A Strange Place for a Homecoming


Book Description

Upon attaining a degree in Earth System History from the University of Saurat, Rachel Elam, the school's star atol player, her fianc, and two friends receive a fully financed tour to study the old, disregarded planet called Earth. All of her life she has been enchanted by the planet, the origin of many life forms in her galaxy. She is excited to explore it now. Retired cop Sodedo Ronah, a true curmudgeon, runs the travel bureau and knows that Earth is not a place where the young graduate and her friends should visit. However, he is forced by sworn code to keep the true use of the planet a secret. Knowing that he is forced to allow a journey that will end in disaster, he and a colleague set out to help the young travelers. Upon their arrival, Rachel and her friends quickly discover that Earth is now being used by society as a prison for the most violent criminals in the populated planetary systems. With their survival at stake, Rachel must rely on her courage, intellectual resourcefulness, and her athletic prowess to escape the planet and save her friends and herself.




Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming


Book Description

WINNER OF THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE "Krasznahorkai’s masterpiece" (The Millions); "Apocalyptic, visionary, and mad" (Publishers Weekly); "One of the supreme achievements of contemporary literature" (Paris Review); "Obsessive and visionary" (The New Yorker); "Genius" (The Baffler) At last, the capstone to Krasznahorkai’s four-part masterwork Set in contemporary times, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming tells the story of a Prince Myshkin–like figure, Baron Béla Wenckheim, who returns at the end of his life to his provincial Hungarian hometown. Having escaped from his many casino debts in Buenos Aires, where he was living in exile, he longs to be reunited with his high-school sweetheart Marika. Confusions abound, and what follows is an endless storm of gossip, con men, and local politicians, vividly evoking the small town’s alternately drab and absurd existence. All along, the Professor—a world-famous natural scientist who studies mosses and inhabits a bizarre Zen-like shack in a desolate area outside of town—offers long rants and disquisitions on his attempts to immunize himself from thought. Spectacular actions are staged as death and the abyss loom over the unsuspecting townfolk.




The Forest of Allund


Book Description

Young Mage Alexio Sopholus has returned home after ten years away at the Mage Academy. Although short and slight of build due to childhood sickness, he has found academic acclaim through his studies. Upon arrival in his home of Korpolis, he reacquaints himself with his old human friends and his former home. His only desire is to take up the position of forest caretaker left to him by his deceased master. The Forest of Allund is a place filled with equal parts myth, mystery, and fear. There he meets a wandering Amazon, but most importantly, his large and intelligent animal friends reside there. They all help him guard the forest from outside intruders. Soon the nature of the forces that govern and protect this place are made evident to him as he find new sources of knowledge and power. Although he only seeks peace and quiet, he is soon thrust into a war with a new barbarian tribe, the Zilar. They seek total domination of all the lands and are not above using slavery, genocide, and brutal repression to get their way. Alexio is forced to fight them directly using all the powers at his command. Initially successful in his efforts he finds his victories have only made him the object of intrigue by his leaders who fear his power and his popularity. His efforts at protecting the land are met with suspicion, fear and betrayal by his own leaders. Seeing the destruction, deceit, and betrayal around him, Alexio is forced to conclude that all his most cherished beliefs, principles, ethics and morality are all but useless against the foes arrayed against him. To protect himself and his friends he must wage war. It will be a war without pity, mercy, and against the laws of Gods and Men. It may also make him an outcast in his own land.




Song of Exile


Book Description

Oft-referenced and frequently set to music, Psalm 137 - which begins "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion" - has become something of a cultural touchstone for music and Christianity across the Atlantic world. It has been a top single more than once in the 20th century, from Don McLean's haunting Anglo-American folk cover to Boney M's West Indian disco mix. In Song of Exile, David Stowe uses a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary approach that combines personal interviews, historical overview, and textual analysis to demonstrate the psalm's enduring place in popular culture. The line that begins Psalm 137 - one of the most lyrical of the Hebrew Bible - has been used since its genesis to evoke the grief and protest of exiled, displaced, or marginalized communities. Despite the psalm's popularity, little has been written about its reception during the more than 2,500 years since the Babylonian exile. Stowe locates its use in the American Revolution and the Civil Rights movement, and internationally by anti-colonial Jamaican Rastafari and immigrants from Ireland, Korea, and Cuba. He studies musical references ranging from the Melodians' Rivers of Babylon to the score in Kazakh film Tulpan. Stowe concludes by exploring the presence and absence in modern culture of the often-ignored final words: "Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Usually excised from liturgy and forgotten by scholars, Stowe finds these words echoed in modern occurrences of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and more generally in the culture of vengeance that has existed in North America from the earliest conflicts with Native Americans. Based on numerous interviews with musicians, theologians, and writers, Stowe reconstructs the rich and varied reception history of this widely used, yet mysterious, text.




