidays with friends who ration snacks and mock you for sleeping in; why do French men turn to him (an American!) for fashion tips; what really is the correct way to cut brie, and how do you tell if you're being invited to a super-exclusive secret society of intellectuals or a weird sex club? John von Sothen has found most of the answers and in this delightful, witty book shares his experience, insights and humour into the fine art of becoming everyday French.

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Leo Durocher (1905–1991) was baseball’s all-time leading cocky, flamboyant, and galvanizing character, casting a shadow across several eras, from the time of Babe Ruth to the Space Age Astrodome, from Prohibition through the Vietnam War. For more than forty years, he was at the forefront of the game, with a Zelig-like ability to be present as a player or manager for some of the greatest teams and defining baseball moments of the twentieth century. A rugged, combative shortstop and a three-time All-Star, he became a legendary manager, winning three pennants and a World Series in 1954. Durocher performed on three main stages: New York, Chicago, and Hollywood. He entered from the wings, strode to where the lights were brightest, and then took a poke at anyone who tried to upstage him. On occasion he would share the limelight, but only with Hollywood friends such as actor Danny Kaye, tough guy and sometime roommate George Raft, Frank Sinatra, and Durocher’s third wife, movie star Laraine Day. Dickson explores Durocher’s life and times through primary source materials, interviews with those who knew him, and original newspaper files. A superb addition to baseball literature, Leo Durocher offers fascinating and fresh insights into the racial integration of baseball, Durocher’s unprecedented suspension from the game, the two clubhouse revolts staged against him in Brooklyn and Chicago, and his vibrant life off the field.

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"The greatest American dramatist of our age." (Evening Standard) In this collected works, five of Arthur Miller's most-produced and popular plays are brought together in a new edition, alongside an exclusive introduction by Ivo van Hove, the celebrated contemporary director of Miller's works. All five plays were written by Miller within a ten-year period which began with his first Broadway hit, All My Sons, in 1947 which led Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times to state that 'theatre has acquired a genuine new talent.' This was followed in 1949 by his exploration of the American Dream in Death of a Salesman, which went on to win the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The Crucible followed in 1953, produced during the McCarthy era and becoming a parable of the witch-hunting practices of a government determined to root-out Communists. A View from the Bridge, originally performed in 1955, concerns the lives of longshoremen in the Brooklyn waterfront and has remained one of Miller's most produced plays. Originally presented as a one-act companion piece to A Memory of Two Mondays, both plays explore the dreams and working lives of ordinary Americans in the early decades of the 20th century. Freshly edited and featuring a bold new design, this updated edition of Arthur Miller Plays 1 is a must-have for theatre fans and students alike.

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The world of young people in the United States today is exhilaratingly global, enriched by the influences of many various cultures. With that, however, comes the need for children to retain confidence in their own heritage while empathizing with people who might seem very different from them. The protagonists of these four plays—written for the world-renowned Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis—strive to achieve that balance with determination, love, and humor. The richness and relevance of these plays lie in their complex portraits of diversity and cultural collision. In Snapshot Silhouette, Somali-born Najma and African American Tay C share the same skin color but struggle to understand each other. The heroine of Brooklyn Bridge must forge new connections with her Puerto Rican and West Indian neighbors while maintaining her connection to her Russian mother. In Esperanza Rising, Mexican immigrant farmworkers navigate complicated relationships with other Mexicans who are in the United States illegally. And in Average Family, the character who knows the most about the Dakota way of life is not a Native American but the daughter of a white family. A culturally plural society can separate people by perceived chasms of unfamiliarity and difference. But as the characters in these plays learn, there can also be bridges built to span those chasms and connect the two sides. The plays in The Face of America will serve as cultural bridges for young people everywhere.

