Ringside Seat to a Revolution


Book Description

El Paso/Juárez served as the tinderbox of the Mexican Revolution and the tumultuous years to follow. In essays and archival photographs, David Romo tells the surreal stories at the roots of the greatest Latin American revolution: The sainted beauty queen Teresita inspires revolutionary fervor and is rumored to have blessed the first rifles of the revolutionaries; anarchists publish newspapers and hatch plots against the hated Porfirio Diaz regime; Mexican outlaw Pancho Villa eats ice cream cones and rides his Indian motorcycle happily through downtown; El Paso’s gringo mayor wears silk underwear because he is afraid of Mexican lice; John Reed contributes a never-before-published essay; young Mexican maids refuse to be deloused so they shut down the border and back down Pershing’s men in the process; vegetarian and spiritualist Francisco Madero institutes the Mexican revolutionary junta in El Paso before crossing into Juárez to his ill-fated presidency and assassination; and bands play Verdi while firing squads go about their deadly business. Romo’s work does what Mike Davis’ City of Quartz did for Los Angeles—it presents a subversive and contrary vision of the sister cities during this crucial time for both countries. David Dorado Romo, the son of Mexican immigrants, is an essayist, historian, musician and cultural activist. Ringside Seat to a Revolution is the result of his three-year exploration of archives detailing the cultural and political roots of the Mexican Revolution along la frontera. Romo received a degree in Judaic studies at Stanford University and has studied in Israel and Italy.




A LITTLE CORNER OF PARADISE


Book Description

The passion project… From the moment he rolled into town, Nick Tyler had chased Madeleine. He bowled her over with a heady mixture of charm and deep, lingering—dangerous—kisses. Madeleine was no helpless innocent but even she didn't suspect that every soft word, each caress was calculated: seduction was all part of Nick Tyler's grand scheme. But what was that saying about the best-laid plans? Soon, even Nick began to doubt his own strategy….




Down and Out in Paradise


Book Description

The bestselling, “unvarnished” (The New York Times), “engrossing” (The Guardian), “gritty, well-researched” (The Economist)—and definitely unauthorized—biography of the celebrity chef and TV star Anthony Bourdain, based on extensive interviews with those who knew the real story. Anthony Bourdain’s death by suicide in June 2018 shocked people around the world. Bourdain seemed to have it all: an irresistible personality, a dream job, a beautiful family, and international fame. The reality, though, was more complicated than it seemed. Bourdain became a celebrity with his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential. He parlayed it into a series of hit television shows, including the Food Channel’s Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and CNN’s Parts Unknown. But his bad boy charisma belied a troubled spirit. Addiction and an obsession with perfection and personal integrity ruined two marriages and turned him into a boss from hell, even as millions of fans became enamored of the quick-witted and genuinely empathetic traveler they saw on TV. At the height of his success Bourdain was already running out of steam, physically and emotionally, when he fell hard for an Italian actress who could be even colder to him than he sometimes was to others, and who effectively drove a wedge between him and his young daughter. Down and Out in Paradise is the first book to tell the full Bourdain story, and to show how Bourdain’s never-before-reported childhood traumas fueled both the creativity and insecurities that would lead him to a place of despair. “Filled with fresh, intimate details” (The New York Times), this is the real story behind an extraordinary life.




The Way Back to Paradise


Book Description

Paradise is not the state of being in harmony, but the process of harmonizing. It is not a garden of bliss, but the bliss of gardening. Paradise is about mending the self, restoring the balance, getting back into tune, bringing all our discarded and forgotten parts into the whole. That means paying attention to and honoring synchronicities, precognitive dreams, telepathic communications, visions--and all manner of experiences of psychic sensitivity. Philosophy professor Joe Felser realized that what he calls the "decrepit, decaying cultural ideologies," in exclusively favoring reason and logic, were excluding the equally real world of magic and psychic activities. He began to investigate, and the closer he looked, the more he found. But he wasn't ready to abandon the world of reason and logic. Instead, he wanted to see if he could find a way to blend the two. He did. The result is this book. In The Way Back to Paradise, Felser takes you through his day, showing what everyday life looks like when you live that blend. His stories, both magical and reasonable, point the way toward a new kind of paradise, one suited to the 21st century.




Race, Gender, and Identity in American Equine Art


Book Description

This book traces an evolution of equine and equestrian art in the United States over the last two centuries to counter conventional understandings of subjects that are deeply enmeshed in the traditions of elite English and European culture. In focusing on the construction of identity in painting and photography—of Blacks, women, and the animals themselves involved in horseracing, rodeo, and horse show competition—it illuminates the strategic and varying roles visual artists have played in producing cultural understandings of human-animal relationships. As the first book to offer a history of American equine and equestrian imagery, it shrinks the chasm of literature on the subject and illustrates the significance of the genre to the history of American art. This book further connects American equine and equestrian art to historical, theoretical, and philosophical analyses of animals and attests to how the horse endures as a vital, meaningful subject within the art world as well as culture at large. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, American art, gender studies, race and ethnic studies, and animal studies.