Roman Literature, Gender and Reception


Book Description

This cutting-edge collection of essays offers provocative studies of ancient history, literature, gender identifications and roles, and subsequent interpretations of the republican and imperial Roman past. The prose and poetry of Cicero and Petronius, Lucretius, Virgil, and Ovid receive fresh interpretations; pagan and Christian texts are re-examined from feminist and imaginative perspectives; genres of epic, didactic, and tragedy are re-examined; and subsequent uses and re-uses of the ancient heritage are probed with new attention: Shakespeare, Nineteenth Century American theater, and contemporary productions involving prisoners and veterans. Comprising nineteen essays collectively honoring the feminist Classical scholar Judith Hallett, this book will interest the Classical scholar, the ancient historian, the student of Reception Studies, and feminists interested in all periods. The authors from the United States, Britain, France and Switzerland are authorities in one or more of these fields and chapters range from the late Republic to the late Empire to the present.




House and Home


Book Description

House and home are words routinely used to describe where and how one lives. This book challenges predominant definitions and argues that domesticity fundamentally satisfies the human need to create and inhabit a defined place in the world. Consequently, house and home have performed numerous cultural and ontological roles, and have been assiduously represented in scripture, literature, art, and philosophy. This book presents how the search for home in an unpredictable world led people to create myths about the origins of architecture, houses for their gods, and house tombs for eternal life. Turning to more recent topics, it discusses how writers often used simple huts as a means to address the essentials of existence; modernist architects envisioned the capacity of house and home to improve society; and the suburban house was positioned as a superior setting for culture and family. Throughout the book, house and home are critically examined to illustrate the perennial role and capacity of architecture to articulate the human condition, position it more meaningfully in the world, and assist in our collective homecoming.




Just Mahalia, Baby


Book Description

Here is "the real book" of the incredible Mahalia Jackson, as pledged to her by her close friend, Laurraine Goreau, before her death. Rich in poetic condensation and vivid imagery, it reaches back to recreate an era and a way of life that no longer exist; it surfaces hidden folk lore and cultural patterns; it delves into Voodoo and a secret psychic world. It shows you jazz at its roots when it was "jass", the Devil's temptation; first-hand, it gives you the surprising sociological significances of the whole gospel movement ... but most of all, it takes you with a misshapen mote on a forgotten scrap of river-land as Mahalia pushes, fights, sings her way to a personage of unique stature among Americans to th eworld's peoples, revered by hundreds of thousands as a symbol of utter integrity, the bearer of God's tidings.




Homecomings


Book Description

Soon after the end of World War II, a majority of the nearly 7 million Japanese civilians and serviceman who had been posted overseas returned home. Heeding the call to rebuild, these veterans helped remake Japan and enjoyed popularized accounts of their service. For those who took longer to be repatriated, such as the POWs detained in labor camps in Siberia and the fighters who spent years hiding in the jungles of islands in the South Pacific, returning home was more difficult. Their nation had moved on without them and resented the reminder of a humiliating, traumatizing defeat. Homecomings tells the story of these late-returning Japanese soldiers and their struggle to adapt to a newly peaceful and prosperous society. Some were more successful than others, but they all charted a common cultural terrain, one profoundly shaped by media representations of the earlier returnees. Japan had come to redefine its nationhood through these popular images. Yoshikuni Igarashi explores what Japanese society accepted and rejected, complicating the definition of a postwar consensus and prolonging the experience of war for both Japanese soldiers and the nation. He throws the postwar narrative of Japan's recovery into question, exposing the deeper, subtler damage done to a country that only belatedly faced the implications of its loss.




In a Strange Land


Book Description

I wrote " A romp through post-conflagration Chicago, Pennsylvania's "Molly Maguire "coal mines, the great Log Jam in G I wrote " A romp through post-conflagration Chicago, Pennsylvania's "Molly Maguire "coal mines, the great Log Jam in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the demise of Brooklyn, New York as an independent city and a New Jersey land development scheme, "In a Strange Land" carries the reader forward as Mary Ann and William with their two surviving sons arrive in "turn of the century" United States and "Became American". Drawing on her grandmother's diary and father's photo album, author Lillian M. (Hooper) Henry, recreates that era of tumultuous growth and the " coming of age" of the country itself. Together with her earlier books, "the Real Yankee Doodle", "Tabitha's Tale", and "In Bristol Fashion", "In a Strange Land" provides insight into how historical events impact ordinary citizens. Lillian's next endeavor is "Son of the Kaiser?"...a rags to riches recreation of "The Era of Peace and Prosperity." She and her husband divide their time between Pennsylvania and Florida. rand Rapids, Michigan, the demise of Brooklyn, New York as an independent city and a New Jersey land development scheme, "In a Strange Land" carries the reader forward as Mary Ann and William with their two surviving sons arrive in "turn of the century" United States and "Became American". Drawing on her grandmother's diary and father's photo album, author Lillian M. (Hooper) Henry, recreates that era of tumultuous growth and the " coming of age" of the country itself. Together with her earlier books, "the Real Yankee Doodle", "Tabitha's Tale", and "In Bristol Fashion", "In a Strange Land" provides insight into how historical events impact ordinary citizens. Lillian's next endeavor is "Son of the Kaiser?"...a rags to riches recreation of "The Era of Peace and Prosperity." She and her husband divide their time between Pennsylvania and Florida.




The Blue Sapphire of the Mind


Book Description

In The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, Douglas E.