This is a reissue of the novel inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's ether-fuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold... And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas.
The author of Quilt Blocks Across America journeys to destinations beyond our borders to bring you new inspiration for travel-themed projects! Debra Gabel’s new collection features fifty all-new 6” square appliqué patterns for exciting locales like Tokyo, Sydney, and Venice, plus general travel-themed designs perfect for any kind of appliqué. An inspiring gallery of the quilt blocks “in action” gives you plenty of ideas for sewing something special to commemorate your travels . . . real or imagined!
“Earnest, poetic.” —Booklist “Raw, engaging.” —Kirkus Reviews The Greatest Showman meets This Is Us by way of Sarah Dessen in this heart-wrenching, hopeful contemporary novel about a multiracial teen who risks it all to follow her dreams by joining the circus, from the award-winning author of Starfish. Harley Milano has dreamed of becoming a trapeze artist for as long as she can remember. With parents who run a famous circus in Las Vegas, she spends almost every night in the big top watching their lead aerialist perform, wishing with all her heart and soul that she would be up there herself one day. After a huge fight with her parents, who continue to insist she go to school instead, Harley leaves home, betrays her family, and joins the rival traveling circus Maison du Mystère. There, she is thrust into a world that is both brutal and beautiful, where she learns the value of hard work, passion, and collaboration. At the same time, Harley must come to terms with the truth of her family and her past—and reckon with the sacrifices she made and the people she hurt in order to follow her dreams. From award-winning author Akemi Dawn Bowman comes a luminous, unforgettable examination of love, loyalty, and the hard choices we must make to find where we truly belong.
A deeply panoramic tour of the night, from its brightest spots to the darkest skies we have left. A starry night is one of nature's most magical wonders. Yet in our artificially lit world, three-quarters of Americans' eyes never switch to night vision and most of us no longer experience true darkness. In The End of Night, Paul Bogard restores our awareness of the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky and how it has influenced the human experience across everything from science to art. From Las Vegas' Luxor Beam -- the brightest single spot on this planet -- to nights so starlit the sky looks like snow, Bogard blends personal narrative, natural history, science, and history to shed light on the importance of darkness -- what we've lost, what we still have, and what we might regain -- and the simple ways we can reduce the brightness of our nights tonight.
Reports of the Incidents of fall of large ice blocks from the sky have been appearing in media since times. These ice chunks, also known as “Blue ice” or “Aircraft Ice” happen to be the frozen mixture of human bio-waste and liquid disinfectant, that emerge in the form of the leakage from the defective toilet lines from a commercial airliner or any other transport category aircraft carrying passengers. The book gives an account of more than 600 such cases of ice fall worldwide extracted from various languages. Many people believe that the colour of ice blocks fallen from the aircraft toilets must be Blue or Green, but as a matter of fact, it could be of any colour, blue, green, yellowish, rusty, muddy, ash, white, dirty, or colourless. These ice blocks are potential hazards that are likely to endanger the lives and properties on the ground. As, the incidents are generally viewed from the perspective of weather and therefore, no preventive measures are contemplated against them. However, a majority of them are actually found to be aviation-related, and thus there appears to be some possibility of minimising them provided appropriate precautionary measures are taken and implemented in the matter by the airlines, regulatory authorities for aviation and other concerned. "This is the first occasion that a book on the topic of ice-fall from the sky has been written by an aviation expert, who has done it after conducting high-quality research work considering various aeronautical aspects as well as the facts & figures related to aviation - Satendra Singh, Former DGCA, India"
This is the story of Percy Diligence - a fearful romantic, a prolific drinker, and purposeful dabbler - and his struggle to complete the final masterwork of his late aunt, the renowned artist Josie Dunn. Water, art, death, and puzzle pieces guide this journey that sends Percy down the red-clay trail of the Grand Canyon with his mysterious beloved Nelly Blue; down to the banks of the mighty Colorado River and then all they way back to the wheezing metropolis of Los Angeles. Along the way he discovers not only sublime disappointment and bitter betrayal at the hands of his best friends, but also the gift of redemption and the final pieces to a lifelong puzzle.
