Wonder of Wonders
Wonder of Wonders

Author: Alisa Solomon

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 0805095292

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A sparkling and eye-opening history of the Broadway musical that changed the world In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has had an astonishing global impact. Beloved by audiences the world over, performed from rural high schools to grand state theaters, Fiddler is a supremely potent cultural landmark. In a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America. It is a story of the theater, following Tevye from his humble appearance on the New York Yiddish stage, through his adoption by leftist dramatists as a symbol of oppression, to his Broadway debut in one of the last big book musicals, and his ultimate destination—a major Hollywood picture. Solomon reveals how the show spoke to the deepest conflicts and desires of its time: the fraying of tradition, generational tension, the loss of roots. Audiences everywhere found in Fiddler immediate resonance and a usable past, whether in Warsaw, where it unlocked the taboo subject of Jewish history, or in Tokyo, where the producer asked how Americans could understand a story that is "so Japanese." Rich, entertaining, and original, Wonder of Wonders reveals the surprising and enduring legacy of a show about tradition that itself became a tradition. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles.

Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment
Still Bored in a Culture of Entertainment

Author: Richard Winter

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2002-10-16

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0830823085

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Richard Winter's critique of our "culture of entertainment" explores the nature, causes and effects of boredom and counteracts it with practical suggestions for living with passion and wonder.

The Social Life of Ink
The Social Life of Ink

Author: Ted Bishop

Publisher: Penguin Canada

Published: 2014-10-28

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 014319318X

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A rich and imaginative discovery of how ink has shaped culture and why it is here to stay Ink is so much a part of daily life that we take it for granted, yet its invention was as significant as the wheel. Ink not only recorded culture, it bought political power, divided peoples, and led to murderous rivalries. Ancient letters on a page were revered as divine light, and precious ink recipes were held secret for centuries. And, when it first hit markets not so long ago, the excitement over the disposable ballpoint pen equalled that for a new smartphone—with similar complaints to the manufacturers. Curious about its impact on culture, literature, and the course of history, Ted Bishop sets out to explore the story of ink. From Budapest to Buenos Aires, he traces the lives of the innovators who created the ballpoint pen—revolutionary technology that still requires exact engineering today. Bishop visits a ranch in Utah to meet a master ink-maker who relishes igniting linseed oil to make traditional printers’ ink. In China, he learns that ink can be an exquisite object, the subject of poetry, and a means of strengthening (or straining) family bonds. And in the Middle East, he sees the world’s oldest Qur’an, stained with the blood of the caliph who was assassinated while reading it. An inquisitive and personal tour around the world, The Social Life of Ink asks us to look more closely at something we see so often that we don’t see it at all.

Tracking Wonder
Tracking Wonder

Author: Jeffrey Davis

Publisher: Sounds True

Published: 2021-11-16

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1683646894

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Discover how the lost art of wonder can help you cultivate greater creativity, resilience, meaning, and joy as you bring your greatest contributions to life. Beyond grit, focus, and 10,000 hours lies a surprising advantage that all creatives have—wonder. Far from child’s play, wonder is the one radical quality that has led exemplary people from all walks of life to move toward the fruition of their deepest dreams and wildest endeavors—and it can do so for you, too. “Wonder is a quiet disruptor of unseen biases,” writes Jeffrey Davis. “It dissolves our habitual ways of seeing and thinking so that we may glimpse anew the beauty of what is real, true, and possible.” Rich with wisdom, inspiring stories, and practical tools, Tracking Wonder invites us to explore how the lost art of wonder can inspire a life of greater joy, possibility, and purpose. You’ll discover: The six facets of wonder—key qualities to help you cultivate the art of wonder in your work, relationships, and lifeHow wonder can help us fertilize creativity, sustain the motivation to pursue big ideas, navigate uncertainty and crises, deepen our relationships, and moreThe biases against wonder—moving beyond societal and internalized resistance to our inherent giftsWhy experiencing wonder isn’t really about achieving goals—though that happens—but about how we live each dayInspiring stories of people whose experiences of wonder helped them move through the unthinkable to create extraordinary livesPractical exercises, tools, and reflections to help you begin your own practice of tracking wonder A refreshing counter-voice to the exhausting narrative hyper-productivity, Tracking Wonder is a welcome guide for experiencing more meaning and joy in the present moment as you bring your greatest contributions to life.

