Encounters with American Culture: Volume 2 (1973-1985)

Encounters with American Culture: Volume 2 (1973-1985) PDF Author: Peter S. Prescott
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412822541
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Peter S. Prescott was one of the most informed and incisive American literary critics to write for the general public. Never content merely to summarize or to pronounce quick judgments, Prescott's reviews are witty and delightful essays to be enjoyed for their own sake as examples of civilized discourse. Whether he is exploring a well-known novelist's outlook and methods, or the peculiar deficiencies of a work of nonfiction, Prescott's grace, elegance, and insights make each piece proof that real criticism need not be pedantic, obscure, or interminably long. The focus in this second volume of Prescott's writings published by Transaction is on both fiction by American authors and on nonfiction reflecting our American unease. He casts an ironic eye on how we in this country think we live now; on what we are saying about ourselves in our fiction, our history, and our biography. Prescott considers some of our century's classic writers: Hemingway and Henry Miller; John Cheever and Thornton Wilder. He offers new insights regarding those who are still at work: Mailer, John Irving, Oates, Updike, Ozick, and Alice Walker. Some authors do not fare well. With his customary flair; Prescott explains why the reputations of Kurt Vonnegut and Barbara Tuchman, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and John Gardner, urgently need deflation. He includes essays on writers and books not generally noticed in collections of criticism: Stephen King, The Joy of Sex, fairy tales, science fiction, thrillers, books on survival and etiquette. Here is a critic with a personal voice and a sense of style. For essays published in this collection, Prescott received the most highly regarded prize in journalism: the rarely presented George Polk Award for Criticism. This is a chronicle of our contemporary American culture as revealed by its books, written with verve, intelligence, wisdom, and wit by a critic who's cruel only when appropriate. Encounters with American Culture is, quite simply, literary journalism at its urbane best. Peter S. Prescott was book review editor for Newsweek. His books include A Darkening Green: Notes from the Silent Generation, and The Child Savers: Juvenile Justice Observed. Anne L. Prescott is Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of English at Barnard College.

Encounters with American Culture: Volume 2 (1973-1985)

Encounters with American Culture: Volume 2 (1973-1985) PDF Author: Peter S. Prescott
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9781412822541
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Get Book Here

Book Description
Peter S. Prescott was one of the most informed and incisive American literary critics to write for the general public. Never content merely to summarize or to pronounce quick judgments, Prescott's reviews are witty and delightful essays to be enjoyed for their own sake as examples of civilized discourse. Whether he is exploring a well-known novelist's outlook and methods, or the peculiar deficiencies of a work of nonfiction, Prescott's grace, elegance, and insights make each piece proof that real criticism need not be pedantic, obscure, or interminably long. The focus in this second volume of Prescott's writings published by Transaction is on both fiction by American authors and on nonfiction reflecting our American unease. He casts an ironic eye on how we in this country think we live now; on what we are saying about ourselves in our fiction, our history, and our biography. Prescott considers some of our century's classic writers: Hemingway and Henry Miller; John Cheever and Thornton Wilder. He offers new insights regarding those who are still at work: Mailer, John Irving, Oates, Updike, Ozick, and Alice Walker. Some authors do not fare well. With his customary flair; Prescott explains why the reputations of Kurt Vonnegut and Barbara Tuchman, the Encyclopedia Britannica, and John Gardner, urgently need deflation. He includes essays on writers and books not generally noticed in collections of criticism: Stephen King, The Joy of Sex, fairy tales, science fiction, thrillers, books on survival and etiquette. Here is a critic with a personal voice and a sense of style. For essays published in this collection, Prescott received the most highly regarded prize in journalism: the rarely presented George Polk Award for Criticism. This is a chronicle of our contemporary American culture as revealed by its books, written with verve, intelligence, wisdom, and wit by a critic who's cruel only when appropriate. Encounters with American Culture is, quite simply, literary journalism at its urbane best. Peter S. Prescott was book review editor for Newsweek. His books include A Darkening Green: Notes from the Silent Generation, and The Child Savers: Juvenile Justice Observed. Anne L. Prescott is Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of English at Barnard College.

