It Gets Worse A Collection Of Essays

From the author of The Tunnel comes a new collection of essays, his first in eight years, on art, writing, nature and culture. This book is by one of the most important and briliant thinkers at work today.

Musings will make you laugh, cry, and ponder the substance of your life. Appearing as random stories, collectively they reveal the subtleties that comprise modern life and explore the human equation. Montgomery Thomas reveals the inner workings of the psyche through projected introspection. From broken friendships to social influence to a tempting dalliance, Thomas jabs at the reader's heart and demands a response. He elicits emotion and the need to deliberate the circumstances of one's life.

A collection of original essays celebrating the legacy of the Chicago School of Sociology during the first half of the 20th century. Contributors - Professor Howard S. Becker, San Francisco, USA. Professor Ian Shaw, University of York, England. Professor Roger A. Salerno, Chair Sociology and Anthropology, Pace University, New York City, USA. Professor Brian Roberts, University of Glamorgan, Wales. Dennis W. MacDonald, Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology, Saint Anselm College, USA. Dr Julie L. Arthur Kirby, Edge Hill University, England. Professor Martyn Hammersley, The Open University, England. Dr Matthias Gross, UFZ, Permoserstr. Leipzig, Germany. Dr Shane Blackman, Canterbury Christ Church University, England. Dr Filipa Subtil, Instituto Politecnico de Lisboa, Portugal and Jose Luis Garcia, Instituto de Ciencias Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa.

This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!

From one of the most admired essayists and novelists at work today: a new collection of essays—his first since Tests of Time, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. These twenty-five essays speak to the nature and value of writing and to the books that result from a deep commitment to the word. Here is Gass on Rilke and Gertrude Stein; on friends such as Stanley Elkin, Robert Coover, and William Gaddis; and on a company of “healthy dissidents,” among them Rabelais, Elias Canetti, John Hawkes, and Gabriel García Márquez. In the title essay, Gass offers an annotated list of the fifty books that have most influenced his thinking and his work and writes about his first reaction to reading each. Among the books: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (“A lightning bolt,” Gass writes. “Philosophy was not dead after all. Philosophical ambitions were not extinguished. Philosophical beauty had not fled prose.”) . . . Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist (“A man after my own heart. He is capable of the simplest lyrical stroke, as bold and direct as a line by Matisse, but he can be complex in a manner that could cast Nabokov in the shade . . . Shakespeare may have been smarter, but he did not know as much.”) . . . Gustave Flaubert’s letters (“Here I learned—and learned—and learned.”) And after reading Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, Gass writes “I began to eat books like an alien worm.” In the concluding essay, “Evil,” Gass enlarges upon the themes of artistic quality and cultural values that are central to the books he has considered, many of which seek to reveal the worst in people while admiring what they do best. As Gass writes, “The true alchemists do not change lead into gold, they change the world into words.” A Temple of Texts is Gass at his most alchemical.

Essays meant for students of English language lucid and simple. Good narrative style which follows the art of Essay writing .Richly fused with Essays, Letters and guided writing material. Format of Letters as per the interactive method

“Julia Alvarez has suitcases full of history (public and private), trunks full of insights into what it means to be a Latina in the United States, bags full of literary wisdom.” —Los Angeles Times From the internationally acclaimed author of the bestselling novels In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents comes a rich and revealing work of nonfiction capturing the life and mind of an artist as she knits together the dual themes of coming to America and becoming a writer. The twenty-four confessional, evocative essays that make up Something to Declare are divided into two parts. “Customs” includes Alvarez’s memories of her family’s life in the Dominican Republic, fleeing from Trujillo’s dictatorship, and arriving in America when she was ten years old. She examines the effects of exile--surviving the shock of New York City life; yearning to fit in; training her tongue (and her mind) to speak English; and watching the Miss America pageant for clues about American-style beauty. The second half, “Declarations,” celebrates her passion for words and the writing life. She lets us watch as she struggles with her art--searching for a subject for her next novel, confronting her characters, facing her family’s anger when she invades their privacy, reflecting on the writers who influenced her, and continually honing her craft. The winner of the National Medal of Arts for her extraordinary storytelling, Julia Alvarez here offers essays that are an inspiring gift to readers and writers everywhere. “This beautiful collection of essays . . . traces a process of personal reconciliation with insight, humor, and quiet power.” —San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle “Reading Julia Alvarez’s new collection of essays is like curling up with a glass of wine in one hand and the phone in the other, listening to a bighearted, wisecracking friend share the hard-earned wisdom about family, identity, and the art of writing.” —People Julia Alvarez’s new novel, Afterlife, is available now.

A collection of twenty-four essays concerned with writing in general, the field of fantasy and science fiction, and with the author's own writing.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, Péter Nádas. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, a superb collection of short stories, essays, and literary criticism, we discover other aspects of Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, and as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of brilliantly original, touching, witty, and thought-provoking works by one of our greatest living writers.

The legendary Greek figure Orpheus was said to have possessed magical powers capable of moving all living and inanimate things through the sound of his lyre and voice. Over time, the Orphic theme has come to indicate the power of music to unsettle, subvert, and ultimately bring down oppressive realities in order to liberate the soul and expand human life without limits. The liberating effect of music has been a particularly important theme in twentieth-century African American literature. The nine original essays in Black Orpheus examines the Orphic theme in the fiction of such African American writers as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, James Baldwin, Nathaniel Mackey, Sherley Anne Williams, Ann Petry, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, and Toni Morrison. The authors discussed in this volume depict music as a mystical, shamanistic, and spiritual power that can miraculously transform the realities of the soul and of the world. Here, the musician uses his or her music as a weapon to shield and protect his or her spirituality. Written by scholars of English, music, women's studies, American studies, cultural theory, and black and Africana studies, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection ultimately explore the thematic, linguistic structural presence of music in twentieth-century African American fiction.

