Author: Howard E. McCurdy
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801898684
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408
Book Description
People dreamed of cosmic exploration—winged spaceships and lunar voyages; space stations and robot astronauts—long before it actually happened. Space and the American Imagination traces the emergence of space travel in the popular mind, its expression in science fiction, and its influence on national space programs. Space exploration dramatically illustrates the power of imagination. Howard E. McCurdy shows how that power inspired people to attempt what they once deemed impossible. In a mere half-century since the launch of the first Earth-orbiting satellite in 1957, humans achieved much of what they had once only read about in the fiction of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and the nonfiction of Willy Ley. Reaching these goals, however, required broad-based support, and McCurdy examines how advocates employed familiar metaphors to excite interest (promising, for example, that space exploration would recreate the American frontier experience) and prepare the public for daring missions into space. When unexpected realities and harsh obstacles threatened their progress, the space community intensified efforts to make their wildest dreams come true. This lively and important work remains relevant given contemporary questions about future plans at NASA. Fully revised and updated since its original publication in 1997, Space and the American Imagination includes a reworked introduction and conclusion and new chapters on robotics and space commerce.
Walt Disney
Author: Neal Gabler
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679757473
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 914
Book Description
ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The definitive portrait of one of the most important cultural figures in American history: Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films–most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi. In his superb biography, Neal Gabler shows us how, over the course of two decades, Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry. In a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, he built a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise. Walt Disney is a revelation of both the work and the man–of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and USA Today Biography of the Year
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679757473
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 914
Book Description
ONE OF THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 GREATEST FILM BOOKS OF ALL TIME • The definitive portrait of one of the most important cultural figures in American history: Walt Disney. Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films–most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi. In his superb biography, Neal Gabler shows us how, over the course of two decades, Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry. In a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, he built a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise. Walt Disney is a revelation of both the work and the man–of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and USA Today Biography of the Year
Space and the American Imagination
Author: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781722750831
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70
Book Description
The introduction will set out the principal theme of the book: that the rise of the U.S. space program was due to a concerted effort by science writers, engineers, industrialists, and civic and political leaders to create a popular culture of space exploration based on important elements of American social life (such as frontier mythology, fears about the cold war, and the rise of the consumer culture). Much of the disillusionment with the NASA space program which set in during the third decade of space flight can be traced to a widening gap between popular expectations and the reality of space exploration. Mccurdy, Howard E. Unspecified Center...
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781722750831
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70
Book Description
The introduction will set out the principal theme of the book: that the rise of the U.S. space program was due to a concerted effort by science writers, engineers, industrialists, and civic and political leaders to create a popular culture of space exploration based on important elements of American social life (such as frontier mythology, fears about the cold war, and the rise of the consumer culture). Much of the disillusionment with the NASA space program which set in during the third decade of space flight can be traced to a widening gap between popular expectations and the reality of space exploration. Mccurdy, Howard E. Unspecified Center...
White Flights
Author: Jess Row
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555978819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
A bold, incisive look at race and reparative writing in American fiction, by the author of Your Face in Mine White Flights is a meditation on whiteness in American fiction and culture from the end of the civil rights movement to the present. At the heart of the book, Jess Row ties “white flight”—the movement of white Americans into segregated communities, whether in suburbs or newly gentrified downtowns—to white writers setting their stories in isolated or emotionally insulated landscapes, from the mountains of Idaho in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping to the claustrophobic households in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Row uses brilliant close readings of work from well-known writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace to examine the ways these and other writers have sought imaginative space for themselves at the expense of engaging with race. White Flights aims to move fiction to a more inclusive place, and Row looks beyond criticism to consider writing as a reparative act. What would it mean, he asks, if writers used fiction “to approach each other again”? Row turns to the work of James Baldwin, Dorothy Allison, and James Alan McPherson to discuss interracial love in fiction, while also examining his own family heritage as a way to interrogate his position. A moving and provocative book that includes music, film, and literature in its arguments, White Flights is an essential work of cultural and literary criticism.