The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History

The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History PDF Author: Emma L. E. Rees
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1623568714
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
From South Park to Kathy Acker, and from Lars Von Trier to Sex and the City, women's sexual organs are demonized. Rees traces the fascinating evolution of this demonization, considering how calling the ‘c-word' obscene both legitimates and perpetuates the fractured identities of women globally. Rees demonstrates how writers, artists, and filmmakers contend with the dilemma of the vagina's puzzlingly ‘covert visibility'. In our postmodern, porn-obsessed culture, vaginas appear to be everywhere, literally or symbolically but, crucially, they are as silenced as they are objectified. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History examines the paradox of female genitalia through five fields of artistic expression: literature, film, TV, visual, and performance art. There is a peculiar paradox – unlike any other – regarding female genitalia. Rees focuses on this paradox of what is termed the ‘covert visibility' of the vagina and on its monstrous manifestations. That is, what happens when the female body refuses to be pathologized, eroticized, or rendered subordinate to the will or intention of another? Common, and often offensive, slang terms for the vagina can be seen as an attempt to divert attention away from the reality of women's lived sexual experiences such that we don't ‘look' at the vagina itself – slang offers a convenient distraction to something so taboo. The Vagina: A Literary and Cultural History is an important contribution to the ongoing debate in understanding the feminine identity

Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism

Jewish Veganism and Vegetarianism PDF Author: Jacob Ari Labendz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438473621
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
In recent decades, as more Jews have adopted plant-based lifestyles, Jewish vegan and vegetarian movements have become increasingly prominent. This book explores the intellectual, religious, and historical roots of veganism and vegetarianism among Jews and presents compelling new directions in Jewish thought, ethics, and foodways. The contributors, including scholars, rabbis, and activists, explore how Judaism has inspired Jews to eschew animal products and how such choices, even when not directly inspired by Judaism, have enriched and helped define Jewishness. Individually, and as a collection, the chapters in this book provide an opportunity to meditate on what may make veganism and vegetarianism particularly Jewish, as well as the potential distinctiveness of Jewish veganism and vegetarianism. The authors also examine the connections between Jewish veganism and vegetarianism and other movements, while calling attention to divisions among Jewish vegans and vegetarians, to the specific challenges of fusing Jewishness and a plant-based lifestyle, and to the resistance Jewish vegans and vegetarians can face from parts of the Jewish community. The book's various perspectives represent the cultural, theological, and ideological diversity among Jews invested in such conversations and introduce prominent debates within their movements.

Choice

Choice PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Academic libraries
Languages : en
Pages : 590

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Book Description


Landscapes of Encounter

Landscapes of Encounter PDF Author: Liam Gearon
Publisher: University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 1552380483
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Brian Moore (1921 1999) is one of the few novelists whose literary portrayal of Catholicism effectively spans the period prior to and following the Second Vatican Council. Many critics have discussed how Moore's life is reflected in his works, while others have dismissed his fictions as simple narratives in the mould of classical realism. In this timely book, Gearon contends that Moore's fictions are far more complex, as he was one of the great observers of Catholicism in all its modern and historical controversy. .

Art in the Encounter of Nations

Art in the Encounter of Nations PDF Author: Bert Winther-Tamaki
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824824006
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Art in the Encounter of Nations is the first book-length study of interactions between the Japanese and American art worlds in the early postwar years. It brings to light a rich exchange of opinions and debates regarding the relationship between the art of the two nations. The author begins with an examination of the Japanese margins of American Abstract Expressionism. Taking a contrapuntal approach, he investigates four abstract painters: two Japanese artists who moved to the United States (Okada Kenzo and Hasegawa Saburo) and two European Americans whose work is often associated with Japanese calligraphy (Mark Tobey and Franz Kline). He then looks at the work of two young scions of the calligraphy and pottery worlds of Japan -- Morita Shiryo and Yagi Kazuo -- and argues that their radical innovations in these ancient arts were, in part, provoked by their sense of a threat posed by Euro-American modernity. The final chapter is devoted to the career of Japanese American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi, whose feeling of affiliation was directed to both the U.S. and Japan in shifting ratios through a series of public and private places, each posing unique opportunities for exploring national distinctions.

