Author: Eugene Robinson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439138095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
Last Dance in Havana
Author: Eugene Robinson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439138095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439138095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
Ugly Cat & Pablo
Author: Isabel Quintero
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545940931
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114
Book Description
From the 2015 winner of the ALA William C. Morris Award comes a humorous chapter book series about a not-so-attractive cat and his well-dressed mouse friend. Ugly Cat is dying for a paleta, or ice pop, and his friend Pablo is determined to help him get one by scaring a little girl who is enjoying a coconut paleta in the park. Things go horribly wrong when, instead of being scared, the little girl picks Pablo up and declares that he would make a great snack for her pet snake. Oh and there's also the small problem that Ugly Cat may have inadvertently swallowed Pablo in all of the commotion! Ugly Cat and his impeccably dressed mouse friend, Pablo, are an unlikely and dynamic duo who will win young readers over with their ridiculously silly antics and their search for tasty treats.
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545940931
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114
Book Description
From the 2015 winner of the ALA William C. Morris Award comes a humorous chapter book series about a not-so-attractive cat and his well-dressed mouse friend. Ugly Cat is dying for a paleta, or ice pop, and his friend Pablo is determined to help him get one by scaring a little girl who is enjoying a coconut paleta in the park. Things go horribly wrong when, instead of being scared, the little girl picks Pablo up and declares that he would make a great snack for her pet snake. Oh and there's also the small problem that Ugly Cat may have inadvertently swallowed Pablo in all of the commotion! Ugly Cat and his impeccably dressed mouse friend, Pablo, are an unlikely and dynamic duo who will win young readers over with their ridiculously silly antics and their search for tasty treats.
Higher Gossip
Author: John Updike
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307957179
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
One of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century—and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series—delivers the intimate, generous, insightful, and beautifully written collection he was compiling when he died. This collection of miscellaneous prose opens with a self-portrait of the writer in winter, a Prospero who, though he fears his most dazzling performances are behind him, reveals himself in every sentence to be in deep conversation with the sources of his magic. It concludes with a moving meditation on a modern world robbed of imagination—a world without religion, without art—and on the difficulties of faith in a disbelieving age. In between are previously uncollected stories and poems, a pageant of scenes from seventeenth-century Massachusetts, five late “golf dreams,” and several of Updike's commentaries on his own work. At the heart of the book are his matchless reviews—of John Cheever, Ann Patchett, Toni Morrison, William Maxwell, John le Carré, and essays on Aimee Semple McPherson, Max Factor, and Albert Einstein, among others. Also included are two decades of art criticism—on Chardin, El Greco, Blake, Turner, Van Gogh, Max Ernest, and more. Updike’s criticism is gossip of the highest order, delivered in an intimate and generous voice.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307957179
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
One of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century—and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series—delivers the intimate, generous, insightful, and beautifully written collection he was compiling when he died. This collection of miscellaneous prose opens with a self-portrait of the writer in winter, a Prospero who, though he fears his most dazzling performances are behind him, reveals himself in every sentence to be in deep conversation with the sources of his magic. It concludes with a moving meditation on a modern world robbed of imagination—a world without religion, without art—and on the difficulties of faith in a disbelieving age. In between are previously uncollected stories and poems, a pageant of scenes from seventeenth-century Massachusetts, five late “golf dreams,” and several of Updike's commentaries on his own work. At the heart of the book are his matchless reviews—of John Cheever, Ann Patchett, Toni Morrison, William Maxwell, John le Carré, and essays on Aimee Semple McPherson, Max Factor, and Albert Einstein, among others. Also included are two decades of art criticism—on Chardin, El Greco, Blake, Turner, Van Gogh, Max Ernest, and more. Updike’s criticism is gossip of the highest order, delivered in an intimate and generous voice.
The Syntax, Semantics and Pragmatics of Spanish Mood
Author: Henk Haverkate
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902729738X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
This study provides a consistent description and explanation of the syntax, the semantics and the pragmatics of Spanish mood. A major focus of attention is the central role of the truthfunctional categories of realis, potentialis and irrealis as parameters relevant to mood selection in both subordinate and non-subordinate clauses. Furthermore, a proposal is offered for a new typology of clause-embedding predicates. The framework chosen stems from the insight that complement-taking predicates share the property of providing information on the set of mental processes which characterize intentional human behavior. At the level of pragmatic analysis, mood selection is examined from a variety of angles. Thus, specific research is conducted within the framework of speech act theory, relevance theory, politeness theory and the theory of Gricean maxims.
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 902729738X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 243
Book Description
This study provides a consistent description and explanation of the syntax, the semantics and the pragmatics of Spanish mood. A major focus of attention is the central role of the truthfunctional categories of realis, potentialis and irrealis as parameters relevant to mood selection in both subordinate and non-subordinate clauses. Furthermore, a proposal is offered for a new typology of clause-embedding predicates. The framework chosen stems from the insight that complement-taking predicates share the property of providing information on the set of mental processes which characterize intentional human behavior. At the level of pragmatic analysis, mood selection is examined from a variety of angles. Thus, specific research is conducted within the framework of speech act theory, relevance theory, politeness theory and the theory of Gricean maxims.
