Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow

Author: Nathaniel Rich

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0374224242

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While working for a financial consulting firm that offers insurance against catastrophic events, a young mathematician becomes increasingly obsessed with doomsday scenarios until one of his worst-case scenarios unfolds in Manhattan.


Scorpion Reef

Scorpion Reef

Author: Charles Williams

Publisher: Overamstel Uitgevers

Published: 2012-09-18

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9049983766

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Aboard a ghost ship, sailors discover a tale of treasure, lust, and murder When the tanker finds the yacht, she is far from land, adrift in the middle of the Caribbean. No one is onboard, but the hold is stuffed with cash, the coffeepot is still warm, and a hint of perfume hangs in the air. The passengers have vanished, but the ship’s log tells a chilling story of the madness peculiar to the search for sunken riches. The journal was written by salvage diver Bill Manning, who was out of money and out of luck when he met a statuesque Swede named Shannon. She and her husband hire him to sail them to the Yucatan coast, to find a plane that went down carrying untold wealth. But a pair of gangsters is pursuing them, hoping for a crack at the treasure as well. For the sake of Shannon’s beauty Manning will chase this fortune, knowing it will take him to the height of riches, or to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.


Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow

Author: Abraham Polonsky

Publisher: Sadanlaur Publications

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13:

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Odds Against Tomorrow (1959), which stars Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, and Gloria Grahame, is written by blacklisted screenwriter Abraham Polonsky and directed by Robert Wise. The last great film noir of the black and white era it reflects the author's strong social conscience as racial conflict is portrayed as central to the failure of a bank robbery. This publication of the complete script blends the shooting script (written before the film was shot) and the continuity script (the elements which are contained in the finished film). The critical analysis draws extensively on specially conducted interviews with Robert Wise, Harry Belafonte and Abraham Polonsky. Discussed in depth are the significance of a black protagonist within the film noir genre; the adaptation from William McGivern's novel; and the critically celebrated jazz score by John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet.


The Lives of Robert Ryan

The Lives of Robert Ryan

Author: J R Jones

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2015-05-11

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 0819573736

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An “engrossing new biography” of the actor famed for his menacing onscreen persona—and his offscreen work for peace and civil rights (Film Quarterly). The Lives of Robert Ryan is an in-depth look at the gifted, complex, intensely private man Martin Scorsese called “one of the greatest actors in the history of American film.” The son of a Chicago construction executive with strong ties to the Democratic machine, Ryan became a star after World War II on the strength of his menacing performance as an anti-Semitic murderer in the film noir Crossfire. Over the next quarter century, he created a gallery of brooding, neurotic, and violent characters in such movies as Bad Day at Black Rock, Billy Budd, The Dirty Dozen, and The Wild Bunch. His riveting performances expose the darkest impulses of the American psyche during the Cold War. At the same time, Ryan’s marriage to a liberal Quaker and his own conscience launched him into a tireless career of peace and civil rights activism that stood in direct contrast to his screen persona. Drawing on unpublished writings and revealing interviews, film critic J.R. Jones deftly explores the many contradictory facets of Robert Ryan’s public and private lives, and how these lives intertwined in one of the most compelling actors of a generation. “Engaging . . . Jones describes a complex man who grappled publicly with the world’s demons and privately with his own, among them alcohol and depression.” —Associated Press “Jones has done a superb job . . . A masterly biography.” —Library Journal Includes photographs


Jazz and Cocktails

Jazz and Cocktails

Author: Jans B. Wager

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1477312277

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Film noir showcased hard-boiled men and dangerous femmes fatales, rain-slicked city streets, pools of inky darkness cut by shards of light, and, occasionally, jazz. Jazz served as a shorthand for the seduction and risks of the mean streets in early film noir. As working jazz musicians began to compose the scores for and appear in noir films of the 1950s, black musicians found a unique way of asserting their right to participate fully in American life. Jazz and Cocktails explores the use of jazz in film noir, from its early function as a signifier of danger, sexuality, and otherness to the complex role it plays in film scores in which jazz invites the spectator into the narrative while simultaneously transcending the film and reminding viewers of the world outside the movie theater. Jans B. Wager looks at the work of jazz composers such as Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, Chico Hamilton, and John Lewis as she analyzes films including Sweet Smell of Success, Elevator to the Gallows, Anatomy of a Murder, Odds Against Tomorrow, and considers the neonoir American Hustle. Wager demonstrates how the evolving role of jazz in film noir reflected cultural changes instigated by black social activism during and after World War II and altered Hollywood representations of race and music.