More Matter is a collection of John Updike's best-loved critical essays and reflections. From the journals of John Cheever to the Queen of England, More Matter is a lively discussion on contemporary art, issues and people, told from the inimitable perspective of Pulitzer prizewinner John Updike. Wide ranging, incisive, witty and always superbly written, it has something to say about almost everyone - from Graham Greene to Bill Gates to Mickey Mouse - and everything - from sexual politics to spiritual matters to unopenable packages. It provides any number of intimate glimpses into how this remarkable mind works. Praise for More Matter: 'Unlike most journalism, Updike's occasional writing is so exquisite as to repay multiple readings' Publishers Weekly 'More Matter attests to Mr. Updike's remarkable versatility and to his ardent drive to turn all his observations into glittering, gossamer prose. . . . In his strongest pieces, Mr. Updike's awesome pictorial powers of description combine with a rigorous, searching intelligence to produce essays of enormous tactile power and conviction' New York Times 'More Matter will leave even his closest followers amazed. . . . Updike can write about anything, in any form and at any length, and do it with intelligence and knowledge and grace and agility and wit-and oh, the prose' Pittsburgh Tribune Review John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. His novels, stories, and nonfiction collections have won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009.

From one of America's great literary figures, a new collection of essays on eminent writers and their work, and on the war between art and life. The perilous intersection of writers' lives with public and private domains is the fertile subject of many of these remarkable essays from such literary giants as T. S. Eliot, Isaac Babel, Salman Rushdie, and Henry James. "A genuine literary education. . . . Each of these pieces is informed, gracefully written and propelled with narrative energy."—San Francisco Chronicle "A glittering new collection. . . . Each essay shimmers with intelligence."—The New York Times

These early works by William Lyon Phelps were originally published in the early 20th century and we are now republishing them with a brand new introductory biography. 'A Collection of Classic Essays by William Lyon Phelps' is a selection of classic essays, including 'The Weather', 'Man and Boy', 'The Devil', and many more. William Lyon Phelps was born on 2nd January 1865, in New Haven, Conneticut, United States. Phelps earned a B.A. in 1887, writing his thesis on the Idealism of George Berkeley. He then gained an M.A. in 1891 from Yale and his PhD from Harvard in the same year. During his time a Yale, he offered a course in modern novels which brought the university considerable attention both nationally and internationally. Phelps published many essays on modern and European literature, including titles such as 'Essays on Modern Novelists' (1910), 'Some Makers of American Literature' (1923), and 'As I Like it' (1923).

This edition presents the incredible research, inventions and legacy of Nikola Tesla: Content My Inventions – Autobiography of Nikola Tesla Lectures: A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers Experiments with Alternate Currents of Very High Frequency and Their Application to Methods of Artificial Illumination Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena On Electricity My Submarine Destroyer High Frequency Oscillators for Electro-Therapeutic and Other Purposes Scientific Articles: Swinburne's "Hedgehog" Transformer Phenomena of Alternating Currents of Very High Frequency Alternate Current Electrostatic Induction Apparatus An Electrolytic Clock Electric Discharge in Vacuum Tubes Notes on a Unipolar Dynamo The "Drehstrom" Patent The Ewing High-Frequency Alternator and Parson's Steam Engine On the Dissipation of the Electrical Energy of the Hertz Resonator The Physiological and Other Effects of High Frequency Currents Nikola Tesla - About His Experiments in Electrical Healing The Age of Electricity The Problem of Increasing Human Energy Talking with Planets Can Bridge the Gap to Mars Little Aeroplane Progress How to Signal to Mars The Transmission of Electric Energy Without Wires The Wonder World to Be Created by Electricity Nikola Tesla Sees a Wireless Vision Correction by Mr. Tesla The True Wireless On Reflected Roentgen Rays On Roentgen Radiations Roentgen Ray Investigations Tuned Lightning Tesla's Wireless Torpedo Tesla's Tidal Wave to Make War Impossible Possibilities of Wireless My Apparatus, Says Tesla Mr. Tesla's Vision Wonders of the Future Electric Drive for Battle Ships A Lighting Machine on Novel Principles Electrical Oscillators... Letters to Magazine Editors The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla by T. C. Martin

This carefully crafted ebook: "JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Table of Contents: Picturesque California The Mountains of California Our National Parks My First Summer in the Sierra The Yosemite Travels in Alaska Stickeen: The Story of a Dog The Cruise of the Corwin A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf Steep Trails Studies in the Sierra Articles and Speeches: The National Parks and Forest Reservations Save the Redwoods Snow-Storm on Mount Shasta Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park A Rival of the Yosemite The Treasures of the Yosemite Yosemite Glaciers Yosemite in Winter Yosemite in Spring Edward Henry Harriman Edward Taylor Parsons The Hetch Hetchy Valley The Grand Cañon of the Colorado Autobiographical: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth Letters to a Friend Tribute: Alaska Days with John Muir by Samuel Hall Young John Muir (1838-1914) was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His letters, essays, and books telling of his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, have been read by millions. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization.

This essay appeared originally in the Atlantic Monthly for May, 1883. During the thirty years which have elapsed since it was written the manifestations of the colonial spirit then apparent in the United States have not only altered in character but, I am glad to say, have weakened, diminished, and become less noticeable. Since 1883, also, there has been much achieved by Americans in Art and Literature, in painting, in sculpture, in music, and particularly in architecture. Success in all these fields has, with few exceptions, been won by men working in the spirit which is not colonial, but which it was the purpose of this essay to inculcate as the true one to which alone we could look for fine and enduring achievement. I have called attention to the date at which the essay was written in order that those who read it may remember that it applies in certain points to the conditions of thirty years ago and not to those of the present day.