Imperial Emotions
Author: Javier Krauel
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1781385629
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
A ground-breaking work that considers myths of the Spanish empire from the perspective of cultural responses to its demise.
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1781385629
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 217
Book Description
A ground-breaking work that considers myths of the Spanish empire from the perspective of cultural responses to its demise.
San Cristóbal de la Habana
Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Havana (Cuba)
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Havana (Cuba)
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
Havana Bay
Author: Martin Cruz Smith
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307809757
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries. In this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world–and a reason to relish his own life again.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0307809757
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354
Book Description
When the corpse of a Russian is hauled from the oily waters of Havana Bay, Arkady Renko comes to Cuba to identify the body. Looking for the killer, he discovers a city of faded loneliness, unexpected danger, and bewildering contradictions. His investigation introduces him to a beautiful Cuban policewoman; to the rituals of Santeria; to an American fugitive and a group of ruthless mercenaries. In this place where all things Russian are despised, where Hemingway fished and the KGB flourished, where the hint of music is always in the air, Arkady finds a trail of deceit that reaches halfway around the world–and a reason to relish his own life again.
The Tennyson Hardwick Collection
Author: Blair Underwood
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451698968
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1199
Book Description
A dream team collaboration of award-winning Hollywood actor and author of Before I Got Here Blair Underwood and award-winning novelists—and married couple—Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes bring you three of their hot, action-packed novels. Casanegra Casanegra follows the adventures of Tennyson Hardwick, a gorgeous, sexy actor and former gigolo, living on the fringes of the good life in Hollywood. This story, which chronicles the redemption of a prodigal son, combines the glamour of Hollywood with the seedy hopelessness of the inner city. In the Night of the Heat Award-winning actor and author Blair Underwood joins forces with two amazing and award-winning authors Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes to deliver the second installation in the stunning and provocative Tennyson Hardwick novel In the Night of the Heat. From Cape Town with Love Actor-turned-detective Tennyson Hardwick has solved two high-profile deaths in Hollywood, but nothing has prepared him for a race to save a child’s life. This thrilling page-turner will have readers waiting with bated breath to discover what lies behind the secrecy and causes men and women to risk jail (or worse) to gain power and wealth—even if it means risking the life of an innocent child.
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451698968
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1199
Book Description
A dream team collaboration of award-winning Hollywood actor and author of Before I Got Here Blair Underwood and award-winning novelists—and married couple—Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes bring you three of their hot, action-packed novels. Casanegra Casanegra follows the adventures of Tennyson Hardwick, a gorgeous, sexy actor and former gigolo, living on the fringes of the good life in Hollywood. This story, which chronicles the redemption of a prodigal son, combines the glamour of Hollywood with the seedy hopelessness of the inner city. In the Night of the Heat Award-winning actor and author Blair Underwood joins forces with two amazing and award-winning authors Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes to deliver the second installation in the stunning and provocative Tennyson Hardwick novel In the Night of the Heat. From Cape Town with Love Actor-turned-detective Tennyson Hardwick has solved two high-profile deaths in Hollywood, but nothing has prepared him for a race to save a child’s life. This thrilling page-turner will have readers waiting with bated breath to discover what lies behind the secrecy and causes men and women to risk jail (or worse) to gain power and wealth—even if it means risking the life of an innocent child.
I. C. S. Reference Library
Author: International Correspondence Schools
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Correspondence schools and courses
Languages : en
Pages : 676
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Correspondence schools and courses
Languages : en
Pages : 676
Book Description
San Cristóbal de la Habana
Author: Joseph Hergesheimer
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465519777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Book Description
THERE are certain cities, strange to the first view, nearer the heart than home. But it might be better to acknowledge that, perhaps, the word home has a wider and deeper significance than any mere geographical and family setting. Many men are alien in houses built from the traditions of their blood; the most inaccessible and obdurate parts of the earth have always been restlessly sought by individuals driven not so much by exterior pressure as by a strange necessity to inhabit a barren copper mountain, a fever coast, or follow to the end of life a river lost in a savage remoteness, hiding the secret of their unquenchable longing. Not this, precisely, happened to me, approaching Havana in the early morning, nothing so tyrannical and absolute; yet, watching the silver greenness of Cuba rising from the blue sea, I had a premonition that what I saw was of peculiar importance to me. I grew at once impatient and sharply intent on the resolving of a nebulous, and verdant mass into the details of dense slopes, slopes that showed, from the sea to their crowns, no break in a dark foliage. The sombreness of the leaves immediately marked the land from an accustomed region of bright maples—they were at once dark, glossy, and heavy, an effect I had often tried to describe, and their presence in such