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555978819
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 320
Book Description
A bold, incisive look at race and reparative writing in American fiction, by the author of Your Face in Mine White Flights is a meditation on whiteness in American fiction and culture from the end of the civil rights movement to the present. At the heart of the book, Jess Row ties “white flight”—the movement of white Americans into segregated communities, whether in suburbs or newly gentrified downtowns—to white writers setting their stories in isolated or emotionally insulated landscapes, from the mountains of Idaho in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping to the claustrophobic households in Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Row uses brilliant close readings of work from well-known writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, Richard Ford, and David Foster Wallace to examine the ways these and other writers have sought imaginative space for themselves at the expense of engaging with race. White Flights aims to move fiction to a more inclusive place, and Row looks beyond criticism to consider writing as a reparative act. What would it mean, he asks, if writers used fiction “to approach each other again”? Row turns to the work of James Baldwin, Dorothy Allison, and James Alan McPherson to discuss interracial love in fiction, while also examining his own family heritage as a way to interrogate his position. A moving and provocative book that includes music, film, and literature in its arguments, White Flights is an essential work of cultural and literary criticism.
War Stars
Author: Howard Bruce Franklin
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN: 9781558496514
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
In this new and expanded edition of an already classic work, H. Bruce Franklin brings the epic story of the superweapon and the American imagination into the ominous twenty-first century, demonstrating its continuing importance both to comprehending our current predicament and to finding ways to escape from it. Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, Franklin traces the evolution of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon -- guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals -- has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN: 9781558496514
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
In this new and expanded edition of an already classic work, H. Bruce Franklin brings the epic story of the superweapon and the American imagination into the ominous twenty-first century, demonstrating its continuing importance both to comprehending our current predicament and to finding ways to escape from it. Sweeping through two centuries of American culture and military history, Franklin traces the evolution of superweapons from Robert Fulton's eighteenth-century submarine through the strategic bomber, atomic bomb, and Star Wars to a twenty-first century dominated by "weapons of mass destruction," real and imagined. Interweaving culture, science, technology, and history, he shows how and why the American pursuit of the ultimate defensive weapon -- guaranteed to end all war and bring universal triumph to American ideals -- has led our nation and the world into an epoch of terror and endless war.
Beyond Earth's Edge
Author: Julie Swarstad Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816539192
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Beyond Earth's Edge vividly captures through poetry the violence of blastoff, the wonders seen by Hubble, and the trajectories of exploration to Mars and beyond. The anthology offers a fascinating record of both national mindsets and private perspectives as poets grapple with the promise and peril of U.S. space exploration across decades and into the present.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780816539192
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Beyond Earth's Edge vividly captures through poetry the violence of blastoff, the wonders seen by Hubble, and the trajectories of exploration to Mars and beyond. The anthology offers a fascinating record of both national mindsets and private perspectives as poets grapple with the promise and peril of U.S. space exploration across decades and into the present.
America's New Destiny in Space
Author: Glenn Harlan Reynolds
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781641771825
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Book Description
With private space companies launching rockets, satellites, and people at a record pace, and with the U.S. and other governments committing to a future in space, Glenn Harlan Reynolds looks at how we got here, where we're going, and why it matters for all of humanity.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781641771825
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40
Book Description
With private space companies launching rockets, satellites, and people at a record pace, and with the U.S. and other governments committing to a future in space, Glenn Harlan Reynolds looks at how we got here, where we're going, and why it matters for all of humanity.
