An American Odysseus

An American Odysseus PDF Author: Charles Chapman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781728774527
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
A lot of years have passed since the events discussed in this book took place. I have had to rely mostly on memory since all letters and writings have long since vanished. I never intended to write a book. I instead sought to leave a journal for my children, my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as to my experiences in my youth and in a very unpopular war. This story revolves around a young man's torturous journey through childhood into the hell of war, and the obstacles to be overcome to bring himself to the journey's end long yearned for.

An American Odysseus

An American Odysseus PDF Author: Charles Chapman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781728774527
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 553

Get Book Here

Book Description
A lot of years have passed since the events discussed in this book took place. I have had to rely mostly on memory since all letters and writings have long since vanished. I never intended to write a book. I instead sought to leave a journal for my children, my grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as to my experiences in my youth and in a very unpopular war. This story revolves around a young man's torturous journey through childhood into the hell of war, and the obstacles to be overcome to bring himself to the journey's end long yearned for.

An American Odyssey

An American Odyssey PDF Author: Mary Schmidt Campbell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199723648
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 486

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Book Description
By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America. As Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us in this definitive, defining, and immersive biography, the relationship between art and race was central to his life and work -- a constant, driving creative tension. Bearden started as a cartoonist during his college years, but in the later 1930s turned to painting and became part of a community of artists supported by the WPA. As his reputation grew he perfected his skills, studying the European masters and analyzing and breaking down their techniques, finding new ways of applying them to the America he knew, one in which the struggle for civil rights became all-absorbing. By the time of the March on Washington in 1963, he had begun to experiment with the Projections, as he called his major collages, in which he tried to capture the full spectrum of the black experience, from the grind of daily life to broader visions and aspirations. Campbell's book offers a full and vibrant account of Bearden's life -- his years in Harlem (his studio was above the Apollo theater), to his travels and commissions, along with illuminating analysis of his work and artistic career. Campbell, who met Bearden in the 1970s, was among the first to compile a catalogue of his works. An American Odyssey goes far beyond that, offering a living portrait of an artist and the impact he made upon the world he sought both to recreate and celebrate.

American Odyssey

American Odyssey PDF Author: Robert E. Conot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 808

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Book Description


Odysseus in America

Odysseus in America PDF Author: Jonathan Shay
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439125015
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
In this ambitious follow-up to Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay uses the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, to illuminate the pitfalls that trap many veterans on the road back to civilian life. Seamlessly combining important psychological work and brilliant literary interpretation with an impassioned plea to renovate American military institutions, Shay deepens our understanding of both the combat veteran's experience and one of the world's greatest classics. In Achilles in Vietnam, Dr. Jonathan Shay used the story of the Iliad as a prism through which to examine how ancient and modern wars have battered the psychology of the men who fight. Now he turns his attention to the Odyssey, the story of a soldier's homecoming, to illuminate the real problems faced by combat veterans reentering civilian society. The Odyssey, Shay argues, offers explicit portrayals of behavior common among returning soldiers in our own culture: danger-seeking, womanizing, explosive violence, drug abuse, visitation by the dead, obsession, vagrancy and homelessness. Supporting his reading with examples from his fifteen-year practice treating Vietnam veterans, Shay shows how Odysseus's mistrustfulness, his lies, and his constant need to conceal his thoughts and emotions foreshadow the experiences of many of today's veterans. He also explains how veterans recover and advocates changes to American military practice that will protect future servicemen and servicewomen while increasing their fighting power. Throughout, Homer strengthens our understanding of what a combat veteran must overcome to return to and flourish in civilian life, just as the heartbreaking stories of the veterans Shay treats give us a new understanding of one of the world's greatest classics.

Riverman

Riverman PDF Author: Ben McGrath
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0451494016
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
“This quietly profound book belongs on the shelf next to Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild.” —The New York Times The riveting true story of Dick Conant, an American folk hero who, over the course of more than twenty years, canoed solo thousands of miles of American rivers—and then disappeared near the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This book “contains everything: adventure, mystery, travelogue, and unforgettable characters” (David Grann, best-selling author of Killers of the Flower Moon). For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage. At the same time, Conant collected people wherever he went, creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting. Ben McGrath, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was one of those people. In 2014 he met Conant by chance just north of New York City as Conant paddled down the Hudson, headed for Florida. McGrath wrote a widely read article about their encounter, and when Conant's canoe washed up a few months later, without any sign of his body, McGrath set out to find the people whose lives Conant had touched--to capture a remarkable life lived far outside the staid confines of modern existence. Riverman is a moving portrait of a complex and fascinating man who was as troubled as he was charismatic, who struggled with mental illness and self-doubt, and was ultimately unable to fashion a stable life for himself; who traveled alone and yet thrived on connection and brought countless people together in his wake. It is also a portrait of an America we rarely see: a nation of unconventional characters, small river towns, and long-forgotten waterways.

