A Borzoi book

Neal Gabler shows us today's astonishing conversion of life itself into Entertainment - Life the Movie. Revealing what now unites phenomena as diverse as modern art, President Clinton versus Kenneth Starr, the O. J. Simpson trial, the Unabomber murders, and Elizabeth Taylor's marriages, Gabler demonstrates how our hunger for entertainment and the massive exploitation of that hunger have combined to make everything from religion to politics to painting to the news into branches of show business; how Life the Movie has generated and popularized its own stars - the rich and famous; and how all of us are not only an audience for the life spectacular, but also performance artists acting out our own dramas within it. Gabler traces the phenomenal rise of Entertainment as it challenges high culture. He also shows how entertainment, most notably with the arrival of the movies, comes to dominate the national consciousness by introducing a new way of seeing, until it seems that every endeavor and idea must become part of the grand, ever-growing, ongoing Big Show or risk invisibility.

Tired of the responsibility of married life, Harry Angstrom leaves his wife and home.

Examination of the American prison system based on research made on both sides of prison walls, from letters and reports sent by inmates and from interviews with institution officers.

“The Dream Merchants” is the first novel in Robbins’ movie trilogy written in 1949 to be followed by “The Carpetbaggers” in 1961 and “The Inheritors” in 1969. It is one of his earliest novels, and it shows. Whilst the book has a good story line, charting the rise of its main protagonist Johnny Edge and the birth of the motion picture industry, the plotting and story telling is clunky and meandering, unlike the tightly written narratives of the novels which were to follow. However many of the elements which Robbin would later use in his novel structures are present – the switching between first and third person and the books within books which go backwards and forwards in time. “The Carpetbaggers” is arguably Robbins’ best novel, and if you compare it to “The Dream Merchants”, you can see just how much he developed as a writer during the ten years between the two novels. Interestingly, unlike his later novels, there is very little sex and the book is probably more sentimental than his other novels. Robbins clearly made a decision at a point in his career to write novels which were more sexualised. “The Dream Merchants”, like “A Stone for Danny Fisher”, falls into the category of his earlier writing which is more sentimental, less tightly written and with few sexual references. It is probably the weakest of the trilogy, and Robbins, no doubt drawing heavily on his experience in finance at Universal Pictures, populates the novels with numerous financial dealings and machinations, on an almost too frequent basis to the detriment of the plot. If you are a fan of Robbins, read “The Dream Merchants”, but accept that you are reading an early book of a novelist who is still learning his craft and yet to write at his best. Perhaps what impresses most, is just how much he developed between this novel and his best.--Amazon customer review Michael C Davies (Reviewed in the United States, January 9, 2018 - 3 of 5 stars): Early Harold Robbins kicks off the first book in his movie trilogy.

H. L. Mencken's Chrestomathy is Mencken's collection of what he considered his best writing.

Study of Greek society.

A compendium of the history of the piano, its composers, with the primary focus on standard piano music through the mid-20th century. Beautifully written by the American pianist and pedagogue, Ernest Hutcheson; updated with sometimes amusing footnotes and asides by Rudolf Gans. Still useful in studio teaching as Dr. Hutcheson gives grade levels for the standard literature. Worth owning and having in your library for easy reference.

Hilfswerk im Kosmos Er ist ein Namenloser, der auf dem Planeten Nggongga lebt. Um sich das Recht auf Namen und Titel zu erwerben, kämpft er in der Arena gegen eine gefürchtete Bestie. Doch Betrug verhindert seinen Sieg und macht ihn zum Ausgestoßenen seines Stammes. Erst als sich Fremde von den Sternen des Namenlosen annehmen, wendet sich das Schicksal des jungen Mannes von Nggongga. Unter dem Namen Schwarzlicht wird er zum kosmischen Entwicklungshelfer und zum Champion der Unterdrückten des Alls.

Set in 18th century Quebec City, this is ostensibly the narration of a year in the life of a widowed apothecary and his young daughter. A gentle tale, full of the small joys and daily struggles of a colonist's life in a harsh and unforgiving New World. Cather explores the links between the protagonists' past lives and their current existence through a series of different portraits - the apothecary and the little girl, a coureur du bois, a Jesuit missionary living in daily privation and danger, two contending Bishops, and even the Governor himself.

