Catapult jan 2015 (4 Ergebnisse)

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - If Only You People Could Follow Directions is a spellbinding debut that reimagines the memoir in Jessica Hendry Nelson's thoroughly original voice. In these linked essays, Nelson's fearless writing and hypnotic storytelling centers on the story of three people: Nelson's mother Susan, her brother Eric, and Jessica herself. These three characters are deeply bound to one another, not just by the usual ties of blood and family, but also by a mother's drive to keep her children safe in the midst of chaos. The book begins with Nelson's childhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia and chronicles her father's addiction and death, her brother's battle with drugs and mental illness, her own efforts to find and maintain stability, and her mother's exquisite power, grief, and self-destruction in the face of such complicated family dynamics. Each of the book's chapters concerns a different relationship-friends, lovers, and strangers are all at play-but at its heart the book is about family, the ties that bind, enrich, and betray us, and how one young woman sought to rise above her perilous surroundings. …

Taschenbuch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - From the simple representative shapes used to record transactions of goods and services in ancient Mesopotamia, to the sophisticated typographical resources available to the twenty-first-century users of desktop computers, the story of writing is the story of human civilization itself.Calligraphy expert Ewan Clayton traces the history of an invention which-ever since our ancestors made the transition from a nomadic to an agrarian way of life in the eighth century BC-has been the method of codification and dissemination of ideas in every field of human endeavour, and a motor of cultural, scientific and political progress. He explores the social and cultural impact of, among other stages, the invention of the alphabet; the replacement of the papyrus scroll with the codex in the late Roman period; the perfecting of printing using moveable type in the fifteenth century and the ensuing spread of literacy; the industrialization of printing during the Industrial Revolution; the impact of artistic Modernism on the written word in the early twentieth century-and of the digital switchover at the century's close.The Golden Thread also raises issues of urgent interest for a society living in an era of unprecedented change to the tools and technologies of written communication.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - After writing two extremely well received biographiesthe first about Anne Sexton and the second about poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plathworldrenowned scholar Diane Middlebrook's final project was a study of Ovid's work. Though he has been dead for over two thousand years and had left no personal recordsnot even the name of his motherhis poetry endures. Middlebrook was convinced that her intimate knowledge of Ovid's poetry and the approach she used in Her Husband (winner of the Prix Du Meilleur Livre Estranger), combined with a deep immersion into the Rome of Ovid's time, would enable her to write what could, without bragging, be called an Ovidian biography.However, severe health issues interfered with Middlebrook's work, and she was ultimately unable to complete this ambitious project before her death in 2007. She left behind an extraordinary look at the conditions and customs to which Ovid was exposed as a young Roman, as well as an acute interpretation of his family and personal life, gleaned from close readings of his poetry and letters from exile. Exhaustively researched and carefully constructed, Middelbrook's portrayal of Ovid is certain to be studied by scholars and read by historians for year to come.…

Buch. Zustand: Neu. Neuware - Table Talk is a portable dinner party and a book to read alone while laughing out loud. Table Talk is a salon attended by your smartest friends and by all of the wittiest people they know. Table Talk is a collection of brief but critically acclaimed, half serious/half tongueincheek pieces that borrow the format of The New Yorker's 'Talk of the Town' column. Selected from several decades of The Threepenny Review, known colloquially as the West Coast's New York Review of Books, these anecdotal essays debate the historical, artistic, and technological developments of our time.Released to coincide with the 35th anniversary of The Threepenny Review in January 2015, Table Talk, edited by Wendy Lesser, Mimi Chubb and Jennifer Zahrt, includes essays by Christopher Ricks, who unfolds a dazzling literary history of the phrase 'Table Talk'; Leonard Michaels on why the waltz should be viewed as an aggressive, imperialist dance; and Claire Messud on the art of digression in fiction and conversation. Sigrid Nunez engages with the contemporary vogue for memoir and autobiography, while Luc Sante draws conclusions about postmodern art from a stray bit of graffiti glimpsed on a New York street. Other contributions include Alexander Nehamas on the NEA controversy that roiled the culture wars of the 1990s and Paula Fox's tips for interacting with difficult children.Ninetynine pieces become a garden of literary delights, as Table Talk takes an irreverent walk on the wild side of philosophical and cultural speculation that will resonate with readers of any age.…