Strange Wonder
Strange Wonder

Author: Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2009-03-05

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0231518595

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Strange Wonder confronts Western philosophy's ambivalent relationship to the Platonic "wonder" that reveals the strangeness of the everyday. On the one hand, this wonder is said to be the origin of all philosophy. On the other hand, it is associated with a kind of ignorance that ought to be extinguished as swiftly as possible. By endeavoring to resolve wonder's indeterminacy into certainty and calculability, philosophy paradoxically secures itself at the expense of its own condition of possibility. Strange Wonder locates a reopening of wonder's primordial uncertainty in the work of Martin Heidegger, for whom wonder is first experienced as the shock at the groundlessness of things and then as an astonishment that things nevertheless are. Mary-Jane Rubenstein traces this double movement through the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Jacques Derrida, ultimately thematizing wonder as the awesome, awful opening that exposes thinking to devastation as well as transformation. Rubenstein's study shows that wonder reveals the extraordinary in and through the ordinary, and is therefore crucial to the task of reimagining political, religious, and ethical terrain.

The Wisdom of Wonder Woman
The Wisdom of Wonder Woman

Author: Signe Bergstrom

Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC

Published: 2019-07-09

Total Pages: 116

ISBN-13: 1452174334

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Beautiful as Aphrodite, stronger than Hercules, wise as Athena—for more than 75 years, Wonder Woman has inspired and empowered generations of fans with her strength and guidance. This gorgeous collection of quotes from throughout Wonder Woman's iconic history in comics, film, and TV, fully illustrated by a wide range of classic and modern visuals, showcases her wisdom on fighting systems of evil, defying expectations in Man's World, standing up for peace and love, and embodying the true meaning of strength. The Wisdom of Wonder Woman is an uplifting and powerful book for wonder women everywhere. WONDER WOMAN and all related characters and elements © & ™ DC Comics. (s19)

Wonder and Science
Wonder and Science

Author: Mary Baine Campbell

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2004-12-10

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1501705059

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During the early modern period, western Europe was transformed by the proliferation of new worlds—geographic worlds found in the voyages of discovery and conceptual and celestial worlds opened by natural philosophy, or science. The response to incredible overseas encounters and to the profound technological, religious, economic, and intellectual changes occurring in Europe was one of nearly overwhelming wonder, expressed in a rich variety of texts. In the need to manage this wonder, to harness this imaginative overabundance, Mary Baine Campbell finds both the sensational beauty of early scientific works and the beginnings of the divergence of the sciences—particularly geography, astronomy, and anthropology—from the writing of fiction. Campbell's learned and brilliantly perceptive new book analyzes a cross section of texts in which worlds were made and unmade; these texts include cosmographies, colonial reports, works of natural philosophy and natural history, fantastic voyages, exotic fictions, and confessions. Among the authors she discusses are André Thevet, Thomas Hariot, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn. Campbell's emphasis is on developments in England and France, but she considers works in languages other than English or French which were well known in the polyglot book culture of the time. With over thirty well-chosen illustrations, Wonder and Science enhances our understanding of the culture of early modern Europe, the history of science, and the development of literary forms, including the novel and ethnography.

Marvelous Possessions
Marvelous Possessions

Author: Stephen Greenblatt

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2017-10-20

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 022652518X

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A masterwork of history and cultural studies, Marvelous Possessions is a brilliant meditation on the interconnected ways in which Europeans of the Age of Discovery represented non-European peoples and took possession of their lands, particularly in the New World. In a series of innovative readings of travel narratives, judicial documents, and official reports, Stephen Greenblatt shows that the experience of the marvelous, central to both art and philosophy, was manipulated by Columbus and others in the service of colonial appropriation. Much more than simply a collection of the odd and exotic, Marvelous Possessions is both a highly original extension of Greenblatt’s thinking on a subject that has permeated his career and a thrilling tale of wandering, kidnapping, and go-betweens—of daring improvisation, betrayal, and violence. Reaching back to the ancient Greeks, forward to the present, and, in his new preface, even to fantastical meetings between humans and aliens in movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Greenblatt would have us ask: How is it possible, in a time of disorientation, hatred of the other, and possessiveness, to keep the capacity for wonder—for tolerant recognition of cultural difference—from being poisoned?

Recapturing the Wonder
Recapturing the Wonder

Author: Mike Cosper

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2017-07-14

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0830890769

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When we're young, it's easy to believe in the supernatural. But as we grow older, even as Christians who believe in the resurrection, we live as if reality is merely what we can see. Mike Cosper has discovered disciplines that awaken the possibility of living again in an enchanted world. With thoughtful practices woven throughout, this book will feed your soul and help you recapture the wonder of your Christian walk.