Author: Ben Fountain
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061847623
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 274
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Book Description
Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller “An exceptional story collection.” —New York Times Book Review The well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera—including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist—are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition. An intelligent and keenly observed collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera marks the arrival of a striking and resonant new voice that speaks adeptly to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.
Author: Ben Fountain
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062096826
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
This award-winning satire shares a day in the life of a nineteen-year-old U.S. soldier home on leave from the Iraq War to take part in an NFL halftime show. A ferocious firefight with Iraqi insurgents at “the battle of Al-Ansakar Canal”—three minutes and forty-three seconds of intense warfare caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. For the past two weeks, the Bush administration has sent them on a media-intensive nationwide Victory Tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. Now, on this chilly and rainy Thanksgiving, the Bravos are guests of America’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, slated to be part of the halftime show alongside the superstar pop group Destiny’s Child. Among the Bravos is the Silver Star–winning hero of Al-Ansakar Canal, Specialist William Lynn, a nineteen-year-old Texas native. Amid clamoring patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and Support Our Troops bumper stickers on their cars, the Bravos are thrust into the company of the Cowboys’ hard-nosed businessman/owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a luscious born-again Cowboys cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized pro players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Among these faces Billy sees those of his family—his worried sisters and broken father—and Shroom, the philosophical sergeant who opened Billy’s mind and died in his arms at Al-Ansakar. Over the course of this day, Billy will begin to understand difficult truths about himself, his country, his struggling family, and his brothers-in-arms—soldiers both dead and alive. In the final few hours before returning to Iraq, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision, and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years . . . Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a devastating portrait of our time, a searing and powerful novel that cements Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation. Now a major motion picture directed by Ang Lee Praise for Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk Finalist for the National Book Award Winner, National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction Winner, Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction “Brilliantly done . . . grand, intimate, and joyous.” —New York Times Book Review “The Catch-22 of the Iraq War.” —Karl Marlantes
Author: Stuart A. Kallen
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books (Tm)
ISBN: 0822590352
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 92
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Book Description
October 9, 1967. World-renowned revolutionary Che Guevara is dead at 39. The charismatic Argentinian had been leading guerrilla fighters in Bolivia and was captured by the Bolivian army. A sergeant volunteered to execute the prisoner. Around the globe, reactions to the assassination were mixed. In Cuba, where Guevara had helped overthrow a brutally repressive dictatorship in 1959, more than a million people mourned openly. But elsewhere, many business leaders and government officials were relieved. To the rich and powerful, Guevara was dangerous. His anti-capitalist movement sought to strip big businesses of their land and power. He wanted to set up socialist systems to spread wealth and resources among ordinary workers--in Latin America and all around the world. How did the fiercely independent and internationally admired revolutionary leader end his life as a captive in a tiny Bolivian village? Why did he die a hunted man, without a fair trial, at the hands of a Bolivian soldier? And how did his story become a legend?--From publisher description.
Author: Ben Fountain
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062688766
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 808
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Book Description
In a sweeping work of reportage set over the course of 2016, New York Times bestselling author Ben Fountain recounts a surreal year of politics and an exploration of the third American existential crisis Twice before in its history, the United States has been faced with a crisis so severe it was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive: first, the struggle over slavery, culminating in the Civil War, and the second, the Great Depression, which led to President Roosevelt’s New Deal and the establishment of America as a social-democratic state. In a sequence of essays that excavate the past while laying bare the political upheaval of 2016, Ben Fountain argues that the United States may be facing a third existential crisis, one that will require a “burning” of the old order as America attempts to remake itself. Beautiful Country Burn Again narrates a shocking year in American politics, moving from the early days of the Iowa Caucus to the crystalizing moments of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and culminating in the aftershocks of the weeks following election night. Along the way, Fountain probes deeply into history, illuminating the forces and watershed moments of the past that mirror and precipitated the present, from the hollowed-out notion of the American Dream, to Richard Nixon’s southern strategy, to our weaponized new conception of American exceptionalism, to the cult of celebrity that gave rise to Donald Trump. In an urgent and deeply incisive voice, Ben Fountain has fused history and the present day to paint a startling portrait of the state of our nation. Beautiful Country Burn Again is a searing indictment of how we came to this point, and where we may be headed.
