Author: Kliph Nesteroff Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic ISBN: 0802190863 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 460
Book Description
“Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century. “Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal
Author: M. R. O'Connor Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 1250096960 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 367
Book Description
At once far flung and intimate, a fascinating look at how finding our way make us human. "A marvel of storytelling." —Kirkus (Starred Review) In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision—especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate. O’Connor explores the neurological basis of spatial orientation within the hippocampus. Without it, people inhabit a dream state, becoming amnesiacs incapable of finding their way, recalling the past, or imagining the future. Studies have shown that the more we exercise our cognitive mapping skills, the greater the grey matter and health of our hippocampus. O'Connor talks to scientists studying how atrophy in the hippocampus is associated with afflictions such as impaired memory, dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease, depression and PTSD. Wayfinding is a captivating book that charts how our species' profound capacity for exploration, memory and storytelling results in topophilia, the love of place. "O'Connor talked to just the right people in just the right places, and her narrative is a marvel of storytelling on its own merits, erudite but lightly worn. There are many reasons why people should make efforts to improve their geographical literacy, and O'Connor hits on many in this excellent book—devouring it makes for a good start." —Kirkus Reviews
Author: Anthony Doerr Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476746605 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 560
Book Description
*NOW A NETFLIX LIMITED SERIES—from producer and director Shawn Levy (Stranger Things) starring Mark Ruffalo, Hugh Laurie, and newcomer Aria Mia Loberti* Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, the beloved instant New York Times bestseller and New York Times Book Review Top 10 Book about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel. In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the Resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge. Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).
Author: John Schaub Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional ISBN: 0071466495 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
Strategies for creating real estate wealth by star ting small--and always making the right moves Nationally known real estate expert John Schaub learned his craft in the best way possible--on the job, and through every kind of market. Over three decades, he learned to bank consistent profits as he built an impressive real estate mini-empire. Building Wealth One House at a Time reveals how virtually anyone can accumulate one million dollars worth of houses debtfree and earn a steady cash flow for life. Unique in that it focuses on buying houses in good-quality neighborhoods, Schaub's nine-step program includes: Renting to long-term tenants, with financial incentives to pay on time Avoiding the temptation of bigger deals, which invariably include bigger problems A 10-year plan to pay off debt and own houses free and clear
Author: Caty Borum Chattoo Publisher: University of California Press ISBN: 0520299779 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 295
Book Description
Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover, in the midst of a merger of entertainment and news in the contemporary information ecology, and a decline in perceptions of trust in government and traditional media institutions, comedy may be a unique force for change in pressing social justice challenges. Comedians who say something serious about the world while they make us laugh are capable of mobilizing the masses, focusing a critical lens on injustices, and injecting hope and optimism into seemingly hopeless problems. By combining communication and social justice frameworks with contemporary comedy examples, authors Caty Borum Chattoo and Lauren Feldman show us how comedy can help to serve as a vehicle of change. Through rich case studies, audience research, and interviews with comedians and social justice leaders and strategists, A Comedian and an Activist Walk Into a Bar: The Serious Role of Comedy in Social Justice explains how comedy – both in the entertainment marketplace and as cultural strategy – can engage audiences with issues such as global poverty, climate change, immigration, and sexual assault, and how activists work with comedy to reach and empower publics in the networked, participatory digital media age.
Author: Melanie Florence Publisher: Second Story Press ISBN: 1772602345 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
The story of the beautiful relationship between a little girl and her grandfather. When she asks her grandfather how to say something in his language – Cree – he admits that his language was stolen from him when he was a boy. The little girl then sets out to help her grandfather find his language again. This sensitive and warmly illustrated picture book explores the intergenerational impact of the residential school system that separated young Indigenous children from their families. The story recognizes the pain of those whose culture and language were taken from them, how that pain is passed down, and how healing can also be shared.
Author: Suzan Shown Harjo Publisher: Smithsonian Institution ISBN: 1588344789 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Nation to Nation explores the promises, diplomacy, and betrayals involved in treaties and treaty making between the United States government and Native Nations. One side sought to own the riches of North America and the other struggled to hold on to traditional homelands and ways of life. The book reveals how the ideas of honor, fair dealings, good faith, rule of law, and peaceful relations between nations have been tested and challenged in historical and modern times. The book consistently demonstrates how and why centuries-old treaties remain living, relevant documents for both Natives and non-Natives in the 21st century.
Author: Hala Alyan Publisher: Houghton Mifflin ISBN: 035812655X Category : Domestic fiction Languages : en Pages : 467
Book Description
"The Arsonists' City delivers all the pleasures of a good old-fashioned saga, but in Alyan's hands, one family's tale becomes the story of a nation--Lebanon and Syria, yes, but also the United States. It's the kind of book we are lucky to have."--Rumaan Alam A rich family story, a personal look at the legacy of war in the Middle East, and an indelible rendering of how we hold on to the people and places we call home The Nasr family is spread across the globe--Beirut, Brooklyn, Austin, the California desert. A Syrian mother, a Lebanese father, and three American children: all have lived a life of migration. Still, they've always had their ancestral home in Beirut--a constant touchstone--and the complicated, messy family love that binds them. But following his father's recent death, Idris, the family's new patriarch, has decided to sell. The decision brings the family to Beirut, where everyone unites against Idris in a fight to save the house. They all have secrets--lost loves, bitter jealousies, abandoned passions, deep-set shame--that distance has helped smother. But in a city smoldering with the legacy of war, an ongoing flow of refugees, religious tension, and political protest, those secrets ignite, imperiling the fragile ties that hold this family together. In a novel teeming with wisdom, warmth, and characters born of remarkable human insight, award-winning author Hala Alyan shows us again that "fiction is often the best filter for the real world around us" (NPR).
Author: Gordon Korman Publisher: Scholastic Inc. ISBN: 1338629123 Category : Juvenile Fiction Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
An unforgettable novel from the New York Times bestseller Gordon Korman Link, Michael, and Dana live in a quiet town. But it's woken up very quickly when someone sneaks into school and vandalizes it with a swastika. Nobody can believe it. How could such a symbol of hate end up in the middle of their school? Who would do such a thing? Because Michael was the first person to see it, he's the first suspect. Because Link is one of the most popular guys in school, everyone's looking to him to figure it out. And because Dana's the only Jewish girl in the whole town, everyone's treating her more like an outsider than ever. The mystery deepens as more swastikas begin to appear. Some students decide to fight back and start a project to bring people together instead of dividing them further. The closer Link, Michael, and Dana get to the truth, the more there is to face-not just the crimes of the present, but the crimes of the past. With Linked, Gordon Korman, the author of the acclaimed novel Restart, poses a mystery for all readers where the who did it? isn't nearly as important as the why?
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Author: Kliph Nesteroff
Author: Kliph Nesteroff
Author: M. R. O'Connor
Author: Anthony Doerr
Author: John Schaub
Author: Caty Borum Chattoo
Author: Melanie Florence
Author: Suzan Shown Harjo
Author: Hala Alyan
Author: Gordon Korman