Search results for ""Author Tom McCarthy""

Bodies in motion. Birds, bees and bobsleighs. What is the force that moves the sun and other stars? Where's our fucking airplane? What's inside Box 808, and why does everybody want it? Deep within the archives of time-and-motion pioneer Lillian Gilbreth lies a secret. Famous for producing solid light-tracks that captured the path of workers' movements, Gilbreth helped birth the era of mass observation and big data. Did she also, as her broken correspondence with a young Soviet physicist suggests, discover in her final days a 'perfect' movement, one that would 'change everything'? An international hunt begins for the one box missing from her records, and we follow contemporary motion-capture consultant Mark Phocan across geo-political fault lines and experimental zones: places where the frontiers of potential - to cure, kill, understand or entertain - are constantly tested and refined. And all the while, work is underway on the blockbuster film Incarnation, an epic space tragedy. Audac

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Few people would want to test their mettle in an ice-encrusted boat with an Arctic explorer, sail the Straits of Magellan with Joshua Slocum, or watch with Owen Chase as an angry whale sends his ship to the bottom, thousands of miles from the nearest land. But it's quite another thing to read these true accounts while settled into a favorite chair. Slocum and Chase persevered in the face of travails that would have given Job pause. Their stoic accounts are stronger and more dramatic for their total lack of affection, their frankness, and their lack of ego. Their gripping stories are custom-made for the imaginative reader who seeks adventure in a more controlled environment, safe and warm, and well fed - civilized readers with their armchairs anchored firmly to the living room floor. Rich in drama and history, here are stories that will entertain, inform, and inspire--enduring stories that have attracted generations of readers.

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Sea stories are, plain and simple, wonderful springboards for vicarious adventure. There is nothing like a sea story to entertain, thrill, move, shock, or inpsire a reader, and this collection will do just that.What is it about the sea that lends itself to so many indelibly classic stories? The sea is a wonderful stage on which to unroll a dramatic narrative or introduce a heroic character. It’s no wonder so many masterpieces are set on the seas of the world.From sublime moments gunkholing with Erskine Childers in “An Introduction to Informality” to sheer terror with the ill-fated men among sharks in Raymond B. Lech “The Loss of the Indianapolis” to astounding respect for the endurance of Ernest Shackelton and his storm-tossed men in “Escape from the Ice,” there is simply nothing that can compare to what awaits in this collection of twenty-eight thrilling stories. Many, having withstood the test of time and the vararies of popular culture are classics. Classic or not, the stories in this collection are good reading--breathtaking, entertaining, and offering myriad unexpected pleasures.

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Traumatized by an accident which ‘involved something falling from the sky’ and leaves him eight and a half million pounds richer but hopelessly estranged from the world around him, Remainder’s hero spends his time and money obsessively reconstructing and re-enacting vaguely remembered scenes and situations from his past: a large building with piano music in the distance, the familiar smells and sounds of liver frying and spluttering, lethargic cats lounging on roofs until they tumble off them... But when this fails to quench his thirst for authenticity, he starts re-enacting more and more violent events, as his repetition addiction spirals out of control. A darkly comic meditation on memory, identity and history, Remainder is a parable for modern times.

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C follows the short, intense life of Serge Carrefax, a man who - as his name suggests - surges into the electric modernity of the early twentieth century, transfixed by the technologies that will obliterate him.Born to the sound of one of the very earliest experimental wireless stations, Serge finds himself steeped in a weird world of transmissions, whose very air seems filled with cryptic and poetic signals of all kinds. What follows is a stunning tour de force in which the eerily idyllic settings of pre-war Europe give way to the exhilarating flight-paths of the frontline aeroplane radio operator, then the prison camps of Germany, the drug-fuelled London of the roaring twenties and, finally, the ancient tombs of Egypt.Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.

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U. is a 'corporate anthropologist' who, while working on a giant, epoch-defining project no one really understands, is also tasked with writing the Great Report on our society. But instead, U. spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him on a daily basis: oil spills, African traffic jams, roller-blade processions. Is there a secret logic holding all these images together? Once cracked, will it unlock the master-meaning of our era? Might it have something to do with the dead parachutists in the news? Perhaps; perhaps not.

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Set in a Central Europe rapidly fragmenting after the fall of Communism, "Men in Space" follows a cast of dissolute Bohemians, political refugees, football referees, deaf police agents, assassins and stranded astronauts as they chase a stolen icon painting from Sofia to Prague and beyond. The icon's melancholy orbit is reflected in the various characters' ellipses and near misses as they career vertiginously through all kinds of space: physical, political, emotional and metaphysical. What emerges is a vision a world in a state of disintegration.

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Ghosts. Pirates. Put the two together and you’ve got a winning combination of the most exciting stories ever written. It's enough to make anyone say, "Shiver me timbers"--with delight.The spirits of Davy Jones's locker have a long and colorful history among sailors and lovers of literature. From Daniel Defoe's "The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts" to Thomas Smollet's "The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle" to Washington Irving's "Adventures of the Black Fisherman," ghost pirates swashbuckle in and out of the scene, stealing the souls of the doomed and frightening the innocent. Prepare yourself for a thrilling ride.

