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The first in the Electra McDonnell series from Edgar-nominated author Ashley Weaver, set in England during World War II, A Peculiar Combination is a delightful mystery filled with spies, murder, romance, and the author's signature wit. “Filled with wry humor, tight suspense, and a delightful cast of characters.”—Alyssa Maxwell, author of the Gilded Newport mysteries FIRST RULE: DON’T LOSE YOUR CONCENTRATION. Electra McDonnell and her family earn their living outside the law. Breaking into the homes of the rich and picking the locks on their safes may not be condoned by British law enforcement, but with World War II in full swing, Uncle Mick’s locksmith business just can’t pay the bills anymore. SECOND RULE: DON’T MAKE MISTAKES. So when Uncle Mick receives a tip about a safe full of jewels in an empty house, he and Ellie can’t resist. All is going as planned—until the pair is caught red-handed. But instead of arresting them, government official Major Ramsey has an offer: either Ellie agrees to help him break into a safe and retrieve blueprints crucial to the British war effort, or he turns her over to the police. THIRD RULE: DON’T GET CAUGHT. Ellie doesn’t care for the major’s imperious manner, but she has no choice. However, when they break into the house, they find the safe open and empty, and a German spy dead on the floor. Soon, Ellie and Major Ramsey are forced to put aside their differences to unmask the double agent, and stop Allied plans from falling into enemy hands.
Book Synopsis A Peculiar Combination by : Ashley Weaver
Download or read book A Peculiar Combination written by Ashley Weaver and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in the Electra McDonnell series from Edgar-nominated author Ashley Weaver, set in England during World War II, A Peculiar Combination is a delightful mystery filled with spies, murder, romance, and the author's signature wit. “Filled with wry humor, tight suspense, and a delightful cast of characters.”—Alyssa Maxwell, author of the Gilded Newport mysteries FIRST RULE: DON’T LOSE YOUR CONCENTRATION. Electra McDonnell and her family earn their living outside the law. Breaking into the homes of the rich and picking the locks on their safes may not be condoned by British law enforcement, but with World War II in full swing, Uncle Mick’s locksmith business just can’t pay the bills anymore. SECOND RULE: DON’T MAKE MISTAKES. So when Uncle Mick receives a tip about a safe full of jewels in an empty house, he and Ellie can’t resist. All is going as planned—until the pair is caught red-handed. But instead of arresting them, government official Major Ramsey has an offer: either Ellie agrees to help him break into a safe and retrieve blueprints crucial to the British war effort, or he turns her over to the police. THIRD RULE: DON’T GET CAUGHT. Ellie doesn’t care for the major’s imperious manner, but she has no choice. However, when they break into the house, they find the safe open and empty, and a German spy dead on the floor. Soon, Ellie and Major Ramsey are forced to put aside their differences to unmask the double agent, and stop Allied plans from falling into enemy hands.
Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.
Book Synopsis A Peculiar Mixture by : Jan Stievermann
Download or read book A Peculiar Mixture written by Jan Stievermann and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-06-26 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through innovative interdisciplinary methodologies and fresh avenues of inquiry, the nine essays collected in A Peculiar Mixture endeavor to transform how we understand the bewildering multiplicity and complexity that characterized the experience of German-speaking people in the middle colonies. They explore how the various cultural expressions of German speakers helped them bridge regional, religious, and denominational divides and eventually find a way to partake in America’s emerging national identity. Instead of thinking about early American culture and literature as evolving continuously as a singular entity, the contributions to this volume conceive of it as an ever-shifting and tangled “web of contact zones.” They present a society with a plurality of different native and colonial cultures interacting not only with one another but also with cultures and traditions from outside the colonies, in a “peculiar mixture” of Old World practices and New World influences. Aside from the editors, the contributors are Rosalind J. Beiler, Patrick M. Erben, Cynthia G. Falk, Marie Basile McDaniel, Philip Otterness, Liam Riordan, Matthias Schönhofer, and Marianne S. Wokeck.
