A Universe of Clowns


Book Description

Canning Australian Fiction Project. Collection of 16 stories, many with Jewish central characters.




Class Clowns


Book Description

The past thirty years have seen dozens of otherwise successful investors try to improve education through the application of market principles. They have funneled billions of dollars into alternative schools, online education, and textbook publishing, and they have, with surprising regularity, lost their shirts. In Class Clowns, professor and investment banker Jonathan A. Knee dissects what drives investors' efforts to improve education and why they consistently fail. Knee takes readers inside four spectacular financial failures in education: Rupert Murdoch's billion-dollar effort to reshape elementary education through technology; the unhappy investors—including hedge fund titan John Paulson—who lost billions in textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin; the abandonment of Knowledge Universe, Michael Milken's twenty-year mission to revolutionize the global education industry; and a look at Chris Whittle, founder of EdisonLearning and a pioneer of large-scale transformational educational ventures, who continues to attract investment despite decades of financial and operational disappointment. Although deep belief in the curative powers of the market drove these initiatives, it was the investors' failure to appreciate market structure that doomed them. Knee asks: What makes a good education business? By contrasting rare successes, he finds a dozen broad lessons at the heart of these cautionary case studies. Class Clowns offers an important guide for public policy makers and guardrails for future investors, as well as an intelligent exposé for activists and teachers frustrated with the repeated underperformance of these attempts to shake up education.




Clowns


Book Description

Clowns: In Conversation with Modern Masters is a groundbreaking collection of conversations with 20 of the greatest clowns on earth. In discussion with clown aficionados Ezra LeBank and David Bridel, these legends of comedy reveal the origins, inspirations, techniques, and philosophies that underpin their remarkable odysseys. Featuring incomparable artists, including Slava Polunin, Bill Irwin, David Shiner, Oleg Popov, Dimitri, Nola Rae, and many more, Clowns is a unique and definitive study on the art of clowning. In Clowns, these 20 master artists speak candidly about their first encounters with clowning and circus, the crucial decisions that carved out the foundations of their style, and the role of teachers and mentors who shaped their development. Follow the twists and turns that changed the direction of their art and careers, explore the role of failure and originality in their lives and performances, and examine the development and evolution of the signature routines that became each clown’s trademark. The discussions culminate in meditations on the role of clowning in the modern world, as these great practitioners share their perspectives on the mysterious, elusive art of the clown.




Clowns


Book Description

Clowns: In Conversation is a groundbreaking collection of interviews expanded in this second edition to include over 30 of the greatest clowns on earth. In discussion with clown aficionados Ezra LeBank and David Bridel, these legends of comedy reveal the origins, inspirations, techniques, and philosophies that underpin their remarkable odysseys. These artists speak candidly about their first encounters with clowning and circus, the crucial decisions that carved out the foundations of their style, and the role of teachers and mentors who shaped their development. Follow the twists and turns that changed the direction of their art and careers, as they explore the role of failure and originality in their lives and performances, and examine the development and evolution of the signature routines that became each clown’s trademark. This new edition has been fully updated and expanded, bringing in Lila Monti, Cristina Marti, Leo Bassi, Danise Payne, Bernice Collins, Ketch, Robert Dunn, Nina Conti, Hélène Gustin and Tanja Simma, Michelle Matlock, Shannan Calcutt, and Gardi Hutter. Clowns is a unique and definitive study on the art of the clown, exploring their role in the modern world – a fascinating series of discussions for students, scholars, and teachers of clowning.




On Clowns


Book Description

Survivor of the Nazi camps and Ceausescu's Romania, winner of the National Book Award, recipient of a MacArthur Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Norman Manea, an extraordinary man of letters, "gives us a taste of something beyond the scope of even our twentieth-century imagination. . . . Manea is too profound a witness to place his gift for observation in the service of another sensualist account. . . . What matters for him is the phenomenon of an entire nation's life under this simultaneously grotesque and terrifying rule." -- The New Republic




Killer Space Clown


Book Description

This spooky anthology by Eli Taff, Jr. is a collection of ten flash fiction stories packed with cosmic horror and unbelievable terror that will keep you on the edge of your seat and have you sleeping with the lights on. The evil clown that steps out of a childhood memory and kills with a touch. The terrified mother who finds a monster in her daughter's bedroom. The unfaithful businessman who gets off the subway at the wrong stop. The gangster who robs the wrong old lady on the wrong night. Each microfiction horror story is exactly five hundred words long, and one or more can be easily devoured in a single sitting.




The Man Who Loved Clowns


Book Description

Delrita likes being invisible. If no one notices her, then no one willnotice her uncle Punky either. Punky is a grown man with a child's mind. Delrita loves him dearly and can't stand people making fun of his Down's syndrome. But when tragedy strikes, Delrita's quiet life—and Punky's—are disrupted forever. Can she finally learn to trust others, for her own sake and Punky's? This story captures the joy and sorrow that come when we open our hearts to love.




A Dissolving Ghost


Book Description

Margaret Mahy is known throughout New Zealand as a brilliant and prolific children's writer. Less widely known but equally remarkable are her commentaries on fiction, writing and the imagination. The sense of delight and careful attention which she brings to the writing of others has germinated many astute and fascinating talks and essays which are collected here for the first time.




Escape to Clown Town


Book Description

General Sharaya touched Duchess’ dark brown hair as she lay weak and dying on the cold stone floor of their jail cell. The dark star Epsilon Eridani finally succeeded in taking her star stone. Duchess has yet to learn that General Sharaya is her cousin and that she herself is Faree. 18 year old Duchess is a simple village girl that has no idea that she is at the center of the most epic war of the ages that is soon to come. Duchess tries desperately to escape her village upbringing and dreams of becoming a dancer in the famous Royal Clown Ballet. Duchess has not been told the truth about her royal fairy lineage and falls victim to a universal plot; conjured by the dark star Epsilon Eridani. The clowns easily ensnare Duchess by seducing her with the life she’s always dreamed of. After Duchess escapes her kidnapper, she wakes up in the grandest room she has ever been in. When she gets up to look out of her window, she realizes that she is in the Grand Clown Plaza Hotel located in the center of Clown Town. King Clownington quickly learns of Duchess’ arrival to Clown Town and immediately plots with Epsilon on how to extract her star stone. Epsilon learned from killing many fairies that star stones must be freely given in order to retain their power and cannot be extracted under duress. King Clownington orders his son Jax to court Duchess and the entire clown family does all that they can to trick Duchess into sacrificing her stone. Duchess falls in love with the king’s son but starts to grow suspicious when she tries to leave Clown Town and is not able to. General Sharaya sends Duchess a seemingly cryptic message about the clowns that Duchess fails to understand, until it’s too late. With the universe on the brink of a war that has the power to penetrate space and time, will Duchess become trapped by her hatred of the clowns or freed by her new found destiny?




Clown


Book Description

This rich collection of readings offers a wide-ranging and authoritative survey of clown practices, history and theory, from the origins of the word clown through to contemporary clowning. Covering clowns in theatre, circus, cinema, TV, street and elsewhere, the author's stimulating narrative challenges assumptions and turns orthodoxy on its head.