Author: William F. Gavin
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1466807474
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
Ripe and ruthless Beltway satire by a former Presidential speechwriter. Peter Holmes Dickinson (of the Main Line Dickinsons), a former top speechwriter for President Tyler "Ty the Guy" Ferguson, is a charming snob, a part-time coke-head, full-time womanizer, and in big trouble. His Washington speechwriting firm is tanking, he owes money to Dean, a hillbilly drug dealer, and also to Jeb Hammerford, a northern Virginia construction executive. And, oh yes, Pete has been shtooping Marlie Rae Perkins, a veritable Valkyrie of a policewoman from rural Virginia, given to periodic fits of overpossessiveness. And then, across a crowded room (actually the foyer in The Kennedy Center), Pete sees Che Che Hart, his former lover. Che Che is beautiful, a Georgetown professor, a kickboxing student, and the daughter of Donna Hart Lyons. Donna is a former soap opera queen, dedicated left-wing activist (Time Magazine called her "The Godmother of the American Left"), and, since the death-by-orgasm of her billionaire octogenarian husband, rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Donna's latest scheme is to reform prostitutes through heavy doses of leftist dogma at The Ernesto "Che" Guevara School for Wayward Girls, located on her Montana ranch. Marrying Che Che would be one way of paying off Pete's debts, but first he has to make her forget what a rat he is. While he is thinking of creative ways to lie to Che Che, he gets a call from Harry Gottlieb, President Ferguson's long-suffering chief-of-staff. Would Pete like to resume doing speeches for Ty the Guy, on the side, but without Ty knowing it is Pete doing the writing? So begins this screamingly funny, page-turning, equal-opportunity-offending political satire.
Author: Mark Wisniewski
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781928589600
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 186
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Book Description
After getting dumped by her boyfriend, a midwestern woman moves to New York to live on her own for the first time.
Author: Teddy Wayne
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061989924
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
“A brilliant book. Karim Issar is one of the freshest, funniest heroes I’ve come across in a long time.” — Ben Fountain, bestselling author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevara “An innovative and incisive meditation on the wages of corporate greed, the fundamental darkness of its vision lit by the author’s great comic intelligence and wit.” — Kathryn Davis, author of The Thin Place, Hell: A Novel, and Versailles With a fresh and singular voice, Teddy Wayne marks his literary debut with the story of one 26 year old Middle Eastern man’s attempt to live the American Dream in New York City. Like the award-winning Netherland and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Kapitoil provides an absorbing look into American culture and New York finance from an outsider’s perspective. "Sometimes you do not truly observe something until you study it in reverse," writes Karim Issar upon arrival to New York City from Qatar in 1999. Fluent in numbers, logic, and business jargon yet often baffled by human connection, the young financial wizard soon creates a computer program named Kapitoil that predicts oil futures and reaps record profits for his company. At first an introspective loner adrift in New York's social scenes, he anchors himself to his legendary boss Derek Schrub and Rebecca, a sensitive, disillusioned colleague who may understand him better than he does himself. Her influence, and his father's disapproval of Karim's Americanization, cause him to question the moral implications of Kapitoil, moving him toward a decision that will determine his future, his firm's, and to whom—and where—his loyalties lie.
Author: Patrick Symmes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307801217
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 363
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Book Description
Intrepid journalist Patrick Symmes sets off on his BMW R80 G/S in search of the people and places in Ernesto "Che" Guevara's classic Motorcycle Diaries, seeking out his own adventure as well as the legacy of the icon Che would become, Symmes retraces the future revolutionary's path. And on the way he runs out of gas in an Argentine desert, talks a Peruvian guerrilla out of taking him hostage, wipes out in the Andes, and, in Cuba, drinks himself blind with Che's travel partner, Alberto Granado. Here is the unforgettable story of a wanderer's quest for food, shelter, and wisdom. Here, too, is the portrait of a continent whose dreams of utopia give birth not only to freedom fighters, but also to tyrants whose methods include torture and mass killing. Masterfully detailed, insightful, unforgettable, Chasing Che transfixes us with the glory of the open road, where man and machine traverse the unknown in search of the spirit's keenest desires.
Author: Paulo Drinot
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822391805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317
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Book Description
Ernesto “Che” Guevara twice traveled across Latin America in the early 1950s. Based on his accounts of those trips (published in English as The Motorcycle Diaries and Back on the Road), as well as other historical sources, Che’s Travels follows Guevara, country by country, from his native Argentina through Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela, and then from Argentina through Bolivia, Peru, Guatemala, and Mexico. Each essay is focused on a single country and written by an expert in its history. Taken together, the essays shed new light on Che’s formative years by analyzing the distinctive societies, histories, politics, and cultures he encountered on these two trips, the ways they affected him, and the ways he represented them in his travelogues. In addition to offering new insights into Guevara, the essays provide a fresh perspective on Latin America’s experience of the Cold War and the interplay of nationalism and anti-imperialism in the crucial but relatively understudied 1950s. Assessing Che’s legacies in the countries he visited during the two journeys, the contributors examine how he is remembered or memorialized; how he is invoked for political, cultural, and religious purposes; and how perceptions of him affect ideas about the revolutions and counterrevolutions fought in Latin America from the 1960s through the 1980s. Contributors Malcolm Deas Paulo Drinot Eduardo Elena Judith Ewell Cindy Forster Patience A. Schell Eric Zolov Ann Zulawski
Author: Ben Fountain
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060885580
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 244
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Book Description
With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story in Brief Encounters with Che Guevara is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition."--BOOK JACKET.
