Swimming Underground is Mary Woronov?s blazing account of her lethal experiences in Andy Warhol?s factory in the late 60s. She takes us on a surreal trip to experience the sights, sounds, moods and decadence of a group of now infamous people (including Ondine, Lou Reed, Nico, Gerard Malanga, International Velvet, Rotten Rita, Billy Name and others...) It?s an amphetamine memoir of lives spinning out of control from an insider who was there at the centre, starring in the films, performing with Lou Reed.
NATIONAL BEST SELLER • From the best-selling, award-winning author of The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine comes a novel about what happens to a group of obsessed recreational swimmers when a crack appears at the bottom of their local pool. This searing, intimate story of mothers and daughters—and the sorrows of implacable loss—is the most commanding and unforgettable work yet from a modern master. The swimmers are unknown to one another except through their private routines (slow lane, medium lane, fast lane) and the solace each takes in their morning or afternoon laps. But when a crack appears at the bottom of the pool, they are cast out into an unforgiving world without comfort or relief. One of these swimmers is Alice, who is slowly losing her memory. For Alice, the pool was a final stand against the darkness of her encroaching dementia. Without the fellowship of other swimmers and the routine of her daily laps she is plunged into dislocation and chaos, swept into memories of her childhood and the Japanese American incarceration camp in which she spent the war. Alice's estranged daughter, reentering her mother's life too late, witnesses her stark and devastating decline.
This text describes topics discussed at the conference, including: tunnelling and construction in soft ground and rocks; geological investigations; tunnelling machines; planning for underground infrastructure; safety issues and environmental and social aspects of underground development.
Whether defined by the carnivalesque excesses of Troma studios (The Toxic Avenger), the arthouse erotica of Radley Metzger and Doris Wishman, or the narrative experimentations of Abel Ferrara, Melvin Van Peebles, Jack Smith, or Harmony Korine, underground cinema has achieved an important position within American film culture. Often defined as "cult" and "exploitation" or "alternative" and "independent," the American underground retains separate strategies of production and exhibition from the cinematic mainstream, while its sexual and cinematic representations differ from the traditionally conservative structures of the Hollywood system. Underground U.S.A. offers a fascinating overview of this area of maverick moviemaking by considering the links between the experimental and exploitative traditions of the American underground.
Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming! From man's first recorded dip into what's now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all--the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic. Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, flows mostly underground through the Dark and Middle Ages (at least in Europe), and then reemerges in the wake of the Renaissance before taking its final lap at today's Olympic games. Along the way, it kicks away the idea that swimming is just about moving through water, about speed or great feats of aquatic endurance, and shows you how much more it can be. Its history offers a multi-tiered tour through religion, fashion, architecture, sanitation and public health, colonialism, segregation and integration, sexism, sexiness, guts, glory, and much, much more. Unique and compelling, Splash! sweeps across the whole of humankind's swimming history--and just like jumping into a pool on a hot summer's day, it has fun along the way.
Back in print after nearly fifty years–the acclaimed fiction debut of novelist H. L. Humes, co-founder of The Paris Review “Immensely intelligent and energetic, intensely dramatic and melodramatic, heroically overwritten yet sharp, insightful, and precise, The Underground City is an astonishing book by a writer of abundant gifts whose resurrection is long overdue.” –Peter Matthiessen It is the late 1940s and Paris is in turmoil. A man named Dujardin is sentenced to death for treason, sparking general strikes and threats of riots across the city. In the meantime, John Stone, a war-weary American and former secret agent, finds himself being investigated as a suspected Communist. What has brought these two men to their fates? H.L. Humes spins a thrilling account of the French underground during the last years of World War II, and the events that lead to the Dujardin affair. His many memorable characters include Adriane, loved by both Stone and Carnot, a fanatic Communist; Bruce Sheppard, the American ambassador to France, a statesman of vision and compassion; and Solange Récamier, the sophisticated young Parisian widow who finds meaning in trying to salvage Stone’s broken life. The Underground City displays H.L. Humes’s youthful literary skill and a striking capacity for fast-paced narrative. This is a brilliant tour de force. “A major achievement . . . [The Underground City] attains its full stature in poetry and truth. . . . [This is a] many-sided, absorbing novel, written on a grand scale, that holds the reader’s attention from the first to the last of its many pages.” –New York Herald Tribune “Magnificent . . . [The Underground City] has verisimilitude and scope, action and depth of emotion.” –Chicago Tribune “A work of power, maturity and distinction.” –Newsweek
Offers exposition of the classification of underground space, important considerations such as geological and engineering and underground planning. This title includes chapters concerning applications for underground water storage, underground car parks, underground metros and road tunnels and underground storage of crude oil, lpg and natural gas.
