Terrible Freedom
Terrible Freedom

Author: Amy C. Beal

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2024-04-23

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0520401271

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From her childhood in Detroit to her professional career in New York City, American composer Lucia Dlugoszewski (1925–2000) lived a life of relentless creativity as a poet and writer, composer for dance, theater, and film, and, eventually, choreographer. Forging her own path after briefly studying with John Cage and Edgard Varèse, Dlugoszewski tackled the musical issues of her time. She expanded sonic resources, invented instruments, brought new focus to timbre and texture, collaborated with artists across disciplines, and incorporated spiritual, psychological, and philosophical influences into her work. Remembered today almost solely as the musical director for the Erick Hawkins Dance Company, Dlugoszewski's compositional output, writings on aesthetics, creative relationships, and graphic poetry deserve careful examination on their own terms within the history of American experimental music.

Azadi
Azadi

Author: Arundhati Roy

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 164259380X

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The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world.

Listen to Life
Listen to Life

Author: Dion Mcinnis

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2005-12

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 1599263866

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"Where you're different, Dion," the marketing consultant said, "Is that you are telling people that what they need to know is around them, not necessarily to be found by contemplating their navels. Instead of just looking inside oneself, you suggest to others to look around themselves." "Listen to Life: Wisdom in Life's Stories" presents more than 90 profoundly simple lessons some reinforced by Dion's photography that remind, encourage, inspire and inform. The stories serve as lessons as well as guides to where and how each of us should look and listen to life to get the most from it. Approachable and accessible, the book can be opened at any page, just as life's lessons can be absorbed at any time. "Life's lessons are random access,'" Dion says, "and we're in contact with knowledge and wisdom at all times from all types of sources." The book is an outgrowth of Dion's weekly newsletter of the same name. Useful as gifts to friends, colleagues or customers, the book provides important reminders to the "listening" professions: education, healthcare, financial, sales, management and more. Dion uses many of these stories as examples in his presentations and workshops to various associations, organizations and businesses, as well as women's shelters, youth programs and others. On a more personal level, the book provides moments to pause and reflect on the sublime wisdom available to us all in our daily lives.

Crossroads Chapter Sampler
Crossroads Chapter Sampler

Author: Jonathan Franzen

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2021-08-17

Total Pages: 25

ISBN-13: 037460729X

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Download the first chapter of Jonathan Franzen's next novel, Crossroads. It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who’s been selling drugs to seventh graders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate. Jonathan Franzen’s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own. A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen’s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

In Defense of the West
In Defense of the West

Author: Donald John Devine

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780761828228

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American values and institutions are under stress, from terrorist attacks by opposing worldviews abroad to widespread domestic skepticism that American traditions are more valuable than others. In this book, Donald Devine asks whether these values can survive or be defended in a West that questions all traditions. Devine raises questions that are answered as the chapters develop, keeping readers engaged, while preventing quick dismissals of the concerns held by those not inclined to support the book's thesis_that Western vision and American values are worth questioning or defending. All standard solutions are considered and are brought together in an investigation of Western values that has a traditionalist bend, but still leaves the largest questions open for the reader to contemplate_including whether American values will in fact survive.

On Leaving
On Leaving

Author: Branka Arsić

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9780674050730

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Arsić unpacks Ralph Waldo Emerson’s repeated assertion that our reality and our minds are in constant flux. Her readings of a broad range of Emerson’s writings are guided by a central question: what does it really mean to maintain that everything fluctuates, is relational, and so changes its identity?

The Genesis of God
The Genesis of God

Author: Thomas J. J. Altizer

Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press

Published: 1993-04-15

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 9780664221638

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Thomas Altizer, one of America's premier theologians, searches for a proper understanding of the Christian God, which he believes can only be explicated when the question of origin is raised. He begins with an investigation of Hegelian thinking, develops his insights in dialogue with such thinkers as Augustine and Nietzsche, and then focuses on notions generated by the Christian epic poetry of Dante, Milton, and Blake. By explicating the absolute origin of God that only Christianity knows, Altizer discloses the origin of a uniquely Christian freedom while also touching upon such important themes as predestination, the fall, evil, and eternity.

Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia
Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia

Author: Irina Paperno

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2018-09-05

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1501724606

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In the popular and scientific imagination, suicide has always been an enigmatic act that defies, and yet demands, explanation. Throughout the centuries, philosophers and writers, journalists and scientists have attempted to endow this act with meaning. In the nineteenth century, and especially in Russia, suicide became the focus for discussion of such issues as the immortality of the soul, free will and determinism, the physical and the spiritual, the individual and the social. Analyzing a variety of sources—medical reports, social treatises, legal codes, newspaper articles, fiction, private documents left by suicides—Irina Paperno describes the search for the meaning of suicide. Paperno focuses on Russia of the 1860s–1880s, when suicide was at the center of public attention.

Traces of War
Traces of War

Author: Colin Davis

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1786940426

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Traces of War examines how the trauma of the Second World War influenced the work of the brilliant generation of writers and intellectuals who lived through it.

Seculosity
Seculosity

Author: David Zahl

Publisher: Fortress Press

Published: 2019-04-02

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1506449441

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At the heart of our current moment lies a universal yearning, writes David Zahl, not to be happy or respected so much as enough--what religions call "righteous." To fill the void left by religion, we look to all sorts of everyday activities--from eating and parenting to dating and voting--for the identity, purpose, and meaning once provided on Sunday morning. In our striving, we are chasing a sense of enoughness. But it remains ever out of reach, and the effort and anxiety are burning us out. Seculosity takes a thoughtful yet entertaining tour of American "performancism" and its cousins, highlighting both their ingenuity and mercilessness, all while challenging the conventional narrative of religious decline. Zahl unmasks the competing pieties around which so much of our lives revolve, and he does so in a way that's at points playful, personal, and incisive. Ultimately he brings us to a fresh appreciation for the grace of God in all its countercultural wonder.