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Northern California Book Awards ShortlistThe comprehensive critical biography of silent-screen star Marion Davies, who fittingly referred to herself as "the captain of my soul." From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star plays like a modern fairy tale shaped by gossip columnists, fan magazines, biopics, and documentaries. Yet the real Marion Davies remained largely hidden from view, as she was wary of interviews and trusted few with her true life story. In Captain of Her Soul, Lara Gabrielle pulls back layers of myth to show a complex and fiercely independent woman, ahead of her time, who carved her own path. Through meticulous research, unprecedented access to archives around the world, and interviews with those who knew Davies, Captain of Her Soul counters the public story. This book reveals a woman who navigated disability and social stigma to rise to the top of a young Hollywood dominated by powerful men. Davies took charge of her own career, negotiating with studio heads and establishing herself as a top-tier comedienne, but her proudest achievement was her philanthropy and advocacy for children. This biography brings Davies out of the shadows cast by the Hearst legacy, shedding light on a dynamic woman who lived life on her own terms and declared that she was "the captain of her soul."

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With a new afterword from the authors, the critically praised indictment of widely embraced “alternatives to incarceration”“But what does it mean—really—to celebrate reforms that convert your home into your prison?” —Michelle Alexander, from the foreword Electronic monitoring. Locked-down drug treatment centers. House arrest. Mandated psychiatric treatment. Data driven surveillance. Extended probation. These are some of the key alternatives held up as cost effective substitutes for jails and prisons. But in a searing, “cogent critique” (Library Journal), Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law reveal that many of these so-called reforms actually weave in new strands of punishment and control, bringing new populations who would not otherwise have been subject to imprisonment under physical control by the state. Whether readers are seasoned abolitionists or are newly interested in sensible alternatives to retrograde policing and criminal justice policies and approaches, this highly praised book offers “a wealth of critical insights” that will help readers “tread carefully through the dizzying terrain of a world turned upside down” and “make sense of what should take the place of mass incarceration” (The Brooklyn Rail). With a foreword by Michelle Alexander, Prison by Any Other Name exposes how a kinder narrative of reform is effectively obscuring an agenda of social control, challenging us to question the ways we replicate the status quo when pursuing change, and offering a bolder vision for truly alternative justice practices.

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Curator and historian, gallerist and writer: Klaus Kertess has long been a decisive and forward-thinking presence in the art world. He founded the Bykert Gallery in 1966, where he represented artists including Chuck Close, Ralph Humphrey, Brice Marden and Dorothea Rockburne; three decades later, he curated the 1995 Whitney Biennial, the follow-up to the famously political 1993 iteration. "What is being proposed here," he wrote in a catalogue essay for the 1995 exhibition, "is not a return to formalism but an art in which meaning is embedded in formal value. An acknowledgment of sensuousness is indispensable--whether as play or sheer joy or the kind of subversity that has us reaching for a rose and grabbing a thorn." The art world has changed considerably from the relatively convivial world of the 60s to today's globalized milieu, but Kertess has been a constant throughout the years, curating shows of provocative new work and writing critical essays on artists whose work challenges and engages him, while also maintaining a vital literary sideline (his short stories are collected in 2000's South Brooklyn Casket Company). This volume collects Kertess' critical works from the past 30 years, including meditations on Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, John Chamberlain, Vija Celmins, Chris Ofili and Matthew Richie. With each essay accompanied by full-color reproductions of works discussed, Seen, Written provides a priceless opportunity to see art through the eyes of a lifelong viewer.

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How ordinary urban objects influence our behavior, exacerbate inequality, and encourage social changeAssumptions about human behavior lie hidden in plain sight all around us, programmed into the design and regulation of the material objects we encounter on a daily basis. In the Midst of Things takes an in-depth look at the social lives of five objects commonly found in the public spaces of New York City and its suburbs, revealing how our interactions with such material things are our primary point of contact with the social, political, and economic forces that shape city life.Drawing on groundbreaking fieldwork and a wealth of original interviews, Mike Owen Benediktsson shows how we are in the midst of things whose profound social role often goes overlooked. A newly built lawn on the Brooklyn waterfront reflects an increasingly common trade-off between the marketplace and the public good. A cement wall on a New Jersey highway speaks to the demise of the postwar American dream. A metal folding chair on a patch of asphalt in Queens exposes the political obstacles to making the city livable. A subway door expresses the simmering conflict between the city and the desires of riders, while a newsstand bears witness to our increasingly impoverished streetscapes.In the Midst of Things demonstrates how the material realm is one of immediacy, control, inequality, and unpredictability, and how these factors frustrate the ability of designers, planners, and regulators to shape human behavior.