The #1 New York Times best-selling series. Bonus features • Q&A with author Ransom Riggs • Eight pages of color stills from the film • Sneak preview of Hollow City, the next novel in the series A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows. “A tense, moving, and wondrously strange first novel. The photographs and text work together brilliantly to create an unforgettable story.”—John Green, New York Times best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars “With its X-Men: First Class-meets-time-travel story line, David Lynchian imagery, and rich, eerie detail, it’s no wonder Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children has been snapped up by Twentieth Century Fox. B+”—Entertainment Weekly “‘Peculiar’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Riggs’ chilling, wondrous novel is already headed to the movies.”—People “You’ll love it if you want a good thriller for the summer. It’s a mystery, and you’ll race to solve it before Jacob figures it out for himself.”—Seventeen
Book Synopsis Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by : Ransom Riggs
Download or read book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children written by Ransom Riggs and published by Quirk Books. This book was released on 2011-06-07 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The #1 New York Times best-selling series. Bonus features • Q&A with author Ransom Riggs • Eight pages of color stills from the film • Sneak preview of Hollow City, the next novel in the series A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive. A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows. “A tense, moving, and wondrously strange first novel. The photographs and text work together brilliantly to create an unforgettable story.”—John Green, New York Times best-selling author of The Fault in Our Stars “With its X-Men: First Class-meets-time-travel story line, David Lynchian imagery, and rich, eerie detail, it’s no wonder Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children has been snapped up by Twentieth Century Fox. B+”—Entertainment Weekly “‘Peculiar’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. Riggs’ chilling, wondrous novel is already headed to the movies.”—People “You’ll love it if you want a good thriller for the summer. It’s a mystery, and you’ll race to solve it before Jacob figures it out for himself.”—Seventeen
An exquisite seaside resort, an eccentric group of British aristrocrats on holiday, and rich 1930's detail lay the setting for this stupendous debut mystery of manners by a young librarian
Book Synopsis Murder at the Brightwell by : Ashley Weaver
Download or read book Murder at the Brightwell written by Ashley Weaver and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exquisite seaside resort, an eccentric group of British aristrocrats on holiday, and rich 1930's detail lay the setting for this stupendous debut mystery of manners by a young librarian
Poems are social. They reach out, however crookedly, to another person, however imperfectly imagined. And sometimes they not only embody but enact those things that we might value in the other parts of our social lives--kindness, for example, or joy--as well as the complications those values entail. Looking closely at poems from Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, Spencer Reece, Robert Pinsky, Claudia Rankine, Jericho Brown, Patricia Lockwood, Ross Gay, Paisley Rekdal, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and many others, That Peculiar Affirmative tries to understand what it means for a poem to be humble or humorous, decorous or confident, and what that tells us not only about poems, but also about the larger world of social virtues, personal vulnerabilities, and political problems that define so much of our time together and apart. "If I had to imagine an ideal reader or critic of poetry it would be Jonathan Farmer, and his soulful book of essays, That Peculiar Affirmative, would be my ideal book. These essays constitute more than a series of discrete engagements with modern and contemporary poets; together they conduct nothing less than a spiritual autobiography that tracks the growth of the writer's moral and aesthetic imagination. There is no book like this in its combination of personal revelation and writerly attention to technique, in its thrilling recreation of the mind through poetry redefining what it thinks and feels." --Alan Shapiro "Along the front line of a new generation of poetry commentators, I place Jonathan Farmer beside Meghan O'Rourke, Philip Metres, and Solmaz Sharif. It's a very fertile moment for poetry, and Farmer is one of the first critics I look to now for clarity and depth. His readings in That Peculiar Affirmative are uniformly brilliant, unswayed by partisan aesthetics, and marked by real joy in intellectual and social engagement with the lyric poem. Even his subtitles point to this rare odic impulse; he writes "on" decorum and humility, "on" politics and humor, even as he applies contemporary issues of racial and sexual identity, for instance, to an old-school devotion to close reading. His touchstones--Sidney and Shakespeare, Kristeva and Durrell--are as aptly rangy as his contemporary subjects, from Brooks and Bishop to Ross Gay, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, or Claudia Rankine. I greet this critic and his book with celebratory gratitude." --David Baker "That Jonathan Farmer writes in his introduction that in this book, he 'has tried to make something worth your time' is characteristic of the critical voice you will find in this thoughtful, probing, and reflective book of essays. The 'I' of That Peculiar Affirmative is modest while its eye is expansive and