The Whiskey Epiphanies
The Whiskey Epiphanies

Author: Dick Bakken

Publisher: PBS Publications

Published: 2018-03-21

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1545722455

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Widely published and even more widely featured, Dick Bakken has been writing and reading (he calls it "voicing" since he memorizes all his poems) for fifty years. He was raised in eastern Washington and taught in Oregon. For that past thirty years he has lived in Bisbee, Arizona, where he keeps on writing and leading writing workshops. He prefers his poems to be heard than to be read, but he agreed to allow this publisher to put these into an actual book.

America Zen
America Zen

Author: Ray McNiece

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13:

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This is an essential collection of contemporary American Zen poetry from thrity poets whose work is shared through biographical statement, Zen statement, photo, and five or more poems each. It's a book that can help you awaken to your natural self.

The Cost of Loyalty
The Cost of Loyalty

Author: Tim Bakken

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1632868997

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A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020 A courageous and damning look at the destruction wrought by the arrogance, incompetence, and duplicity prevalent in the U.S. military-from the inside perspective of a West Point professor of law. Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America's collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military's insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. The consequences are undeniably grim: failure in every war since World War II, millions of lives lost around the globe, and trillions of dollars wasted. Bakken makes the case that the culture he has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them. Despite fabricated admissions data, rampant cheating, epidemics of sexual assault, archaic curriculums, and shoddy teaching, the military academies produce officers who maintain their privileges at any cost to the nation. Any dissenter is crushed. Bakken revisits all the major wars the United States has fought, from Korea to the current debacles in the Middle East, to show how the military culture produces one failure after another. The Cost of Loyalty is a powerful, multifaceted revelation about the United States and its singular source of pride. One of the few federal employees ever to win a whistleblowing case against the U.S. military, Bakken, in this brave, timely, and urgently necessary book, and at great personal risk, helps us understand why America loses wars.

Mirrorforms
Mirrorforms

Author: Peter Kline

Publisher: Parlor Press LLC

Published: 2019-10-28

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 1643171313

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Mirrorforms is a collection of poems in a tiny, eight-lined, intricately rhyming “mirrorform” I invented that begins and ends with the same line. Like John Berryman’s “Dream Songs,” Charles Wright’s “Sestets,” and Terrence Hayes’ “American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin,” this collection strives to develop the full range of expressive and sonic possibility in a single poetic form. The mirrorform’s two sets of mirrored envelope rhymes make it reminiscent of the octave of a Petrarchan sonnet – and, indeed, the great English-language tradition of the sonnet sequence is another major influence—but its slender trimeter lines and prominent identical repetition give it a very distinct effect. The form is well-suited to thinking quickly through an idea, turning it over in the light; the repetition allows for both a sharply ironic twist and a haunting echo. The very short lines allow me to put intense pressure on individual words and phrases, making the form apt for all kinds of punning. In addition, the mirrorform’s tendency to establish binaries makes it an especially effective form for creating complex systems of parallelism and antithesis. I’ve written several that are informed by Emily Dickinson’s “definition” poems trying to take advantage of these logical structures. I’ve also written mirrorforms that incorporate quotations from other poets, using the binary structure to emphasize the implicit dialogue that is created. Mirrorforms explores the musical, rhetorical, and expressive possibilities of this form through a series of agnostic psalms, shadowy dramatic monologues, meditative studies, and elegies.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Author: Sherman Alexie

Publisher: Random House

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 074938669X

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Weaves characters, themes and language in 22 linked stories that evoke the complex density of life in and around the Spokane Indian Reservation. The author is one of Granta's 20 Best Young American Writers.

The New Wild West
The New Wild West

Author: Blaire Briody

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2017-09-26

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1466871520

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Williston, North Dakota was a sleepy farm town for generations—until the frackers arrived. The oil companies moved into Williston, overtaking the town and setting off a boom that America hadn’t seen since the Gold Rush. Workers from all over the country descended, chasing jobs that promised them six-figure salaries and demanded no prior experience. But for every person chasing the American dream, there is a darker side—reports of violence and sexual assault skyrocketed, schools overflowed, and housing prices soared. Real estate is such a hot commodity that tent cities popped up, and many workers’ only option was to live out of their cars. Farmers whose families had tended the land for generations watched, powerless, as their fields were bulldozed to make way for one oil rig after another. Written in the vein Ted Conover and Jon Krakauer, using a mix of first-person adventure and cultural analysis, The New Wild West is the definitive account of what’s happening on the ground and what really happens to a community when the energy industry is allowed to set up in a town with little regulation or oversight—and at what cost.

Dark Money
Dark Money

Author: Jane Mayer

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2017-01-24

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 0307947904

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Who are the immensely wealthy right-wing ideologues shaping the fate of America today? From the bestselling author of The Dark Side, an electrifying work of investigative journalism that uncovers the agenda of this powerful group. In her new preface, Jane Mayer discusses the results of the most recent election and Donald Trump's victory, and how, despite much discussion to the contrary, this was a huge victory for the billionaires who have been pouring money in the American political system. Why is America living in an age of profound and widening economic inequality? Why have even modest attempts to address climate change been defeated again and again? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? In a riveting and indelible feat of reporting, Jane Mayer illuminates the history of an elite cadre of plutocrats—headed by the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Olins, and the Bradleys—who have bankrolled a systematic plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. Mayer traces a byzantine trail of billions of dollars spent by the network, revealing a staggering conglomeration of think tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses, and government allies that have fallen under their sphere of influence. Drawing from hundreds of exclusive interviews, as well as extensive scrutiny of public records, private papers, and court proceedings, Mayer provides vivid portraits of the secretive figures behind the new American oligarchy and a searing look at the carefully concealed agendas steering the nation. Dark Money is an essential book for anyone who cares about the future of American democracy. National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist LA Times Book Prize Finalist PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Finalist Shortlisted for the Lukas Prize