Search results for ""atlantic monthly press""

“Song of Napalm is more than a collection of beautifully wrought, heartwrenching, and often very funny poems. It’s a narrative, the story of an American innocent’s descent into hell and his excruciating return to life on the surface. Weigl may have written the best novel so far about the Vietnam War, and along the way a dozen truly memorable poems.” — Russell Banks

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“Dogs are not people dressed up in fur coats, and to deny them their nature is to do them great harm.” So says short-story writer Jeanne Schinto in her witty introduction to The Literary Dog, a superlative collection of contemporary stories written by some of the most important writers of our time. A traditional dog story usually recounts some heroic and unbelievable dog deed that the teller swears is true. The stories in The Literary Dog, however, are not traditional dog stories at all. Writers of short fiction, from Kafka to Updike, have a distinguished history of using the dog as a subject for the highest and purest literary aims, stories not about dogs but rather ones in which dogs are essential and intrinsic to the effect. Schinto has selected only contemporary pieces, most of which were first published in the 1980s. Including stories by some of the most important writers of our time, this beautiful and highly accomplished collection features good dogs and bad dogs, but only great fiction.

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Dissatisfied with her job as a pharmaceutical rep and struggling with the decline of her long-term relationship, Grace, a well-heeled Londoner, uses yoga class to unwind, reflect, and momentarily transcend her earthly dilemmas. While pitching her company’s latest antidepressant to the disarming Dr. James, she is inspired by his plan to study Eastern medicine in Vietnam and decides to quit her job to become a yoga teacher. After studying at the eccentric White Lotus Foundation in California, Grace returns to London, ready for her new life. But nothing could have prepared her for the motley crew of students she amasses--from the octogenarian industrialist desperate for distraction, the supermodel who indulges yogic aspirations when she tires of kabbalah, to the American film star who uses yoga classes to conceal a scandalous affair. Overwhelmed, Grace soon finds herself relying on her bi-continental correspondence with Dr. James for solace and inspiration, his words hovering above her London life like a sweet promise. With an eye for the absurdity in every encounter, Alexandra Gray gently skewers our society’s preference for a quick-fix nirvana in this chronicle of one woman’s quest for love and meaning in a world numbed by materialism and psychotropic drugs.

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Renowned social commentator and best-selling author James Howard Kunstler's sequel to World Made by Hand, expands on his vision of post-oil society in America in this "suspenseful, darkly amusing story with touches of the fantastic in the mode of Washington Irving" (Booklist). In the tiny hamlet of Union Grove, New York, the electricity has flickered off, the Internet is a distant memory, and the government is little more than a rumor. Travel is horse-drawn and farming is back at the center of life, but Union Grove is no pastoral haven. Wars are fought over dwindling resources and illness is a constant presence. Bandits roam the countryside, preying on the weak and a sinister cult threatens to shatter the town's fragile stability. In a novel that is both shocking yet eerily convincing, Kunstler seamlessly weaves hot-button issues such as the decline of oil and the perils of climate change into a compelling narrative of violence, religious hysteria, innocence lost, and love found.

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