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Hergé's Tintin cartoon adventures have been translated into more than fifty languages and read by tens of millions of children aged, as their publishers like to say, 'from 7 to 77'. Arguing that their characters are as strong and their plots as complex as any dreamt up by the great novelists, Tom McCarthy asks a simple question: is Tintin literature? McCarthy takes a cue from Tintin himself, who spends much of his time tracking down illicit radio signals, entering crypts and decoding puzzles and suggests that we too need to 'tune in' and decode if we want to capture what's going on in Hergé's work. What emerges is a remarkable story of hushed-up royal descent in both Herge's work and his own family history. McCarthy shows how the themes this story generates - expulsion from home, violation of the sacred, the host-guest relationship turned sour and anxieties around questions of forgery and fakeness - are the same that have fuelled and troubled writers from the classical era to the present day. His startling conclusion is that Tintin's ultimate 'secret' is that of literature itself. Appearing on the eve of the release of a major Steven Spielberg Tintin film, Tintin and the Secret of Literature should be avidly devoured by not only Tintin lovers but also by anyone with an interest in literature, philosophy or art.

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The most ambition and exciting novel yet from the Booker shortlisted author of C and Satin Island.Bodies in motion. Birds, bees and bobsleighs. What is the force that moves the sun and other stars? Where's our fucking airplane? What's inside Box 808, and why does everybody want it? Deep within the archives of time-and-motion pioneer Lillian Gilbreth lies a secret. Gilbreth helped birth the era of mass observation and big data but did she also discover a 'perfect' movement that would 'change everything'? An international hunt begins for the one box missing from her records, and we follow contemporary motion-capture consultant Mark Phocan across geo-political fault lines and experimental zones in his search for it. And all the while, work is underway on the blockbuster film Incarnation, an epic space tragedy...'Dazzling... The Making of Incarnation feels utterly original, utterly new, utterly magical' Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others'Hugely interesting, energetic, wise and well written' GQ'A rich and fascinating exercise in observation' Independent

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“1789 April: Just before sun-rising, Mr. Christian, with the master at arms, gunner’s mate, and Thomas Burket, seaman, came into my cabin while I was asleep, and seizing me, tied my hands with a cord behind my back and threatened me with instant death if I spoke or made the least noise.” So began William Bligh’s explanation of the infamous mutiny aboard the Bounty. His account of his capture and his phenomenal navigation of a small boat filled with men desperate to survive is one of the greatest sailing stories ever told. It is just one account readers will find in Astounding Sea Stories—many that have been sitting unread for decades. Some are from master writers whose deserved fame rests on works and characters who lived far from the sea. Here are sea stories from Jack London, his first published work, written miles from the frozen north that he loved and wrote about often—and from Charles Dickens without Scrooge, Victor Hugo far from Paris, and Arthur Conan Doyle on the deck of a ship without Sherlock or Watson. All are hidden gems that make you wish they had written and the sea and ships. Here also are marquee names like Melville and Richard Henry Dana, the official report of the sinking of the Titanic, a first-person account of the wreck of the Medusa, and a story by an unknown captain written after his ship was sunk by a whale. Imagine that. This eclectic collection will not disappoint any armchair seafarer.

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The title of the catalogue of works by the artist duo Stefan Panhans (Germany) and Andrea Winkler (Switzerland) is a nod to the rhetoric used by evangelical megachurches in the United States that preach a market-oriented, neoliberal ideology of individual self-optimisation under the guise of Christian pastoral care. The artists’ works touch on electric SUVs, communication with forms of artificial intelligence, racism in everyday life, celebrity cults, stereotypes, computer games, the “uncanny valley,” and other post-digital feedback loops between humans and virtual worlds, but also on the precarious condition of cultural sector workers. Panhans and Winkler are masters at using a broad spectrum of artistic genres and media, such as novels, texts, performances, installations, miniseries, musicals, sculptures, objects, films, videos, and dance. Their video installations can be subsumed under what is known as “expanded cinema”: the displayed objects, which also appear in the videos, are presented in a way that allows the films to expand into the surrounding space, drawing viewers into the artwork. Text in English and German.

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Snow Leopards: Biodiversity of the World: Conservation from Genes to Landscapes is the only comprehensive work on the biology, behavior, and conservation status of the snow leopard, a species that has long been one of the least studied, and hence poorly understood, of the large cats. Breakthroughs in technologies and methodologies to study this elusive cat have come rapidly, including non-invasive genetics, camera traps, and GPS-satellite collaring. The book begins with chapters on the genetic standing and taxonomy of the snow leopard, followed by chapters on their behavior and ecology. Additional contributions follow on the current and emerging threats to the species, which include longstanding concerns, such as poaching and conflicts with livestock, and new and emerging threats such as mining and climate change. A section on conservation solutions, backed by valuable case studies, starts with an overview of the important role mountain communities play in assuring the snow leopard’s long-term persistence. In addition, chapters on the role of captive snow leopards for the conservation of the species, state-of-the-art techniques and technologies for studying and monitoring snow leopards, status reports from around the region, and future perspectives, such as transboundary conservation initiatives, international conventions (CITES, CMS, etc.), the role of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and the Snow Leopard Network, and undertakings such as the Global Snow Leopard Forum facilitated by the World Bank are also included.

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