King Zeno

King Zeno

Author: Nathaniel Rich

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2018-01-09

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0374716315

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A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a Paris Review Staff Pick A January Pick by Salon, Town and Country, Southern Living, and LA Magazine New Orleans, 1918. The birth of jazz, the Spanish flu, an ax murderer on the loose. The lives of a traumatized cop, a conflicted Mafia matriarch, and a brilliant trumpeter converge—and the Crescent City gets the rich, dark, sweeping novel it so deserves. From one of the most inventive writers of his generation, King Zeno is a historical crime novel and a searching inquiry into man’s dreams of immortality. New Orleans, a century ago: a city determined to reshape its destiny and, with it, the nation’s. Downtown, a new American music is born. In Storyville, prostitution is outlawed and the police retake the streets with maximum violence. In the Ninth Ward, laborers break ground on a gigantic canal that will split the city, a work of staggering human ingenuity intended to restore New Orleans’s faded mercantile glory. The war is ending and a prosperous new age dawns. But everything is thrown into chaos by a series of murders committed by an ax-wielding maniac with a peculiar taste in music. The ax murders scramble the fates of three people from different corners of town. Detective William Bastrop is an army veteran haunted by an act of wartime cowardice, recklessly bent on redemption. Isadore Zeno is a jazz cornetist with a dangerous side hustle. Beatrice Vizzini is the widow of a crime boss who yearns to take the family business straight. Each nurtures private dreams of worldly glory and eternal life, their ambitions carrying them into dark territories of obsession, paranoia, and madness. In New Orleans, a city built on swamp, nothing stays buried long.


Goat Days

Goat Days

Author: Benyamin

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2012-07-17

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 8184756658

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Najeeb’s dearest wish is to work in the Gulf and earn enough money to send back home. He achieves his dream only to be propelled by a series of incidents, grim and absurd, into a slave-like existence herding goats in the middle of the Saudi desert. Memories of the lush, verdant landscape of his village and of his loving family haunt Najeeb whose only solace is the companionship of goats. In the end, the lonely young man contrives a hazardous scheme to escape his desert prison. Goat Days was published to acclaim in Malayalam and became a bestseller. One of the brilliant new talents of Malayalam literature, Benyamin’s wry and tender telling transforms this strange and bitter comedy of Najeeb’s life in the desert into a universal tale of loneliness and alienation.


Against the Odds

Against the Odds

Author: Peter S. Arno

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13:

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"Against the Odds is the most important book yet written about the quest for a cure and treatments for AIDS. Authors Arno and Feiden cut through the complex issues to tell the tragic, inspiring story behind the scenes of the AIDS crisis - how a diverse group of extraordinary people banded together to fight bureaucracy and greed to save lives. AIDS has been called the greatest public health menace of our time, and yet political and bottom-line agendas, couples with fear, racism, and homophobia, have made the battle against it a painful uphill struggle. Against the Odds is the tale of government officials, agencies, and pharmaceutical companies that have delayed the development of life-saving and life-prolonging drugs, and of others who have bent and changed the rules. Most of all, it is the story of the activist and patient communities that have now altered the course of government policy toward AIDS and other diseases with their creative, and often heroic, tactics"--Unedited summary from book.


Against Tall Odds

Against Tall Odds

Author: Matt Roloff

Publisher: Multnomah

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781576735831

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Anyone who watched part three in the Star Wars movie trilogy, Return of the Jedi, saw Matt Roloff. His handicap helped land him a part as one of the diminutive, furry Ewoks. In Matt's biography Against Tall Odds, readers view a world of fast-walking giants, where common obstacles for most are mountains for little people, and stares from strangers are the norm. Through perseverance and faith, Matt shows that success comes not by trying to be what you're not, but by being what God has made you.


BraveHearts

BraveHearts

Author: Bud Withers

Publisher: Triumph Books

Published: 2002-09

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1623684579

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The inspirational and touching story of Gonzaga's rise from college basketball obscurity to near mythic status as everyone's favorite underdog, this book was penned by acclaimed college basketball writer Bud Withers, who has covered the Zags since it all began. In dramatic fashion he reanimates the events of the last few years, adding flesh to the personalities and summoning the details, great and small, that make up this unforgettable story. Readers will meet players such as Blake Stepp, a blue chip high school recruit who selected Gonzaga because of what it wasn't; Dan Dickau, who became a first-round NBA pick in 2002 after becoming Gonzaga's first All-American player in the history of the men's basketball program; Dan Monson, the former coach who instilled a fearless attitude among the players and began Gonzaga's storied run; Mark Few, the current coach who has continued and expanded upon the program's great success; and Father Tony Lehmann, the school's longtime chaplain who died in March 2002, who was the inspirational leader of the basketball team. This book is a must read for any college basketball fan wanting to know more about Gonzaga, the team that makes deep runs into the NCAA tournament almost every year without compromising on the small-school values that still separate it from the basketball factories it terrorizes each March.