Alien Ink


Book Description

A comprehensive look at how the FBI waged war against American writers and readers from the early years of this century. Here is new and previously undisclosed information about the hounding and intimidation of writers.




New York Magazine


Book Description

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.




Alien Nation


Book Description

A wordless wonder of a picture book, reminiscent of David Wiesner and Chris Van Allsburg. An unforgettable subway ride in an alien world filled with truths of our own.




All Those Strangers


Book Description

Adored by many, appalling to some, baffling still to others, few authors defy any single critical narrative to the confounding extent that James Baldwin manages. Was he a black or queer writer? Was he a religious or secular writer? Was he a spokesman for the civil rights movement or a champion of the individual? His critics, as disparate as his readership, endlessly wrestle with paradoxes, not just in his work but also in the life of a man who described himself as "all those strangers called Jimmy Baldwin" and who declared that "all theories are suspect." Viewing Baldwin through a cultural-historical lens alongside a more traditional literary critical approach, All Those Strangers examines how his fiction and nonfiction shaped and responded to key political and cultural developments in the United States from the 1940s to the 1980s. Showing how external forces molded Baldwin's personal, political, and psychological development, Douglas Field breaks through the established critical difficulties caused by Baldwin's geographical, ideological, and artistic multiplicity by analyzing his life and work against the radically transformative politics of his time. The book explores under-researched areas in Baldwin's life and work, including his relationship to the Left, his FBI files, and the significance of Africa in his writing, while also contributing to wider discussions about postwar US culture. Field deftly navigates key twentieth-century themes-the Cold War, African American literary history, conflicts between spirituality and organized religion, and transnationalism-to bring a number of isolated subjects into dialogue with each other. By exploring the paradoxes in Baldwin's development as a writer, rather than trying to fix his life and work into a single framework, All Those Strangers contradicts the accepted critical paradigm that Baldwin's life and work are too ambiguous to make sense of. By studying him as an individual and an artist in flux, Field reveals the manifold ways in which Baldwin's work develops and coheres.




Ink


Book Description

Ink showcases an unusual body of work by Tanya Marcuse which came about serendipitously after her young son insisted on trying nocturnal squid fishing one summer in Maine. Unlike the majority of Marcuse's large-scale, elaborate works, these images were made with an iPhone camera, a more spontaneous and versatile tool. Marcuse's uncanny images, in which the bodies of squid spread acrobatically across newspaper headlines, fashion advertisements, and marriage announcements, echo the broadside's sense of moral warning and impending apocalypse. As the squid ink obscures the printer's ink, the photographs explore the materiality of the newspaper and the dynamic interplay between its sense of fact and order and the abstract, primordial chaos of the tangled tentacles. Both in their physical presence and the inky marks they leave behind, the bodies of the squid both obscure and transform the apparently objective narratives of the newspaper.




Aliens, Robots & Virtual Reality Idols in the Science Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Asimov and William Gibson


Book Description

H. P. Lovecraft’s aliens are extra-terrestrial, terrestrial & trans-dimensional entities, totally unlike any other aliens in science fiction literature. In contrast, Isaac Asimov's and William Gibson’s aliens are human created positronic robots and virtual reality constructs, or 'idols'. Lovecraft’s great theme is alien indifferentism, tinged with a malevolence that escalates into an existential, apocalyptic threat against humankind, while for Asimov and Gibson, alien inclusionism is the norm. The robots and the VR idols integrate into society and their influence appears to be beneficial. But this is only on the surface. In this book, John L. Steadman demonstrates that there is ultimately little difference between alien indifferentism and alien inclusionism in the fictional works of these three great writers. For in fact, the robots and the VR idols evolve into monsters whose actions bring about outcomes which are every bit as terrifying as anything in Lovecraft’s work. Humans tend to be isolates ('alien'-ated). The reader is invited to question this, and to consider the possibility that an alien perspective, or platform, might, perhaps, be crucial if we intend on seeing ourselves clearly and understanding exactly what it means to be human.




ALIEN Thinking


Book Description

How do people come up with truly original ideas? The answer is to think outside the box—way outside. For the past decade, Cyril Bouquet, Jean-Louis Barsoux, and Michael Wade, professors of innovation and strategy at IMD Business School, have studied inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and artists. These people, or “aliens,” as the authors call them, are able to make leaps of creativity, and use five patterns of thinking that distinguish them from the rest of us. These five patterns—Attention, Levitation, Imagination, Experimentation, and Navigation—lead to a fresh and flexible approach to problem-solving. Alien thinkers know how to free the imagination so it can detect hard-to-observe patterns. They practice deliberate ways to retreat from the world in order to see the big picture underlying a problem. And they approach ideas in systematic ways that reflect the constraints of reality. Through surprising and compelling stories, the authors show how readers can use this method to develop out-of-this-world ideas. ALIEN Thinking can help any of us find innovative solutions to the most difficult problems.




The Long War


Book Description

In the early 1930s, the American Communist Party attracted support from a wide range of liberal and radical intellectuals, partly in response to domestic politics, and also in opposition to the growing power of fascism abroad. The Long War, a social history of these intellectuals and their political institutions, tells the story of the rift that developed among the groups loosely organized under the umbrella of the Party--representing communist supporters of the People's Front and those who would become anti-Stalinists--and the evolution of that rift into a generational divide that would culminate in the liberal anti-communism of the post-World War II era. Judy Kutulas takes us into the debates and outright fights between and within the ranks of organizations such as the League of American Writers, the John Reed Clubs, the Committee for Cultural Freedom, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners. Showing how extremist views about the nature and value of communism triumphed over more moderate ones, she traces the transfer of the left's leadership from one generation to the next. She describes how supporters of the People's Front were discredited by the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and how this opened the way for a new generation of leaders better known as the New York intellectuals. In this shift, Kutulas identifies the beginnings of the liberal anti-communism that would follow World War II. A book for students and scholars of the intersection of politics and culture, The Long War offers a new, informed perspective on the intellectual maneuvers of the American left of the 1930s and leads to a reinterpretation of the time and its complex legacy.




If You Come to Earth


Book Description

From two-time Caldecott Winner author-illustrator Sophie Blackall! If You Came to Earth is a glorious guide to our home planet, and a call for us to take care of both Earth and each other. This stunning book is inspired by the thousands of children Sophie Blackall has met during her travels around the world in support of UNICEF and Save the Children. • An engaging storybook about a single curious and imaginative child • Simultaneously funny and touching • Carries a clear message about the need to care for the earth and each other If you come to Earth, there are a few things you need to know. . . We live in all kinds of places. In all kinds of homes. In all kinds of families. Each of us is different. But all of us are amazing. And, together, we share one beautiful planet. This masterful and moving picture book is a visually comprehensive guide to the earth, imbued with warmth and humor. • Ideal for children ages 3 to 5 years old • A great pick for teachers looking for a crowd-pleasing picture book about the world for little students • Perfect for parents, grandparents, and caregivers • You'll love this book if you love books like The Travel Book by Lonely Planet Kids, Atlas of Adventures by Rachel Williams, and If You Lived Here: Houses of the World by Giles Laroche.




New York Magazine


Book Description

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.