Water Follies

Author: Robert Jerome Glennon
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597267872
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 329

Book Description
The Santa Cruz River that once flowed through Tucson, Arizona is today a sad mirage of a river. Except for brief periods following heavy rainfall, it is bone dry. The cottonwood and willow trees that once lined its banks have died, and the profusion of birds and wildlife recorded by early settlers are nowhere to be seen. The river is dead. What happened? Where did the water go. As Robert Glennon explains in Water Follies, what killed the Santa Cruz River -- and could devastate other surface waters across the United States -- was groundwater pumping. From 1940 to 2000, the volume of water drawn annually from underground aquifers in Tucson jumped more than six-fold, from 50,000 to 330,000 acre-feet per year. And Tucson is hardly an exception -- similar increases in groundwater pumping have occurred across the country and around the world. In a striking collection of stories that bring to life the human and natural consequences of our growing national thirst, Robert Glennon provides an occasionally wry and always fascinating account of groundwater pumping and the environmental problems it causes. Robert Glennon sketches the culture of water use in the United States, explaining how and why we are growing increasingly reliant on groundwater. He uses the examples of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers in Arizona to illustrate the science of hydrology and the legal aspects of water use and conflicts. Following that, he offers a dozen stories -- ranging from Down East Maine to San Antonio's River Walk to Atlanta's burgeoning suburbs -- that clearly illustrate the array of problems caused by groundwater pumping. Each episode poses a conflict of values that reveals the complexity of how and why we use water. These poignant and sometimes perverse tales tell of human foibles including greed, stubbornness, and, especially, the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality. As Robert Glennon explores the folly of our actions and the laws governing them, he suggests common-sense legal and policy reforms that could help avert potentially catastrophic future effects. Water Follies, the first book to focus on the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment, brings this widespread but underappreciated problem to the attention of citizens and communities across America.

Frontier Follies

Author: Ree Drummond
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062962825
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Book Description
New York Times bestseller A down-to-earth, hilarious collection of stories and musings on marriage, motherhood, and country life from the #1 New York Times bestselling author and star of the Food Network show The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond. Once upon a time, I lost my marbles and married a sexy, Wrangler-wearing cowboy named Ladd. That single decision would wind up setting the stage for years of rural adventures (and misadventures), and while I can't imagine my life being any different, raising a family in the “idyllic” countryside has not been without a few bumps in the road. (Or were those cow patties? It's hard to tell the difference sometimes.) I'm excited to share this crazy collection of true stories from my full-of-energy, hard-to-tame, wonderfully wild (and very weird) frontier family. From the unique challenges of being married to a rancher to the blood, sweat, mud, and tears of raising country kids, I'll pull back the curtain and let you in on some of the sh*t and shenanigans that have really gone on here on Drummond Ranch over the past two-plus decades. You'll learn about marital spats, run-ins with wildlife, ER visits, my parenting neuroses, triumphs, tribulations, love, loss . . . and how manure has somehow managed to weave its way through all of it. To keep things up to the minute, you'll also hear about more recent family developments that have tested my sanity and pushed me to the brink. (And pleasantly surprised me, too.) This book is both a love letter and a laugh letter, and I hope you get a big kick out of it all: the good, the bad, and the dirty. Mostly, I hope it demonstrates how much I adore this family of mine . . . even if I sometimes have to use rubber snakes to show it.

Everything was Possible

Author: Ted Chapin
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557836533
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 380

Book Description
In 1971, Ted Chapin was a production assistant on the legendary Broadway musical Follies. Thirty years later, the journal he kept has become the definitive history of one of Broadway's greatest-ever musicals, created by geniuses at the top of their free: Stephen Sondheim, Hal Prince, Michael Bennett, and James Goldman.

Follies in America

Author: Kerry Dean Carso
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501755943
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Book Description
Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.

American Follies

Author: Norman Lock
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
ISBN: 1942658494
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Book Description
A young woman joins Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Barnum’s circus to rescue her infant from the KKK In the seventh stand-alone book of The American Novels series, Ellen Finch, former stenographer to Henry James, recalls her time as an assistant to Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, heroes of America’s woman suffrage movement, and her friendship with the diminutive Margaret, one of P. T. Barnum’s circus “eccentrics.” When her infant son is kidnapped by the Klan, Ellen, Margaret, and the two formidable suffragists travel aboard Barnum’s train from New York to Memphis to rescue the baby from certain death at the fiery cross. A savage yet farcical tale, American Follies explores the roots of the women’s rights movement, its relationship to the fight for racial justice, and its reverberations in the politics of today.

