The Vicissitudes of Fortune
The Vicissitudes of Fortune

Author: Bob Siqveland

Publisher: Outskirts Press

Published: 2017-03-13

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1478785896

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Five teenagers from diverse backgrounds are brought together by a war. A Japanese, a Jew, a Native American, an African American, and a white kid from middle-class America form an interdependent relationship in the jungles of Vietnam. They become the most highly decorated squad in a war they don’t understand, but their relationships transcend the social structures of racism formed through historical injustices, and they remain best friends for decades. Their iconic leader, Billy Stone, one day finds himself entangled with a Medicare scam dreamed up by his sister’s husband. For his sister’s sake, he must find a solution. The livelihoods of the others form within the law enforcement communities in their individual and collective quest for justice as they grow from boys to men of great character. Even the strongest of character has its flaws, but these men are the best of the best, and there is only one adversity they cannot overcome. From the Selma-to-Montgomery march, the internment camps of WWII, the poverty and desolation of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; to the estrangement of a father and son and a suicide of great consequence, this team of five becomes one. At the same time, there are “takers” like Billy’s brother-in-law who infect the American system. They need to be brought to justice, but the price will be high. On the smallest of scales, this is an epic tale of how the dream of a world community can become a reality.

Vicissitudes
Vicissitudes

Author: Kim Green

Publisher: Transgress Press

Published: 2021-02-01

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0998252182

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Vicissitudes confronts the transformative power of love in black romance and relationships when we dare to question conventional ideas about gender and sexuality and who we consider worthy of our love and commitment. Narrated through various character perspectives, Vicissitudes explores the intricacies and complexities of being black, queer and trans and boldly confronts the barriers (within and without) that we face when we dare live to love with authenticity, dignity and integrity. Kim Green challenges readers to reconsider the meaning of love, struggle and liberation in a world that clings to labels out of fear of change and the unexpected. Exceedingly relevant for today’s rapidly changing world, this morality play of trial and triumph shines a bright light on the enormous power of love to transform us anew and reinvent the world.

100 Years of Vicissitude
100 Years of Vicissitude

Author: Andrez Bergen

Publisher: John Hunt Publishing

Published: 2012-10-26

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1780995989

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"First up, a disclaimer. I suspect I am a dead man. I have meagre proof, no framed- up certification, nothing to toss in a court of law as evidence of a rapid departure from the mortal coil. I recall a gun was involved, pressed up against my skull, and a loud explosion followed." Thus begins our narrator in a purgatorial tour through twentieth-century Japanese history, with a ghostly geisha who has seen it all as a guide and a corrupt millionaire as her reluctant companion. Thrown into the milieu are saké, B-29s, Lewis Carroll, Sir Thomas Malory, Melbourne, 'The Wizard of Oz', and a dirigible - along with the allusion that Red Riding Hood might just be involved. ,

Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life
Culture, Rhetoric and the Vicissitudes of Life

Author: Michael Carrithers

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2009-06-01

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1845459245

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Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume’s wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.

The Linguistics Wars
The Linguistics Wars

Author: Randy Allen Harris

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 569

ISBN-13: 019974033X

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"This book chronicles the history of linguistics from the 1950s rise of Noam Chomsky's Transformational Grammar, in alliance with cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence, to the current day. It centers on a highly consequential dispute at a key moment of that rise, the relative importance of structure and meaning. The dispute marks a rupture between what looked to be an approaching Chomskyan hegemony in theory and a flowering of alternate approaches that complement but do not replace his approach, as well as some that advance it in various ways. The rupture was between the theory of Generative Semantics, pushing to include more and more meaning into linguistic theory, and Interpretive Semantics, which resisted that push, putting more and more focus on linguistic structure. But in many ways the dispute can be reduced to George Lakoff, the most prominent voice on the more-meaning side, and Noam Chomsky on the more-structure side. Chomsky is a big personality, quiet and understated but always gesturing at monumental and revolutionary implications for his ideas, never failing to mobilize great numbers of linguists, often with large contingents of psychologists, philosophers, computer scientists, or biologists sharing the enthusiasm as well. Lakoff is also big personality, anything but quiet or understated, equally comfortable gesturing at grand revolutions. So, personalities are central to the dispute and its aftermath, alongside the theories, the data, and the technical developments, with other social currents playing various additional roles, from military and educational funding to the counter-culture movement of the 1960s to the growth of computational technologies, and all of these factors show up in the chronicle, along with a cast of other remarkable and influential characters. Noam Chomsky is unquestionably the most influential linguist of the twentieth century-many people claim of any century-whose work and personal imprint remains powerfully relevant today, so the book ends by an analysis of Chomsky's influence and legacy"--