Where the Wild Frontiers are
Author: Manan Ahmed
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935982210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Over the past decade, Pakistan assumed increasing importance in American thinking as a perplexing part of the quagmire in which Washington's "AfPak" policy has became stuck. But Pakistan had its own history throughout these years, too: a history that was complex, enthralling, infuriating, and inspiring-- sometimes, all at once. And the country's 175 million people had their own view of the attempts that distant Washington was making to wield influence over their country's government and society... How lucky, then, that since 2004, a deeply informed Pakistani historian called Manan Ahmed has been casting his keen and always wry eye on the U.S.-Pakistani interaction on his blog, "Chapati Mystery." Now, Ahmed has curated the most trenchant of these analyses into Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination, a work that will forever change the way its American readers think about Pakistan. In an Epilogue penned in May 2011, Ahmed offers some final reflections on the multiple meanings that the U.S. killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan at the beginning of the month had for the interaction between Pakistan and the 'West'. In September 2010, Ahmed was reflecting on the "failure of imagination" on behalf of U.S. officials, to which the authors of the American 9/11 Commission report ascribed the officials' failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. To combat terrorism, he noted, the report's authors thought American officials needed to work harder on developing a more specifically novelistic (à la Tom Clancy) kind of imagination: "the capacity to imagine this Other, to give them an interiority, a mindfulness, an agency, a history." But it did not work out that way. Where the Wild Frontiers Are vividly captures the failure of most members of the U.S. elite to successfully "imagine" the reality of people's lives and society in Pakistan in this important way. Ahmed unsparingly criticizes most of the so-called "experts" who prognosticate about Pakistan and its region in the U.S. mainstream media. About Robert Kaplan, he writes that ""The empire... will surely invite him to speak to groups with shinier brass and shinier domes. The historians reading [his] book will have less cause to be charitable". A similar charge, he lays at the feet of Rory Stewart and Greg Mortenson. Where the Wild Frontiers Are looks clear-headedly at U.S. imaginings about Pakistan-- and also at the big historical and political trends within Pakistan itself. The Lawyers' Movement, the self-destructive last days of Pervez Musharraf's presidency, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the eruption of a vicious anti-Ahmadi pogrom, the disruptions and suffering caused by the 'Global War on Terror', the country's endless tangling with the complexities of its own past and meaning: All are the object of Ahmed's steady (and sometimes exasperated) gaze. Between them, the book's ten chapters provide a compelling picture of the complexity of the U.S.-Pakistan entanglement in the first decade of this century.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781935982210
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Over the past decade, Pakistan assumed increasing importance in American thinking as a perplexing part of the quagmire in which Washington's "AfPak" policy has became stuck. But Pakistan had its own history throughout these years, too: a history that was complex, enthralling, infuriating, and inspiring-- sometimes, all at once. And the country's 175 million people had their own view of the attempts that distant Washington was making to wield influence over their country's government and society... How lucky, then, that since 2004, a deeply informed Pakistani historian called Manan Ahmed has been casting his keen and always wry eye on the U.S.-Pakistani interaction on his blog, "Chapati Mystery." Now, Ahmed has curated the most trenchant of these analyses into Where the Wild Frontiers Are: Pakistan and the American Imagination, a work that will forever change the way its American readers think about Pakistan. In an Epilogue penned in May 2011, Ahmed offers some final reflections on the multiple meanings that the U.S. killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan at the beginning of the month had for the interaction between Pakistan and the 'West'. In September 2010, Ahmed was reflecting on the "failure of imagination" on behalf of U.S. officials, to which the authors of the American 9/11 Commission report ascribed the officials' failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. To combat terrorism, he noted, the report's authors thought American officials needed to work harder on developing a more specifically novelistic (à la Tom Clancy) kind of imagination: "the capacity to imagine this Other, to give them an interiority, a mindfulness, an agency, a history." But it did not work out that way. Where the Wild Frontiers Are vividly captures the failure of most members of the U.S. elite to successfully "imagine" the reality of people's lives and society in Pakistan in this important way. Ahmed unsparingly criticizes most of the so-called "experts" who prognosticate about Pakistan and its region in the U.S. mainstream media. About Robert Kaplan, he writes that ""The empire... will surely invite him to speak to groups with shinier brass and shinier domes. The historians reading [his] book will have less cause to be charitable". A similar charge, he lays at the feet of Rory Stewart and Greg Mortenson. Where the Wild Frontiers Are looks clear-headedly at U.S. imaginings about Pakistan-- and also at the big historical and political trends within Pakistan itself. The Lawyers' Movement, the self-destructive last days of Pervez Musharraf's presidency, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the eruption of a vicious anti-Ahmadi pogrom, the disruptions and suffering caused by the 'Global War on Terror', the country's endless tangling with the complexities of its own past and meaning: All are the object of Ahmed's steady (and sometimes exasperated) gaze. Between them, the book's ten chapters provide a compelling picture of the complexity of the U.S.-Pakistan entanglement in the first decade of this century.