The Great American Masquerade

The Great American Masquerade PDF Author: Harold Lowther Beaver
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description

The Great American Masquerade

The Great American Masquerade PDF Author: Harold Lowther Beaver
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Great American Masquerade

The Great American Masquerade PDF Author: Harold Lowther Beaver
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Imports
ISBN: 9780389205852
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
American culture, by definition, lacked a coherent identity. The new-found man was necessarily initiated into an intricate masquerade, whose postures often seemed grotesque in comparison to the more staid contentions of transatlantic visitors. The carnival tradition of America, asserts the author of this volume, insists on an inexhaustible play of mobility, transformation and fun. Such masks may be festal masks of joyous regeneration, or secretive masks hiding nothing but vacuum or dread. The essays in this book explore that dichotomy.

The Great American White Woman

The Great American White Woman PDF Author: Shawn J. Hobson
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1450064280
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The Great American White Woman reflects perceptions of an uncertain society. The story chronicles the life and death of Niece Thompson. Niece suffers a tormented childhood and witnesses her younger sister killed by a drunk driver. Through her adolescence, she endures an abusive mother that hides behind the veil of Christianity. To establish a sense of self, Niece runs away from home, but her experiences have virtually shaped a delusional and skewed view of the world around her. Homeless and struggling, Niece meets Hope Andersen. They fall in love, but as a young woman Niece’s sexuality and personal identity fall victim to her past. As they plan for a future together, Hope’s deepest carnal desires mark their relationship with a degree of darkness and turmoil. Niece’s worst fears manifest in the graceful form of her adversary, a blond-haired woman named Casky. The ensuing conflict between Niece and Casky is a portrayal of self-serving corruption in pursuit of an overwhelming desire. Combining elements of suspense and romance, the literary contribution is designed to capture the imagination with a polemic challenge to race, religion, and relationships. The story in its shallows examines covetousness, worship, desire, and praise. However, in its surreal depths uncovers the idolization of the blonde, the brunette, and the redhead. Very different, the work travels through the Church of the Great American White Woman and takes us to the door of Pandemonium. Filled with unique and memorable characters, the story is an intricate web of life and human nature.

Masquerade

Masquerade PDF Author: Walter Satterthwait
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 9780312186296
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Set in "le jazz hot" Paris of 1923, the sequel to "Escapade" finds recourceful Pinkerton Phil Beaumont and ladies' paid companion Jane Turner investigating the death of a rich American publisher--along the way, running into such literary notables as Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

Masquerade

Masquerade PDF Author: Carolyne Wright
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781736432334
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Masquerade is a jazz-inflected, lyric-narrative sequence of poems, a "memoir in poetry" set principally in pre-Katrina New Orleans and in Seattle, involving an interracial couple who are artists and writers. Moved by mutual fascination, shared ideals and aspirations, and the passion they discover in each other, the two are challenged to find a place together in the cultures of both races and families, amid personal and political dislocations as well as questions of trust--all against the backdrop of America's racism and painful social history. The twentieth century's global problem, the color line, as W. E. B. du Bois named it, is enacted here in microcosm between these lovers and fellow artists, who must face their own fears and unresolved conflicts in each other. Similar stories have been told from the male protagonist's point of view; Masquerade is unique in foregrounding the female perspective.

The Fall of a Great American City

The Fall of a Great American City PDF Author: Kevin Baker
Publisher: City Point Press
ISBN: 1947951149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 177

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Book Description
The Fall of a Great American City is the story of what is happening today in New York City and in many other cities across America. It is about how the crisis of affluence is now driving out everything we love most about cities: small shops, decent restaurants, public space, street life, affordable apartments, responsive government, beauty, idiosyncrasy, each other. This is the story of how we came to lose so much—how the places we love most were turned over to land bankers, billionaires, the worst people in the world, and criminal landlords—and how we can - and must - begin to take them back. Co-published with Harper's Magazine, where an earlier version of this essay was originally published in 2018. The landlords are killing the town. As New York City approaches the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. By unremarkable I don’t just mean periodic, slump-in-the-art-world, all-the-bands-suck, cinema-is-dead boring. I mean flatlining. No longer a significant cultural entity but a blank white screen of mere existence. I mean The-World’s-Largest-Gated-Community-with-a-few-cupcake-shops. For the first-time in our history, creative-young-people-will-no-longer want-to-come-here boring. Even, New-York-is-over boring. Or worse, New York is like everywhere else. Unremarkable. This is not some new phenomenon, but a cancer that’s been metastasizing on the city for decades now. Even worse, it’s not something that anyone wants, except the landlords, and not even all of them. What’s happening to New York now—what’s already happened to most of Manhattan, its core, and what is happening in every American city of means, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Seattle, you name it—is something that almost nobody wants, but everybody gets. As such, the current urban crisis exemplifies our wider crisis: an America where we believe that we no longer have any ability to control the systems we live under.

