Abner & Me


Book Description

Cannons are blasting! Bullets are flying! Wounded soldiers are everywhere! Stosh has time-traveled to 1863, right into the middle of the Civil War. In possibly his most exciting and definitely his most dangerous trip yet, Stosh has decided to answer the question for all time: did Abner Doubleday, a Civil War general, really invent the game of baseball? It's all here: big laughs, dramatic action, fast baseball games in the middle of a battlefield. You'll be blown away by this sixth amazing baseball card adventure!




Lum and Abner


Book Description

In the 1930s radio stations filled the airwaves with programs and musical performances about rural Americans—farmers and small-town residents struggling through the Great Depression. One of the most popular of these shows was Lum and Abner, the brainchild of Chester "Chet" Lauck and Norris "Tuffy" Goff, two young businessmen from Arkansas. Beginning in 1931 and lasting for more than two decades, the show revolved around the lives of ordinary people in the fictional community of Pine Ridge, based on the hamlet of Waters, Arkansas. The title characters, who are farmers, local officials, and the keepers of the Jot 'Em Down Store, manage to entangle themselves in a variety of hilarious dilemmas. The program's gentle humor and often complex characters had wide appeal both to rural southerners, who were accustomed to being the butt of jokes in the national media, and to urban listeners who were fascinated by descriptions of life in the American countryside. Lum and Abner was characterized by the snappy, verbal comedic dueling that became popular on radio programs of the 1930s. Using this format, Lauck and Goff allowed their characters to subvert traditional authority and to poke fun at common misconceptions about rural life. The show also featured hillbilly and other popular music, an innovation that drew a bigger audience. As a result, Arkansas experienced a boom in tourism, and southern listeners began to immerse themselves in a new national popular culture. In Lum and Abner: Rural America and the Golden Age of Radio, historian Randal L. Hall explains the history and importance of the program, its creators, and its national audience. He also presents a treasure trove of twenty-nine previously unavailable scripts from the show's earliest period, scripts that reveal much about the Great Depression, rural life, hillbilly stereotypes, and a seminal period of American radio.




Thinking of Others


Book Description

In Thinking of Others, Ted Cohen argues that the ability to imagine oneself as another person is an indispensable human capacity--as essential to moral awareness as it is to literary appreciation--and that this talent for identification is the same as the talent for metaphor. To be able to see oneself as someone else, whether the someone else is a real person or a fictional character, is to exercise the ability to deal with metaphor and other figurative language. The underlying faculty, Cohen argues, is the same--simply the ability to think of one thing as another when it plainly is not. In an engaging style, Cohen explores this idea by examining various occasions for identifying with others, including reading fiction, enjoying sports, making moral arguments, estimating one's future self, and imagining how one appears to others. Using many literary examples, Cohen argues that we can engage with fictional characters just as intensely as we do with real people, and he looks at some of the ways literature itself takes up the question of interpersonal identification and understanding. An original meditation on the necessity of imagination to moral and aesthetic life, Thinking of Others is an important contribution to philosophy and literary theory.







Lazar & Jingles with Bunson in The Ashes Fall


Book Description

Walking in circles, friendships will abound. With an eye toward heaven, angels around about. Found upon the sands, tinted glasses which help to see. Yesterday comes quickly. Where will we be? A star held dear, it will ring a silent chime. Stand tall in your faith. As a giant, be humble and oh so very kind. Long after death, a path will be seen. Words are most deadly. Listen, don't speak. Temptation will be offered. Let the curtains be sewn shut. A fortune for the sinner. Joints no longer rust. Roses colored black. Others will be blue. Many strings will be pulled. The scent will be true. Hidden in the shadows, paper will unfold. Eyes will be sleepy. A transformation will be bold. The truth in a tear frozen from the sky. Aligned past the suns, it burns very bright. All exits covered. Prayers, each and every heard. Not one but two of each. His is the Word.




George R. R. Martin Starter Pack 4-Book Bundle


Book Description

The epic saga that inspired HBO’s Game of Thrones made George R. R. Martin an international phenomenon, but there’s much more to this versatile, prolific, and original author. In addition to the book that kicks off A Song of Ice of Fire, this eBook bundle includes Dreamsongs: Volume I, which showcases Martin’s early writings; Fevre Dream, the acclaimed author’s reinvention of the vampire novel; and The Armageddon Rag, a thrilling story of psychedelic—and apocalyptic—rock. Spanning genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and suspense, Martin’s virtuosic talents will surprise and delight even his most devoted fans. A GAME OF THRONES “The only fantasy series I’d put on a level with J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings . . . It’s a fantasy series for hip, smart people, even those who don’t read fantasy.”—Chicago Tribune In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. As sinister forces mass beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser is dead and his enemies are emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself. DREAMSONGS: VOLUME I “The ideal way to discover . . . a master of science fiction, fantasy and horror. . . . Martin is a writer like no other.”—The Guardian (U.K.) Gathered here are the very best of Martin’s early works, including his Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker award–winning stories, cool fan pieces, and the original novella The Ice Dragon, from which his New York Times bestselling children’s book of the same title originated. With extensive author commentary, Dreamsongs: Volume I is a rare treat, offering fascinating insights into Martin’s journey from young writer to award-winning master. FEVRE DREAM “An adventure into the heart of darkness that transcends even the most inventive vampire novels.”—Los Angeles Herald Examiner Abner Marsh, a struggling riverboat captain, suspects that something’s amiss when he is approached by a wealthy aristocrat with a lucrative offer. The hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York doesn’t care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh’s dilapidated fleet. Not until the maiden voyage of Fevre Dream does Marsh realize that he has joined a mission both more sinister, and perhaps more noble, than his most fantastic nightmare—and humankind’s most impossible dream. THE ARMAGEDDON RAG “The best novel concerning the American pop music culture of the sixties I’ve ever read.”—Stephen King Onetime underground journalist Sandy Blair has come a long way from his radical roots in the sixties—until he’s drawn back by the bizarre and brutal murder of a rock promoter who made millions with a band called the Nazgûl. As Sandy investigates the crime, he finds himself drawn back into his own past. For a new messiah has resurrected the Nazgûl along with a requiem of demonism, mind control, and death, whose apocalyptic tune only Sandy may be able to change.




The Southwestern Reporter


Book Description




The Black Diamond


Book Description