utter expanses filled me with pleasure. It was exactly as though the smooth lustrous hills before me had been created out of an old mysterious desire to realize them in words. Undoubtedly their effect belonged to the sea, the sky, and the hour in which they were set. The plane of the sea, ruffled by a wind like a willful and contrarily exerted force, was so blue that its color was lost in the dark intensity of tone; while the veils of space were dissolved in arcs of expanding light. The island seemed unusually solid and isolated, as complete within itself as a flower in air, and saturated with romance. That was my immediate feeling about Cuba, taking on depth across water profounder than indigo ... it was latent with the emotional distinction which so signally stirred me to write. At once, in imagination, I saw the ineffable bay of Guatanago, where buccaneers careened their ships and, in a town of pink stucco and windows with projecting wooden grilles, drank and took for figureheads the sacred images of churches painted blue. On the shore, under a canopy of silk, a woman, naked but for a twist of bishop's purple, bound her hair in gold cloth. From where she stood, in dyed shadow, a figure only less golden than the cloth, she heard the hollow ring of the caulking malls and the harsh rustle of the palms. Drawing rapidly nearer to what was evidently the entrance to the harbor of Havana I considered the possibilities of such a story, such a character: She had her existence in the seventeenth century, when Morgan marched inland to rape Camagüey—the daughter, without doubt, of a captain of the Armada de Barlevento, the Windward Fleet, and a native woman taken in violence; a shameless wench with primitive feelings enormously complicated by the heritage of Spain's civilization, a murderous, sullen, passionate jade, wholly treacherous and instinct with ferine curiosity. The master for her, I decided, must come from the Court of Charles, the London of the Cavalier Parliament, a gentleman in a gay foppery masking a steel eaten by a cruelty like a secret poison. It would be a story bright with the flames of hell and violent as a hurricane; the pages would reflect the glare of the sand scrawled with cocoanut palms, and banked with mangroves; and, at the end, the bishop's purple would be a cerecloth and the gallows chains sound in Xaymaca. But, above everything else, it would be modern in psychology and color treatment, written with that realism for which the only excuse was to provide a more exact verisimilitude for romance.
Publisher: Library of Alexandria
ISBN: 1465519777
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 170
Book Description
THERE are certain cities, strange to the first view, nearer the heart than home. But it might be better to acknowledge that, perhaps, the word home has a wider and deeper significance than any mere geographical and family setting. Many men are alien in houses built from the traditions of their blood; the most inaccessible and obdurate parts of the earth have always been restlessly sought by individuals driven not so much by exterior pressure as by a strange necessity to inhabit a barren copper mountain, a fever coast, or follow to the end of life a river lost in a savage remoteness, hiding the secret of their unquenchable longing. Not this, precisely, happened to me, approaching Havana in the early morning, nothing so tyrannical and absolute; yet, watching the silver greenness of Cuba rising from the blue sea, I had a premonition that what I saw was of peculiar importance to me. I grew at once impatient and sharply intent on the resolving of a nebulous, and verdant mass into the details of dense slopes, slopes that showed, from the sea to their crowns, no break in a dark foliage. The sombreness of the leaves immediately marked the land from an accustomed region of bright maples—they were at once dark, glossy, and heavy, an effect I had often tried to describe, and their presence in such utter expanses filled me with pleasure. It was exactly as though the smooth lustrous hills before me had been created out of an old mysterious desire to realize them in words. Undoubtedly their effect belonged to the sea, the sky, and the hour in which they were set. The plane of the sea, ruffled by a wind like a willful and contrarily exerted force, was so blue that its color was lost in the dark intensity of tone; while the veils of space were dissolved in arcs of expanding light. The island seemed unusually solid and isolated, as complete within itself as a flower in air, and saturated with romance. That was my immediate feeling about Cuba, taking on depth across water profounder than indigo ... it was latent with the emotional distinction which so signally stirred me to write. At once, in imagination, I saw the ineffable bay of Guatanago, where buccaneers careened their ships and, in a town of pink stucco and windows with projecting wooden grilles, drank and took for figureheads the sacred images of churches painted blue. On the shore, under a canopy of silk, a woman, naked but for a twist of bishop's purple, bound her hair in gold cloth. From where she stood, in dyed shadow, a figure only less golden than the cloth, she heard the hollow ring of the caulking malls and the harsh rustle of the palms. Drawing rapidly nearer to what was evidently the entrance to the harbor of Havana I considered the possibilities of such a story, such a character: She had her existence in the seventeenth century, when Morgan marched inland to rape Camagüey—the daughter, without doubt, of a captain of the Armada de Barlevento, the Windward Fleet, and a native woman taken in violence; a shameless wench with primitive feelings enormously complicated by the heritage of Spain's civilization, a murderous, sullen, passionate jade, wholly treacherous and instinct with ferine curiosity. The master for her, I decided, must come from the Court of Charles, the London of the Cavalier Parliament, a gentleman in a gay foppery masking a steel eaten by a cruelty like a secret poison. It would be a story bright with the flames of hell and violent as a hurricane; the pages would reflect the glare of the sand scrawled with cocoanut palms, and banked with mangroves; and, at the end, the bishop's purple would be a cerecloth and the gallows chains sound in Xaymaca. But, above everything else, it would be modern in psychology and color treatment, written with that realism for which the only excuse was to provide a more exact verisimilitude for romance.