Convinced that the expensive, vulgar presidential campaign is worse than it has ever been, Americans long for the good old days of dignified campaigns and worthy candidates which, as this book demonstrates, never existed. Troy shows that our disappointment with campaigns is simply the latest chapter in a centuries-long struggle to make peace with the idea of leadership in a democratic society.
Before Game Change there was What It Takes, a ride along the 1988 campaign trail and “possibly the best [book] ever written about an American election” (NPR). Written by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and New York Times–bestselling author Richard Ben Cramer, What It Takes is “a perfect-pitch rendering of the emotions, the intensity, the anguish, and the emptiness of what may have been the last normal two-party campaign in American history” (Time). An up-close, in-depth look at six candidates—George H. W. “Poppy” Bush, Bob Dole, Joe Biden, Michael Dukakis, Richard Gephardt, and Gary Hart—this account of the 1988 US presidential campaign explores a unique moment in history, with details on everything from Bush at the Astrodome to Hart’s Donna Rice scandal. Cramer also addresses the question we find ourselves pondering every four years: How do presumably ordinary people acquire that mixture of ambition, stamina, and pure shamelessness that allows them to throw their hat in the ring as a candidate for leadership of the free world? Exhaustively researched from thousands of hours of interviews, What It Takes creates powerful portraits of these Republican and Democratic contenders, and the consultants, donors, journalists, handlers, and hangers-on who surround them, as they meet, greet, and strategize their way through primary season chasing the nomination, resulting in “a hipped-up amalgam of Teddy White, Tom Wolfe, and Norman Mailer” (Los Angeles Times Book Review). With timeless insight that helps us understand the current state of the nation, this “ultimate insider’s book on presidential politics” explores what helps these people survive, what makes them prosper, what drives them, and ultimately, what drives our government—human beings, in all their flawed glory (San Francisco Chronicle).
The inspiration for the Major Motion Picture Directed by George Clooney—exclusively in theaters December 25, 2023! The #1 New York Times bestselling true story about the American rowing triumph of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—from the author of Facing the Mountain For readers of Unbroken, out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant. It was an unlikely quest from the start. With a team composed of the sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the University of Washington’s eight-oar crew team was never expected to defeat the elite teams of the East Coast and Great Britain, yet they did, going on to shock the world by defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler. The emotional heart of the tale lies with Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not only to regain his shattered self-regard but also to find a real place for himself in the world. Drawing on the boys’ own journals and vivid memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, Brown has created an unforgettable portrait of an era, a celebration of a remarkable achievement, and a chronicle of one extraordinary young man’s personal quest.
Kurosawa generally is recognized as the best of the modern Japanese filmmakers. He was the first Japanese director to gain international recognition, partly because his storytelling technique is not culture-bound. Rashomon (1950), a story of rape and terror that is told from several different viewpoints, received first prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951; the film's title has become synonymous with the concept of subjective truth expressed in widely varying versions of the same story. The Seven Samurai (1954), a humanistic tale of samurai risking their lives to defend a poor village, is another Kurosawa classic. Kurosawa has always been attracted to Western literature, and two of his most notable films are based on Shakespeare's plays: Throne of Blood (1957), a retelling of Macbeth, and Ran (1985), a masterly reinterpretation of King Lear.
This collection of short stories is new, original and modern. Thougt some are fiction, several of the stories in the collection are based on actual experiences and events or recognizable events.
Edward Eggleston (December 10, 1837 - September 3, 1902) was an American historian and novelist. Eggleston was born in Vevay, Indiana, to Joseph Cary Eggleston and Mary Jane Craig. The author George Cary Eggleston was his brother. As a child, he was too ill to regularly attend school, so his education was primarily provided by his father. He was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1856. He wrote a number of tales, some of which, especially the "Hoosier" series, attracted much attention. Among these are The Hoosier Schoolmaster, The Hoosier Schoolboy, The End of the World, The Faith Doctor, and Queer Stories for Boys and Girls. Eggleston was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1893. His boyhood home at Vevay, known as the Edward and George Cary Eggleston House, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. His summer home, Owl's Nest, in Lake George, New York, eventually became his year-round home. Eggleston died there in 1902, at the age of 64. Owl's Nest was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1971. His daughter, the writer, Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, was married to Elwyn Seelye, the founder of the New York State Historical Association. (wikipedia.org)
In the years between the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 and the Soweto Uprising of 1976—a period that was both the height of the apartheid system in South Africa and, in retrospect, the beginning of its end—Harold Scheub went to Africa to collect stories. With tape-recorder and camera in hand, Scheub registered the testaments of Swati, Xhosa, Ndebele, and Zulu storytellers, farming people who lived in the remote reaches of rural South Africa. While young people fought in the streets of Soweto and South African writers made the world aware of apartheid’s evils, the rural storytellers resisted apartheid in their own way, using myth and metaphor to preserve their traditions and confront their oppressors. For more than 20 years, Scheub kept the promise he made to the storytellers to publish his translations of their stories only when freedom came to South Africa. The Tongue Is Fire presents these voices of South African oral tradition—the historians, the poets, the epic-performers, the myth-makers—documenting their enduring faith in the power of the word to sustain tradition in the face of determined efforts to distort or eliminate it. These texts are a tribute to the storytellers who have always, in periods of crisis, exercised their art to inspire their own people.
