The Golden Age of Paraphernalia


Book Description

Poetry. Radically comic, formally inventive, and ridiculously smart, every 8 to 10 years Kevin Davies releases a new book reminding us just how unexpected poetry can be. THE GOLDEN AGE OF PARAPHERNALIA will without doubt garner the applause his previous book COMP. (Edge Books, 2000) received. That garnering included The San Francisco Book Award in 2000 selected by Kevin Killian, write-ups in the New York Times, Village Voice, and Boston Review, translation into French by Xandaire Selene, and extended critical articles in American Literature, Jacket, and The Poker-- i.e. Davies' work has met with more than a little enthusiasm. One example: Joshua Clover in the Village Voice: "Davies often writes long, tumbling sequences that gather force like a dream landslide, with each part standing out as an idiosyncratic scene charged by an alluring voice, or stance, not quite like anything else in contemporary poetry." Cover photograph by Benjamin Friedlander.




Shazam!


Book Description

Shazam made his debut in Whiz Comics in 1940, and outsold his biggest competitor, Superman, by 14 million copies a month. It wasn't long before a variety of merchandise was licensed--secret decoders, figurines, buttons, paper rockets, tin toys, puzzles, costumes--and a fan club was created to keep up with the demand. These collectibles now sell for outrageous prices on eBay and in comic book stores and conventions. Seventy years later, an unprecedented assortment of these artifacts are gathered together by award-winning writer/designer Chip Kidd and photographer Geo Spear. Join Kidd, Spear, and the World's Mightiest Mortal in this first, fully authorized celebration of ephemera, artwork, and rare, one-of-a-kind toys, and recapture the magic that was Shazam




2000 A.D.


Book Description




The Matter of Capital


Book Description

Christopher Nealon’s reexamination of North America’s poetry in English, from Ezra Pound and W. H. Auden to younger poets of the present day, argues persuasively that the central literary project of the past century was to explore the relationship between poetry and capitalism—its impact on individuals, communities, and cultures.




Facing Ted Williams


Book Description

“The Splendid Splinter,” “Teddy Ballgame,” “The Kid”—no matter the nickname, Ted Williams was one of the most accomplished hitters in baseball history. He was the last man to hit .400 in a single season, a nineteen-time All-Star, a two-time MVP and Triple Crown award winner, and an inductee into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966 . . . all while serving his country in World War II and the Korean War. Far from a conventional biography, Facing Ted Williams aims to offer a different perspective with testimonials from teammates and opponents alike on how Williams was regarded among his peers. See Ted Williams through the eyes of pitchers struggling to put a fastball past his bat, the infielders and outfielders adjusting their positions in the hopes that they can fill the hole where a frozen rope might land, and the catchers as they strategize a Williams at-bat, pitch-by-pitch. Facing Ted Williams provides riveting insights from many baseball legends, including: Bob Feller Mudcat Grant Bobby Richardson Don Larsen Bob Friend And many more! Whether you’re a Red Sox fanatic, a casual baseball fan, or perhaps just an admirer of the fabled war hero and slugger, this book is sure to be a fresh and compelling look at this classic baseball icon. Much like Williams himself, Facing Ted Williams is sure to be a home run for all walks of baseball fandom, so don’t swing and miss! Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports—books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team. Whether you are a New York Yankees fan or hail from Red Sox nation; whether you are a die-hard Green Bay Packers or Dallas Cowboys fan; whether you root for the Kentucky Wildcats, Louisville Cardinals, UCLA Bruins, or Kansas Jayhawks; whether you route for the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, or Los Angeles Kings; we have a book for you. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.




