Faculty Brat


Book Description

At the most prestigious preparatory schools in the United States, the children of educators are referred to as “faculty brats.” Though generally lacking the privilege of the institution’s wealthy students, faculty brats enjoy access to the school’s extensive grounds and facilities and are part of everyday campus life. Dominic Bucca’s art teacher mother married his music teacher stepfather twice, and the young boy wondered if the union might be twice as strong as a result. Instead, this faculty brat quickly discovered that the marriage was twice as flawed. When Dominic was nine years old, his stepfather began sexually abusing him in the faculty housing attached to the boys’ dorm his parents oversaw. Years later, he found escape by reaching out to his biological father, and learned to split his life between two realities. For nearly twenty-five years, Bucca hid the secret of his stepfather’s abuse from his mother and sisters. When he decided to tell, hoping to prevent his stepfather from continuing to teach young boys, Bucca discovered the limits of both his family and the legal system.




Slingshot


Book Description

"This is a book that needed to be written. Eric Cantor’s defeat was not only shocking but it runs against everything we teach in our election courses. By extracting the lessons from Cantor’s defeat, Slingshot helps to inform our more general understanding of campaigns & elections." -Professor Kirby Goidel, Texas A&M University Incumbents don′t lose. So how did nationally prominent House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lose a primary battle to college professor David Brat, an unknown political rookie? In Slingshot: The Defeat of Eric Cantor, authors Lauren Cohen Bell, David Elliot Meyer and Ronald Keith Gaddie take advantage of exceptional behind-the-scenes access to the Brat campaign to explain the challenger’s victory. They examine the essential need for elected officials to maintain strong support in their home districts and just how Cantor’s focus on climbing the party ranks in Washington contributed to his loss. They also show how local "rules of the game" —particularly voter mobilization in this case—affect elections, and they explore the continuing impact of the Tea Party and its role in the factionalism of current Southern politics.




Dictionary of American Slang


Book Description

The fourth edition of this authoritative reference offers clear definitions for the slang words and idioms used in everyday American conversation. First published in 1960, this newly updated edition of Dictionary of American Slang traces the language of today back to its American roots. With thousands of entries ranging from the widely accepted to the taboo and obscure, slang words are explained in terms of definition, usage, and historical etymology. As language continues to evolve at an ever-increasing rate, Dictionary of American Slang offers an essential guide to the terms that are here to stay—as well as those that might otherwise be forgotten.




The Last Chairlift


Book Description

John Irving’s fifteenth novel is “powerfully cinematic” (The Washington Post) and “eminently readable” (The Boston Globe). The Last Chairlift is part ghost story, part love story, spanning eight decades of sexual politics. In Aspen, Colorado, in 1941, Rachel Brewster is a slalom skier at the National Downhill and Slalom Championships. Little Ray, as she is called, finishes nowhere near the podium, but she manages to get pregnant. Back home, in New England, Little Ray becomes a ski instructor. Her son, Adam, grows up in a family that defies conventions and evades questions concerning the eventful past. Years later, looking for answers, he will go to Aspen. In the Hotel Jerome, where he was conceived, Adam will meet some ghosts; in The Last Chairlift, they aren’t the first or last ghosts he sees. John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time—among them, The World According to Garp and The Cider House Rules. A visionary voice on the subject of sexual tolerance, Irving is a bard of alternative families. In the “generously intertextual” (The New York Times) The Last Chairlift, readers will once more be in his thrall.




Cross Purposes


Book Description

A Marriage at Cross Purposes Professor Martin Quint has moved from a major university to a small college. He has an important book to write. But he is pressured by the college to help develop a new school of engineering and entrepreneurship and pushed by a visiting professor from Oxford University to completely redesign his teaching mode. Meanwhile, his wife’s new business draws her away from child care. Conflicts over time and money erupt just when a shocking revelation from Martin’s past threatens to careen everything out of control. Cross Purposes provides an eye-opening look at the realities of academic life, but at its heart, it’s about a marriage at cross purposes, about trust and betrayal, anger and forgiveness.