Upon a day in the spring of the year Jesus stood in the market-place of Jerusalem and He spoke to the multitudes of the kingdom of heaven. And He accused the scribes and the Pharisees of setting snares and digging pitfalls in the path of those who long after the kingdom; and He denounced them. Now amongst the crowd was a company of men who defended the Pharisees and the scribes, and they sought to lay hands upon Jesus and upon us also. But He avoided them and turned aside from them, and walkked towards the north gate of the city. And He said to us, "My hour has not yet come. Many are the things I have still to say unto you, and many are the deeds I shall yet perform ere I deliver myself up to the world." Then He said, and there was joy and laughter in His voice, "Let us go into the North Country and meet the spring. Come with me to the hills, for winter is past and the snows of Lebanon are descending to the valleys to sing with the brooks.

A survey of the whole field of anthropology.

This book is a landmark in American political thought. It examines the passion for progress and reform that colored the entire period from 1890 to 1940 -- with startling and stimulating results. it searches out the moral and emotional motives of the reformers the myths and dreams in which they believed, and the realities with which they had to compromise. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize. From the Paperback edition.

Novel of an obsolete ocean freighter, a veteran of both World Wars, and of Gideon Patch, the ship's mate. Published serially as "The Mary Deare."

The Rebel (French: L'Homme révolté) is a 1951 book-length essay by Albert Camus, which treats both the metaphysical and the historical development of rebellion and revolution in societies, especially Western Europe. Examining both rebellion and revolt, which may be seen as the same phenomenon in personal and social frames, Camus examines several' countercultural' figures and movements from the history of Western thought and art, noting the importance of each in the overall development of revolutionary thought and philosophy. He analyses the decreasing social importance of the king, god and of virtue and the development of nihilism. It can be seen as a sequel to The Myth of Sisyphus, where he ponders the meaning of life, because it answers the same question, but offers an alternative solution. (Source: Wikipedia)

Examines the land and people, Race, Religion, Regionalism, the Hacienda, Education, Leadership, Politics, The U.S. and Latin America, and Castro and social changes.

This is one of the most accurate and comprehensive texts on the history of medicine. Palaeopathology is discussed and the sections on medieval and Renaissance Italian medicine are especially valuable. The bibliographies are excellent.

A powerful tragedy distilled into a jewel of a masterpiece by the Nobel Prize--winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier.In the 1680s the slave trade was still in its infancy. In the Americas, virulent religious and class divisions, prejudice and oppression were rife, providing the fertile soil in which slavery and race hatred were planted and took root.Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer, with a small holding in the harsh north. Despite his distaste for dealing in "flesh," he takes a small slave girl in part payment for a bad debt from a plantation owner in Catholic Maryland. This is Florens, "with the hands of a slave and the feet of a Portuguese lady." Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from a handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved.There are other voices: Lina, whose tribe was decimated by smallpox; their mistress, Rebekka, herself a victim of religious intolerance back in England; Sorrow, a strange girl who's spent her early years at sea; and finally the devastating voice of Florens' mother. These are all men and women inventing themselves in the wilderness.A Mercy reveals what lies beneath the surface of slavery. But at its heart it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and of a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment.Acts of mercy may have unforeseen consequences.From the Hardcover edition.

Much has been written about Albert Einstein, technical and biographical, but very little remains as valuable as this unique hybrid of a book written by Einstein's colleague and contemporary. Both rich in personal insights and grounded in a deep knowledge of twentieth-century science, Phillip Frank's biography anchors the reader with a lucid overview of physics and draws an intimate portrait of the Nobel Prize-winner.

This book is a fast-paced, carefully documented, and rich biography of Barnum, the greatest showman of all time, the American from Bethel, Connecticut, whose eccentricities and oblique, cynical approach to humanity transformed entertainment into a big, incredibly profitable business. As bachelor, husband (twice), father, and grandfather, Barnum comes to life in Mr. Wallace's crowded pages, an exceedingly interesting and human man. Here, too, are New York City in all its nineteenth-century color, the London of Queen Victoria, and the Paris of Napoleon III. - Jacket flap.

"The cow is there," said Ansell, lighting a match and holding it out over the carpet. No one spoke. He waited till the end of the match fell off. Then he said again, "She is there, the cow. There, now."

Continues the saga of Sayward Luckett Wheeler, who marries the educated New Englander, Portious, and bears him eight children. As pioneer, wife, and mother, she struggles to create a home in the wilderness for her family.