The Best Buddhist Writing 2006


Book Description

Presents an eclectic collection of Buddhist-inspired writings on a wide range of issues.




The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead


Book Description

The Tragic Odes of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead is a multifaceted study of tragedy in the group’s live performances showing how Garcia brought about catharsis through dance by leading songs of grief, mortality, and ironic fate in a collective theatrical context. This musical, literary, and historical analysis of thirty-five songs with tragic dimensions performed by Garcia in concert with the Grateful Dead illustrates the syncretic approach and acute editorial ear he applied in adapting songs of Robert Hunter, Bob Dylan, and folk tradition. Tragically ironic situations in which Garcia found himself when performing these songs are revealed, including those related to his opiate addiction and final decline. This book examines Garcia’s musical craftsmanship and the Grateful Dead’s collective art in terms of the mystery-rites of ancient Greece, Friedrich Nietzsche’s Dionysus, 20th century American music rooted in New Orleans, Hermann Hesse’s Magic Theater, and the Greek Theatre at Berkeley, offering a clear prospect on an often misunderstood phenomenon. Featuring interdisciplinary analysis, close attention to musical and poetic strategies, and historical and critical contexts, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Popular Music, Musicology, Cultural Studies, and American Studies, as well as to the Grateful Dead’s avid listeners.




Death Don't Have No Mercy


Book Description

"William Boyle does for the small damaged towns of New York what Nelson Algren did for Chicago: he makes the streets sing with piss-pot poetry and gut-bucket blues. These are edgy stories about people who would have to pull themselves up to walk the line, people who spend so much time in bars, drunks and bartenders start to look like family. In here, hardship is a given, failure too, but Boyle's beautiful prose infuses his characters with a deep sense of knowledge and dignity and awareness, so hope is always present, no matter how dim the light. In DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY, a shot of whiskey is rocket fuel, and the songs are all sung by dead folks and outlaws. Drunk working men look like dumptrucks, their mouths hanging open for booze. Boyle is a new breed of literary crime writer that knows to be alive is to be a criminal and the art of living is finding the best possible crime. Fans of James Cain and Vicki Hendricks, of Charles Bukowski and Larry Brown, saddle up to the bar and throw down your money for the excellent stories in DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY. I guarantee you will fall in love with the neighborhoods, with the alleys, with the garages and one-bedroom apartments, because around the corner William Boyle is bartending and everything he has to say is the best thing you will read this year. An outstanding collection " -Dave Newman, author of PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ANYONE TONIGHT, RAYMOND CARVER WILL NOT RAISE OUR CHILDREN, THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE POEMS, and TWO SMALL BIRDS




Show Them No Mercy


Book Description

Did God condone genocide in the Old Testament? How do Christians harmonize the warrior God of Israel with the God of love incarnate in Jesus? Christians are often shocked to read that Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, commanded the total destruction--all men, women, and children--of the ethnic group known as the Canaanites. This seems to contradict Jesus' command in the New Testament to love your enemies and do good to all people. How can Yahweh be the same God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? What does genocide in the Bible have to do with the politics of the 21st century? Show Them No Mercy explores the Old Testament command of God to exterminate the Canaanite population and what that implies about continuity between the Old and New Testaments. The four views presented are: Strong Discontinuity – emphasizes the strong tension, regarding violence, between the two main texts of the Bible (C.S. Cowles) Moderate Discontinuity – provides a justification of God’s actions in the Old Testament with strong emphasis on exegesis (Eugene H. Merrill) Eschatological Continuity – a reading of the warfare narratives that ties them contextually to the book of Revelation and the Second Coming (Daniel L. Gard) Spiritual Continuity – incorporates the genocidal account into the full picture of the Old and New Testaments (Tremper Longman III) The Counterpoints series presents a comparison and critique of scholarly views on topics important to Christians that are both fair-minded and respectful of the biblical text. Each volume is a one-stop reference that allows readers to evaluate the different positions on a specific issue and form their own, educated opinion.