The Brooklyn Follies

Author: Paul Auster
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1429900091
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
From the bestselling author of Oracle Night and The Book of Illusions, an exhilarating, whirlwind tale of one man's accidental redemption Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore—a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances—not to mention a stray relative or two—and leads him to a reckoning with his past. Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others. The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.

Follies of God

Author: James Grissom
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1101972777
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
This remarkably illuminating portrait of Tennessee Williams lifts the veil on the heart and soul of his artistic inspiration: the unspoken collaboration between playwright and actor. At a low moment in Williams’s life, he summoned to New Orleans a young twenty-year-old writer, James Grissom, who had written him a letter asking for advice. After a long, intense conversation, Williams sent Grissom on a journey on his behalf to find out if he or his work had mattered to those who had so deeply mattered to him. Among the more than seventy women and men with whom Grissom talked were giants of American theater and film: Lillian Gish, (“the escort who brought me to Blanche”), Jessica Tandy (the original Blanche DuBois on Broadway), Eva Le Gallienne (“She was a stone against which I could rub my talent and feel that it became sharper”), Maureen Stapleton, Julie Harris, Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn, Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, and many more. Follies of God provides dazzling insight into how Williams conjured the dramatic characters and plays that so transformed American theater.

Fabulous Fairy Tale Follies

Author: Graham Philpot
Publisher: Hachette Children's Books Australia
ISBN: 9780733600630
Category : Fairy tales
Languages : en
Pages : 28

Book Description
Colourfully illustrated, humorous picture book for young children. The reader is asked to find the pictures corresponding to the well-known fairytale characters described in the text.

The Follies of Richard Wadsworth

Author: Nick Mandaag
Publisher: Drawn & Quarterly
ISBN: 1770465251
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Book Description
A dark, bizarre comedy where teachers push boundaries into preposterous places The Follies of Richard Wadsworth showcases Nick Maandag’s signature blend of deadpan satire and exceedingly unexpected plot twists. In “Night School,” a Modern Managerial Business Administration and Operational Leadership class goes awry when a fire alarm brings the Chief to school and he decides to stick around to teach the students a thing or two about leadership—and discipline. “The Follies of Richard Wadsworth” follows the title character, a professor of philosophy, as he begins work as a contract instructor at yet another university. When Wadsworth finds himself smoking reefer at his student’s party and discovers she works at a rub ’n’ tug, an off-kilter plan is hatched. And in “The Disciple,” a yarn about a coed Buddhist monastery, Brother Bananas, the resident gorilla, isn’t the only one having difficulty keeping his lust tucked safely under his robe. In Maandag’s hands—hands that love to toy with morally ambiguous characters and flirt with absurdity—troubled men make poor decisions, unlikable characters gain our sympathies through their very haplessness, and riotous laughs ensue. Maandag has achieved cult acclaim through his self-published and micro-published comics, and The Follies of Richard Wadsworth is his debut book. His mechanical, affectless characters and economical artwork efficiently deliver cringes, heightening the awkward silence and stillness of his hilarious comics.

Contemporary Follies

Author: Keith Moskow
Publisher: The Monacelli Press, LLC
ISBN: 1580933408
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Book Description
Contemporary Follies showcases outstanding examples of contemporary design that address our place in nature. Emerging from the Enlightenment spirit of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Jefferson, the English picturesque folly, and the forest retreats of Scandinavian modernists, these projects inspire contemplation and creativity in their spatial energy and alliance with the environment. The book features fifty structures, including work by internationally recognized firms such as Arata Isozaki & Associates, Heatherwick Studios, Patkau Architects, Steven Ehrlich Architects, TEN Arquitectos as well as innovative young studios in all parts of the world: Norway, United Kingdom, Austria, Chile, Germany, Ecuador, Finland, Taiwan, Spain, Canada, Netherlands, United States, Czech Republic, France, and Switzerland. International in scope and focused on design excellence, this collection of exquisite buildings will appeal to all who yearn for a place of their own, a retreat in which to regroup and reprioritize. Together these small structures are the contemporary interpretation of the folly, the small building nestled in the landscape, a place apart.