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'Real, heart-breaking - I loved it.' Katie Fforde'My heart is smashed and repaired for reading this wonderfully romantic and strong piece of fiction.' Milly Johnson___What happens when 'I do' turns into 'I don't know'?Jeannie always wanted to fall in love, and now she's finally got the whirlwind romance she dreamed of. Dan's gorgeous, he's a successful young vet, and he flew her to New York and proposed on Brooklyn Bridge. Jeannie has to remind herself this is actually her life. It seems too perfect, too magical, to be real. Yet it is.But now she's on her way to the wedding she can't shake off the tight sensation crushing her chest. Is it just nerves . . . or is this all happening a bit too fast?Jeannie has one last chance to shout, 'Stop!' But just as she grabs it, a twist of fate throws everything she knows into the air like confetti. What Jeannie learns about Dan, about her own heart, and about the power of love itself, will change her world for ever . . .Pre-order Lucy's uplifting new novel, After the Rain, coming in spring 2022!___Readers adore Unexpected Lessons in Love***** 'An absolute delight . . . I enjoyed every moment.'***** 'I couldn't put it down. Lovely story about finding love and being honest with a little twist.'***** 'A story of family, friendship, loyalty, relationships and new beginnings. This book made me smile but also broke my heart.'

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"One of the most exciting and visceral poets of his generation."—Tony Hoagland"Look at homie on the beach picking shells in dress shoes," David Tomas Martinez writes in his raw, electrifying second collection. In his debut, Hustle, Martinez offered a kaleidoscopic coming-of-age narrative replete with teen shootings and car-jackings, uncertain forays into sex, and the ongoing violence of colonialism upon Latino communities in San Diego. Emerging from the fray, the poet is left to wonder: Who am I now? In Post Traumatic Hood Disorder, the speaker assembles a bricolage self-portrait from the fractures of the past. Sliding between scholarly diction and slangy vernacular, studded with references to Greek mythology and hip-hop, Martinez's poems showcase a versatility of language and a wild-hearted poetic energy that is thoughtful, vulnerable, and distinctly American.David Tomas Martinez is a recipient of a 2017 NEA fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, the Verlaine Poetry Prize, a CantoMundo fellowship, and the Stanley P. Young Fellowship from Breadloaf. His debut collection of poetry, Hustle (2014, Sarabande Books) received the New England Book Festival's prize in poetry, the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award, and $10,000 as honorable mention from the Antonio Cisneros Del Moral Prize. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, Tin House, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Martinez lives in Brooklyn, NY.

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From America’s premier sportswriter, the definitive, #1 New York Times bestselling biography of Joe Paterno and the story of America’s love affair with football.Joe Paterno believed that football was a way to teach young men how to live. He coached at Penn State for 62 years. In the course of his years as a head coach, his teams won 409 games, a Division I record. At the end of his life, more than 100 of those wins were invalidated by the NCAA because of the crimes of a longtime assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, and Paterno’s alleged knowledge of those crimes—knowledge Paterno denied until his death. In the process, the name Paterno—the name he had spent a lifetime building—came to represent scandal and controversy. Joe Posnanski lived in State College, Pennsylvania, through the turbulent final months of Paterno’s life and was with him and his family as the scandal that eventually consumed him unfolded. Now with a new afterword, Posnan­ski’s book delves deep into the life of Joe Paterno, going back to his childhood days in Brooklyn and his college days at Brown, and looks at him through the eyes of the young men he coached. It is a portrait that goes beyond the daily headlines and into the life of a stubborn idealist, a teacher, and a flawed but principled man who, to the very end, loved to coach.