The Majic Bus

The Majic Bus PDF Author: Douglas Brinkley
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9781560254966
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 523

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Book Description
Professor Douglas Brinkley arranged to teach a six-week experimental class aboard a fully equipped sleeper bus. The class would visit thirty states and ten national parks. They would read twelve books by great American writers. They would see Bob Dylan in Seattle, gamble at a Vegas casino, dance to Bourbon Street jazz in New Orleans, pay homage to Elvis Presley’s Graceland and William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, ride the whitewater rapids on the Rio Grande, and experience a California earthquake. Their journey took them to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Abraham Lincoln’s Springfield, Harry Truman’s Independence, and Theodore Roosevelt’s North Dakota badlands. And it gave them the unforgettable experience of meeting some of their cultural heroes, including William S. Burroughs and Ken Kesey, who took the gang for a spin in his own psychedelic bus. Driven by Doug Brinkley’s energetic prose, The Majic Bus is a spirited travelogue of a unique experience.

A Hope in the Unseen

A Hope in the Unseen PDF Author: Ron Suskind
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307763080
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
The inspiring, true coming-of-age story of a ferociously determined young man who, armed only with his intellect and his willpower, fights his way out of despair. In 1993, Cedric Jennings was a bright and ferociously determined honor student at Ballou, a high school in one of Washington D.C.’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where the dropout rate was well into double digits and just 80 students out of more than 1,350 boasted an average of B or better. At Ballou, Cedric had almost no friends. He ate lunch in a classroom most days, plowing through the extra work he asked for, knowing that he was really competing with kids from other, harder schools. Cedric Jennings’s driving ambition—which was fully supported by his forceful mother—was to attend a top college. In September 1995, after years of near superhuman dedication, he realized that ambition when he began as a freshman at Brown University. But he didn't leave his struggles behind. He found himself unprepared for college: he struggled to master classwork and fit in with the white upper-class students. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric was left to rely on his intelligence and his determination to maintain hope in the unseen—a future of acceptance and reward. In this updated edition, A Hope in the Unseen chronicles Cedric’s odyssey during his last two years of high school, follows him through his difficult first year at Brown, and tells the story of his subsequent successes in college and the world of work. Eye-opening, sometimes humorous, and often deeply moving, A Hope in the Unseen weaves a crucial new thread into the rich and ongoing narrative of the American experience.

North American Odyssey

North American Odyssey PDF Author: Craig E. Colten
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442215860
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This groundbreaking volume offers a fresh approach to conceptualizing the historical geography of North America by taking a thematic rather than a traditional regional perspective. Leading geographers, building on current scholarship in the field, explore five central themes. Part I explores the settling and resettling of the continent through the experiences of Native Americans, early European arrivals, and Africans. Part II examines nineteenth-century European immigrants, the reconfiguration of Native society, and the internal migration of African Americans. Part III considers human transformations of the natural landscape in carving out a transportation network, replumbing waterways, extracting timber and minerals, preserving wilderness, and protecting wildlife. Part IV focuses on human landscapes, blending discussions of the visible imprint of society and distinctive approaches to interpreting these features. The authors discuss survey systems, regional landscapes, and tourist and mythic landscapes as well as the role of race, gender, and photographic representation in shaping our understanding of past landscapes. Part V follows the urban impulse in an analysis of the development of the mercantile city, nineteenth- and twentieth-century planning, and environmental justice. With its focus on human-environment interactions, the mobility of people, and growing urbanization, this thoughtful text will give students a uniquely geographical way to understand North American history. Contributions by: Derek H. Alderman, Timothy G. Anderson, Kevin Blake, Christopher G. Boone, Geoffrey L. Buckley, Craig E. Colten, Michael P. Conzen, Lary M. Dilsaver, Mona Domosh, William E. Doolittle, Joshua Inwood, Ines M. Miyares, E. Arnold Modlin, Jr., Edward K. Muller, Michael D. Myers, Karl Raitz, Jasper Rubin, Joan M. Schwartz, Steven Silvern, Andrew Sluyter, Jeffrey S. Smith, Robert Wilson, William Wyckoff, and Yolonda Youngs

In History's Shadow

In History's Shadow PDF Author: John Connally
Publisher: Hyperion
ISBN: 9780786880683
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The powerful, acclaimed autobiography of a major political figure is now available in trade paperback. The late John Connally learned the ropes of rural Texas politics under Lyndon Johnson and worked his way up, getting wounded along the way allegedly by the same bullet that killed JFK. Connally's story is an essential contribution to our understanding of recent American history. Photographs.

An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017

An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and an Epic: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 PDF Author: Daniel Mendelsohn
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0007545142
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 SHORTLISTED FOR THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE 2017 WINNER OF THE PRIX MÉDITERRANÉE 2018 From the award-winning, best-selling writer: a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading – and reliving – Homer’s epic masterpiece.