Free at Last in Paradise


Book Description

FREE AT LAST IN PARADISE is a historical novel on Sri Lanka. It is the first part of A SRI LANKAN TRILOGY FROM FREEDOM TO PEACE and deals with the period 1848 to 1948 when the country evolved into a modern nation and regained independence. It is a gripping novel tracing the path of the freedom movement, in then Ceylon from the 1848 rebellion to Independence in 1948. It features a Buddhist boy; a young novice in a temple, later educated in missionary schools, becomes a government functionary, a forest monk and still later an erudite scholar, whose life parallels the freedom movement driven mainly by the Buddhist revival led by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott and his followers Anagarika Dharmapala and Sir Baron Jayatilake. The hero was a strong nationalist, deeply involved in the movement most of his adult life. Though a work of epic proportions, full of information masterfully dissecting every aspect of social and family life, with all its strains of caste and class, as well as the political and cultural scene of Ceylon at the time, it is a triumphant love story, that is by turns dramatic and powerful, romantic and tender that makes you want to keep reading. Displaying the author's dexterity, the most readable prose is appropriately laced with exhilarating verse. This is an extraordinary novel that exemplifies the best of historical fiction. Somehow he has managed to make the story both educational and, dare I say it, fun! “The book will be read with pleasure," says David Vickery of Britain, "by those who love Ceylon and introduce those who have no knowledge of the country to a fascinating society." Leslie Gray M.D. of Denver, Colorado, USA, in his review published in the Journal of Theosophical History, says, “a magnum opus, a masterpiece from any angle. Elegant style, eloquent language, relentless tempo, exciting and almost galloping.”




Paved Paradise


Book Description

Shortlisted for the Zócalo Book Prize Named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The New Republic “Consistently entertaining and often downright funny.” —The New Yorker “Wry and revelatory.” —The New York Times "A romp, packed with tales of anger, violence, theft, lust, greed, political chicanery and transportation policy gone wrong . . . highly entertaining." —The Los Angeles Times An entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life—the humble parking spot Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a shocking number of Americans kill one another over parking spots, and we routinely do ri­diculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Since the advent of the car, we have deformed our cities in a Sisyphean quest for car storage, and as a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted to empty vehicles. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, traffic patterns and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, and the overall quality of public space. Is this really the best use of our finite resources? Is parking really more important than everything else? In a beguiling and absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Slate staff writer Henry Grabar brilliantly surveys the nation’s parking crisis, revealing how the compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems— from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster—and, ultimately, how we can free our cities from park­ing’s cruel yoke.




Birds of a Lesser Paradise


Book Description

Presents a collection of stories focusing on the moments when bonds with nature become evident, including the story of a mother and son attempting to reclaim an African gray parrot and of a population control activist who longs to have a baby.




Gringos in Paradise


Book Description

A Year in Provence meets Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House in this lively and entertaining account of a couple's year building their dream house in Mexico. In 2004, Barry Golson wrote an award-winning article for AARP magazine about Mexican hot spots for retirees longing for a lifestyle they couldn't afford in the United States. A year later, he and his wife Thia were taking part in the growing trend of retiring abroad. They sold their Manhattan apartment, packed up their SUV, and moved to one of those idyllic hot spots, the surfing and fishing village of Sayulita on Mexico's Pacific coast. With humor and charm, Golson details the year he and his wife spent settling into their new life and planning and building their dream home. Sayulita -- population 1,500, not including stray dogs or pelicans -- is a never-dull mixture of traditional Mexican customs and new, gringo-influenced change. Before long, the Golsons had been absorbed into the rhythms and routines of village life: they adopted a pair of iguanas named Iggy Pop and Iggy Mom, got sick and got cured by a doctor who charged them sixteen dollars a visit, made lasting friends with Mexicans and fellow expatriates, and discovered the skill and artistry of local craftsmen. But their daily lives were mostly dedicated to the difficult yet satisfying process of building their house. It took them almost six months to begin building -- nothing is simple (or speedy) in Mexico -- and incredibly, they completed construction in another six. They engaged a Mexican architect, builder, and landscape designer who not only built their home but also changed their lives; encountered uproariously odd bureaucracy; and ultimately experienced a lifetime's worth of education about the challenges and advantages of living in Mexico. The Golsons lived (and are still living) the dream of many -- not only of going off to a tropical paradise but also of building something beautiful, becoming a part of a new world, making lasting friends, and transforming their lives. As much about family and friendship as about house-building, Gringos in Paradise is an immensely readable and illuminating book about finding a personal paradise and making it a home.