It's a Wonderful Woof


Book Description

INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER Spencer Quinn's It's a Wonderful Woof presents a holiday adventure for Chet the dog, “the most lovable narrator in crime fiction” (Boston Globe), and his human partner, PI Bernie Little. Holiday time in the Valley, and in the holiday spirit—despite the dismal shape of the finances at the Little Detective Agency—Bernie refers a potential client to Victor Klovsky, a fellow private eye. It’s also true that the case—promising lots of online research but little action—doesn’t appeal to Bernie, while it seems perfect for Victor, who is not cut out for rough stuff. But Victor disappears in a rough-stuff way, and when he doesn’t show up at his mom’s to light the Hanukkah candles, she hires Chet and Bernie to find him. They soon discover that Victor’s client has also vanished. The trail leads to the ruins of a mission called Nuestra Señora de los Saguaros, dating back to the earliest Spanish explorers. Some very dangerous people are interested in the old mission. Does some dusty archive hold the secret of a previously unknown art treasure, possibly buried for centuries? What does the Flight into Egypt—when Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus fled Herod—have to do with saguaros, the Sonoran desert cactus? No one is better than Chet at nosing out buried secrets, but before he can, he and Bernie are forced to take flight themselves, chased through a Christmas Eve blizzard by a murderous foe who loves art all too much. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Reading the Grateful Dead


Book Description

Since the 1960s, the Grateful Dead have welcomed and participated in academic work on the band, encouraging scrutiny from a wide variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, from anthropology to sociology. Interest in Dead studies is growing across the country and around the world, and UC–Santa Cruz’s Grateful Dead Archive continues to attract a high level of attention. In Reading the Grateful Dead: A Critical Survey, Nicholas G. Meriwether has assembled essays that examine the development of Grateful Dead studies. This volume features work from three generations of scholars, including a wide variety of perspectives on the band and its cultural significance. From insiders like lyricist John Perry Barlow and longtime band publicist and historian Dennis McNally to well-known Deadhead scholars such as Barry Barnes and Rebecca Adams, the contributors to this volume offer valuable insights into the Grateful Dead phenomenon. No other Dead book focuses on the growth and development of the discourse, contains such a range of critical approaches, nor features work by luminaries Stan Krippner and Barnes, among others. The four sections of the book describe aspects and approaches to Dead studies, along with overviews of how the discipline evolved and what it comprises today. This collection will appeal to scholars, students, and teachers interested in Dead studies and fans of the band.




Death and the Lady'chylde


Book Description

Raw-nerved, gritty, unprettified, and rarely sentimentalized, spontaneous verse, exposing one of the greatest pains a parent can experience.




The Grateful Dead FAQ


Book Description

(FAQ). The Grateful Dead rose out of San Francisco's '60s underground rock scene with an unprecedented sound and image. Its members, steeped in rock, folk, classical, and blues; their instrumental prowess; and their refusal to bow to commercial conventions helped originate jam band music. Unapologetic in its advocacy of drug use as a means toward mind expansion, the Dead helped catapult psychedelic music. After performing at the Monterey International Pop Festival and Woodstock, the group became iconic without ever scoring a hit single. A large, devoted fan base "Deadheads" began to follow the band everywhere. The group suffered a tragedy when bandleader Jerry Garcia slipped into a coma in 1986, but returned the next year with a top-selling album and surprise hit single, "Touch of Grey." By 1993, the Dead was the top-grossing live act in the United States. The band ended when Garcia died in 1995, but the music lives on with a stream of live releases. In Grateful Dead FAQ , Tony Sclafani examines the band's impact and influence on rock music and pop culture. This book ventures into unexplored areas and features a host of rare images, making it a must-have for both Deadheads and casual fans.




The Grateful Dead Reader


Book Description

This collection of writings about the greatest tour band in the history of rock offers both classic and hard-to-find essays, reviews, and reports that piece together a chronological history of the group. 12 photos. 3 line drawings.




Radical Construction Grammar


Book Description

This book is based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. The essence of the approach is (a) that almost all aspects of grammatical structure are language specific, and (b) that language universals are to be found in conceptual structure and in the mapping of conceptual structure on to linguistic form. It proposes intimate links between syntactic and semantic structures, and argues that the basic elements of any language are not syntactic but syntactic-semantic 'Gestalts'. Professor Croft puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work. He covers a wide range of syntactic phenomena, illustrating these with examples that show the varied grammatical structures of the world's languages. The book will be accessible all linguists at graduate level and beyond.