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The Upright Heart chronicles the return from Brooklyn of a Jewish man, Wolf, to his native Poland soon after World War II. He is haunted by the memory of his Catholic lover, Olga, whom he abandoned to marry a woman of his own faith and start a new life in America, and who perished sheltering the parents and younger sister he left behind. Harassed on the streets of postwar Poland, Wolf is watched over by the spirits of those who died during and after the war but have yet to let go. His story is woven together with those of others, living and dead, Catholic and Jew, including the deceased students of a school for girls, a battalion of fallen German soldiers, and an orphan boy who wanders the streets of Krakow, believing in a magic pill he has conjured up as a way to survive. Set amid the ruins of the Holocaust and the Nazis' total war, this haunting novel is at once a page-turning drama and a meditation on what it means to be human, part of a community, alive. The Upright Heart's dreamlike qualities and fluent lyricism draw the reader toward a consecrated realm, while its narrative force guides the story into the present, where survivors and their children, beset by the devastations of the past, struggle alongside the dead to perceive and appreciate the beauty of that which remains and that which might yet be.

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Escape to the Maine seashore, an exquisite summer sanctuary where vacations stretch out forever during long, golden days and food is the stuff from which memories are made. The summers that acclaimed chef Rebecca Charles and her family spent swimming in the Atlantic, scouring the beach for shells, and eating shore dinners inspired her to open the famed Greenwich Village restaurant Pearl Oyster Bar. In this heartwarming memoir, Rebecca combines more than seventy of her favorite recipes with captivating family stories. Rebecca's adventurous granduncle Sam Goldsmith first took the family from the sweltering summer streets of Brooklyn to the exclusive seaside resort of Kennebunkport. But it was his sister–in–law Pearle Goldsmith, Pearl Oyster Bar's namesake and an opera singer with the Metropolitan and New York City operas, who fell in love with the rugged coast of Maine. Pearle passed this love on to her daughter, Eleanor, and her granddaughter, Rebecca. Rebecca recounts her family's three–generation love affair with the small Yankee fishing village and shares the recipes that have New Yorkers waiting in line for hours to taste what food writer Ed Levine described as "the best lobster roll I have ever eaten." Rebecca breathes new life into classic beach food. Whether re–creating an old–time clambake or grilling a whole pompano, she imparts the expertise that has made her one of the foremost seafood chefs in the country.

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For generations, New Yorkers have joked about "The City's" interminable tearing down and building up. The city that the whole world watches seems to be endlessly remaking itself. When the locals and the rest of the world say "New York," they mean Manhattan, a crowded island of commercial districts and residential neighborhoods, skyscrapers and tenements, fabulously rich and abjectly poor cheek by jowl. Of course, it was not always so; New York's metamorphosis from compact port to modern metropolis occurred during the mid-nineteenth century. Empire City tells the story of the dreams that inspired the changes in the landscape and the problems that eluded solution. Author David Scobey paints a remarkable panorama of New York's uneven development, a city-building process careening between obsessive calculation and speculative excess. Envisioning a new kind of national civilization, "bourgeois urbanists" attempted to make New York the nation's pre-eminent city. Ultimately, they created a mosaic of grand improvements, dynamic change, and environmental disorder. Empire City sets the stories of the city's most celebrated landmarks--Central Park, the Brooklyn Bridge, the downtown commercial center--within the context of this new ideal of landscape design and a politics of planned city building. Perhaps such an ambitious project for guiding growth, overcoming spatial problems, and uplifting the public was bound to fail; still, it grips the imagination. Author note: David M. Scobey is Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Arts of Citizenship Program at the University of Michigan.