United States Relations with South Africa

United States Relations with South Africa PDF Author: Y. G.-M. Lulat
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9780820479064
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 700

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Book Description
"Relations between the United States and South Africa - or the parts of the world these nations now occupy - go nearly as far back as the very beginning of their inception as permanent European colonial intrusions. This book is a critical overview of these relations from the late seventeenth century to the present. Unprecedented in its scope - and supported by substantive and detailed notes, together with an extensive bibliography, chronology, glossary, and appendices - the book distinguishes itself from extant works in a number of other ways. Set against the backdrop of a wider interdisciplinary exploration of both ideational and structural issues of historical context, it not only gives attention to the importance of contributions from nonofficial actors in shaping official relations, but also considers the impact of the geo-political location of South Africa within southern Africa, where the presence of other nations - particularly Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zimbabwe - looms large. Methodologically written from the perspectives of both traditional narrative history and Khaldunian interpretive historical analysis, the book consequently sits at the interdisciplinary interstice of political economy and sociology, where the aim is to advance our understanding of the Braudelian interconnectedness of world history as an important diachronic determinant of the diplomacy of foreign relations. Written for both scholars and policy analysts, this book's examination of the agency of the marginalized should also be of interest to activists and the reading public."--BOOK JACKET.

The Great Encounter

The Great Encounter PDF Author: Jayme A. Sokolow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315498685
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Traditional histories of North and South America often leave the impression that Native American peoples had little impact on the colonies and empires established by Europeans after 1492. This groundbreaking study, which spans more than 300 years, demonstrates the agency of indigenous peoples in forging their own history and that of the Western Hemisphere. By putting the story of the indigenous peoples and their encounters with Europeans at the center, a new history of the "New World" emerges in which the Native Americans become vibrant and vitally important components of the British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese empires. In fact, their presence was the single most important factor in the development of the colonial world. By discussing the "great encounter" of peoples and cultures, this book provides a valuable, new perspective on the history of the Americas.

Patriot's History® of the Modern World, Vol. II

Patriot's History® of the Modern World, Vol. II PDF Author: Larry Schweikart
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1595231048
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 706

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Book Description
The bestselling historians turn their focus to America’s role in the world since the end of World War II Schweikart, author of the number one New York Times bestseller A Patriot’s History of the United States, and Dougherty take a critical look at America, from the postwar boom to her search for identity in the twenty-first century. The second volume of A Patriot’s History of the Modern World picks up in 1945 with a world irrevocably altered by World War II and a powerful, victorious United States. But new foes and challenges soon arose: the growing sphere of Communist influence, hostile dictatorships and unreliable socialist allies, the emergence of China as an economic contender, and the threat of world Islamification. The book reestablishes the argument of American exceptionalism and the interplay of our democratic pillars—Judeo-Christian religious beliefs, free market capitalism, land ownership, and common law—around the world. Schweikart and Dougherty offer a fascinating conservative history of the last six decades.

The Peoples of the Caribbean

The Peoples of the Caribbean PDF Author: Nicholas J. Saunders
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1576077020
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

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Book Description
A true "first," this encyclopedia is the only comprehensive guide ever published on the archaeology and traditional culture of the Caribbean. In The Peoples of the Caribbean, archaeologist Nicholas J. Saunders assembles for the first time a comprehensive sourcebook on the archaeology, folklore, and mythology of the entire region, charting a story 7,000 years in the making. Drawing on decades of study in the Caribbean and South America, Saunders explores landmark archaeological sites, such as Caguana in Puerto Rico, with its ceremonial architecture and ballcourts, and plantation sites, such as Jamaica's Drax Hall. The author dives into the underwater archaeology of Spanish treasure galleons and untangles stories of cannibalism, zombies, and hallucinogenic snuffing rituals. He examines the impact of key Europeans, such as Christopher Columbus, and introduces readers to the native people, such as the Arawak, who welcomed them. Bringing the story up-to-date, Saunders chronicles the struggle of the indigenous people, from the Caribs of Dominica to the Taíno of the Dominican Republic, trying to reclaim and revitalize their historical cultural identity.