In an extraordinary montage of facts, sound-bites and testimonies, Weinberger assembles an uncompromising and blackly comic narrative which permits the voices of war to speak for themselves, and allows the protagonists and the apologists to damn themselves in their own words.
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction “There Kevin Young goes again, giving us books we greatly need, cleverly disguised as books we merely want. Unexpectedly essential.”—Marlon James Award-winning poet and critic Kevin Young tours us through a rogue’s gallery of hoaxers, plagiarists, forgers, and fakers—from the humbug of P. T. Barnum and Edgar Allan Poe to the unrepentant bunk of JT LeRoy and Donald J. Trump. Bunk traces the history of the hoax as a peculiarly American phenomenon, examining what motivates hucksters and makes the rest of us so gullible. Disturbingly, Young finds that fakery is woven from stereotype and suspicion, race being the most insidious American hoax of all. He chronicles how Barnum came to fame by displaying figures like Joice Heth, a black woman whom he pretended was the 161-year-old nursemaid to George Washington, and What Is It?, an African American man Barnum professed was a newly discovered missing link in evolution. Bunk then turns to the hoaxing of history and the ways that forgers, plagiarists, and journalistic fakers invent backstories and falsehoods to sell us lies about themselves and about the world in our own time, from pretend Native Americans Grey Owl and Nasdijj to the deadly imposture of Clark Rockefeller, from the made-up memoirs of James Frey to the identity theft of Rachel Dolezal. In this brilliant and timely work, Young asks what it means to live in a post-factual world of “truthiness” where everything is up for interpretation and everyone is subject to a pervasive cynicism that damages our ideas of reality, fact, and art.
The chivalrous and charismatic Koch Generalissimo Sukladwaj known as Chilarai, was the younger brother & Prime Minister of King Naranarayan of the kingdom of Kamrupa-Kamata Kingdom during 1510-1571. Before mentioning about Mahaveer Chilarai, it would be worthy to mention that Maharaj Viswa Singha, who rose from the position of cow-hard king to that of a very powerful monarch of Kamrupa-Kamata and the founder of the Koch Kingdom, was a great and benevolent king. He was known as a great warrior, a superb organizer of people, a just and efficient ruler, extraordinarily courageous, highly religious, tolerant in attitudes, and undoubtedly adventurous with sky rocketing ambitions. His children in general, Naranarayan and Chilarai in particular must have genetically inherited all the great qualities of their father, importantly aggressive personality, organizing and leadership qualities and there of a nation builder. The qualities as part of teaching vis-à-vis learning were-art of warfare, wrestling, study of the sastras, weaponry, horse-riding and fighting from horse-back and particularly attacking the enemy with swords & shields, spears, bows & arrows, fire-arms etc. Once Nara Singha, one of the sons of Viswa Singha, succeeded the throne after the death of Viswa Singha without following norms as set by his father. Naranarayan and Chilarai removed him from the throne and further entered Nepal to fetch Nara Singha who fled to Nepal. In Nepal, the king of Nepal honored both Naranarayan and Chilarai. As “Hanuman Danda” and Druga murti as the sacred deity of Koch kingdom also recovered from Narasimha by Chilarai with delicate approach. Further, the duo brother (Naranarayan and Chilarai) continued to extend their kingdom with massive platoon of soldiers little over 6 lakhs with Bhutiya, Daflas, and Bhuyan joined as one force.
In The Nature Essay: Ecocritical Explorations Simone Schröder offers the first extended account of the nature essay. Her ecocritical readings of essays engage with the genre's central epistemological and poetic paradigms, revealing its unique capacity to serve as a platform for environmental discourse.