Following the Equator

Following the Equator PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 738

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Book Description
As America's finest writer, Mark Twain could make entertaining reading -- and great literature -- out of almost anything. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into ill-advised schemes. So, in 1895 at age 60, he undertook a two-year round-the-world lecture tour, in which he circumnavigated the globe via steamship, including stops at the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Fiji Islands, New Zealand, India, South Africa and elsewhere. He describes a rich range of experiences -- visiting a leper colony in Hawaii, shark fishing in Australia, tiger hunting, diamond mining in South Africa, and riding the rails in India. The personalities of the ship's crew and passengers, the poetry of Australian place-names and the success of women's suffrage in New Zealand, among other topics, are the focus of his wry humor and redoubtable powers of observation. An evocative and highly unique American portrait of nineteenth-century travel and custom, this book has a serious thread running through it, recording Twain's observations of the mistreatments and miseries of mankind.

Following the Equator

Following the Equator PDF Author: Mark Twain
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Australia
Languages : en
Pages : 738

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Book Description
As America's finest writer, Mark Twain could make entertaining reading -- and great literature -- out of almost anything. Twain was practically bankrupt in 1894 due to investing heavily into ill-advised schemes. So, in 1895 at age 60, he undertook a two-year round-the-world lecture tour, in which he circumnavigated the globe via steamship, including stops at the Hawaiian Islands, Australia, Fiji Islands, New Zealand, India, South Africa and elsewhere. He describes a rich range of experiences -- visiting a leper colony in Hawaii, shark fishing in Australia, tiger hunting, diamond mining in South Africa, and riding the rails in India. The personalities of the ship's crew and passengers, the poetry of Australian place-names and the success of women's suffrage in New Zealand, among other topics, are the focus of his wry humor and redoubtable powers of observation. An evocative and highly unique American portrait of nineteenth-century travel and custom, this book has a serious thread running through it, recording Twain's observations of the mistreatments and miseries of mankind.

Fact Stranger Than Fiction

Fact Stranger Than Fiction PDF Author: John Patterson Green
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description


The Seas

The Seas PDF Author: Samantha Hunt
Publisher: Tin House Books
ISBN: 1941040969
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
National Bestseller "The Seas took me back to how I felt as a kid, when you’re newly falling in love with literature, newly shocked by its capacity to cast a spell..." ?Maggie Nelson (from the Introduction) A Most Anticipated Book of Summer at BuzzFeed, NYLON, and more. Moored in a coastal fishing town so far north that the highways only run south, the unnamed narrator of The Seas is a misfit. She’s often the subject of cruel local gossip. Her father, a sailor, walked into the ocean eleven years earlier and never returned, leaving his wife and daughter to keep a forlorn vigil. Surrounded by water and beckoned by the sea, she clings to what her father once told her: that she is a mermaid. True to myth, she finds herself in hard love with a land-bound man, an Iraq War veteran thirteen years her senior.The mesmerizing, fevered coming-of-age tale that follows will land her in jail. Her otherworldly escape will become the stuff of legend. With the inventive brilliance and psychological insight that have earned her international acclaim, Samantha Hunt pulls readers into an undertow of impossible love and intoxication, blurring the lines between reality and fairy tale, hope and delusion, sanity and madness.

Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be

Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be PDF Author: J. Richard Middleton
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 9780830818563
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh offer an introduction, evaluation and response to postmodern culture that comes straight from the heart of the gospel.

Desert Islands

Desert Islands PDF Author: Gilles Deleuze
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
An anthology of 40 texts and interviews written over 20 years by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, of which the early texts belong to literary criticism. Philosophy clearly dominates the rest of the book with a surprise admission by Deleuze that Sartre was his master.

Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction PDF Author: Michael L. Williams
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781463714857
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Stranger Than Fiction: The Lincoln Curse is a revised edition consisting of 50 stories that prove, in the words of Mark Twain, sometimes truth can be stranger than fiction. According to Southern lore, a dying Confederate, versed in the dark arts, placed a curse on the Lincoln family and the Federal government. Soon afterwards, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated and calamity befell everyone who assisted or abetted the Lincoln family. In the next 98 years three more American presidents were assassinated. Each time an American president has been murdered, he was in the company of a member of the Lincoln family. Mary Lincoln was with her husband the night he was shot. Robert Lincoln, the president's oldest son, was with his father when he died the next morning. Robert Lincoln was in the company of President Garfield when he was gunned down 16 years later. The same Robert Lincoln was in the company of President McKinley when he was felled by an assassin's bullet in 1901. Evelyn Lincoln, personal secretary of President Kennedy, was near the president when he was slain in 1963. Curse or coincidence? Either way it proves truth can be stranger than fiction. Read about how medical bungling killed President Washington who was accidentally bled to death and marvel at the antiquated medical procedures that prompted one doctor to propose resurrecting Washington shortly after he died. Read how President Garfield died as a result of medical bungling. Why did a Japanese soldier go on fighting World War II for 29 years after it had ended? Examine the photo of Abraham Lincoln's ghost taken by a spirit photographer and decide for yourself is it authentic or a hoax? Muse at the antics of love starved sailors who almost took their ship apart and attempted to set sail in the dilapidated vessel to gain the affections of several island women. Read about the origins of the custom of awarding presidential pardons to turkeys. Read about the deadly wolf peach and how it became a part of the American diet. You'll be intrigued by the bizarre deaths of several prominent people including a well-known detective who died from biting his tongue. Learn of General Custer's lost treasure and of the American president who once gave a press conference in the nude. Who was the queen whose corpse was given a coronation after she died? Why was an elephant publicly executed in Tennessee? Read about the wayward outlaw who was given the nickname "The stupidest outlaw in the west." Read about the outlaw who started a movie career that spanned several decades after he was shot to death. You'll be mystified at Mark Twain's premonition of his brother's death--one that came eerily true. Imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning and read your own obituary in the paper. It happened to Mark Twain. These and many other stories will leave the reader convinced that perhaps Twain was right when he said "truth is stranger than fiction." Michael Williams has written a children's book entitled "Great Kids in History." The book has received rave reviews from readers. The book is a collection of 22 true stories of amazing children that have accomplished incredible feats. Your child will be inspired by the stories of courage and adventure of these amazing kids. For more information visit the web site www.strangerthanfictionnews.com.

Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction PDF Author: Mike Chunn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780994135940
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Revised 2019 edition: In the early 1970s, a group of impoverished students formed a rock band in Auckland, New Zealand, and planned their assault on the world's music charts. For a decade Split Enz fought to be understood by audiences and music critics who often struggled to accept their madcap on-stage performances and innovative sounds. Eventually, they found chart success in the UK, United States, Canada, Europe, Australia with hits like I Got You and with best-selling albums such as Mental Notes, Frenzy, True Colours, Waiata/Corroboree and Time and Tide. At home, they remain New Zealand's most successful rock band. The band launched the careers of its leader Tim Finn and brother Neil Finn who later formed the hugely-successful Crowded House and joined Fleetwood Mac. Success had its price for members of Split Enz, and founding bass-player Mike Chunn shares his inside story of the band in Stranger Than Fiction: The Life and Times of Splitz Enz, a searingly honest account of this much-loved group of musicians.

Stranger Than We Can Imagine

Stranger Than We Can Imagine PDF Author: John Higgs
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1593766262
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
“An illuminating work of massive insight” on the complex ideas and events that initiated the historical shift between the 19th and 20th centuries (Alan Moore, author of V for Vendetta and Watchmen). “An always-provocative view of an era that many people would just as soon forget . . . an absorbing tour of the 20th century.” —Kirkus Reviews In Stranger Than We Can Imagine, John Higgs argues that before 1900, history seemed to make sense. We can understand innovations like electricity, agriculture, and democracy. The twentieth century, in contrast, gave us relativity, cubism, quantum mechanics, the id, existentialism, Stalin, psychedelics, chaos mathematics, climate change and postmodernism. In order to understand such a disorienting barrage of unfamiliar and knotty ideas, Higgs shows us, we need to shift the framework of our interpretation and view these concepts within the context of a new kind of historical narrative. Instead of looking at it as another step forward in a stable path, we need to look at the twentieth century as a chaotic seismic shift, upending all linear narratives. Higgs invites us along as he journeys across a century “about which we know too much” in order to grant us a new perspective on it. He brings a refreshingly non-academic, eclectic and infectiously energetic approach to his subjects as well as a unique ability to explain how complex ideas connect and intersect—whether he’s discussing Einstein’s theories of relativity, the Beat poets' interest in Eastern thought or the bright spots and pitfalls of the American Dream.

Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction PDF Author: Phil Healey
Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
ISBN: 9780582417915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 38

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Book Description
Presents a collection of short anecdotes about unusual occurrences.

Truly Peculiar

Truly Peculiar PDF Author: Tom Standage
Publisher: Economist Books
ISBN: 9781788168960
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description