inclusive; Farmer's curiosity is palpable, both in the questions he poses and the questions he hears in the poems he reads. In beautiful and generous essays on subjects of perennial poetic relevance and contemporary sociopolitical relevance, Farmer rethinks topics like joy, decorum, humility, kindness, humor, and political discourse itself through insightful readings of contemporary poets as varied as Ross Gay, Patricia Lockwood, Paisley Rekdal, Jill McDonough, Mary Syzbist, Terrance Hayes, Claudia Rankine, and more, as well as a vast array of interlocutors across time, such as Hamlet, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop (whose phrase gives this book its title), Lucille Clifton, and even Allie Brosh of the iconic web comic Hyperbole and a Half. As befits an exploration of the social life of poetry, That Peculiar Affirmative is a book that will not only speak to you about poetry, affect, and politics, but will speak with you. Farmer has met his goal and then some: this book is dazzlingly and rewardingly worth your time." --Sumita Chakraborty
Book Synopsis That Peculiar Affirmative by : Jonathan Farmer
Download or read book That Peculiar Affirmative written by Jonathan Farmer and published by Stephen F. Austin University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poems are social. They reach out, however crookedly, to another person, however imperfectly imagined. And sometimes they not only embody but enact those things that we might value in the other parts of our social lives--kindness, for example, or joy--as well as the complications those values entail. Looking closely at poems from Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Bishop, Gwendolyn Brooks, Terrance Hayes, Spencer Reece, Robert Pinsky, Claudia Rankine, Jericho Brown, Patricia Lockwood, Ross Gay, Paisley Rekdal, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, and many others, That Peculiar Affirmative tries to understand what it means for a poem to be humble or humorous, decorous or confident, and what that tells us not only about poems, but also about the larger world of social virtues, personal vulnerabilities, and political problems that define so much of our time together and apart. "If I had to imagine an ideal reader or critic of poetry it would be Jonathan Farmer, and his soulful book of essays, That Peculiar Affirmative, would be my ideal book. These essays constitute more than a series of discrete engagements with modern and contemporary poets; together they conduct nothing less than a spiritual autobiography that tracks the growth of the writer's moral and aesthetic imagination. There is no book like this in its combination of personal revelation and writerly attention to technique, in its thrilling recreation of the mind through poetry redefining what it thinks and feels." --Alan Shapiro "Along the front line of a new generation of poetry commentators, I place Jonathan Farmer beside Meghan O'Rourke, Philip Metres, and Solmaz Sharif. It's a very fertile moment for poetry, and Farmer is one of the first critics I look to now for clarity and depth. His readings in That Peculiar Affirmative are uniformly brilliant, unswayed by partisan aesthetics, and marked by real joy in intellectual and social engagement with the lyric poem. Even his subtitles point to this rare odic impulse; he writes "on" decorum and humility, "on" politics and humor, even as he applies contemporary issues of racial and sexual identity, for instance, to an old-school devotion to close reading. His touchstones--Sidney and Shakespeare, Kristeva and Durrell--are as aptly rangy as his contemporary subjects, from Brooks and Bishop to Ross Gay, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, or Claudia Rankine. I greet this critic and his book with celebratory gratitude." --David Baker "That Jonathan Farmer writes in his introduction that in this book, he 'has tried to make something worth your time' is characteristic of the critical voice you will find in this thoughtful, probing, and reflective book of essays. The 'I' of That Peculiar Affirmative is modest while its eye is expansive and inclusive; Farmer's curiosity is palpable, both in the questions he poses and the questions he hears in the poems he reads. In beautiful and generous essays on subjects of perennial poetic relevance and contemporary sociopolitical relevance, Farmer rethinks topics like joy, decorum, humility, kindness, humor, and political discourse itself through insightful readings of contemporary poets as varied as Ross Gay, Patricia Lockwood, Paisley Rekdal, Jill McDonough, Mary Syzbist, Terrance Hayes, Claudia Rankine, and more, as well as a vast array of interlocutors across time, such as Hamlet, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop (whose phrase gives this book its title), Lucille Clifton, and even Allie Brosh of the iconic web comic Hyperbole and a Half. As befits an exploration of the social life of poetry, That Peculiar Affirmative is a book that will not only speak to you about poetry, affect, and politics, but will speak with you. Farmer has met his goal and then some: this book is dazzlingly and rewardingly worth your time." --Sumita Chakraborty
When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you’re squatting in your parents’ old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can’t afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It’s not my real name, but it’s the only one you’re getting. Things like names are important these days. And it’s not so much that I’m Pet. I am a pet. A human pet: I belong to the two Behindkind fae and the pouty vampire who just moved into my house. It’s not weird, I promise—well, it is weird, yeah. But it’s not weird weird, you know?