Still Life and Trade in the Dutch Golden Age


Book Description

An original and provocative view of Golden Age still life paintings and the exotic commodities they depict




Theory of the Gimmick


Book Description

Christian Gauss Award Shortlist Winner of the ASAP Book Prize A Literary Hub Book of the Year “Makes the case that the gimmick...is of tremendous critical value...Lies somewhere between critical theory and Sontag’s best work.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “Ngai exposes capitalism’s tricks in her mind-blowing study of the time- and labor-saving devices we call gimmicks.” —New Statesman “One of the most creative humanities scholars working today...My god, it’s so good.” —Literary Hub “Ngai is a keen analyst of overlooked or denigrated categories in art and life...Highly original.” —4Columns “It is undeniable that part of what makes Ngai’s analyses of aesthetic categories so appealing...is simply her capacity to speak about them brilliantly.” —Bookforum “A page turner.” —American Literary History Deeply objectionable and yet strangely attractive, the gimmick comes in many guises: a musical hook, a financial strategy, a striptease, a novel of ideas. Above all, acclaimed theorist Sianne Ngai argues, the gimmick strikes us both as working too little (a labor-saving trick) and working too hard (a strained effort to get our attention). When we call something a gimmick, we register misgivings that suggest broader anxieties about value, money, and time, making the gimmick a hallmark of capitalism. With wit and critical precision, Ngai explores the extravagantly impoverished gimmick across a range of examples: the fiction of Thomas Mann, Helen DeWitt, and Henry James; the video art of Stan Douglas; the theoretical writings of Stanley Cavell and Theodor Adorno. Despite its status as cheap and compromised, the gimmick emerges as a surprisingly powerful tool in this formidable contribution to aesthetic theory.




The Golden Age Is in Us


Book Description

This is a history, a diary, a dossier of a radical's working life and circumstances among some of the most momentous years of the century. Its pages echo with the crash of rubble, of the old regimes of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, of the illusions of the post-Cold War West, of physical landscapes in upheaval. Cockburn's own reflections, both personal and political, are interspersed with letters from Claud Cockburn, Graham Greene, friends and irate readers. There are discussions with Noam Chomsky, dippings into criticism, Colette, transvestism, sexual manners, hate mail.




The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time


Book Description

The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time offers original readings of poems composed in this century—poems that are challenging to follow, challenging to understand, challenging to discuss, and challenging to enjoy. Difficult poetry of the past relied on allusion, syntactic complexity, free association, and strange juxtapositions. The new poetry breaks with the old in its stunning variety; its questioning of inherited values, labels, and narratives; its multilingualism; its origin in and production of unnamed affects; and its coherence around critical and social theorists as much as other poets. The essays in this volume include poets writing on the works of a younger generation (Lyn Hejinian on Paolo Javier, Bob Perelman on Rachel Zolf, Roberto Tejada on Rosa Alcalá), influential writers addressing the work of peers (Ben Lerner on Maggie Nelson, Michael W. Clune on Aaron Kunin), critics making imaginative leaps to encompass challenging work (Brian M. Reed on Sherwin Bitsui, Siobhan Philips on Juliana Spahr), and younger scholars coming to terms with poets who continue to govern new poetic experimentation (Joseph Jeon on Myung Mi Kim, Lytle Shaw on Lisa Robertson). In pairings that are both intuitive (Marjorie Perloff on Craig Dworkin) and unexpected (Langdon Hammer on Srikanth Reddy), The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time illuminates the myriad pathways and strategies for exploring difficult poetry of the present.




Golden Holocaust


Book Description

The cigarette is the deadliest artifact in the history of human civilization. It is also one of the most beguiling, thanks to more than a century of manipulation at the hands of tobacco industry chemists. In Golden Holocaust, Robert N. Proctor draws on reams of formerly-secret industry documents to explore how the cigarette came to be the most widely-used drug on the planet, with six trillion sticks sold per year. He paints a harrowing picture of tobacco manufacturers conspiring to block the recognition of tobacco-cancer hazards, even as they ensnare legions of scientists and politicians in a web of denial. Proctor tells heretofore untold stories of fraud and subterfuge, and he makes the strongest case to date for a simple yet ambitious remedy: a ban on the manufacture and sale of cigarettes.