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Flatbed Press, a collaborative publishing workshop in Austin, Texas, has become one of the premier artists’ printshops in America and an epicenter for the art form. Founded in 1989 by Mark Lesly Smith and Katherine Brimberry, Flatbed provides studio spaces for visiting artists to work with the press’s master printers to create limited editions of original etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and monotypes. The roster of artists who have worked at Flatbed includes Robert Rauschenberg, John Alexander, Dan Rizzie, Terry Allen, Michael Ray Charles, Luis Jimenez, Julie Speed, Trenton Doyle Hancock, and James Surls. Prints produced at Flatbed have been collected by major museums—the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others.Lavishly illustrated and printed, Flatbed Press at 25 presents a quarter-century retrospective of the press’s productions. The book features the prints of thirty-five prominent artists who have collaborated with the press, each represented by full-color plates and a lively reminiscence by Smith and Brimberry that describes the process of working with the artist. Eighty additional artists are also included with a single print and documentary details. Susan Tallman’s introduction places Flatbed in a national context, defines its uniqueness, and discusses many of the outstanding artworks that have been created there. Photographs of the facilities and equipment, technical processes, and artists and printers at work, as well as a chronology and glossary, complete the volume.

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Writing and Selling Thriller Screenplays has the lowdown on how to get your thriller feature script on to the page, and how to get it in front of producers and investors. First published in 2013, this new edition offers an all-new resources section and a host of new case studies that map the considerable changes of the past decade. With marketplace disruptors such as Netflix and the first phases of The Marvel Cinematic Universe leaving their mark, new opportunities have been created for screenwriters and filmmakers who are keen to get their stories in front of industry professionals. This time around, Lucy V Hay doesn't just guide you through the writing of movies, but spec TV pilots too. Putting iconic, mixed-genre projects under the microscope -such as Stranger Things (horror thriller), Brooklyn 99 (comedy thriller) and Lost (sci fi thriller) - she considers what writers can learn from these shows. She also argues that the lone protagonist in a thriller has had its day and looks at how the genre is moving into a space beyond 'The Hero's Journey'. Case studies to support this include The Hunger Games, Captain Marvel, Iron Man and many more. Finally, the book considers how the screenplay might be sold to investors, exploring high concept ideas, pitching, packaging and the realities of film finance - all updated for the 2020s - and lays out alternative routes to sales and production, including transmedia such as novels and adaptation, and immersive storytelling online.

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Contemporary artists and writers reflect on the Great Migration and the ways that it continues to inform the Black experience in America The Great Migration (1915–70) saw more than six million African Americans leave the South for destinations across the United States. This incredible dispersal of people across the country transformed nearly every aspect of Black life and culture. Offering a new perspective on this historical phenomenon, this incisive volume presents immersive photography of newly commissioned works of art by Akea, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems. The artists investigate their connections to the Deep South through familial stories of perseverance, self-determination, and self-reliance and consider how this history informs their working practices. Essays by Kiese Laymon, Jessica Lynne, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts, and Willie Jamaal Wright explore how the Great Migration continues to reverberate today in the public and private spheres and examine migration as both a historical and a political consequence, as well as a possibility for reclaiming agency.Published in association with the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Mississippi Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson (April 9–September 11, 2022)Baltimore Museum of Art (October 30, 2022–January 29, 2023)Brooklyn Museum (March 3–June 25, 2023)California African American Museum, Los Angeles (August 5, 2023–March 3, 2024)