Book Synopsis Between Jobs by : W.R. Gingell
Download or read book Between Jobs written by W.R. Gingell and published by W. R. Gingell. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When you get up in the morning, the last thing you expect to see is a murdered guy hanging outside your window. Things like that tend to draw the attention of the local police, and when you’re squatting in your parents’ old house until you can afford to buy it, another thing you can’t afford is the attention of the cops. Oh yeah. Hi. My name is Pet. It’s not my real name, but it’s the only one you’re getting. Things like names are important these days. And it’s not so much that I’m Pet. I am a pet. A human pet: I belong to the two Behindkind fae and the pouty vampire who just moved into my house. It’s not weird, I promise—well, it is weird, yeah. But it’s not weird weird, you know?
Edgar Award-shortlisted author Ashley Weaver returns with the fifth installment in the Amory Ames mystery series. An Act of Villainy is an a gem, set in 1930s London and filled with style, banter, and twists that traditional mystery fans will positively relish. "So you've gotten yourself involved with another murder, have you?" Walking through London’s West End after a night at the theater, Amory Ames and her husband Milo run into wealthy investor and former actor Gerard Holloway. Holloway and his wife Georgina are old friends of theirs, and when Holloway invites them to the dress rehearsal of a new play he is directing, Amory readily accepts. However, Amory is shocked to learn that Holloway has cast his mistress, actress Flora Bell, in the lead role. Furthermore, the casual invitation is not what it seems—he admits to Amory and Milo that Flora has been receiving threatening letters, and he needs their help in finding the mysterious sender. Despite Amory’s conflicting feelings—not only does she feel loyalty to Georgina, but the disintegration of the Holloways’ perfect marriage seems to bode ill for her own sometimes delicate relationship—her curiosity gets the better of her, and she begins to make inquiries. It quickly becomes clear that each member of the cast has reason to resent Flora—and with a group so skilled in the art of deception, it isn’t easy to separate truth from illusion. When vague threats escalate, the scene is set for murder, and Amory and Milo must find the killer before the final curtain falls. Also out now in the Amory Ames mysteries: Murder at the Brightwell, Death Wears a Mask, A Most Novel Revenge, and The Essence of Malice.
Book Synopsis An Act of Villainy by : Ashley Weaver
Download or read book An Act of Villainy written by Ashley Weaver and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edgar Award-shortlisted author Ashley Weaver returns with the fifth installment in the Amory Ames mystery series. An Act of Villainy is an a gem, set in 1930s London and filled with style, banter, and twists that traditional mystery fans will positively relish. "So you've gotten yourself involved with another murder, have you?" Walking through London’s West End after a night at the theater, Amory Ames and her husband Milo run into wealthy investor and former actor Gerard Holloway. Holloway and his wife Georgina are old friends of theirs, and when Holloway invites them to the dress rehearsal of a new play he is directing, Amory readily accepts. However, Amory is shocked to learn that Holloway has cast his mistress, actress Flora Bell, in the lead role. Furthermore, the casual invitation is not what it seems—he admits to Amory and Milo that Flora has been receiving threatening letters, and he needs their help in finding the mysterious sender. Despite Amory’s conflicting feelings—not only does she feel loyalty to Georgina, but the disintegration of the Holloways’ perfect marriage seems to bode ill for her own sometimes delicate relationship—her curiosity gets the better of her, and she begins to make inquiries. It quickly becomes clear that each member of the cast has reason to resent Flora—and with a group so skilled in the art of deception, it isn’t easy to separate truth from illusion. When vague threats escalate, the scene is set for murder, and Amory and Milo must find the killer before the final curtain falls. Also out now in the Amory Ames mysteries: Murder at the Brightwell, Death Wears a Mask, A Most Novel Revenge, and The Essence of Malice.