Dressed for Thrills

Dressed for Thrills PDF Author: Mark Alice Durant
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
A Whimsical array of ghosts and goblins, spooks and skeletons, animals and nursery-room characters parade through this unparalleled collection of more than one hundred years of American Halloween costumes and masquerade. Photographer Phyllis Galembo approaches her subjects with the delight and wonder of one who has discovered an entire cast of characters backstage in an abandoned theater. Through her lens, the costumes rise from the dead to once again dance, play, and amuse. Ranging from handmade to store-bought, satin to polyester, the masks, wigs, and costumes, whether recognizable figures or obscure, pique our childhood memories. In her celebration of Halloween revelry, Galembo never settles for the ordinary; instead she creates evocative scenes of dressed-to-scare young trick-or-treaters "modeling" their disguises and of undead spirits haunting their surroundings. The costumes, which span over a century, take on magical qualities through fanciful sets and specialized lighting effects. Accompanying the costumes is a history of this always-popular holiday and essays discussing Galembo's inspirations and techniques. Through her art, Galembo allows us to act out our youthful fantasies of transformation -- to become, or at least observe, what we most want to be: free of inhibitions, of fixed notions of identity. Her images make us laugh and dream and maybe even believe in ghosts. Book jacket.

Bronx Masquerade

Bronx Masquerade PDF Author: Nikki Grimes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0425289761
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
This award-winning novel is a powerful exploration of self, an homage to spoken-word poetry, and an intriguing look into the life of eighteen teens. When Wesley Boone writes a poem for his high school English class, some of his classmates clamor to read their poems aloud too. Soon they're having weekly poetry sessions and, one by one, the eighteen students are opening up and taking on the risky challenge of self-revelation. There's Lupe Alvarin, desperate to have a baby so she will feel loved. Raynard Patterson, hiding a secret behind his silence. Porscha Johnson, needing an outlet for her anger after her mother OD's. Through the poetry they share and narratives in which they reveal their most intimate thoughts about themselves and one another, their words and lives show what lies beneath the skin, behind the eyes, beyond the masquerade.

Masquerade

Masquerade PDF Author: Alfred F. Young
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679761853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
In Masquerade, Alfred F. Young scrapes through layers of fiction and myth to uncover the story of Deborah Sampson, a Massachusetts woman who passed as a man and fought as a soldier for seventeen months toward the end of the American Revolution. Deborah Sampson was not the only woman to pose as a male and fight in the war, but she was certainly one of the most successful and celebrated. She managed to fight in combat and earn the respect of her officers and peers, and in later years she toured the country lecturing about her experiences and was partially successful in obtaining veterans’ benefits. Her full story, however, was buried underneath exaggeration and myth (some of which she may have created herself), becoming another sort of masquerade. Young takes the reader with him through his painstaking efforts to reveal the real Deborah Sampson in a work of history that is as spellbinding as the best detective fiction.

The King of Confidence

The King of Confidence PDF Author: Miles Harvey
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316463582
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The "unputdownable" (Dave Eggers, National Book award finalist) story of the most infamous American con man you've never heard of: James Strang, self-proclaimed divine king of earth, heaven, and an island in Lake Michigan, "perfect for fans of The Devil in the White City" (Kirkus) A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction Finalist for the Midland Authors Annual Literary Award A Michigan Notable Book A CrimeReads Best True Crime Book of the Year "A masterpiece." —Nathaniel Philbrick In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king. From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was frontpage news across the country. The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.