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"Rohrer's frequently beautiful, brief poems are rooted in specific images that initially seem unrelated--but which ultimately form a unity as meditations on how the ordinary distractions of everyday life can be seen as the source for almost everything important in life."--Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly The poems in Matthew Rohrer's seventh poetry collection are generated by, and embrace, friendships with the living, the dead, and the inanimate. Friends, family, and the urban peoplescape are gathered together in these poems, with more and more poetic voices joining in, and ending with poems written "in collaboration" with Kobayashi Issa, Yosa Buson, Matsuo Basho, and Hafiz. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LONELIER There is absolutely nothing lonelier than the little Mars rover never shutting down, digging up rocks, so far away from Bond Street in a light rain. I wonder if he makes little beeps? If so he is lonelier still. He fires a laser into the dust. He coughs. A shiny thing in the sand turns out to be his. Matthew Rohrer has received the Hopwood Award for poetry, a Pushcart Prize, was selected as a National Poetry Series winner by Mary Oliver, and was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize. He is the co-author, with Joshua Beckman, of Nice Hat. Thanks., and the audio CD Adventures While Preaching the Gospel of Beauty. He has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered and The Next Big Thing. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches at NYU.

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When LCD Soundsystem broke up in 2011, they left behind a small but remarkable catalog of music. On top of the genius singles and a longform composition for Nike, there was a trilogy of full-length albums. During that initial run, LCD Soundsystem—and the project's mastermind, James Murphy—were at the center of several 21st century developments in pop culture: indie music's growing mainstream clout, Brooklyn surpassing Manhattan as an epicenter of creativity in America, the collision and eventual erosion of genre perceptions, and the rapid and profound growth and impact of digital culture. Amidst this storm, Murphy crafted Sound Of Silver, the centerpiece of LCD's work. At the time of Sound Of Silver’s creation and release, Murphy was a man closing in on 40 while fronting a critically-adored band still on the ascent. This album was the first place where he earnestly grappled with questions of aging, of being an artist, and the decisions we make with the time we have left. Anchored by a series of colossal, intense dance-rock songs, Sound Of Silver called upon the rhythms of New York City in order to draw out, dissect, and ultimately rip open these meditations. By the time LCD Soundsystem reunited in 2016, Sound Of Silver had already proven to be a generational touchstone, living on as a document of what it's like to be alive in the 21st century.

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“The political arrives in pieces, settling across his sprawling poems like dew or debris. Berrigan has always matched his experimental drive with a personable quality.” —Boston GlobeAnselm Berrigan’s eighth collection of poems, Something for Everybody, is exactly as its title describes. Wide-ranging in forms, densities, and aesthetics—and written from numerous collaborations, prompts, and influences—these poems express poetry’s astonishing possibilities. At the same time, they evince this sin- gular poet’s consciousness in the here and now, as a family and community member looking at the seams of public life.For consciousness the world is décor: sentences cast aboutFor bodies in the exuberant wobble factory Q-Bert believesIn me in the dark to pass out and check yourself out glidingBy storefront windows searching for a feeling no one’s feltIn the last twelve seconds lathered with coeval nightmareRhetoric of sociable extinction bashful as a wraith eking outA line of image extract to sprinkle on a plenty reeling mind. . .Anselm Berrigan is the editor of What is Poetry? (Just Kidding , I Know You Know): Interviews from the Poetry Project Newsletter (1983–2009), and is the author of many books of poetry, most recently Come In Alone and Primitive State. From 2003 to 2007 he was Artistic Director of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. He is Co-Chair, Writing at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts interdisciplinary MFA program and also teaches part-time at Brooklyn College.

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***Named one of "the 7 best books from indie publishers right now" in 2017 by PBS From the author of House Arrest and On Hurricane Island comes a thrilling new activist novel that begs the question, “How far is too far?” He was nine when the vines first wrapped themselves around him and burrowed into his skin. Now a college botany major, Jeremy is desperately looking for a way to listen to the plants and stave off their extinction. But when the grip of the vines becomes too intense and Health Services starts asking questions, he flees to Brooklyn, where fate puts him face to face with a group of climate-justice activists who assure him they have a plan to save the planet, and his plants. As the group readies itself to make a big Earth Day splash, Jeremy soon realizes these eco-terrorists’ devotion to activism might have him—and those closest to him—tangled up in more trouble than he was prepared to face. With the help of a determined, differently abled flame from his childhood, Zoe; her deteriorating, once–rabble-rousing grandmother; and some shocking and illuminating revelations from the past, Jeremy must weigh completing his mission to save the plants against protecting the ones he loves, and confront the most critical question of all: how do you stay true to the people you care about while trying to change the world?