All Tomorrow's Parties


Book Description

“In this carefully wrought coming-of-age memoir, a young American writer searches for home in an unlikely place: East Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Rob Spillman—the award-winning, charismatic cofounding editor of the legendary Tin House magazine—has devoted his life to the rebellious pursuit of artistic authenticity. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between East and West, between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression. After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the anarchic streets of East Berlin in search of the bohemian lifestyle of their idols. But Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home. In his intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt memoir, Spillman narrates a colorful, music-filled coming-of-age portrait of an artist’s life that is also a cultural exploration of a shifting Berlin. “With wry humor and wonder, Spillman beautifully captures the deadpan hedonism of the East Berliners and the city’s sense of infinite possibility.” —The New York Times Book Review “A thrilling portrait of the artist as intrepid young adventure seeker.” —Vanity Fair “Convivial, page-turning . . . Spillman’s life is a good one to read.” —The Washington Post




All of Us and Everything


Book Description

For fans of the quirky, heartfelt fiction of Nick Hornby and Eleanor Brown comes a smart, wry, and poignant novel about reconciliation between fathers and daughters, between spouses; the deep ties between sisters; and the kind of forgiveness that can change a person’s life in unexpected and extraordinary ways. The Rockwell women are nothing if not . . . Well, it’s complicated. When the sisters—Esme, Liv, and Ru—were young, their eccentric mother, Augusta, silenced all talk of their absent father with the wild story that he was an international spy, always away on top-secret missions. But the consequences of such an unconventional upbringing are neither small nor subtle: Esme is navigating a failing marriage while trying to keep her precocious fifteen-year-old daughter from live-tweeting every detail. Liv finds herself in between relationships and rehabs, and Ru has run away from enough people and problems to earn her frequent flier miles. So when a hurricane hits the family home on the Jersey Shore, the Rockwells reunite to assess the damage—only to discover that the storm has unearthed a long-buried box. In a candid moment, Augusta reveals a startling secret that will blow the sisters’ concept of family to smithereens—and send them on an adventure to reconnect with a lost past . . . and one another. Praise for All of Us and Everything “Engaging . . . [a] lively comic novel about stormy women and the spy (and other sexy types) who loved them.”—People (“The Best New Books”) “Similar to Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down, [All of Us and Everything] rewards readers with an engrossing plot rich in witty and frank dark humor. . . . Readers will linger on the story’s web of connections. . . . Thoughtful and provoking.”—Booklist “[Bridget] Asher’s newest title spotlights her unique voice plus an affinity for quirky, wounded characters that are both realistic and likable. . . . The subtle theme [is] how changing our stories can change us. An entertaining yet astute look at family, self, story, and connections.”—Kirkus Reviews “Charming, original, and impeccably written, All of Us and Everything is a spirited romp through the lives of an unusual family of women—three adult sisters, their mother, one teenage daughter, and their longtime housekeeper—and the men who love them, amuse them, pursue them, and lose them. When I wasn’t laughing out loud or eagerly turning pages to see what happened next, I was marveling at Bridget Asher’s ability to tell a highly entertaining, fully engaging, and deeply insightful story.”—Cathi Hanauer, New York Times bestselling author of Gone “While many writers strive to create a single memorable character, Bridget Asher, seemingly with the flick of her wrist, brings forth four amazing, unique, altogether brilliant characters in All of Us and Everything. The Rockwell siblings, Esme, Liv, and Ru, as well as their fascinating mother, Augusta, won me over completely, and their story twists and turns in such fascinating, hilarious, and heartfelt ways that it left me in awe of Asher’s abilities.”—Kevin Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of The Family Fang “Bridget Asher’s fascinating, eccentric characters are such good company that I finished All of Us and Everything in one sitting. This is a compelling, funny, moving story about an irresistible family.”—Leah Stewart, author of The New Neighbor




Views from a Jagged Orbit: Essays


Book Description

These are essays, indeed, but generally not the sort taught in schools -- or that I taught for forty years: not in the elegant Intro/Thesis/Proof/Conclusion tradition but more in the older tradition of Michel de Montaigne and les essais, and of satire. That is, they are "attempts," explorations, and, well, also traps, where I wander around a bit in apparent innocence and then spring on readers a possibly outrageous idea, one they wouldn’t have considered for a moment if I hadn’t lulled them (you) into trusting me a bit. Some of the essays are also in the satiric tradition, where one tries for some startling combinations of learnéd language and vulgarity, short shocker sentences in the midst of some knotty convolutions. Anyway, the essays usually do come to some fairly clear, fairly serious, non-random conclusion and Views can’t be entirely without form. So my initial editor and I have arranged them into categories. The over-arching, “meta” category for most is POLITICS or POLITICS AND CULTURE: I was brought up political in Chicago and have remained true to my breeding as a thoroughly political animal, and, of course, I am a student of, and participant in, at least a couple of cultures.




With a Happy Eye, But...


Book Description

In his seventh collection, Will examines more than five years of his observations on politics, the economy, justice, international relations, and, not least, the death of Princess Diana--a brilliantly diverse collection from an extraordinarily diverting mind.




What It Takes to Pull Me Through


Book Description

Given a chance to observe at the Academy at Swift River, a school helping teenagers in crisis, the author sees the students' struggles and see their transformations from the inside.