Jem McCrail is a fantastical godsend to the timid young Alice Pilling. "Like a dropped acorn,†? she appears halfway through the week, halfway through the term, and halfway through Miss Aldridge's Silent Reading Hour. Through the doorway she barely clears, wearing clothes like the urchin she encountered in her favorite P. G. Wodehouse story, Jem leads the stammering Alice into a world of culture, truancy, and bizarrerie-a world far beyond the dull lessons of school. The girls cultivate a steadfast bond based on a wicked and encircling sense of humor, an impish joy in indelicate literature, and Mozart's The Magic Flute. Then, as abruptly as she came, Jem disappears. The years and schools that follow, as well as the lovers, do not dim the image of the wondrous Jem. The disheartened Alice is almost ready to settle into an ordinary life when an accident and the intervention of a latter-day fallen angel impel her to go on one more wild and extravagant journey. Like the opera it echoes, the result is pure enchantment. "Why did it take me so long to discover the singular joys of Barbara Trapido's novels? Why, for so many years, had I missed these witty, soulful, heartbreaking, expansive, brilliant tales? I have become a literary evangelist on her behalf. On account of my badgering, all my friends now love her, too.I won't rest until everyone in America has read (and fallen in love with) this fabulous author.†? -Elizabeth Gilbert
Book Synopsis Temples of Delight by : Barbara Trapido
Download or read book Temples of Delight written by Barbara Trapido and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jem McCrail is a fantastical godsend to the timid young Alice Pilling. "Like a dropped acorn,†? she appears halfway through the week, halfway through the term, and halfway through Miss Aldridge's Silent Reading Hour. Through the doorway she barely clears, wearing clothes like the urchin she encountered in her favorite P. G. Wodehouse story, Jem leads the stammering Alice into a world of culture, truancy, and bizarrerie-a world far beyond the dull lessons of school. The girls cultivate a steadfast bond based on a wicked and encircling sense of humor, an impish joy in indelicate literature, and Mozart's The Magic Flute. Then, as abruptly as she came, Jem disappears. The years and schools that follow, as well as the lovers, do not dim the image of the wondrous Jem. The disheartened Alice is almost ready to settle into an ordinary life when an accident and the intervention of a latter-day fallen angel impel her to go on one more wild and extravagant journey. Like the opera it echoes, the result is pure enchantment. "Why did it take me so long to discover the singular joys of Barbara Trapido's novels? Why, for so many years, had I missed these witty, soulful, heartbreaking, expansive, brilliant tales? I have become a literary evangelist on her behalf. On account of my badgering, all my friends now love her, too.I won't rest until everyone in America has read (and fallen in love with) this fabulous author.†? -Elizabeth Gilbert
"This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.
Book Synopsis Why People Believe Weird Things by : Michael Shermer
Download or read book Why People Believe Weird Things written by Michael Shermer and published by Holt Paperbacks. This book was released on 2002-09-01 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This sparkling book romps over the range of science and anti-science." --Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Revised and Expanded Edition. In this age of supposed scientific enlightenment, many people still believe in mind reading, past-life regression theory, New Age hokum, and alien abduction. A no-holds-barred assault on popular superstitions and prejudices, with more than 80,000 copies in print, Why People Believe Weird Things debunks these nonsensical claims and explores the very human reasons people find otherworldly phenomena, conspiracy theories, and cults so appealing. In an entirely new chapter, "Why Smart People Believe in Weird Things," Michael Shermer takes on science luminaries like physicist Frank Tippler and others, who hide their spiritual beliefs behind the trappings of science. Shermer, science historian and true crusader, also reveals the more dangerous side of such illogical thinking, including Holocaust denial, the recovered-memory movement, the satanic ritual abuse scare, and other modern crazes. Why People Believe Strange Things is an eye-opening resource for the most gullible among us and those who want to protect them.
Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson’s growth–a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production. Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson’s own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson’s story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father’s political isolation after the Whig Party’s collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice. The definitive treatment of Dickinson’s life and times, and of her poetic development, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.
Book Synopsis My Wars Are Laid Away in Books by : Alfred Habegger
Download or read book My Wars Are Laid Away in Books written by Alfred Habegger and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2002-09-17 with total page 802 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson’s growth–a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production. Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new material from legal archives, congregational records, contemporary women's writing, and previously unpublished fragments of Dickinson’s own letters. Habegger discovers the best available answers to the pressing questions about the poet: Was she lesbian? Who was the person she evidently loved? Why did she refuse to publish and why was this refusal so integral an aspect of her work? Habegger also illuminates many of the essential connection sin Dickinson’s story: between the decay of doctrinal Protestantism and the emergence of her riddling lyric vision; between her father’s political isolation after the Whig Party’s collapse and her private poetic vocation; between her frustrated quest for human intimacy and the tuning of her uniquely seductive voice. The definitive treatment of Dickinson’s life and times, and of her poetic development, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books shows how she could be both a woman of her era and a timeless creator. Although many aspects of her life and work will always elude scrutiny, her living, changing profile at least comes into focus in this meticulous and magisterial biography.