Imagination runs wild in this Caldecott Honor-winning tale featuring Dr. Seuss's inimitable voice and hysterical illustrations. The first Seuss title to feature full-color art on every other page, this adventurous picture book tells of Marco-who first imagined an extraordinary parade in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street-as he daydreams of all the possibilities that await him while he fishes in McElligot's Pool. Optimistic and exciting, this tale is the perfect bait, and readers young and old will be hooked on this fish-tastic favorite.
The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Set aboard a nineteenth century riverboat theater, this is the moving, page-turning story of a charmingly frank and naive seamstress who is blackmailed into saving runaways on the Underground Railroad, jeopardizing her freedom, her livelihood, and a new love. It’s 1838, and May Bedloe works as a seamstress for her cousin, the famous actress Comfort Vertue—until their steamboat sinks on the Ohio River. Though they both survive, both must find new employment. Comfort is hired to give lectures by noted abolitionist, Flora Howard, and May finds work on a small flatboat, Hugo and Helena’s Floating Theatre, as it cruises the border between the northern states and the southern slave-holding states. May becomes indispensable to Hugo and his troupe, and all goes well until she sees her cousin again. Comfort and Mrs. Howard are also traveling down the Ohio River, speaking out against slavery at the many riverside towns. May owes Mrs. Howard a debt she cannot repay, and Mrs. Howard uses the opportunity to enlist May in her network of shadowy characters who ferry babies given up by their slave mothers across the river to freedom. Lying has never come easy to May, but now she is compelled to break the law, deceive all her new-found friends, and deflect the rising suspicions of Dr. Early who captures runaways and sells them back to their southern masters. As May’s secrets become more tangled and harder to keep, the Floating Theatre readies for its biggest performance yet. May’s predicament could mean doom for all her friends on board, including her beloved Hugo, unless she can figure out a way to trap those who know her best.
“McLeod’s deft and generous book tells of a constellation of avant-garde squatters, divas, and dissidents who reinvented the world.” —Jonathan Lethem, New York Times-bestselling author of Motherless Brooklyn The 1960s to early ’70s was a pivotal time for American culture, and New York City was ground zero for seismic shifts in music, theater, art, and filmmaking. The Downtown Pop Underground takes a kaleidoscopic tour of Manhattan during this era and shows how deeply interconnected all the alternative worlds and personalities were that flourished in the basement theaters, dive bars, concert halls, and dingy tenements within one square mile of each other. Author Kembrew McLeod links the artists, writers, and performers who created change, and while some of them didn’t become everyday names, others, like Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, and Debbie Harry, did become icons. Ambitious in scope and scale, the book is fueled by the actual voices of many of the key characters who broke down the entrenched divisions between high and low, gay and straight, and art and commerce—and changed the cultural landscape of not just the city but the world. “The story of underground artists of the 1960s and ’70s, an amalgam of bustling radical creativity and fearless groundbreaking work in art, music, and theater.” —Tim Robbins “Breathes new fire into a familiar history and is a must-read for anyone who wants to know how American bohemia really happened.” —Ann Powers, critic, NPR Music “Honors those who were at the forefront of a movement that transformed our understandings of sexuality and artistic freedom.” —Lily Tomlin