The Vegas Dilemma, a collection of twenty-seven short stories, weaves a vision of contemporary America through the eyes of its outcasts. Set largely in Las Vegas, featuring a recurring character of a footloose, morose woman who likes to eat Cheerios in grocery stores, each story takes up quotidian concerns-staying in Starbucks past closing time, a visit to Hoover Dam, falling in love over Instagram-and mines them for their political and existential undercurrents, which fly off the stories like sparks from a pinwheel. A cycle of stories-"Pulverized Oat Wheels," "Mother Nature is Belligerent", "Symmetry of Provocation", etc.-make use of a vignette style to suture seemingly disparate scenarios and emotions. Thus, in "Not Capable of Giving her Leprosy" we meet a sexually exploitative American professor at a South Korean University; a reading group who meet in Starbucks to discuss the ethics of eating meat while reading The Vegetarian; palm trees that are mistaken for armadillos; and Walmart identified as a nerve agent. Other stories, such as "Your Sadness is Salt on Salt" and "In My Youth My Father Is Short and Poor," use a sparse first-person voice for more poetic effect. Connected by themes of alienation, bad romance, and microaggressions, The Vegas Dilemma combines the inventiveness of fiction and the richness of everyday life to show that such American tragedies as Trump's ascendency and the Weinstein scandal aren't divorced from everyday interactions, but arise from them.
Music industry insiders on the nature of fame Our cultural darlings make music; we make them mythic. Every musical genre begets a community of listeners, performers, and critics, and quite often those categories are blurred. From the principled punk refusal of celebrity to hip-hop's celebration of its power, the music world is self-obsessed. Stars Don't Stand Still in the Sky assembles scholars, music writers, industry workers, and musicians, who offer a range of opinions and experience of the nature of fame. The collection focuses on commerce, the crowd, performance and image, history and memory, and romance. Contributors discuss black women icons, love-songs, the legacy of the blues, the image of the tortured rock star, MTV, the politics of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the joy of line-dancing, and more. The contributors are James Bernard, Anthony DeCurtis, Katherine Dieckmann, Chuck Eddy, Paul Gilroy, Daniel Glass, Lawrence Grossberg, Jessica Hagedorn, Kathleen Hanna, James Hannaham, Dave Hickey, Jon Langford, Greil Marcus, Angela McRobbie, Paul D. Miller (a.k.a. DJ Spooky), Barbara O'Dair, Ann Powers, Toshi Reagon, Simon Reynolds, Robert Santelli, Jon Savage, Danyel Smith, Arlene Stein, Deena Weinstein, and Ellen Willis.
William Fox's writing for the last several years has been focused on how we construct aerial views, either physically (by flying) or in our imaginations. In Aereality, he flies over earthworks in Nevada and Utah, soars through the world's largest open pit mine, and surveys Los Angeles, circumnavigating large swaths of true American urban sprawl. On the East Coast, he examines the elevated art of the Hudson River Valley and New York City. And finally, in Australia, Fox examines the history and current practice of both Euro–Australian and Aboriginal aerial views, and searches for the cognitive roots of our aerial imagination. Accompanying Fox throughout his travels is a rolling cast of enlightened fliers: geographers, museum curators, landscape photographers, anthropologists, and artists. He traverses the sky in prop planes, helicopters, and hot air balloons, all with the ultimate goal of knowing and experiencing the earth from the air.
Pasha's talent and determination has taken him to some amazing places all around the world including Moscow, New York, LA and London. However, it was the grey, stark landscape of his Siberian hometown, still reeling from the Communist regime, which provided the unlikely inspiration for his early love of ballroom dancing, a passion that he has embraced and nurtured ever since. With a desire to succeed, Pasha fought off tough competition to win a place on So You Think You Can Dance in the US, and then became one of the best-loved professionals on Strictly Come Dancing in the UK. It's no surprise that Pasha has twice danced his way into the Strictly final, and waltzed straight into the hearts of the nation. Yet, despite his fame, Pasha remains something of an enigma and, unlike some of is dancing co-stars, has eschewed the limelight, preferring to express himself through movement. Now, in his own words, Pasha reveals all in his heart-warming autobiography. From romance to body image, Pasha speaks candidly about the impact his extensive world travel and showbiz life have had on his mindset, and the illness that nearly killed him.He'll separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth and reveal how it really felt to almost lift the Glitter-ball trophy with Chelsee Healey and Kimberley Walsh. Most of all, he'll give readers a glimpse behind the scenes of the flashy world of ballroom, and what really goes on beneath the veneer of sparkles and glamour.