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The exodus of the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers to the west after the 1957 season left a gaping hole in the fabric of the New York sports community. In 1962, the New York Mets stepped in to fill the void – an impossible task for any expansion team, but especially for this band of lovable losers in a city spoiled by the success of the New York Yankees. Led by the inimitable Casey Stengel, the ’62 Mets set the mark for futility in major league baseball, winning a mere 40 games while losing 120. It didn’t get much better in the ensuing years – until 1969. It was then that the Miracle Mets, just two years removed from losing 101 games, shocked the world, defeating the powerhouse Baltimore Orioles in the World Series, 4 games to 1. Seventeen years later, the bad boys of ’86 pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in sports history when they defeated the cursed Boston Red Sox to win the Mets’ second world championship. And in 2000, the Amazin’ Mets fought their way into a Subway Series showdown with the crosstown rival Yankees. Along the way, throughout the ups and downs, the cast of characters, both Hall of Famers and underachievers, has rarely failed to entertain. Through vintage and modern photos, baseball cards, memorable stories, and sports trivia, 101 Reasons to Love the Mets celebrates this one-of-a-kind team.

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Long recognised as a classic in the USA, "The Tower and the Bridge" is now at last available in German translation. In his preface to the German edition, Jorg Schlaich writes. "This book is essential reading and a pleasure for the "structural engineering artist", in whose structures the connection between form and force flow is visible and which are distinguished by the ideals of efficiency, cost-effectiveness and elegance." Billington founded with this book structural art as a new, independent art form, which he considers equivalent to architecture. It is no coincidence that the title states the two classic domains of the structural engineer; in this case Billington is referring to two outstanding structures of the epoch, the Eiffel Tower and the Brooklyn Bridge. Billington describes in an easily readable style and in an entertaining manner the ideals, principles and methods of structural art during its historical development through examples of structures from outstanding engineers (e.g. Telford, Maillart, Freyssinet, Menn). With the establishment of structural art as an art form and the explication of its inherent principles, Billington gives the reader well founded arguments for the aesthetic discussion of engineering structures. This also provides a basis for criticism of the new art form; for the criticism of construction that has long been demanded. This timeless book thus has the potential to give a new impulse to the debate about construction culture and particularly the aesthetic aspects of structural engineering in German-speaking countries.

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Joe the Bouncer's search for a stolen racing pigeon sends him into a warren of assassins in this thrilling caper from David Gordon. Harvard dropout and ex-Special Forces operative Joe Brody is climbing the ranks in the criminal underworld. After successfully executing multiple missions for the various crime syndicates that run New York City, he has come to earn the trust and respect of the city’s most dangerous denizens. Which is why his newest task — retrieving a pet pigeon snatched from a rooftop coop in Brooklyn — has Joe puzzled … until he learns that the bird is valued at close to a million dollars. Joe hatches a plan to sneak into the luxury apartment building where the pigeon is held captive. But the plan takes a deadly turn when he stumbles upon a nest of international war criminals. Fearing that Joe's entry into the building has somehow compromised their nefarious scheme, they put a bounty on his head. In New York, Joe is untouchable, but his new foes come from outside the flock, and he’ll need a wing and a prayer to elude their assassins. Reviewers on David Gordon 'David Gordon brings an outstanding new voice to the contemporary crime novel.' Robert Crais 'A unique and worthwhile series' CrimeReads 'Gordon knows how to write a potboiler.' LA Times 'In the caper tradition popularized by Donald E. Westlake and Lawrence Block, Gordon uses humour to good effect.' Publishers Weekly

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